Yushchenko Fires Cabinet

I haven't had time to really dig into this, but Viktor Yushchenko just fired his cabinet:

Ukraine's President Viktor Yushchenko on Thursday sacked his cabinet and appointed a loyal and moderate ally to take over as prime minister from the populist Yulia Tymoshenko, after accusing her of engaging in divisive conflicts with other members of his political team.

Mr Yushchenko said Ms Tymoshenko and his national security chief, Petro Poroshenko, who had earlier resigned, had "lost their team spirit and trust" and had forced him to play the role of arbiter between competing institutions within his own administration.

Yushchenko promised that his main focus would be on stamping out corruption from the Soviet-era bureaucrats that have infected the Ukrainian government for decades. Prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko was a prominant figurehead in the Orange Revolution and definitely turned a few heads with her firey oratory and youthful appearance.

My first impression is that it looks like this was more about Yushchenko being fed up with being dragged into a baby sitter role over a couple of subordinates that refuse to work with each other than about corruption. Neither Tymoshenko or Poroshenko were elected, so Yushchenko was well within his rights to can a couple of bickering teammates, even though it seemed that Tymoshenko was a genuine reformist who wanted to clean house. Her first project was reprivatizing many of the corrupt industrial assets that were handed to some boys tight with the previous regime.

Before being sacked, Tymoshenko was listed by Forbes as the 3rd most powerful woman in the world.