Tkachenko Resigns as Minister of Culture Over Splitting Off State Film Agency and Budget Cut

The State Film Agency may become a separate ministry.

Oleksandr Tkachenko has written a statement of resignation as minister of culture and information policy.

In particular, the decision is linked to the government's decision, which came as a surprise to him, to take the State Film Agency away from his ministry, as well as the small budget planned for culture in 2022.

Here are the details of what happened.

Splitting the State Film Agency from the Ministry of Culture

The Cabinet of Ministers voted at a closed session on November 10 to separate the State Film Agency from the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine.

Sources told “UP. Zhyttia” that the State Film Agency will now become the Ministry of Cinema, and that the decision to separate it was made without Tkachenko's participation, which outraged him.

The source calls the separation of the State Film Agency “the last straw for Tkachenko”:

“Since February 2021 he has not been approved to create separate central executive bodies, such as the State Inspection and the State Service for the Protection of Cultural Heritage, on the grounds that all of this should be left within the ministry. This also contradicts the logic of introducing central executive bodies.”

The minister opposed separating the State Film Agency because, according to the source, “this contradicts the logic of the reform launched long before Tkachenko became minister.”

It concerns the transfer of operational functions to the relevant central executive bodies — the State Art Agency, the State Film Agency, until recently the State Tourism Agency, the State Ethnopolicy Agency, etc. — while the ministry retains the function of forming policy and strategies and coordinating the activities of central executive bodies and regions in the sphere of culture and media.

Tkachenko's statement 

Later Tkachenko confirmed that the Cabinet's decision on the State Film Agency was made without agreement with the Ministry of Culture. “Taking the State Film Agency away from the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy and placing it under the Cabinet's management is illogical,” the minister said.

On November 11 Tkachenko wrote a resignation statement, which the Verkhovna Rada will have to consider. At the end of the document Tkachenko wrote: “Everything will be culture.”

Oleksandr Tkachenko
Minister of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine

It's like taking the transport department away from a company and placing it under the board of directors. Such a style and approach to managing processes surprises me – it is not my concept or values. Instead of continuing to implement the European concept of reform, which involves transferring operational functions to services and relevant agencies, which I have insisted on since February, a decision is being made with which I cannot agree. And it is not unique.

As an example, Tkachenko points out that under the management reform, earlier this year the government decided to create the State Service and State Inspection for the Protection of Cultural Heritage.

Several months later, the Ministry received a letter from the prime minister withdrawing the submission to create these institutions. The filling of the State Art Agency with operational functions was also blocked.

Oleksandr Tkachenko
Minister of Culture and Information Policy of Ukraine

They write that transferring the State Film Agency became the last straw for me. Then, let me remind you of the penultimate one — no less painful. The 2022 culture budget. Both the nature of the discussion and the final amount are unacceptable to me.

Let me remind you that the 2022 state budget, in its first reading, approved 10.6 billion hryvnias for culture. The Ministry of Culture is asking to add another 6.5 billion hryvnias.

The minister also said that “a report to the Rada is not far off,” because he sent his resignation to the speaker of parliament, Ruslan Stefanchuk.

Tkachenko believes that in the year and a half he has worked at the Ministry of Culture he “managed to do about 50% of what was planned,” but he has things to be proud of.

Among the achievements he named the launch of the “#MandruyUkrainoyu” program, the “Great Restoration” program, under which 57 cultural heritage sites have already received subventions from the state budget for restoration and reconstruction, the development of an Information Security Strategy, and the launch of the media literacy program “Filter,” among others.