How Zelenskyy Can Overcome Crisis Caused by Appointing Sexologist as Ambassador to Bulgaria

The group chats of Ukrainian diplomats were on fire last weekend.

Workers of embassies and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs rumoured a lot about Olesia Ilashchuk, the new Ambassador of Ukraine to Bulgaria. This information leaked into the mass media and Telegram channels on Sunday. "European Pravda" found out about the new Ambassador and confirmed that the position was granted to someone outside the diplomatic system.

Even on Friday, before the presidential decree, diplomats saw an unknown black-haired woman who came to the meeting of Ukrainian ambassadors with Volodymyr Zelenskyy in a suit with a large yellow ribbon (the ambassadors were asked to adhere to the smart casual style, but not everyone listened). She sat in the hall during the entire event - she must also be an ambassador.

Right after the president's website announced the appointment of the diplomatic mission head in Bulgaria, diplomats started sending each other her Facebook profile. She mentioned there psychology and sexology as her majors. There were many posts about trips to Greece for psychologist training. Nobody could understand her connection either to Bulgaria or to international affairs. And on Sunday, the details of the scandalous appointment became public.

She mentioned sexology in her self-description on social media. The new diplomat posts a lot on this "viral" topic.

Who is Olesia Ilashchuk?

The biography of the 46-year-old native of Chernivtsi is very unusual. She has radically changed her jobs many times during her life.

She started working (at least according to documents) at 17 - as a teacher's assistant, and then as an English teacher. In 1997-2000, Olesia Ilashchuk worked in the Bukovyna department of ICTV.

She moved to Kyiv and involved herself in business, immediately getting management positions.

It is difficult but possible to imagine that the newly appointed Ambassador Ilashchuk is such an effective manager that she was constantly invited to work for a company of a new profile for a year or two. But it sounds more realistic that such drastic changes have some other explanation.

Our talented heroine abandoned a successful career as a top manager in 2018 in favor of... private practice as a psychotherapist in Kyiv as a Gestalt therapist and sexologist without a medical degree. Ilashchuk is still a psychotherapist but has to quit her practice and move to Sofia as an ambassador.

One of EuroPravda's sources in the Office of the President of Ukraine assures that she attended certain meetings with ambassadors back in the spring when the President's Office involved outside ideas on how to adjust processes in the state, resisting Russian aggression. They claim that she had the right ideas about the people's flow abroad across her native Bukovyna.

In fact, Ukraine faces completely different challenges in Bulgaria right now than refugee management! However, they will be affected by the lack of professionalism of the new Ambassador, who has not worked for a day in diplomacy and public administration.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs got publicly blamed on Monday. It had to publish a statement that political appointments outside the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are normal and effective.

To somehow justify Ilashchuk's lack of international experience, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs referred to the fact that she "got her honour degree in "Country Studies" from the Department of International Relations of the Chernivtsi National University."

In fact, specialised education (as opposed to specialised experience!) is not decisive for an ambassador.

However, Olesia Ilashchuk's education could be more questionable.

However, she graduated from Chernivtsi University in 2005. At the same time, according to her official biography, she worked in Kyiv as a top manager! She could surely graduate externally but this fact tells a lot.

Such political appointments as Ilashchuk are absolutely unacceptable. In the history of Ukraine, there has never been a similar example regarding the level of unprofessionalism of the new Ambassador.

Ilashchuk has no experience in politics and international work, experience in interstate and intergovernmental negotiations at all. This is crucial!

The experience of reacting to crises is also completely absent, as the first days after her appointment have already shown.

But if Ambassador Ilashchuk reaches Sofia, the current crisis will happen to become just a warm-up since Bulgaria is one of the most problematic EU and NATO countries for Ukraine.

The challenges that the new Ambassador has to solve are unprecedented.

In order to avoid problems, President Zelenskyy must admit the mistake and cancel the decree as unimplemented, or Ilashchuk herself can take the initiative to resign.