A Ukrainian economist on his time in government and life in wartime Ukraine
Tymofiy Mylovanov, a prominent Ukrainian economist and Minister of Finance, Trade, and Agriculture during President Volodymyr Zelensky’s first year in office, appeared at the Harriman Institute for a closed discussion with students and faculty in September 2024.
Mylovanov spent years of his adult life in the United States as a tenured professor at the University of Pittsburgh. He got involved in Ukrainian public life from abroad, during Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity in 2014, after helping a fellow Kyiv School of Economics (KSE) alumnus start VoxUkraine, a popular governance and economics blog. Two years later, KSE was on the brink of bankruptcy, and he became its president (traveling frequently between the United States and Ukraine while keeping his Pittsburgh post). He turned KSE into a thriving global academic institution. “What helped is that I didn’t go to KSE to save the school. I went there to make an impact on the economy of Ukraine,” he told me.
In two conversations following his talk, Mylovanov reflected on his time in Zelensky’s administration and on returning home permanently during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. This transcript has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Udensiva-Brenner: Can you talk about how you ended up in government, what your experience was like, and why you left so quickly?
Mylovanov: In Ukraine you end up in the government, not because you build a long career to be in the government, but because of, you know, a coincidence of circumstances.
When Zelensky became president and the parliament was elected, they were looking for people who could onboard new members of parliament, because there were a lot of people who were out of the system. They were looking for an institution [to] help with that. And we [KSE] were available—a lot of my career has been built in this way and a lot of success actually depends on this, in my view, that you’re fast and ready during moments of opportunity. And then I think they kind of figured it out, ok, he’s an economist, we need a Minister of Economy. The MPs said, “he’s a good guy.” I wasn’t controversial yet.
Udensiva-Brenner: And how did you feel about going into government?
Mylovanov: From a career perspective, it was almost a no-brainer. You can become a minister and then you go back to teach if you want, to this double appointment, KSE/Pittsburgh. But I was very unsure. Am I good enough? Am I not good enough?
And then they sold me on the fact that President Zelensky wanted to do a land market reform. There was a land market trade moratorium for 20 years at the time, and he said that he was going to combine the Ministry of Economy and Ministry of Agriculture and push these reforms through. And what economist doesn’t want to create a market in his lifetime? I had already written a few top papers, and now I wanted to create a market in a country where markets for land matter—it’s an agricultural powerhouse of Europe; that’s a big deal. So, I got seduced. And I pushed it through with the leadership of Zelensky.
And it took a lot of sabotage, you know, I figured out how the system works quite quickly, shrewdly. You have to be very, almost Machiavellian about it.
Udensiva-Brenner: And what do you mean it took a lot of sabotage? Like, you had to sabotage other people?
Mylovanov: No, no, it took a lot of overcoming sabotage. You know, people don’t go and campaign in the parliament. They use their friends in the system to lose your paperwork so it gets denied. Things like that. It happens all the time, so you have to learn how to navigate that very quickly.
For example, because it was a new ministry, I couldn’t appoint people for a while. You need to pass a document to appoint people and they were kind of losing approvals or sending me for another round of approvals to get it done. The system slows you down and you have to overcome that.
And I think it was a very good experience. But then when the government was changing [2020], I wanted to quit because the land market reform was already on track. And there was not that much left for me to do because there were no other reforms coming through. At least in the pipeline, it was becoming more of a political battle over appointments.
My sense was that if I don’t quit at that time, I’d get stuck for another three, four years. And I didn’t see myself being stuck for that long, okay? It was the perfect exit because the government was reshuffled. I was offered the position of a minister and I kind of refused to go on and it burned my relationship with the president and his inner circle a little bit. I would be upset too, if I were them, I chose KSE and academia over them. So, this maybe would not be the right choice strategically for most people, but for me, I think it worked out just fine.
Udensiva-Brenner: What were you doing at the time of Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022?
Mylovanov: I came back [to Ukraine] two days before the war. I didn’t believe the war would start, but once they started cancelling flights, I rushed from San Francisco, from some conference, to the last flight on Lufthansa from Munich to Ukraine. And it was full of people like me, who are semi-leaders. I couldn’t bring myself to think about my wife [Nataliia Shapoval, chairman of the KSE institute—they had just married in December 2021] and my family being in Ukraine without me when the war started. I’ve been there since. And so far, I’ve survived, we’ll see how it works out further.
Udensiva-Brenner: What has your life looked like since you came back? What’s it like running an institution like KSE in the middle of a horrific war?
Mylovanov: It’s a lot of visits to Europe and the U.S. to keep publicity and awareness, fundraising, you know, all kinds of infrastructure, governance, compliance, investments, basically managing resources. It takes effort and it’s not easy—you have to build relationships. We have to be proper.
It’s not a small company, according to Ukrainian standards. Running it is difficult. And I need to learn—I have never been trained professionally. I think I would benefit from an MBA in a top school, or at least short-term courses.
Udensiva-Brenner: You’ve also been fundraising for the war effort and have raised a ton of money. Can you talk about that aspect of it?
Mylovanov: We raised over $100 million. Maybe 110 by now, overall, and most of this went to humanitarian and defense efforts. That means bomb shelters for schools, scholarships for students, but not necessarily at KSE. In the beginning of the war, we were doing medical kits and protective kits, bulletproof vests. We were doing cars. We bought so many cars. Some of them were given to the military actually, which is allowed. Some of this, we channel through KSE, others, we do it either personally or with foundations targeted specifically for the defense effort. That’s actually a tricky part—you have to be careful on the details, you know?
We helped veterans. We trained a lot of people [both civilians and military], which is totally allowed, by the way, for 501(c)(3)s. We actually have to hire lawyers who give us opinions on what can and cannot be done.
Udensiva-Brenner: Wow. And for now, is your plan to just stay as long as the war is happening?
Mylovanov: Yes, absolutely. I want to stay as long as the war is going on. Morally, I can’t leave. People are in the military, dying, you know, friends of mine. If I run away, it’s probably not going to look good in my own mind later in my life. I’ll feel bad about it. I’ve done bad things in my life, including some things I did while I was a minister, and some of them I regret. I don’t want any more regrets. ◆
Featured photo: Tymofiy Mylovanov, 2021. Photo courtesy of the Kyiv School of Economics
