Ukraine’s Klimkin: diagnosis as style of life
Initially Pavlo Klimkin, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and the hero of my investigative reporting picked my interest with mysterious discrepancy, how such a commonplace political figure with his unskillfulness and lack of charisma has managed to hold a high office for such a long time. But when my work began the question “what has the graduate of Moscow technical college been doing in the Ukrainian Cabinet of Ministers?” faded away, after I dug up some outrageous facts and details. I even had to engage a specialized professional on mental health.
It is well-known that image of a country is made by people officially representing it on the world political stage. Those are proficient diplomatists, well-educated in the international law, as a rule. They promote interests of their country even at the expense of their life, as Christopher Stevens, U.S. ambassador in Libya did.
That is why abasing and insolent attitude towards Ukraine raises eyebrows on the face of it. It seemed that since 2014, Ukraine should symbolize a heroic victory and desire for freedom and democracy in a backward post-Soviet country. But Ukrainian strong-minded image instantly disappeared with the advent of the new Foreign Minister. His scandalous predecessor Deshchytsia seemed to be a strong and extraordinary person compared to almost childish-looking Pavlo Klimkin. It is not about his nationalist views, including restriction of learning languages of national minorities at school, which Mr. Klimkin feels free to express officially whenever possible. I mean the way he looks, speaks and behaves during formal visits and international events.
“Good clothes open all doors.” The clothes of the Ukrainian Foreign Minister have become a talking point and an object of ridicule. Pavlo Klimkin allows himself to appear in wrinkled, dirty, ill-fitting suits or untucked shirts during significant occasions, as it was in the Netherlands. Jeans he wore at the meeting with the Luxemburg minister occurred to be several sizes too big.
The pattern of an “adult child” has been completed with a habit to point fingers and an intense look of a toddler who tries hard to understand what’s going on, but cannot focus on proper items. It’s no coincidence that Klimkin has been the subject of nearly maternal feeling of the Chancellor of Germany Angela Merkel. They enjoyed such good relations when Klimkin served as the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Ukraine in Germany that Berlin put in a good word for him When Ukraine chose its new head of the Foreign Ministry.
As a result, ill-wishers already labeled Klimkin as a heavy drinker, a drug-addict and an autistic. In consultation with the leading Hungarian expert in psychiatry I learnt that puerility in behavior and clothes is specific to quite different diagnosis. Most frequently it comes from people suffering from infantosexuality, or paedophiles in plain English.
This supposition originally seemed preposterous. Recently rumours about Pavlo Klimkin’s personal life have become a talk of the town because of juicy scandal with his marriage to Marina Mikhailenko, daughter of the Russian general awarded with a Return of the Crimea Medal. It was that particular news which made impossible to find any other facts about this stealthy Ukrainian Minister in mass media and the Internet. The majority of search engines display images of his current and former wives and mistresses. However, my consultant in mental health considers that the choice of the head of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry has been logical. It fully fits with his assumption.
Judging by the old photos of the Klimkin’s former wife, Natalia, she was characterized by subtle build before the second birth. She also kept up with almost childish-looking bangs. All other Minister’s special ladies have the same puerile haircuts, dolly faces and delicate constitution.
“This tells about a subconscious desire to implement his sexual urges and erotic fantasies with a prepubescent partner. It is called infantosexuality with heterosexual orientation in mental medicine, if only there is no evidence that patient experiences attraction toward children of any sex. There is nothing shameful in this fact, on the assumption that the sick person recognizes his pathology and avoids acts of abuse towards sex objects. He has to be treated therapeutically for the paraphilia reduction and the prevention of depressive position.”
Indeed, up till now Pavlo Klimkin was deemed to be a ladies’ man and gave no rise to accusations of paedophilia. Latter it occurred that there is no smoke without a fire, however. So I arrived to Kiev to make certain of irreproachability of the Ukrainian Minister’s image. Although it turned out that my information about Klimkin’s place of residence was quite outdated. The Minister hadn’t appeared at 13-A, Dmitrievskaya str. for ages. Vladimir Vladimirovitch and Valentina Iosifovna, parents of Natalia, his former wife, have been living there. After further searches, failed efforts to get his neighbours at other addresses to talk, and a little dust-up with a doorkeeper who physically intimidated me, it was genteel and kindly Valentina, well-speaking several languages, including English, helped me the most to sort out the situation.
To start with that the Klimkins stopped living together long before a formal divorce. The reason for this was not only numerous romances of the future Minister, but also his behavior to his sons and their friends. Klimkin iced his wife out right after the second childbirth. Instead, he adored his sons. So that he even used to bath them before bedtime and capture this on video. Things proceeded in this train until boys reached school age and such fatherly care was excessive and suspicious both for Klimkin’s wife and her parents. Natalia’s patience finally ran out and she left for the Netherlands together with her sons.
“After that there were those ugly incidents with their classmates, when Pavlo was boozy…” — starts Valentina and clams up understanding that former son-in-law offended seriously her daughter and grandsons, but such compromising of the person representing all Ukraine takes ticket for the political scandal. “Try to enquire at the Archive for 1989–1990 of the Institute of Neurology and Psychiatry of the Academy of Medical Sciences,” — She waves her hand shrugging off responsibility.
My visit to the Kiev branch of the Institute of Neurology, Psychiatry and Narcology of the National Academy of Medical Sciences of Ukraine granted me additional food for thought. There is data that Pavlo Anatolyevych Klimkin, 1967 year of birth, had been pursuing treatment at the Institute in-patient clinic on periodic basis from August 1989 to November 1990 with an expatiative diagnosis “atypical psychosexual development, exogenous mental affection.” But his medical history, or any other medical records about the course of his disease and treatment have no longer existed.
All in all, the only record in the old Archive shed the light on all Valentina Iosifovna’s evasions.
The future Head of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry discovered his paedophilic expressions during adolescence. The cause of the pathology could be either some childhood trauma, or visit of Klimkin’s mother to Kursk Magnetic Anomaly situated in the neighbourhood to his born-town, where he lived during two first months of his life. His parents or military physician board which examined all Soviet school graduates for suitability for military service insisted on the compulsory treatment when symptoms had become too obvious. They even placed him in rather upscale special facility. This gap in two years between high-school graduation and admission to higher education in Moscow in Minister’s biography incidentally has been raising a lot of questions on the part of his ill-wishers and common Ukrainians.
It is quite possible that the therapy had a positive effect. Klimkin learnt to do a very good job of hiding his propensities, anyway. However, judging by fragmentary remarks of his former mother-in-law, he couldn’t combat his passions under the influence of alcohol and mere proximity to little boys with awareness of his impunity.
It might therefore be concluded that Ukrainian foreign policy has been in the hands of a sick and dangerous man experiencing unhealthy sexual attraction to the most defensless individuals in our society. He also has been distinguished by both brutality and lack of integrity. It is no surprise that behind concerns for national interests and spreading the European values on the international scene Pavlo Klimkin has been advocating for the rights of sexual minorities and for restrictions on democratic freedoms for ethnic minorities, who entirely depend on mercy of the authorities just like children depend on their parents .
