Ukraine’s Prime Minister Filed His Resignation Due to Scandal with Wiretapped Conversation about Zelensky

Ukrainian Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk filed a resignation and handed it for signing to President Vladimir Zelensky. Honcharuk posted that on Facebook on January 17. “I took the office to fulfill the presidential program. I see him as a model of transparency and decency. However, in order to eliminate any doubts about our respect for and trust in the president, I wrote a resignation letter and handed it to the President with the right to submit it to the parliament. He is a man in whom the Ukrainians have expressed unprecedented confidence. And he has every right to evaluate the effectiveness of every member of his team which is changing the country. ” Zelensky’s Office said the president would consider a “resignation letter”. On Wednesday evening, an audiotape was uploaded to social media in Ukraine in which people with voices similar to those of the prime minister, deputy head of the National Bank and the Minister of Finance, discussed the country's economic policy and make unflattering comments on the competence of President Vladimir Zelensky, the BBC reported. In addition, a man with a voice sounding like Oleksiy Honcharuk’s admits that he was “a total ignoramus in economy.” “Zelensky has a very primitive, I mean, simple understanding of economic processes. He understands: there is a balance of payments, it has not improved much, and the hryvnia has greatly strengthened, it is abnormal. He’s looking for an answer to this question, but there is no answer to this question,” the person on the record with a voice similar to that of Prime Minister Oleksiy Honcharuk says. The president needs viable explanations for what is happening in the economy, and they should “sound very realistic”, he continues. “Until the president has an answer to this question in his head, he will have an empty place there, and this crap on the bonds issue will turn back to him. It gets into his head only because he has a haze on this topic,” a man with the prime minister’s voice says and offers at least two possible explanations for the president. The first variant: to tell Zelensky that the overvaluation of dollar at the beginning of last year is explained by the pre-election neurosis, and after the elections, when “the new strong president came to power, blah-blah-blah, unprecedented level of confidence in power”, the hryvnia greatly strengthened. Another explanation: “He (Zelensky) needs to be told: look, Vova, currency drop means that Olivier salad at the next New Year’s table...”