Ukraine’s Azarov: Loyal bureaucrat with nasty temper

Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov, who resigned on Tuesday after months of pressure from the opposition, is a loyalist bureaucrat with a nasty temper who once told his critics to “piss off”.

The 66-year-old former geologist has been a faithful servant to President Viktor Yanukovych and has been mercilessly mocked by the nationalist opposition for his inability to speak Ukrainian.

Azarov said he was stepping down in a bid to ease “a political compromise to peacefully resolve the conflict” and preserve Ukraine’s unity.

He said he had been forced to work in “extreme conditions” and warned the protests were “threatening” Ukraine’s territorial integrity and society.

Yanukovych later said he accepted the resignation of Azarov and the entire cabinet but asked them to stay on in a caretaker capacity until a new government is named.

Born in Russia and resident in Ukraine only since the 1980s, Azarov has shown a nasty temper in public.

He has blasted an EU partnership deal that was scrapped by Yanukovych and has hailed Russia’s controversial bailout of Ukraine as “historic”.

Azarov has also taken to Facebook to thank supporters and take on critics, accusing the opposition of trying to stage a “coup” and reiterating his message of stability — particularly for pensioners.

His supporters have pointed to Azarov’s wide economic experience that has seen him serve as head of the tax service and also as finance minister.

He headed the election campaign in 2010 that helped Yanukovych defeat his sworn rival — now jailed opposition leader — Yulia Tymoshenko.

White-haired, bespectacled and with a reputation as a number-cruncher, Azarov could hardly be a greater contrast to his glamorous predecessor Tymoshenko who was known for her designer dresses and iconic golden hair braid.

“Azarov is more a bureaucrat than a politician. He can be described as the classic accountant,” Volodymyr Fesenko, director of the Penta centre for political research, said.

Azarov was born in the Russian city of Kaluga outside Moscow and was educated as a geologist at the prestigious Moscow State University.

He moved to Ukraine when it was still part of the Soviet Union in 1984 to head a geological research institute.

In 1994, he was elected an MP in a newly independent Ukraine and became head of parliament’s budget commission.

Subsequently he worked as head of the tax service from 1996 to 2002, remembered for a strict management style that many saw as a throwback to the Soviet era.

The business community at that time became exasperated with his interference in the economy.

He fell out with the head of Ukraine’s state entrepreneurs council, Inna Bogoslovska, who resigned in 2004 denouncing the “ferocity” of the tax service.

She famously created the Ukrainian word “Azarovshchina” (Azarov Rule) to describe his taxman stint which she alleged was marred by rampant corruption and a complete disregard for the law.

Azarov was deputy prime minister from 2002 to 2005, during Yanukovych’s first stint as prime minister. He then served as deputy prime minister and finance minister from 2006 to 2007.

The influential Ukrainian weekly Dzerkalo Tyjnia said when he was nominated after Yanukovych’s victory in 2010 that Azarov was headed for trouble because of “his rigidity, his toughness and lack of flexibility”.

But it added at the time: “He will take any criticism painfully, but no criticism will be able to stop him.”

After four years, it finally did.