Yuriy Lutsenko, 41, has been appointed to the post of Minister of Internal Affairs. An engineer who graduated from Lviv Polytechnic Institute, he is a former deputy Minister for science and technology issues. He has been a member of the Socialist Party of Ukraine since 1991 and is currently one of its brightest representatives. He is chief editor of the Grani Plus weekly. The role of field commander and Maidan’s DJ that he played during the Orange revolution was one of the most significant.

The son of an oblast communist boss, Yuriy went to work at a plant. Since December 2000 he co-chaired the action ‘Ukraine Without Kuchma’. He has been a council member in protest actions and a representative of a civil committee for the defense of the Constitution.

Yuriy Lutsenko is active, sociable, ambitious and learns easily. He seriously intended to take the seat of Communications Minister. Indeed, he is much better versed in high tech and telecommunications than in law enforcement.

If Lutsenko sincerely intends to make every effort to bring the daily routine of Ukraine’s militia in compliance with democratic standards, we can only take off our hats to him. And yet, we have a question: Is he, as a person who has never worked in this area, really aware of all the problems in the Ukrainian militia? Does he see the situation the way a minister must see it, or does he perceive it as does a common person, who distrusts the militia, fears it and is deeply convinced that honest cops have all died out?

His first months at the post will reveal if he is able to be a real head of the Internal Ministry, or a marionette, lacking understanding of what he is signing. In theory, Lutsenko is capable of breaking the corrupt and deep-rooted practices that now exist in law enforcement. As an organizer of a number of civil protest actions, he will bring a new sprit into this organization. However, the Internal Ministry’s collegium is totally different from the Maidan, so he will always remain alien to his subordinates. There will always be a gap between him and his deputies.

We doubt that Lutsenko is fully aware of what a terrible heritage his predecessors have left to him. It is unlikely that he has already had a clear plan of actions. We can only hope that he will mage at least to start purifying this corrupt structure having cut the knot of criminal business ties without eradicating the professional core.

“It will be very difficult for Lutsenko to hold this post, especially in the beginning, because Internal Ministry is an extremely conservative and extremely corrupt structure. The first thing he will have to do is to redirect the Ministry’s efforts from assisting criminal structures to the fulfillment of its actual functions laid out in the law and to take the Ministry out of political fight,” Mykola Melnyk, professor and member of Supreme Council of Justice commented on this appointment.