Zelensky dismissed Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine Ruslan Demchenko

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed Ruslan Demchenko from the post of First Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine.

The corresponding decree No. 528/2022 was published on the website of the Office of the President.

Demchenko was appointed to the position of Deputy Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council on June 16, 2020. In 2014, he was an adviser to the fifth president, Petro Poroshenko, and worked as an Adviser to President Zelensky between July 2019 and June 2020.

From February 26, 2010, to March 5, 2014, Demchenko worked as the First Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs. During February 23-27, 2014, he was Acting Foreign Minister of Foreign Affairs.

The Kharkiv Pact

On April 21, 2010, in Kharkiv, fugitive President Yanukovych signed an agreement between Ukraine and Russia on behalf of Ukraine, which extended Russia's lease of a major naval base in the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Sevastopol for an additional 25 years instead of preparing for withdrawal of Russian forces from the territory of Ukraine.

This Pact created preconditions for increasing the number of Russian troops in Ukraine, their re-equipment, and modernization. This later led to the Russian invasion and the occupation of Crimea.

In March 2021, the Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Oleksii Danilov, ordered the Security Service of Ukraine to check the circumstances of the preparation and ratification of the Kharkiv Pact. The SSU had to check how 236 people's deputies voted for these agreements.

As the Deputy Minister at the time, Ruslan Demchenko could prepare and approve the text of the Pact. Still, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs claimed that the official was not involved in preparing the documents. However, the journalists of the Cxemu (Schemes, ed.) investigative journalistic project found the transcript of the closed session of the parliamentary security committee on April 26, 2010, where Demchenko allegedly lobbied for the Kharkiv Pact.

A year ago, Zelensky called the information that Demchenko might be involved in the Kharkiv Pact a manipulation. The President stressed that Demchenko, as a deputy minister, did not put any signatures.  "But there are law enforcement agencies - let them investigate. He is testifying,"  Zelensky said.

The Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, Oleksii Danilov, said that everyone involved is responsible for signing the agreements:  "If Demchenko took part in it, he should also bear responsibility for it."