NEW HEAD OF UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT’S ADMINISTRATION APPOINTED.

Mykola Biloblotsky, 54, has replaced the public politician Kushnaryov as the chief-of-staff of Leonid Kuchma’s administration (Ukrainian media, November 25). Until then, Biloblotsky served as deputy premier for social policy in the cabinet of Pustovoytenko.

Biloblotsky–an assiduous and reliable administrator, apparently not associated with any party or “clan”–has behind him a twenty-five-year career in Komsomol and the USSR’s Communist Party apparatus. After independence, he was elected in parliament and joined the Socialist Party of Ukraine, but has never since then actively participated in party politics. In 1996 he was appointed labor minister. Kuchma used Biloblotsky’s administrative skills in February 1998, sending him to Yalta to chair a special commission to tame the rebellious Crimean city council, allegedly connected with organized crime, which refused to accept the president’s mayoral appointee. In June, Biloblotsky, appointed by Kuchma as the temporary acting mayor of Odessa, put an end to the squabbles between the mayor, Eduard Hurvits, and the regional council head, Ruslan Bodelan, which continued for years. Biloblotsky’s latest emergency mission was in November in the Transcarpathia, where he headed the cabinet team in charge of eliminating the consequences of a devastating flood.–OV

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