Klimkin, Pavel Anatolyevich

Pavel Klimkin was born on December 25, 1967 in Kursk . In 1991 he graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology , Department of Aerophysics and Space Research, majoring in applied mathematics and physics ^[1] .

He speaks Ukrainian , Russian , English and German , has basic knowledge of the French language .

In 1991-1993 - a researcher at the Institute of Electric Welding. Paton NAS of Ukraine .

In 1993-1997 - attaché, third, second secretary of the Department of military control and disarmament of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine .

In 1997-2000, he was the third, second secretary of the Ukrainian Embassy in Germany on scientific, technical and political issues.

In 2000-2002 - First Secretary, Advisor to the Department of Economic Cooperation of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine on nuclear and energy security.

In 2002-2004 - Head of the Department of Economic and Sectoral Cooperation with the EU, Department of European Integration, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine.

In 2004-2008 - Counselor-Envoy of the Embassy of Ukraine in Great Britain .

From March 2008 to April 2010 - Director of the European Union Department of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine.

From April 2010 to April 29, 2011 - Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine .

From April 29, 2011 to June 22, 2012 - Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine - Chief of Staff.

From June 22, 2012 to June 19, 2014 ^[2] - Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Ukraine to the Federal Republic of Germany.

Since June 19, 2014, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. Since June 24, 2014, a member of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine ^[3] .

In March 2015, he announced a personal boycott to all Russian media, and then the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry canceled their accreditation ^[4] .

On April 14, 2016, the government was dismissed; in the new government of Groysman, Klimkin retained the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine ^[5] . According to Groysman, in 2019, Klimkin’s candidacy, along with Yaresko, was a potential succession to Prime Minister Yatsenyuk, but both of them did not find support in parliament ^[6] .

In an interview with the newspaper Rheinische Post, given on February 2, 2018, Pavel Klimkin announced Ukraine’s intention to work out measures against German companies Volkswagen and Adidas for working in Crimea. He noted: “Any attempt to circumvent one or another Russian sanction imposed as a result of the annexation of Crimea should be punishable by law. We have at our disposal a wide selection of legal mechanisms with which we can operate. We are currently in the process of finding a balanced solution ” ^{[7] [8] [9]} .

May 17, 2019 wrote a letter of resignation from the post of Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. After the inauguration of President-elect Vladimir Zelensky on May 20, Pavel Klimkin was to lay down his ministerial powers, after which he planned to be elected to the Verkhovna Rada ^[10] .

At the end of June 2019, a conflict occurred between Klimkin and President Vladimir Zelensky related to the fate of those detained by the Russian authorities during the border conflict in the Kerch Strait. On June 26, Klimkin announced that he received a note from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation with a proposal on possible options for the release of Ukrainian sailors, and announced that he had refused to discuss any proposals by the Russian side. On June 27, Zelensky publicly announced to the media about his indignation over the actions of Klimkin, who, without his knowledge, answered the Russian note ^[11] , and demanded that Prime Minister Vladimir Groysman bring him to disciplinary liability ^[12] . On July 1, Zelensky sent a letter to the Verkhovna Rada for the second time asking him to consider the dismissal of Klimkin from the post of foreign minister. After that, Klimkin announced that on July 3 he was going on “political leave” ^{[13] [14]} .

July 1, 2019, Pavel Klimkin told reporters that he refused the offer of Petro Poroshenko to join the European Solidarity Party and run for it in the Verkhovna Rada. Klimkin said that he does not exclude the possibility that he will run for the mayor of Kiev ^[15] .

USSR

After the change of power in Ukraine in 2014, a policy was developed in the country to “cleanse” it from the Soviet past. Klimkin repeatedly touched on this topic. In January 2018, he expressed bewilderment in the fact that the Friendship of Peoples Arch , which was installed on the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the creation of the USSR , has not yet been dismantled in the center of Kiev, wondering: “either we got confused in the symbols, or maybe “because there were no pioneers left who could take it apart for scrap?” ^[16] . His statement provoked a response from the official representative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia M.V. Zakharova , who said that there really weren’t any pioneers left in Ukraine, but “even if they had remained, the monument would still have stood still: adults placed adequate pioneer children tasks, vandalism was not among them ” ^[17] .

After almost a year, in the new year of 2019, he expressed dissatisfaction with the fact that a lot of Soviet films were broadcast on Ukrainian television ^[18] , but at the same time concluded: “I would like to believe that this year we have become a little less Soviet” ^{[19 ]} . As for education, in his article published in March of the same year by the Ukrainian News Agency, it was said that the inhabitants of Ukraine were expecting that “a Ukrainian higher school freed from Soviet shackles will rush forward”:

He spoke of the USSR as an empire from a mixture of the statehood of the Moscow kingdom , absolutism and communism : “The October Revolution created a mutant empire. The traditions of the Moscow kingdom and absolutism combined with the factors of sectarian communism ” ^[21] . At the same time, he made a connection between the first Russian tsar and the “leader of the peoples”: “ Ivan the Terrible was not a communist, but Stalin was guided by the same logic” ^[21] .

On February 28, 2018, the Uruguayan publication Observador published an article by Klimkin, where he claimed that Ukrainians tried to resist “communist totalitarianism” in the days of the Soviet Union in order to defend democratic and European values, and the Soviet period itself caused “historical trauma” to the Ukrainian people ^[22] .

Kievan Rus

After the discovery (beginning in 2014) by archaeologists on Postal Square of monuments dating back to the times of Kievan Rus (including the remains of the quarter) ^[23] , Klimkin supported the creation of the Museum of the History of Kiev on Postal Square ^[24] . At the same time, in his article for the publication Observador for 2019, he considered Ukraine as the successor of Kievan Rus, and Ukraine, according to him, throughout history has played "a crucial role in shaping Europe and its values," and Kievan Rus itself saved Europe from conquests, as examples of which Klimkin cited the Tatar-Mongol invasion and “protection from the Ottoman Empire ” ^[25] .

Russia and Belarus

In March 2018, an article by Klimkin, “Ukraine and Belarus. Logika istorії ”(“ Ukraine and Belarus. Logic of History ”). In it, he reasoned that the Ukrainian People’s Republic (UNR) could become an example for Belarusian patriots, which resulted in the formation of the Belarusian People’s Republic (BNR):

In 2019, when the State Duma of the Russian Federation began to calculate the losses incurred by Crimea for 23 years of being a part of Ukraine, Klimkin began to think about demanding compensation from Russia for the centuries-old “occupation” of Ukraine. He first wrote about this in March on Facebook ^[27] , and already on April 5 on Espresso TV , Klimkin said that Kiev could demand from Russia “compensation for centuries of occupation” ^[28] . In response to this, the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Maria Zakharova , jokingly asked if the head of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry had tested: “We now know that without analysis in Ukraine important conversations are not conducted” ^[28] .

• The first wife, Natalya Klimkina, works as the first secretary of the Ukrainian Embassy in the Netherlands . Children: two sons, live with their mother in Holland. The couple broke up due to political differences.
• Second wife (from 2015) - Marina Yurievna Mikhailenko, deputy head of the main department of foreign policy and European integration, head of the foreign policy department of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine ^[29] . The daughter of the Soviet Major General, retired Yuri Vasilyevich Mikhailenko, who was awarded the medal " For the Return of the Crimea " in 2014 and living in Crimea. Due to the position of Yuri Vasilyevich, the couple broke off any relationship with him, but formally Mikhailenko “ did not renounce his father ” . ^{[30] [31]} .

• Cavalier of the Order of Merit, III degree (June 19, 2017) ^[32]
• Certificate of honor of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine (August 2009).
• Gratitude of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine (December 2009).

• The official website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. Minister's biography (Ukrainian)
• Roman Chernyshev . Klimkin: There is no alternative to joining NATO // LIGABusinessInform, May 25, 2015
• Klimkin, Pavel Anatolyevich on Twitter
• Putin's desire for a new Russian empire won't stop with Ukraine. Article by P. Klimkin in the English newspaper The Guardian, 03/25/2017