Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba (L) and the Netherlands’s Foreign Minister Caspar Veldkamp (R) walk past a display of destroyed Russian military vehicles in Saint Michael’s Square in Kyiv on July 6, 2024.
Genya Savilov / AFP
Zelensky is apparently fearful about officials being able to say things “contrary to the government’s line.”
Just over a year after he was pushed out of Volodymyr Zelensky’s government, Dmytro Kuleba is reported to have left the country before a travel ban was brought into force to ‘silence former diplomats.’
Kuleba announced his resignation as foreign minister in early September last year, a post he had held for four years, including during the start of Russia’s invasion in February 2022.
On Monday, Italian daily Corriere della Seraclaimed he called the paper to say that he had “fled” his country just before a decree banning former officials from travelling abroad came into effect. Journalists added that he spoke “worriedly” over the phone, saying:
The truth is that Zelensky and his entourage don’t want us to go abroad and say things they believe might be contrary to the government’s line. I’ve calculated that there are about 20 of us subject to this measure. I don’t think I suffer from persecution mania, but I know for sure that this decree is aimed at blocking me and a few others.
Kuleba previously urged Ukrainians who fled the country to return in order to help the fight against Russia. He even once stressed that “if we run out of weapons, we will fight with shovels.”
Despite Corriere della Sera’s report, Ukrainian media later claimed Kuleba’s press team said he had simply “left on a planned business trip and would return on September 20th.” Other reports say Kuleba also personally denied having fled from Ukraine in a post on his Instagram account.
Journalist Leonid Ragozin said the intention of Zelensky’s decree was more likely to keep former commander-in-chief and “main presidential hopeful Valery Zaluzhny, currently the ambassador in the UK, out of Ukraine at election o’clock.”
Michael Curzon is a news writer for europeanconservative.com based in England’s Midlands. He is also Editor of Bournbrook Magazine, which he founded in 2019, and previously wrote for London’s Express Online. His Twitter handle is @MichaelCurzon_.
