[Ohio UZO News] Ukraine: Economist; NYT (op-ed); CNN

[Deychak, Orest]

The Economist

www.economist.com/world

 

Ukraine's predicament 

Oranges are not the only fruit

Dec 17th 2009 | KIEV 
>From The Economist print edition


Five years after the "orange revolution", Ukraine faces a less uplifting election

THE good news is that nobody can predict the result of Ukraine's presidential election on January 17th, a sign of a healthy democracy. The incumbent, Viktor Yushchenko, who swept to power in the "orange revolution" in 2004-05, is almost certain to be voted out. But a second round of voting is likely to be needed between Yulia Tymoshenko, the prime minister and former orange ally of Mr Yushchenko, and Viktor Yanukovich, a former prime minister who was the anti-Yushchenko loser then. In the fluid world of Ukrainian politics, allies become enemies and vice versa. Russia strongly backed Mr Yanukovich in 2004. This time, the Kremlin would settle for either frontrunner and has also promised no gas war this Christmas.

After years of political crisis, at least Ukraine is taking the election in its stride. The protesters' tents that were once a fixture of Ukraine's political life are so far absent. Political fighting is fierce, as reflected by television channels that plug the interests of their powerful owners. But at least the overall coverage is diverse.

The bad news is that the leaders of this country of 46m, bordering the EU in the west and Russia in the east, have largely squandered the credit they won in the heyday of the orange revolution. Corruption is rife, the courts are bent, institutions are dysfunctional and the economy (dominated by Soviet-era steel and chemical factories) is sick. Instead of reforming Ukraine, politicians have fought over power and assets, blocking each other's decisions. This is exemplified by Mr Yushchenko's recent actions, aimed at damaging Ms Tymoshenko at any cost, even if they discredit the country.

Mr Yushchenko has even managed to sabotage the disbursement of a badly needed IMF loan. The fund bailed out Ukraine to the tune of $16.4 billion, and was relatively lenient over its conditions. One thing it did ask was that the budget deficit be kept down. So when Mr Yushchenko signed a law to increase public-sector wages, the fund had little choice but to suspend the final $3.8 billion tranche. 

On paper, both Ms Tymoshenko and Mr Yanukovich are promising reforms. But Ukrainians know better than to believe promises. Ms Tymoshenko's record in office is mixed. In two stints as prime minister, she reversed one of Ukraine's more controversial privatisations and scrapped an opaque intermediary in the gas trade between Russia and Ukraine. She has also held down public spending.

But her bid to control prices, her rabble-rousing instincts and her scheming were all alarming. Not long ago she tried to forge a deal with Mr Yanukovich to amend the constitution so that parliament would elect the president. According to a leaked document, parliamentary elections were to be held in two rounds, giving the winning party total control. The arrangement fell through only after Mr Yanukovich walked away. 

The common wisdom in Ukraine suggests that, if Ms Tymoshenko wins the election, she will consolidate her power, undermine the opposition and micromanage the government. There is no danger of micromanagement with Mr Yanukovich, who represents the interest of big industrial groups in the Russian-speaking east. Worryingly, his political camp includes Ukrainian officials involved in the scrapped gas intermediary. Yet corruption is so rife in Ukraine that even the most scandalous allegations surprise nobody. "The trouble is that 80% of what Tymoshenko says about Yanukovich is true, but 80% of what Yanukovich says about Tymoshenko is also true," says Yulia Mostovaya, editor of Zerkalo Nedeli, a weekly. 

The choice in this election is not, say some Ukrainians, who would do the best job but who would do the least damage. Whoever wins will have to amend the constitution that makes decisions in Ukraine so hard to reach. The worst outcome would be a result in the second round so close that neither concedes defeat. If that happens, expect more tents in Kiev.

The New York Times

www.nytimes.com

 

Global Edition

 

Op-Ed Contributor 

The Difficulty of Being Ukraine 

By MARK MEDISH

Ukraine holds presidential elections next month, and the outcome is likely to spell the epitaph of the Orange Revolution. The euphoria of 2003-04, when a grand display of "people power" reversed a rigged election, has long faded.

The country of 46 million has been one of the hardest hit by the global financial meltdown, suffering a sharp currency devaluation and a projected 14 percent GDP drop this year.

President Viktor Yushchenko, once the Orange hero, is now polling in low single digits. Much like Lech Walesa in Poland a generation ago, the out-of-touch Yushchenko has unceremoniously morphed from national icon of change into political footnote. 

The January ballot is likely to lead to a run-off between Prime Minsiter Yulia Tymoshenko, a feisty populist, and Viktor Yanukovich, a drab but steady former premier and Yushchenko rival, whose Party of Regions boasts the strongest organization. 

Both are pragmatic leaders. But whichever wins will face enormous challenges, foremost restarting the anti-crisis program with the IMF, which suspended its $16 billion lending facility last month due to the bitter political impasse between Yushchenko and Tymoshenko.

The winner will also need to remember that to lead Ukraine is to balance East and West. This imperative reflects the pressures of both external geopolitics and internal demographics.

Russia and the United States tend to view Ukraine as a key battleground in a cosmic proxy war between East and West. Both have a bad habit of trying to pick winners in Ukrainian politics. These interventions, naïve in their own ways, tend to backfire, often at Ukraine's expense. 

Russian meddling fueled the Orange backlash against the mediocre Leonid Kuchma and his cronies and ended in a series of crippling winter gas cut-offs and sabre-rattling over Crimea.

Meantime, the U.S. expected far more from Yushchenko than he could deliver, deepening his isolation at home. The curse of U.S. foreign-policy idealism, whether neoconservative or liberal, is to make the best the enemy of the good. 

By putting more emphasis on the symbolism of a failed NATO membership bid than the unglamorous work of energy reform, the U.S. did no favor for Ukraine's security. It should be clear that an independent Ukraine must not consume Russian-sourced energy as though it were still part of the U.S.S.R.

By contrast, Russia's designs on Ukraine are hardly idealistic. At the NATO summit last year, Vladimir Putin reportedly remarked to former president George W. Bush, "You understand, George, that Ukraine isn't even a country. What is Ukraine? Part of its territory is Eastern Europe, and part of it, a significant part, was given by us."

Political bullies can be clever at implanting a grain of truth in their predatory barbs. Like other European nations, Ukraine's ethnicity is mixed and its borders were not God-given. These things emerged through collisions of tribes, ethnic intermingling and considerable bloodshed over centuries.

Western Ukraine - Galicia and Bukovina - were Habsburg lands and never part of the czarist empire. The Crimean peninsula was transferred from the Russian Republic to Soviet Ukraine by Nikita Khrushchev in 1954, when both were part of the Soviet Union.

Ukraine faces deep identity issues. Ethnic Russians are roughly 20 percent of the population, and many more Ukrainians speak Russian. The languages are close, like High German and Bavarian or Danish and Swedish.

Europe prides itself on what Freud called "the narcissism of small differences." However, Ukrainian nationalists would be wise not to overplay their hand, as Yushchenko often has done on sensitive language and historical issues.

In the 21st century, Ukraine needs to pursue its own path as a pluralist democracy and emerging market, balancing Western integration with a respect for its older cultural roots and affinities. Despite the present economic crisis and wide dissatisfaction with the political elite, Ukraine has a bright future. It has fertile land, solid industry and well-endowed human capital. 

It also has a libertarian Cossack streak that explains how Ukraine came into being - precisely because of the proud self-reliance of its diverse people. The streets of Kiev, Lvov, Kharkov, Dniepropetrovsk and Simferopol (forgive the Russian transliterations) today have a distinct whiff of freedom, and they should keep it.

What should the West do to help? The U.S. needs to continue balancing its important "reset" policy with Russia by reassuring its neighbors, foremost Ukraine, of its active commitment.

It is the fate of the post-Soviet countries to be part of what Moscow calls the "near abroad." While these states will always be near, it must be the policy of the U.S. and European Union to make sure they remain "abroad," and free and prosperous.

Earlier this year, a senior Ukrainian official, anxious about the reset, asked me whether the Obama adminsitration would "trade us for something like cooperation on Iran." I told her that the U.S. was rooting for Ukraine even when Leonid Kravchuk and Leonid Kuchma, less than stellar figures, were its elected leaders. This will not change.

Yet Ukrainians remember lost dreams of statehood during the two great European wars in the 20th century. And they remember the "Chicken Kiev" speech of President George H.W. Bush to the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet on Aug. 1, 1991, just months before the unraveling of the U.S.S.R., when he said, "Americans will not support those who seek independence in order to replace a far-off tyranny with a local despotism." Bush had uncannily bad timing, but his underlying point about the need for political maturity remains important.

Ukrainians and their Western partners alike should stick to a balanced path of reform and long-term sustainability, not quick fixes and grand gestures. The end of the Orange era will not be the end of Ukraine's independence - nor of its Euro-Atlantic identity.

Mark Medish, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment, served as senior director for Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian Affairs on the National Security Council under President Clinton.


CNN 


Ukraine online: You've got crop reports!


December 21, 2009 6:00 AM

 

To promote democracy, the United States is working to get Eastern Europe connected to the 'net. The results are more practical.

By Julia Ioffe, Contributor 

When the village of Syn'kiv in Western Ukraine first got a computer with web access in 2003, the local priest encouraged people to come out for the grand opening of the library's Internet center. It had been paid for by the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, and the web access, which was free, was a novelty for this hamlet of 1,100 people.

Since then, however, the residents of Syn'kiv, a town known for its early tomatoes, have used the web to find out more precise local weather forecasts as well as the breeds of tomato best suited for the area and how to grow and fertilize them. In the last six years, this knowledge has helped Syn'kiv double its tomato crop.

Syn'kiv was part of a larger U.S. Embassy push to hook Ukraine, which has one of the lowest Internet penetration rates in Europe, to the web.

Full article: Link <http://brainstormtech.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/12/21/ukraine-online-youve-got-crop-reports/?section=magazines_fortuneintl> 

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