[Ohio UZO News] Ukraine: NYT; KP (2); EDM

[Deychak, Orest]

The New York Times

December 11, 2008


Ukraine's Leaders Reach Accord on New Coalition 


By CLIFFORD J. LEVY

MOSCOW - After months of political discord that threatened Ukraine's ability to respond to deepening financial problems, the country's pro-Western leaders announced Wednesday that they had patched up their differences and would not call new elections.

Prime Minister Yulia V. Tymoshenko announced in Kiev, Ukraine's capital, that she had formed a new parliamentary coalition with allies of the president, Viktor A. Yushchenko, and a small third party. Ms. Tymoshenko and Mr. Yushchenko both favor closer ties to the West, but have regularly feuded since they came to power in the so-called Orange Revolution of 2004.

"I am convinced that the end of the political crisis gives us more hope that Ukraine will safely overcome all the challenges of the world financial-economic crisis," Ms. Tymoshenko said.

The once high-flying Ukrainian economy has been battered by the financial crisis, and the country has sought an emergency $16.5 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund. The economy is dependent on steel, chemical and other heavy industries which have suffered, and the Ukrainian currency has plunged.

At the same time, tensions with neighboring Russia have grown as Mr. Yushchenko has pushed for Ukraine to join NATO and actively supported Georgia in its conflict with Russia in August. 

The internal political struggle in Kiev reached its height in September, when Mr. Yushchenko accused Ms. Tymoshenko of carrying out a "political and constitutional coup" by approving a measure to curb the president's authority. The measure was passed with the backing of the pro-Kremlin party led by a former prime minister, Viktor F. Yanukovich.

At that point, Mr. Yushchenko said he would declare new parliamentary elections, which Ms. Tymoshenko resisted, and the two sides spent weeks bickering over how to proceed. All three major politicians have been seeking to use the stalemate to position themselves for presidential elections in January 2010, analysts said.


Kyiv Post


Editorial


Sins of past stunt future


December 10, 2008

 

The nation is unlikely to make much progress until it confronts the great crimes and injustices of its recent past

 

De-Nazification did wonders for Germany. De-Kuchmafication could do the same for Ukraine. But it's never happened and, in fact, the same old calcified elite that cut its political teeth under the former president, Leonid Kuchma, is still running the show and stalling the nation's progress.

The nation is not likely to advance dramatically, either, until it confronts the great crimes and injustices of its recent past. But the chances, unfortunately, are slim when so many with tainted pasts - including Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and "new" Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn -  still occupy driving seats of power.

A beheaded reporter; top politicians and businessmen dying under suspicious circumstances or gunned down in broad daylight; mass election fraud; corrupt privatization and sweetheart government favors to insiders - these are only some of the greatest crimes, injustices and tragedies Ukrainians have witnessed in the 17 years of their country's independence.

President Victor Yushchenko shouldn't be let off the hook. As the top person among leaders who promised during the Orange Revolution to prosecute wrongdoers, he bears the greatest single responsibility for not doing so today.

He is behaving more like a president who has long ago acquiesced to the banditry that he once denounced. We try not to sink into cynicism, but it sure looks as though an informal deal or understanding has been reached to keep law enforcement far away from discovering the truth of the Kuchma era of cronyism. Either that or this generation of political leaders is simply too compromised in their personal dealings to bring justice to those who desperately deserve it.

Kuchma, the former red missile plant director, celebrated his 70th birthday earlier this year in true post-Soviet chic fashion. The ex-president's sycophants (we didn't know there were that many left; perhaps he enriched more people than we thought) attended a star-studded concert gala that was broadcast nationally by the country's leading television channel.

The Inter channel presented him a glowing "documentary," entitled "Leonid Kuchma: The Person We Do Not Know." It was broadcast during prime time. The underlying message of the concert and film was to say that "Kuchma: You were right!" while conveniently avoiding the darkest pages of a decade under Kuchma.

Kuchma's son-in law, billionaire Victor Pinchuk, also appears to have secured a clouds-free future for his father-in-law by years of clever and expensive public relations tricks and contributions to various influential institutions, including Bill Clinton's U.S. presidential library.

In this issue, the Kyiv Post presents the former president and our readers with a gift of our own: a walk down memory lane of some of Ukraine's greatest unsolved crimes, injustices and tragedies. Most of these events happened under Kuchma's watch. Invariably, the criminal investigations were farcical attempts not designed to find the truth, but to obscure and obfuscate. This is part of the contemptuous treatment of the public that politicians are supposed to serve.

The fact that these games continue under Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, the twin Orange Revolution heroes, raises questions about whether they really represent a break with the Kuchma past.

They behave more like the next generation of Soviet Ukraine's nomenclature, former Komsomol members who have grown up to become Red Directors. The Orange Revolution has sputtered so badly that its fourth anniversary is largely uncelebrated. 

If Ukraine's political elite continues down this road of allowing crimes to be committed with impunity, then the public will naturally follow suit. Nihilism has already resulted in greater disillusionment and put democracy further out of reach. A recent poll conducted by Research & Branding Group shows that more than 85 percent of Ukrainians do not trust any national authorities, be it the president, parliament or government.


Perhaps the greatest miracle of all is how Ukraine manages to make progress, despite the crippling limitations of a leadership lacking in character. But, sooner or later, a nation that does not address the wrongs of its past is doomed to repeat these mistakes and remain hostage to its own delinquency and negligence. 


 


Kyiv Post


http://www.kyivpost.com/newspaper


Ukraine's Greatest Crimes, Injustices & Other Tragedies


December 10, 2008

Mark Rachkevych, Alina Pastukhova, Stephen Bandera, Kyiv Post, Staff Writers

 

Can a nation that doesn't confront its past ever make progress?

"Bandits belong behind bars!" "One law for all!"

These were the rallying cries that vaulted presidential candidate Victor Yushchenko to power during the Orange Revolution in 2004, when the nation refused to accept attempts to rig an election for Yushchenko's opponent, Victor Yanukovych.

Yushchenko's rise to the presidency was meant to finally cleanse the nation of the endemic corruption that marked the 10-year reign of predecessor Leonid Kuchma.

It hasn't turned out that way.

Four years into Yushchenko's presidency, most of the suspected lawbreakers from Kuchma's time have yet to face justice. And none of the criminal cases that invigorated protesters during the Orange Revolution has been solved - neither the poisoning of candidate Yushchenko, nor election fraud in 2004 or previous years, nor the murder of muckraking journalist Georgiy Gongadze, nor the suspicious deaths of dozens of influential figures.

The Kuchma era from 1994-2005 left a trail of dead bodies, victims whose murderers never faced justice. Countless other crimes, ranging from embezzlement, abuse of office and theft of state property have gone unpunished. There was also the injustice in how the most valuable national industries were acquired by a small group of well-connected insiders, depriving the nation of billions of dollars in revenue and giving rise to an oligarch class that still dominates today.

Taken together, these unsolved cases and unredressed grievances raise questions about how far Ukraine has progressed from its post-Soviet gangland past.

"Impunity leaves the possibility for [crimes like these] to happen again," said Adrian Karatnycky, who headed the United States-based Freedom House democracy watchdog when many of the events happened. He is now a senior scholar at the Atlantic Council in New York. "If you have politicians knocking off politicians or businessmen knocking off businessmen, you want to know that everything will be done to punish those responsible."

RELATED STORIES:

·         Georgiy Gongadze <http://www.kyivpost.com/nation/31857>  

·         Vadym Hetman <http://www.kyivpost.com/nation/31856>  

·         Yevhen Shcherban <http://www.kyivpost.com/nation/31855>  

·         Victor Yushchenko <http://www.kyivpost.com/nation/31854>  

·         2004 presidential election <http://www.kyivpost.com/nation/31853>  

·         Vyacheslav Chornovil <http://www.kyivpost.com/nation/31852>  

·         Yuriy Kravchenko <http://www.kyivpost.com/nation/31851>  

·         Russian refuge <http://www.kyivpost.com/nation/31850>  

·         Akhat Bragin <http://www.kyivpost.com/nation/31849>  

·         Heorhiy Kirpa <http://www.kyivpost.com/nation/31848>  

·         Yevhen Kushnariov <http://www.kyivpost.com/nation/31847>  

·         Maksim Kurochkin <http://www.kyivpost.com/nation/31846>  

·         Pavlo Lazarenko <http://www.kyivpost.com/nation/31845>  

·         Privatization <http://www.kyivpost.com/nation/31844> 

Countries such as Poland and the Czech Republic initiated "peace and reconciliation" tribunals in the 1990s in an effort to make peace with their past and shed the vestiges of their communist histories. 

In contrast, suspects in Ukraine have even received awards and decorations for their past "achievements and contributions" to statehood while others continue to hold power in the upper echelons of government.

And Ukraine's wealthiest individuals, including Kuchma's son-in-law, Victor Pinchuk, have held on to multi-billion-dollar assets grabbed at rock-bottom prices during the years of crony capitalist privatization.

"There is no political will to solve these cases now because many in power fear the disclosure of 'kompromat' [compromising information] and the potential political blacklist this can produce," said Taras Berezovets, who runs the Politech political consulting company, which has advised Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko's bloc. 

The nation's awful hangover from the Kuchma era, which became synonymous with murder, graft and corruption, lingers today. The ex-president, now 70 and living comfortably in retirement, doesn't appear to be in any danger of having his deeds or alleged misdeeds investigated by the current government.

The inexplicable dead ends to these cases have also raised questions about how much Ukraine's power structure has really changed - and whether Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, the twin democratic Orange Revolution heroes, really represent a clean break from the authoritarian Kuchma past.

Yushchenko, Tymoshenko and other top politicians worked for Kuchma, many of them cutting their political teeth under his tutelage. Yushchenko even once famously described his relationship with Kuchma as "father and son." The current tandem, their financial backers and their allies were part and parcel of the system that flourished under Kuchma, who rewarded friends, disdained democracy and punished enemies.

While Freedom House has noted major improvements in Ukraine's democracy since the Orange Revolution, upgrading it to one of a few truly "free" ex-Soviet republics, the organization did offer a cautionary note in a 2007 report:

"Political conflicts revealed a lack of respect for the division of power and the rule of law, with [the country's leadership consistently] interfering in the courts. Corruption remained a key problem, particularly in the energy sector."

Experts and political insiders said the long dirty laundry list of unsolved crimes has been kept unwashed by a ruling class bound by informal ties and connections dating back to the crony capitalist days of striking it rich with the sweet insider deals.

One of the key rules of staying in business appears to be not spilling all the dirt on political or business opponents because they could strike back with equally-damaging "kompromat,"  or compromising information, of their own.

It all adds up to a government that has many of the same faces in place, playing musical chairs with posts. Those who fell out of line or out of favor ended up dead or abroad.

"The rule of law is ruined ... nobody wants an investigator to get to the bottom of a case and open a can of worms," said Kyiv lawyer and civil rights activist Tetyana Montian.

Montian's husband, Yuriy Vasylenko, was the only judge who dared initiate criminal proceedings against Kuchma while he was president.

Meanwhile, the number of the nation's unsolved crimes keeps growing as Ukrainians lose faith in the country's institutions and government. Ukraine's Western partners, Brussels and Washington, watch from a distance and take cautious steps to integrate with a country whose democracy is fragile and whose leaders are unwilling, or incapable, of atoning for past sins. Russian leaders, too, look on with disdain - with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin reportedly calling into question Ukraine's claim to real statehood.

 Rules of the game

"Criminal investigation and prosecution do not run things in this country. The only name of the game is money, influence, connections, etc. Justice ranks something like 150th on this list," Montian said.

Law enforcement officers get scared when they come upon the trail of a large criminal network with extensive financial resources, intimidating bodyguards and ties to government. If prosecutors or police take proper and lawful measures with a well-connected suspect, they can lose their jobs or, in the worst case, their heads. If they agree to hush such cases, they can be paid off handsomely.

With cops, prosecutors and judges earning meager salaries, many believe these rules are still in place today.

Although most of the unsolved crimes are perceived as a legacy inherited from the Kuchma era, the post-Orange Revolution governments have shown little willingness to pursue the cases, or fundamentally clean up the system. Salaries for police officers, prosecutors and judges have been raised slightly, but inadequately.

The media and public are often teased with news of "investigative breakthroughs" and populist proclamations that "criminals will face justice." But the lack of progress leaves little hope that the status quo will change.

Experts contacted by the Kyiv Post declined to rank high-level criminal cases in terms of greatest impact, claiming their assessment would not be objective. However, all of them agreed that unsolved crimes damage the country's image, both domestically and abroad.  

Among the most heinous crimes left over from the Kuchma era are the decapitation of journalist Georgiy Gongadze in 2000, the mysterious roadside death of Vyacheslav Chornovil in 1999, earlier contract killings of powerbrokers such as Vadym Hetman and Yevhen Shcherban, corruption under former prime minister Pavlo Lazarenko and, of course, Yushchenko's poisoning in 2004.

Officials often invoke the "investigation confidentiality" clause to justify not revealing any details to the public. For some high-profile cases, prosecutors and top politicians occasionally disclose tantalizing details that have the effect of soap-opera cliffhangers. But after promises of swift action, the buzz eventually dies out and the cases are forgotten. Information about unsolved cases is sometimes leaked as weapons in political blackmail and dirty PR tactics. Rumors and speculation seem more important than the truth. Media outlets and journalists become pawns in the game.

"Cases remain unsolved because officials get involved. The main reason is that there are individuals in government who are not interested in seeing these types of cases through to their logical end," said lawyer Andriy Fedur, who has represented Lesia Gongadze, the mother of the slain journalist, in her battle for justice. She refuses to bury her son's body until his killers are all brought to justice.

Fedur thinks cases remain unsolved because of unprofessional investigation and because the influential exert influence over law enforcement. However, it's difficult to believe that the case of Yushchenko's poisoning has fallen victim to unskilled investigators, he said. An overview of the highest profile criminal cases since Ukraine's independence reveals a myriad of political and business connections revolving around a cut-throat battle for either power  or resources, or both, given Ukraine's intertwined political and business elite.

Experts said politicians fear that solving one case could lead to a domino effect, resulting in their photos appearing on charts resembling those elaborate FBI New York crime family charts they have seen in the movies.

Kuchma is implicated in scores of crimes, including bribe-taking, money laundering, pilfering of state coffers, and even murder, according to Hryhoriy Omelchenko, a Tymoshenko ally, a corruption whistleblower, and  onetime  State Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) officer. He has also served on parliamentary investigative commissions on various high profile crimes since 1994.

"Until Kuchma-era top officials are sentenced, not a single high-profile crime will be solved, including Gongadze's beheading and Yushchenko's poisoning," Omelchenko said.

Omelchenko said that Ukraine's first two presidents - Leonid Kravchuk and Kuchma - are to blame for the country's inept and corrupt justice system. He said that, while in office, Kravchuk and Kuchma created a system that provided protection for political allies while the judicial system and "kompromat" were used to keep opponents in check or to eliminate them. Omelchenko said the same system is still in place today.

"It seems that a non-aggression pact was signed [by those in power]. Criminal investigations could be opened, but courts will never rule to incarcerate anyone," said Serhiy Taran, director of the Sotsiovymir think tank. "If the president's poisoning case isn't solved, what can be said concerning cases involving average citizens?"

Analysts concluded that if laws continue to be broken with impunity, especially the elite, the public will naturally follow suit. The resulting widespread legal nihilism will bring more disillusionment and put democracy further from reach.

Honest members of the law enforcement will simply stop investigating complex and politicized criminal cases, many believe, if they haven't stopped already. There is always a risk that this trend will reach a point of no return, said Volodymyr Fesenko, chairman of the Penta Center for Applied Political Studies.

He stressed that the harm to society is enormous with each unsolved economic or political crime, giving rise to a nation that views its politicians as thugs and stop caring about anything that happens in the country.

 Editor's Note: Kyiv Post staff members looked into what happened to some of the nation's greatest injustices, mysteries and unsolved crimes since 1991 independence. Much of the lawlessness happened under the Kuchma administration, in power from 1994 to 2005. Under his successor, Yushchenko, the nation has made little progress in solving many of these cases or in redressing such injustices as the way state businesses were privatized following the Soviet Union's collapse. 

Eurasia Daily Monitor

December 9, 2008
Ukrainian and Georgian ANPs Are Also Testing NATO


The NATO ministerial meeting in Brussels on December 3 announced that Albania and Croatia were now completing their Membership Action Plans (MAPs) and would be welcomed at the NATO Summit in April 2009 as new members of the alliance. The ministerial communiqué takes note of those countries' reforms through MAP and their "significant contributions to our security." Macedonia has also completed the MAP process and will become a member as soon as Greece lifts its veto regarding Macedonia's name. The ministerial meeting also welcomed Montenegro's request for a NATO MAP (Meeting of the North Atlantic Council communiqué, December 3).

These steps undoubtedly signify a success for the alliance and those entrant countries. Their acceptance as members, however, debunks the argument that Ukraine and Georgia did not qualify for MAPs. The Ukrainian and Georgian contributions to NATO and U.S.-led operations in recent years have been incomparably stronger than those of Albania, Croatia, or Macedonia, which are now deemed to qualify as NATO members. Moreover, Ukraine's and Georgia's strategic locations are vital to the common security in ways in which Albania's, Croatia's, or Macedonia's are clearly not.

Yet Ukraine and Georgia have been denied even MAPs, let alone membership in NATO, because of the objections of several West European countries. Instead, NATO approved lower-level Annual National Plans (ANPs) for Georgia and Ukraine. Thus the alliance is seen agonizing over aspirant countries of tremendous added value, because they border on Russia, while accepting "safe" countries that are not objectionable to Moscow.

Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary joined NATO in 1999 without having gone through MAPs. The alliance instituted the MAP process in 1999 for the seven countries that went on to join in 2004, most of them after five annual MAP cycles. In the next enlargement round, West-Balkan countries joining NATO at the summit in April 2009 will have spent nine years in the MAP process. There is, however, no hard-and-fast requirement for aspirant countries, including Ukraine and Georgia, to go through MAPs, if other programs can be tailored to these countries' and NATO's needs. The ANPs along with the NATO-Ukraine and NATO-Georgia commissions are intended to be such instruments.

Strategic considerations were almost entirely absent from NATO's public debates and official discourse on MAPs while preparing for and during the Bucharest summit and Brussels ministerial meeting. Instead, discussions were sidetracked into procedural wrangles and considerations of Russia's possible reactions to NATO decisions on Ukraine and Georgia.

Real-world decisions on alliance policy are guided by location, resources, troop-contributing potential and will, shared perceptions of security challenges and requirements, and political compatibility (for example, democracy in progress) as the main criteria. NATO, however, is not exercising the necessary leadership in re-acquainting the West European public and post-modern politicians with those real-world factors. While many in NATO correctly reproach Ukraine's Orange leaders' reluctance to campaign for an unpopular NATO in their country (MAPs include public education programs), NATO leaders seem themselves reluctant to perturb West European strategic and political complacency about Europe's East. While NATO gropes for an as yet undefined role in energy security, the alliance failed to explain to the European public that Georgia needed to be secured as the vital linchpin in energy transport to Europe.

The alliance insists that no outside country has a voice, let alone a veto, on NATO decisions, including enlargement policy. In practice, however, Russia does seem to exercise a degree of influence, informally and indirectly, through its bilateral relations with a few governments in NATO.

The alliance's other sacrosanct principle, the Open Door, also seems less than certain at the moment. "NATO's door remains open to all European democracies willing and able to assume the responsibilities and obligations of membership," the ministerial meeting's communiqué reaffirmed. Nevertheless the Alliance has thus far proven unable to offer even MAPs, let alone membership, to Ukraine and Georgia. The door is not closed either. The two aspirant countries seem to face a long wait within sight of a door that is open to them in principle.

For both Ukraine and Georgia, the NATO summit in Bucharest in April 2008 opened a dangerous period of vulnerability. NATO's firm promise of eventual membership without a time-frame or a mechanism was enough to provoke Russia and not enough to restrain it. NATO did not respond in any credible way when Russia threatened (at the summit and subsequently) to dismember Ukraine and proceeded to dismember Georgia, overtly and methodically, during the four months leading up to the August invasion. Russia even used Ukraine's territory for naval attacks against Georgia, violating Ukraine's neutrality. The response of a divided NATO to those events looked feeble to friend and foe alike (see EDM, August 20, 28).

Of the two countries, Georgia is clearly more determined to advance toward that door through the ANP, while Ukraine is consumed with its political crises. Undaunted by the denial of a MAP, the Georgian government takes the position that it would "accept any NATO plan on offer," as Acting Defense Minister Batu Kutelia put it, in the effort to meet NATO criteria for ultimate membership (Civil Georgia, December 6). Georgia is aiming for interoperability with NATO forces. In the hypothetical case that some NATO countries dilute or stretch out the ANP assistance programs, or obstruct necessary decisions within the NATO-Georgia Commission, Georgia and the United States will have additional reasons for stepping up their bilateral programs of military cooperation outside the NATO framework. This would not substitute for the ANP but rather complement it and compensate for its possible inadequacies.

The alliance can now restore its credibility by strengthening its ties with Ukraine and Georgia through the ANPs. Hesitation and procrastination in this regard could increase the creeping doubts about the alliance's capacity for action and may prompt some of the member and aspirant countries to seek bilateral security arrangements with the United States.

-Vladimir Socor





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