Andrii Ryazantsev is the most contact official of Ukrainian Railway, which is quite rare nowadays. However, there are even more questions to him after his dismissal. Andrii Ryazantsev told in an interview with Rail.Insider why he was dismissed, what events preceded to it and what story details reveal an open confrontation in the company.
I’m sure many people would ask, “What’s going on? Why were they treated you so badly? After all, if they already decide to dismiss you, it was possible to make it in a more civil manner.”
First of all, I was not dismissed. I wrote the letter of resignation with the consent of the parties after more than six months of pressure put by the company’s Supervisory Board. In my opinion, all this was done in a “dirty” way so that we have no right to return, that is, without opportunity for any of us to participate in the further work of Ukrzaliznytsia (UZ), even after internal changes in processes. Usually were they invited people and pointed out at their faults in the work, so people themselves preferred to leave afterwards. Without such a reason, they resorted to some dirty tricks. I know that, and those people who understand the situation will agree with me. In addition, some customers disliked me personally, and the nature of this hostility I have already clarified and will soon made public.
It is difficult for me to say what is happening now, because I have not been present at UZ since I filled the resignation letter. But what I hear does not bode well for those market changes in the company. I know that Anton Sabolevsky left the company today (interview recorded on June 17 – ed.) under the same serious pressure. He said he would not be left alone while he remained in the country, so he was going to leave the country. Actually, he once came from Poland, we invited him in 2016. He is going to return there. According to my information, he learned that he would not be left alone until he left the country.
That is, we are not even talking about a post in UZ, but any post in the country?
In his case yes, not just in UZ. Well, I also cannot assess the veracity and reliability of this information – it’s just what I heard from him.
Having worked in the public sector for 6 years, I have never felt like this before. Each of my works have difficult ends, given the specifics of my activities aimed at limiting non-targeted cash flows from government sources. It’s never easy, but what’s happening now – I haven’t seen this before. This does not add optimism for the future.
Also, as far as I know, the resignation letter was written by another two members of the board – Remigiusz Paszkiewicz and Marchin Tseleevsky. Remigiusz has worked the longest among all the board members present today – since the time of Wojciech Balczun. This person is created for the implementation of major infrastructural changes and managed it very well in difficult conditions. He had balanced economic position regarding all of the board’s decisions. This, in my opinion, is a serious loss for the railway industry. Marchin, I think, did not have enough time to implement everything he planned, but as I heard this plans were quite progressive.
We also know that the Supervisory Board addressed the Cabinet of Ministers with a request to terminate the work of two more members of the Board, namely, Serhii Kushnir and Roman Veprytskii. Roman was perfect employee to implement real changes in the industry, and who understand the need to change the internal procedure and mentality of the company as a whole.
If UZ wants to enter the market, it needs to change its behavior model with the customers. That is, not in words, but in deeds to became customer-oriented company. We see from the situation in the train car market: if you give the company a chance to become a market participant and not die in a non-competitive struggle, it will not be a competitor to anyone. Because, and I keep saying this for six months now, it is necessary to build a sales system, a system of relations with customer, to create distribution channels for a special profile unit and analytics – one that will focus on customer needs.
Who or what forces are carrying out such a large-scale personnel purge in the top management of UZ?
Well, first of all, in fact the personnel component almost dominates for a half a year. It seems to me that at some levels of the company’s management it takes all the time. I could understand if there was a serious personnel reserve, so as not to interrupt the necessary processes. First of all, financial, economic and operational indicators suffer. What do they want to achieve with acting in this way?! This certainly does not bring the company closer to the implementation of railway reform, because today we are returning to daily crisis management.
Of course, some external factors caused by the outbreak of the virus contributed to this. But it’s not just about that. Okay, maybe that’s my subjective opinion, but it seems to me that the levels of management of a company are not always specific. For example, the board, supervisory board, or other bodies do not always act according to logic and system of corporate governance. And this, in particular, affected me. Everyone has to do their job. Someone has to be involved in politics, given how big the company is, and someone has to work for the company to grow, to build up a margin of strength to go through the transformation that was originally planned. This is to be short. What forces? It is unlikely that these forces are within the Ukrainian Railways.
And within Ukraine, in general?
It’s hard to say. But let’s be honest: when I came to the company, there was low interest in it. Given that neither the economy nor the country can exist without this company, as this company do more than 60% of cargo transportations. No alternative transport will be able to accept the entire freight flow if UZ is not fully operational.
It is said that there is a purposeful underestimation of UZ market value. Both Wojciech Balczun and Željko Marček are mentioned, who deliberately removed the railroad workers and left only those who, presumably, did not have much work experience in UZ. If possible, try to evaluate the personal work of railway managers. Who is interesting and acting right, and who may be a foreign agent?
Probably, Ukrainian Railways is an object of interest for those who want to increase own revenues with its help. And I’m talking about merged corporations and financial-industrial groups. It should also be noted that UZ is not only the economy, but also the defense capabilities of the state, so it is certainly of interest from the standpoint of possible harm and unfriendly activities against the country as a whole. This may be a biased opinion, but it seems to me that with the advent of such a body as the supervisory board, the quality of work in the corporate management of the railway not only not improved, but worsened. If in the beginning these were rare meetings, say, with a slight diversion of resources to get acquainted with the case, then later it turned into serious attempts to shift the supervisory board to uncharacteristic operations from point of view of the corporate governance logic. I mean the new board. Many things are not realized due to a poorly organized system of distribution of functions between government agencies, as well as personal incompetence. It is possible that the special tasks facing the members of the Supervisory Board have not yet been performed for the same reasons.
They tried to drag on many functions related to staff. I was surprised to learn that, despite the fact that by law the supervisory board makes decisions exclusively on board members, they have introduced the right to approve executive directors and other management by separate recommendations of the supervisory board itself. That is, literally everyone wants to influence the appointment process, which now interested everyone the most. This is what has worsened the decision-making and implementation quality and speed. In the supervisory board, everyone has their own direction, so you can analyze for each individual member of the supervisory board. Although, in my opinion, it is the collegiality of the body that is more acceptable. Because the supervisory board must determine what the company is doing and in what direction it is moving.
Let’s say I can’t understand many things. I read: “We will produce brake pads.” Why only pads?! Maybe then we will produce locomotives so as not to get rid of non-core infrastructure?! The strategy of such a large company should not be involved by throwing from side to side or individual decisions. I heard an idea voiced by one of the members of the supervisory board responsible for this area. He recommended selling locomotive repair plants. This automatically turns the company to became a hostage, because the owner of these three plants will immediately bring the company to its knees.
On the other hand, the activity of the supervisory board is limited to strategic areas. The supervisory board controls not only internal but also external interests. First of all, it shares control with the owner – the Cabinet. This is a tariff-formation function, as well as the reimbursement of compensation for passenger traffic. Everything stands still. From year to year, the agenda includes many other issues, and these, even if being discussed, do not lead anywhere.
How exactly did you get fired?? Were you threatened?
It started in September last year, when Anton Sabolevsky sent me a “greeting” from one of the members of the supervisory board, Anders Åslund. After the next dinner, Anton drove him home by car and he told him: “It is better for Andriy to write a letter of resignation. Of course, we respect him, and he has done a lot of good things, but he has personal claims.”
I didn’t take this very seriously. I thought that this was the result of a mental impulse, especially after, at the request of Yevhen Kravtsov, I resigned as CFO, did not contact the supervisory board and was not present at these regular meetings.
The second stage began in December 2019, when I was informed that the chairman of the board was instructed to remove me, a person outside the competence of the supervisory board, from office and take all necessary measures to terminate the employment relationship.” It was already New Year’s Eve. At the same time, there were no documents that confirmed or motivated such a decision.
This protocol was not signed for a month. As a result, it was signed only in January. All this time they tried to explain to them that according to the law it is not accepted to expel people in our country, especially without any reasons. However, someone decided to sign a protocol at the end of January, I do not remember who actually. This was at the same time when the decision was made to terminate the duty of Yevhen Pavlovych (Yevhen Kravtsov – former chairman of the board of UZ). And there was an excerpt from the protocol, which was officially sent to the staff. Lawyers explained that the law forbids dismissing a person without any documents – it is impossible without a reason. Even at the request of “highly respected” representatives of the owner. At the same time, I was forbidden to write posts. My activity on Facebook or my contacts with the media has always been a big problem, even with the consent of the press service. For some reason, this greatly irritated some members of the supervisory board.
On Friday, February 28, Željko Marček personally informed me in his office about termination of my position. I signed this note. According to the law, I had two months to work and then leave the company.
I always thought it was a misunderstanding and tried to get to the supervisory board meeting. I said that I did not mind leaving, as a civilized person, and I wanted to be told at least the reason. What exactly are the claims, what I did not provide in my work and then there would be no questions asked. But I was told, “No one will talk to you at all.”
Then the supervisory board partially changed. I showed them the implemented projects over the past three years, and those that are still under development. And they did not have any claims. They said they could not influence the reversal of the decision.
On April 28, people’s deputies addressed a request to the Office of the President, the Cabinet of Ministers and the Prosecutor General with a clear description of the achievements, stating that there were no reasons for my dismissal. This process coincided with another change of leadership. I stayed to work.
The dogs bark, but the caravan goes on. I was just launching “Dutch auctions”, preparing long contracts, a number of other products and starting to build a new sales system, as I received verbal approval that it was necessary for the company. I was entrusted with a crushed stone HQ for the large-scale construction of roads, as well as grain projects were still remained under my control. There we worked on changing the entire logistics system of building materials with the possibility of building territorial hubs to ensure year-round uniform transportation outside peak loads.
Suddenly, in late May, I don’t remember exactly, at 5:50 a.m. Ivan Yuryk wrote to me that he wanted to talk to me. At the end of the day, he wrote “Come to me tomorrow, please, at 1:00 p.m..” That is on Saturday. Well, I say, “OK, no problemo.” We were a little late. And first, Ivan on his phone shows me a photos of the statement of the person who later appeared on the TV. “Write a resignation letter, and post on Facebook that you worked and decided to resign on your own will.” I say that I need to think about all of this, but I decided that I would not write any resignation letter. Apparently, this cannot be considered as a direct threat, but I was told that my dismissal would happen one way or another, under a different scenario. I thought that the asset I had earned in the organization was serious enough not to be fired at the request of some workers. On the same day, I went to the police department and submitted the application. It was filed through the office and it’s hard for me to say how Ivan got it, because it had to be searched there. It was not given much attention and was processed in working mode.
There was another interesting moment in our conversation with Yuryk: “This is in case of false information release in media.” Even then I asked what it was about. Why should we be afraid? I asked: “Ivan, they claim that you stole 80 million. So you also have to resign according to this logic? People wrote that you stole money. So resign.” It was a joke, of course. Then I didn’t pay serious attention to the possible fake news in media. On Sunday and on Monday nobody asked me any questions. On Tuesday morning, first by correspondence and then by invitation to his office, he asks: “Have you changed your mind?” No, I answered, I did not change my mind. “Then we will follow the dismissal procedure.” Well, less than a month has passed since my first job cut. There will be a second one, and while I will work, I have long contracts, this and that and the other thing and many unrealized projects. Either the donkey will die, or the emir will die. For some reason he was surprised. And so we parted.
An hour or two later I went to a meeting with Veprytskii and Pashkevych. I don’t remember what was the occasion of the meeting. And then suddenly a stir happens, and they are already brought me back to Ivan’s office, where he shows me a video on this resource and puts paper on the table. After seeing the video, my self-preservation instinct worked. I thought that if this story lasted half a year and ended like that, then I would not want to see the next stage. It is not in my interests to check what people are capable of. That’s all, actually. So I wrote a statement. However, after that I learned that the press service had prepared two versions of the announcement of my resignation since Friday: in case I will or will not write the letter. All responsible persons were aware.
What was the second option?
They thanked me for my work and so on. By the way, there is another point I wanted to draw attention to: Christian Kuhn and Anders Åslund have always been most interested in my dismissal. They asked questions about it at each Supervisory Board meeting. Do they really have no other job to do?! And this despite the fact that we increased the revenue of the company, gave proposals for cost optimization, worked with the market and associations.
I noticed that this process literally was launched immediately after you conditionally agreed on the work with Roman Veprytsky.
Not immediately, but after some time. I had developments and we are still working on one of the programs with the Federation of Employers of Ukraine. They need the people who developed it to better understand the essence of the program. It will provide an opportunity for the state to make an additional UAH 100 billion industrial production in 5 years. Roman said: “Well, give your developments!”. I came to him with a package of projects in the semi-finished phase or even closer to the finish, and we began to quickly launch them to get the job done. For two months I could not “get” the vote and issue long contracts. We clearly separated our verticals to build sales of the company’s products, etc., and began to implement these developments. And only then the above happened. It is good that we managed to finish long term contracts. Although I am very interested in how they will be implemented, because you can accept anything, but fail the implementation. When in April I tried to figure out what to do next, I was told: “Go to Veprytsky to do some projects with him.”
What do you plan to do next? Where do you see yourself and what would you like to achieve?
So far, I continue to work on programs that no longer depend only on the railway. As I have already said, the work with the Federation of Employers of Ukraine is a program of renewing the fleet of railway cars, which is localized by 93%. This is one of the unique opportunities to quickly and efficiently raise the economy sector after quarantine measures. However, today most of my time is spent building legal protection and restoring my rights of the citizen of this country to revive what this process has destroyed. Some media behaved unprofessionally. I am convinced that they were paid for, because the air “exploded” in half a day. At the same time, I have two possible directions. The first is business. I am currently considering several proposals. There is also a proposal from a sphere unfamiliar to me – political. I used to be involved in politics at the amateur level as a deputy of the City Council of my hometown.
Is it working with an economic bias?
Of course! In any case, with the economic.
Consulting?
In politics – no. Only real participation.
In the near future I will define and tell more concretely.
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