Experts Comment on Replacement of Heads of Most Significant Cultural Institutions

Last Friday, Minister of Culture of Ukraine Mykhailo Kulyniak signed an order to dismiss Maryna Hromova from the position of the general director of the National Historic and Cultural Kyiv Cave Reserve. On the next day, the former deputy minister of culture and tourism, Viktoria Lisnycha, was appointed to the position.

On January 24, an order was issued to dismiss Nelia Kukovalska from the position of the director of the National Reserve Sophia of Kyiv. Nelia Kukovalsa successfully administered the affairs of the reserve since the year 2000.

Experts associate the large-scale replacement of the directors of the most significant cultural institutions with the efforts of the authorities to employ ex-officials who were made redundant due to the reduction of the top section of officials, reads the report of the press service of the head of the Committee on Culture and Tourism of the Kyiv City Council, Oleksandr Bryhynets.

The deputy said that the most pressing subject of discussion in the art, museum and monument-preservation environment is who wrote which letter to the minister of culture, prime minister or president of Ukraine to support the director of Sophia of Kyiv, Nelia Kukovalska.

“These letters have been provoked by the general replacement of the directors of the most significant cultural institutions for ex-officials made redundant due to the reduction of the top section of officials,” said Bryhynets.

The head of the committee is afraid that the new director will not hold a consistent protective position with respect to the Sophia of Kyiv Reserve. He also expressed an assumption that the appointment of such an official can be lobbied by those who ruin the historic area of the capital by illegal construction – even more so as the rumors about the dismissal of the head of the Sophia of Kyiv have been around since the time when the reserve was transferred to the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Culture.

Representatives of the Reserve Sophia of Kyiv told RISU that all the inspections of Controlling and Auditing Department, Security Service of Ukraine, Public Prosecutor’s Office and a committee of the Ministry of Culture did not detect any violations.