[Ohio UZO News] Ukraine: The Economist; FP; EDM; KP

[Deychak, Orest]

The Economist

http://www.economist.com/

 

Five years on in Kiev

Jan 21st 2010 | KIEV AND KOLOMIYA 
>From The Economist print edition


The presidential election shows that the orange revolution is out of
puff, no matter who eventually wins

ON DECEMBER 3rd 2004 jubilant crowds flowed into a snowbound Kiev's
Independence Square, waving their orange flags, to celebrate a court
decision to annul Ukraine's rigged presidential election two weeks
earlier. They cried and they danced-and the world was gripped by the
sight of a sleepy Ukrainian people waking up to defend their freedom. 

Days later, their hero, Viktor Yushchenko, his face disfigured by a
mysterious poisoning, promised change. "Everything will change in
Ukraine from today. We were independent for 14 years but we were not
free...We should roll up our sleeves and work honestly from morning till
night for this country." He promised that bandits would go to jail,
honest types would replace corrupt officials and judges would no longer
take bribes-and that in five years' time Ukrainians would be proud of
their achievements. For a time Ukraine became fashionable the world
over.

All that enthusiasm has now turned to fatigue. Ukraine's under-reformed
economy teeters on the edge of national bankruptcy, the rule of law is
elusive, courts remain corrupt and the parliament resembles a trading
platform for business tycoons in which deals are made and seats bought
and sold. In April 2005 some 53% of Ukrainians said their country was on
the right track. Now 81% believe it is heading in the wrong direction.
Ukraine lies 17th from bottom in the latest global index of economic
freedom, below Russia and Belarus.

It is to the credit of the voters that the failure of Mr Yushchenko and
his team has not discredited the very concept of democracy, as happened
in Russia in the 1990s. In the election Mr Yushchenko was
unceremoniously booted out, gaining just over 5% of the vote. Viktor
Yanukovich, the bad guy in 2004, got 35%, against 25% for Yulia
Tymoshenko, the prime minister, who energised the crowds in 2004 but has
since fallen out bitterly with Mr Yushchenko. The two front-runners will
now face each other in a second round on February 7th. 

Ukraine is as divided as ever, with the industrialised, Russian-speaking
east and south backing Mr Yanukovich and the centre and west supporting
Ms Tymoshenko. The only politician who did well all over the country was
Serhiy Tyhypko, a former banker who ran and then quit Mr Yanukovich's
campaign in 2004. He fought the best campaign and took 13% of the vote
despite, or more likely because of, being absent from politics in the
past five years. 

That an unpopular incumbent can be peacefully removed is an achievement
of the orange revolution. Yet Ukraine's free (and frequent) elections
are providing neither good governance nor stability, which may explain
the voters' gloomy mood. "There was little room for hope, faith, love,
hatred, commitment or passion in this election. These emotions were
replaced by pity, inertia, tiredness, indifference and depression,"
lamented Zerkalo Nedeli, a Ukrainian weekly. 

After the drama of the orange revolution, disappointment was perhaps
inevitable. But the orange camp's failure to honour its promises has
been breathtaking. It is often blamed on a trap set in 2004 by Mr
Yushchenko's foes, who pushed through a constitutional change to split
executive power between the president and parliament. Yet that did not
come into force until 15 months later. At the start of 2005 Mr
Yushchenko had a free hand and a soaring approval rating. "He could have
made any reforms: we would have supported him. But he wasted an
opportunity," laments a truck driver in western Ukraine. 

Even Mr Yushchenko's fans now say he was weak and had neither a plan of
action nor strong advisers to push through reforms. He destroyed the
bureaucratic machine of his predecessor, Leonid Kuchma, but put nothing
in its place. Bandits went unpunished; business friends were rewarded
with lucrative deals. After making Ms Tymoshenko prime minister, he
promptly set about undermining her. In 2006, when Russia cut off the
gas, he accepted a shady gas-trading scheme designed by his
predecessors. 

On the edge

The roots of Ukraine's ills stretch far beyond Mr Yushchenko's weakness
or Ms Tymoshenko's populism. The country lacks a strong elite or any
experience of sovereignty. Apart from a brief period just after the
Bolshevik Revolution, Ukraine has never been an independent country in
modern times. It has spent most of its history under Russian, Polish or
Austro-Hungarian rule. Its independence in 1991 only came out of the
Soviet Union's collapse. In his book "Unexpected Nation", Andrew Wilson,
a historian and analyst at the European Council on Foreign Relations,
argues that it "arrived as much by accident as design." And as in other
parts of the former Soviet Union, independence initially brought neither
economic liberalisation nor much change at the top.

In the late Soviet era, aspirations for Ukrainian independence were
confined to a group of dissident writers and intellectuals. The popular
appeal was weaker than the force of the KGB: as many as half of all
political prisoners in the Soviet Union were from Ukraine. When the
nationalist movement was allowed to resurface in the late 1980s, it was
as much concerned with the revival of Ukrainian culture and language as
with democracy or market reforms. Nationalists in effect struck a deal,
under which the Communists conceded independence but were allowed to
keep their power and assets. 

Leonid Kravchuk, the last Communist boss, became Ukraine's first
national president in 1991 with no idea how to run an economy. "Ukraine
fed the entire Soviet Union, and we thought that if we were on our own
we would be rich. Nobody understood the market economy here," he says.
By 1993 hyperinflation had set in, and Ukraine suffered one of the
sharpest drops in GDP of any country in peacetime. Unlike Russia and
Poland, Ukraine did not have liberal economists in charge, but "a
shifting kaleidoscope of clans, shadowy business and old nomenklatura
interests," says Mr Wilson. America and the West focused on ridding
Ukraine of nuclear weapons and paid little attention to the economy.
Left to their own devices, politicians built a rent-seeking, corporatist
state. 

Mr Kuchma, who was elected in 1994, at least managed to stabilise the
economy. With Mr Yushchenko, first as head of the central bank and later
as prime minister, he launched a currency in 1996 and set about
privatisation. But reforms stalled and Ukraine slipped into a
semi-authoritarian state. Mr Kuchma then overplayed his hand by trying
to anoint Mr Yanukovich as his successor. 

	
 

	

 

The orange revolution was not aimed personally at Mr Yanukovich but
against the idea of transferring power like this. It was also a
revolution against a kleptocratic system that held the country back,
bullied opponents and had journalists killed. The Ukrainian middle
class, tired of muddling through, trusted Mr Yushchenko to smash that
system. But the "first real Ukrainian president", as Mr Yushchenko
called himself, was too backward-looking.

Instead of governing, he tried to boost national consciousness by
promoting the Ukrainian language and trying to revise history. This did
little for the Russian-speaking east, not to mention Crimea, which still
has not been fully integrated into Ukraine (and which includes
Sebastopol, host to Russia's Black Sea Fleet until its lease runs out in
2017). Mr Yushchenko objected to Russia's version of history, but he too
was ideological. He insisted on calling the famine of 1932-33, a
deliberate and horrendous extermination of peasants by Stalin, an act of
genocide, when it affected the entire Soviet Union. 

He said little of the dark pages in Ukraine's own history, including
collaboration with Nazi Germany and the role of the Ukrainian Auxiliary
Police in administering the Holocaust. For instance, in Ivano Frankivsk,
where some 100,000 Jews were killed, the authorities have put up a
monument to 27 Ukrainian insurgents who were killed by the Nazis, but
not even a plaque on the site of Jewish mass graves. Anti-Semitism is no
longer rampant, but it is partly a failure to teach history that allows
Nadia Mateiko, an art student in Kolomiya, to say of Ms Tymoshenko: "I
don't want this Jew to be the president of my country. It is not their
land." (Ms Tymoshenko is not even Jewish.)

History is of little comfort to poor people in western Ukraine, where
remittances from illegal workers abroad are often a main source of
income. Five years after the orange revolution, hopes for a dynamic and
modern Ukraine remain just that. Some may now be invested in Mr Tyhypko,
who refuses to back either front-runner. Ukrainians have to pick one of
two familiar faces: Mr Yanukovich or Ms Tymoshenko. It is like a choice
"between the plague and AIDS", says Yulia Mostovaya, editor of Zerkalo
Nedeli. 

Mr Yanukovich has the flesh and blood of the clan system. Born into a
poor working-class family in Donetsk, a coal-mining centre, he lost his
parents early. By the age of 20 he had two convictions for violent
crime. In the late 1990s he became governor of Donetsk and befriended
Rinat Akhmetov, now Ukraine's richest steel magnate. When the orange
revolution began, Mr Yanukovich and his supporters brought in
nasty-looking toughs from Donetsk to balance the orange crowd. 

In the 2004 election Mr Yanukovich had the backing of Russia's then
president, Vladimir Putin, who rushed to congratulate him. The Kremlin
might have expected a brutal dispersal of the crowd, but Mr Kuchma would
not sanction the use of force. Even today Mr Yanukovich is unrepentant:
"The rigging has not been proved. What happened in Ukraine would not
have happened in any civilised country. It was not an election-it was a
coup," he complains. Despite a makeover by American political
consultants, Mr Yanukovich has not shaken off his image of a thuggish,
inarticulate man. 

Yet his "pro-Russian candidate" label is misleading. He represents the
Russian-speaking east, but has done little to advance Russia's
interests, instead jealously guarding those of such tycoons as Mr
Akhmetov. What Mr Akhmetov wants is a politically and economically
stable Ukraine. Yet some of Mr Yanukovich's team do not inspire
confidence. They include a former finance minister, Mykola Azarov,
architect of the repressive tax inspectorate, as well as the creators of
the opaque gas-trading scheme with Russia. Mr Yanukovich wants to
renegotiate today's gas agreement, which excludes shady intermediaries. 

 

The gas princess

Even so, many businessmen worry more about the populist Ms Tymoshenko.
In her early days she was known as the "gas princess", having made money
as boss of United Energy System, a gas intermediary that won lucrative
contracts from Pavlo Lazarenko, a former prime minister who partly owned
the company and was arrested and jailed in America in 1999 for
money-laundering and fraud. But Ms Tymoshenko was not implicated and, as
deputy prime minister in 1999, she used her knowledge to clean up the
energy business. (For her pains, she was even put in prison for a few
months.) 

In 2004 her charisma and energy electrified the orange revolution, but
as prime minister in 2005 she revealed a worrying populism, trying to
regulate meat and petrol prices and advocating state control of the
commanding heights of the economy. She also rattled some oligarchs by
reversing the dodgy privatisation of a vast steel factory and reselling
it for six times as much. But when she was fired, the orange coalition
fell apart. 

Two years later, she came back as prime minister and managed to scrap
RosUkrEnergo, the biggest and shadiest of the country's gas
intermediaries. But her government made little progress with other
reforms. For this she blamed Mr Yushchenko, who vetoed many of her
decisions. She then managed the feat of winning an IMF bail-out without
fulfilling the fund's demands to raise gas prices and cut public
spending.

Viktor Pynzenyk, who resigned as finance minister last year after
failing to stop a deliberately unrealistic budget, says that "the IMF
money was not the cure but the hair of the dog." In 2009, when the
economy shrank by 15%, budgeted spending rose by 35%, he says. "The
crisis gave us a chance to reform the economy and we wasted it." Yet, by
juggling figures and budgets, Ms Tymoshenko has managed to sustain much
of her political support. 

There are at least two reasons why she may win on February 7th despite
lagging behind in the opinion polls. First, she is a much cleverer and
more appealing politician than the inarticulate and slow-thinking Mr
Yanukovich. ("Her profession is to speak and to lie beautifully and I
can't do it like her," Mr Yanukovich admits.) Second, she seems more
desperate for power than Mr Yanukovich, who enjoys hunting and tennis as
much as politics. "Tymoshenko's priority is to be in power at any cost.
Principles are secondary," says Mr Pynzenyk. 

But that may also make her a riskier choice. She campaigned on the
slogan of bashing the oligarchs and will have to make an example of
some. But she has also been trying to reassure and pull to her side
people like Mr Akhmetov and Viktor Pinchuk, another magnate. They may
not want to jeopardise their wealth and safety by opposing her. The
danger is that she will seek to maximise her power rather than push
through reforms and strengthen the institutions that would then keep her
ambitions in check. 

She has certainly found a common language with Mr Putin, now Russia's
prime minister, who has said he could work with her. Her final
three-hour long televised press conference before the election had a
Putinesque tone. It is not hard to imagine her doing dodgy deals with Mr
Putin in exchange for Russian help to keep her in power. Nor does she
have many scruples about her allies. One is said to be Viktor
Medvedchuk, Mr Kuchma's notorious chief of staff, who is accused of
harassing the media and bullying businessmen. Mr Medvedchuk, who asked
Mr Putin to be a godfather to his child, is a welcome guest in the
Kremlin. 

Yet Ukraine is not Russia-and Ms Tymoshenko is not Mr Putin. She does
not have a background in the security services. She faces regional
divisions that make centralisation of power hard in Ukraine. Democratic
forces are stronger and criticism from the West has more weight than in
Russia. Moreover, low credit from the voters and the dire state of
public finances mean that whoever wins the election will be constrained
in what they can do. 

Ukraine's economy has been kept afloat by IMF money. But late last year
the IMF suspended its programme because of ballooning public spending.
Ukraine's budget deficit stands at 12% of GDP and the country has no
real way of financing it. Ukraine's sovereign international debt is
manageable, but its domestic obligations are not. Mr Pynzynek estimates
that, by the spring, Ukraine will run out of cash to pay pensions and
salaries. This may at last force squabbling politicians to act. 

The winner on February 7th will need to raise heavily subsidised gas
prices and cut public spending with a vengeance. He or she must trim red
tape and hope that Ukrainian business pulls the country out of its hole.
Ukraine may be tempted to ask Russia for help-and Russia may be tempted
to grant it in order to secure more influence. After 18 years of
independence the biggest threat to Ukraine is its inability to govern
itself. The election is tight, and the country can ill afford another
deadlock.


Foreign Policy

 

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/01/18/seeing_orange

 


Seeing Orange


Why a Ukraine without Viktor Yushchenko might be in a better position to
cooperate with the West.


BY SAMUEL CHARAP | JANUARY 18, 2010


 

Ukrainians went to the polls on Sunday to elect a president for the
first time since the dramatic events of 2004-2005 that came to be known
as the Orange Revolution. Early results indicate that Viktor Yanukovych,
the leader of the parliamentary opposition, and Yulia Tymoshenko, the
current prime minister, lead the pack of 18 candidates, with Yanukovych
in position to garner between 31 and 38 percent to Tymoshenko's 25 to 27
percent. The Central Election Commission is unlikely to issue the final
tally for at least a week, but it is clear that neither candidate will
end up with over 50 percent of the vote, triggering a runoff on Feb. 7.
While this result might seem like a blow to Western interests, a closer
look at both the last five years of Ukrainian politics under Yushchenko
and the likely policies of his probable successors shows that the
situation is far less dire than it has been portrayed. 

Coverage of the elections in the Western press has been marked by
hand-wringing about the implications of a win for either of the two
frontrunners, especially the allegedly "pro-Russian" Yanukovych. One
headline read, "Orange sunset as Ukraine poll heralds turn to Russia."
After all, Yanukovych was the "villain" in the Orange Revolution drama
-- the Kremlin-endorsed candidate who was vanquished by the purportedly
"democratic," pro-Western opposition leader Viktor Yushchenko in a
repeat vote after the second round of the presidential elections in 2005
that was marred by fraud. Although Tymoshenko -- the Orange Revolution's
other international icon -- was Yushchenko's close ally during the
uprising, and became his prime minister after he took office, she is now
portrayed as nearly as hostile to NATO and the European Union as
Yanukovych. Since the main goal of Yushchenko's presidency was,
according to the prevailing conventional wisdom, anchoring Ukraine in
the West, the election, no matter which of the two emerges victorious on
Feb. 7, represents the Ukrainian people's repudiation of this goal --
all the more so because Yushchenko appears to have garnered only 6
percent of the vote in his reelection bid.

Fortunately, these assertions are largely bogus. They rely on a
superficial account of Yushchenko's presidency, mischaracterizations of
the two presidential frontrunners, and a misunderstanding of the role of
the president in Ukraine's political system. In fact, a Tymoshenko or a
Yanukovych victory is unlikely to significantly impact the country's
relations with NATO, the European Union, or the United States, and its
ramifications for Russia are mixed. However, a Tymoshenko victory might
present the opportunity for an end to the political instability that has
paralyzed Ukrainian policy-making for the past several years, and make
it more likely that much-needed reforms will be implemented.

Yushchenko does appear to be genuinely committed to integrating his
country into the Euro-Atlantic community. During his tenure several
important steps were taken toward that end: Ukraine became a member of
the World Trade Organization; it received a promise that it would
eventually become a NATO member-state; it joined the EU Eastern
Partnership - a forum for the alliance's former Soviet neighbors; and
negotiations began on a free trade agreement with Brussels.

But these achievements were relatively modest, and were outweighed by
the damage to the country's international reputation caused by the
unfulfilled promises and political infighting that characterized his
tenure. With commitments consistently broken (such the conditions
attached to a $16.4 billion International Monetary Fund loan, largely
due to Yushchenko's failure to veto a massive budget-busting hike in
social benefits) and a president who proved incapable of demonstrating
competent leadership, Ukraine came to be seen as a basket case, and
genuine progress toward integration with the West ground to a halt.

Yushchenko also discredited the Westernization project within Ukraine.
He pushed too hard on divisive issues like NATO membership and
exacerbated Ukraine's regional fissures by forcing the country's largely
Russian-speaking southern and eastern regions to use the Ukrainian
language and taking controversial stances on historical issues (earlier
this month, for example, he issued a decree creating a holiday and
ordering cultural events in honor of Ukrainian soldiers who fought with
Austro-Hungarian forces against Russia in World War I). By the end of
his tenure, more Ukrainians supported a union with Belarus and Russia
than joining the EU, and less than 20 percent favored NATO accession.

So despite his positive rhetoric, Yushchenko leaves office with
relations with the West in a sad state. And because of both the
Kremlin's visceral distaste for him and his own gratuitously provocative
moves (such as not accepting the newly appointed Russian ambassador's
credentials last year), he will leave his successor a relationship with
Russia at its lowest point in the post-Soviet period. As
counterintuitive as it may seem, a fractious relationship between Kyiv
and Moscow makes Ukraine's Westward progression more difficult.  

While neither Yanukovych nor Tymoshenko are likely to use the same
pro-Western rhetoric as Yushchenko, their positions more accurately
reflect Ukrainian public opinion. When asked what issues a new president
should focus on after taking office, only 3 percent of the population
put relations with the EU at the top of the list, and just 1 percent
prioritized relations with NATO. Compare that to the 71 percent who
thought the new president should focus on creating jobs.

But beyond the public speeches, the banal but crucial ongoing
behind-the-scenes cooperation with the West is unlikely to change much.
Negotiations on the trade agreement with the European Union will
continue and Ukraine will not suddenly pull out of the Eastern
Partnership. Neither candidate will cut off cooperation with NATO, which
encompasses a wide range of joint activities with the Alliance,
especially in the area of defense modernization.

Yanukovych and Tymoshenko will prioritize repairing Ukraine's
relationship with Moscow, but largely because its current state of
disrepair is untenable, not in order to cede sovereignty to the Kremlin.
Yanukovych is no pro-Russian stooge, and during his brief tenure as
prime minister in 2006 and 2007 he did little to act on Moscow's policy
wish list. Indeed, the economic interest groups that back him would
never allow him to sour relations with the West, where they send the
majority of their exports, or open Ukraine's markets to Russian
oligarchs.

So despite what's been claimed, this election will not mark a major
geopolitical departure for Ukraine. There may no longer be an idealistic
pro-Western dreamer at the helm in Kyiv, but a foreign policy pragmatist
who moderates divisive rhetoric while continuing practical cooperation
might well prove preferable.

That does not, however, make the election insignificant. The outcome
will determine the balance of power in Ukraine's complicated domestic
politics, where, because of constitutional reforms implemented as part
of the compromise that brought Yushchenko to power, Ukraine has a
(highly convoluted) parliamentary-presidential political system, which
severely limits the powers of the presidency and effectively means that
a president who does not control parliament cannot govern.

If Tymoshenko wins, the parliamentary opposition is likely to splinter,
with a number of MPs coming over to her side of the aisle, providing her
with a solid majority. She could then install one of her loyalists as
prime minister, which would give her control over all three centers of
power in Ukraine and put an end to the endless confrontation among these
institutions that has crippled governance. For the first time since the
Orange Revolution, a Ukrainian president would be able to deliver on
promises and perhaps even push ahead with unpopular, but desperately
needed, reforms.

For the West, this might be a major boon, since one of the top
priorities in both the Europe and the United States' relations with
Ukraine is energy reform. The country's highly corrupt, backwards energy
sector represents a major threat to Europe's energy security, as the
2009 gas shut-off that left Eastern Europe shivering demonstrated. When
Western leaders go to Kyiv, they inevitably demand action on this front,
but their Ukrainian counterparts invariably fail to deliver. If elected,
Tymoshenko could use her political authority to implement painful
reforms such as cutting the massive gas subsidies for domestic consumers
and tackling the problems in the opaque, graft-ridden energy monopoly,
Naftohaz.

That said, an empowered Tymoshenko is not good news for her political
enemies. She has never been known for a democratic governing style, and
there is no guarantee that she will not abuse her authority to, for
example, lock up some of her opponents. 

A Yanukovych win would be quite different. He is unlikely to cobble
together a solid majority in parliament, and might face the prospect of
Tymoshenko remaining prime minister. Even if he dismisses parliament and
calls early elections he is unlikely to gain control of the legislature.
In short, the fractiousness that has been the hallmark of Ukrainian
politics for the past five years would continue unabated.

Perhaps the best the West can hope for from these elections  is a
president who can govern. What is at stake is not geopolitics, in the
sense of a tug of war with Russia over Ukraine, but something much more
banal -- a functioning state.

Samuel Charap is associate director for Russia and Eurasia in the
National Security and International Policy program at the Center for
American Progress. In 2007, he was a visiting fellow at the
International Center for Policy Studies in Kyiv. 

Eurasia Daily Monitor: 

http://www.jamestown.org/programs/edm/ (go to this website to see other
post-election analyses in addition to the one below)

January 20, 2010

Yanukovych and Tymoshenko: Foreign and Security Policies

Viktor Yanukovych and Yulia Tymoshenko will face each other in round two
of the fifth Ukrainian presidential elections on February 7. In foreign
and security policies there are seven key differences between both
candidates.

1. The Black Sea Fleet based in Sevastopol. Yanukovych's election
program proclaims support for Ukraine's neutrality and opposes Ukraine's
membership of military blocs. Nevertheless, on many occasions Yanukovych
has stated his readiness to discuss prolonging the Black Sea Fleet's
(BSF) base in Sevastopol beyond 2017, when the twenty year treaty
expires.

Is this a contradiction? Of course, but this is nothing new, while
Tymoshenko has never supported the prolongation of the BSF base.

2. Relations with Russia. Both candidates are seeking to improve
relations with Russia, but in very different ways. First, Yanukovych has
repeatedly stated that he supports Russia's proposals for a new European
security architecture that NATO has received with skepticism (UNIAN,
January 12). Second, Tymoshenko has never mentioned the Russian proposal
nor has she ever endorsed it.

Yanukovych supported the abusive criticism in August 2009 in President
Dmitry Medvedev's letter to President Viktor Yushchenko. Tymoshenko,
like Yushchenko, criticized the Medvedev letter. Yanukovych's Party of
Regions has a long-term cooperation agreement with the Unified Russia
party unlike Tymoshenko's Batkivschina party. The Party of Regions has
also supported the CIS Single Economic Space (SND YES) Customs Union,
which Tymoshenko has again not mentioned. No country can be in two
customs unions (SND YES and a Free Trade Zone with the EU), but such
contradictions are quite common for the Party of Regions.

3. Yanukovych and the Party of Regions have financially gained from and
supported gas intermediaries such as RosUkrEnergo (RUE) and the gas
lobby that took over the party in 2006-2008. Tymoshenko was involved in
cleaning up the energy sector during the last decade and is the only
member of the Ukrainian elite who has been imprisoned for battling
energy corruption (February 2001). In 2009 Ukraine had no gas
intermediaries, because of the contract negotiated by the Tymoshenko
government. A Yanukovych victory may return RUE and the resultant
massive corruption in Ukrainian politics. Yanukovych has strongly
supported a gas consortium with Russia to receive gas subsidies
(Ukrayinska Pravda, January 19). Tymoshenko has never done so.

4. Yanukovych has always adopted a hard-line on NATO membership,
opposing any Membership Action Plan (MAP). President Leonid Kuchma and
Prime Minister Yanukovych requested MAP's at the Prague and Istanbul
NATO summits in 2002 and 2004. Tymoshenko signed a joint letter with
Yushchenko and then Parliamentary Speaker Arseniy Yatseniuk in January
2008 requesting that NATO offer Ukraine a MAP at the Bucharest summit.

The Party of Regions' two Crimean allies, extremist Russian parties in
the For Yanukovych bloc, launched anti-American-NATO protests that
blocked (after a decade of no interruptions) joint military exercises
with NATO. Ukraine's cooperation within NATO's Partnership for Peace may
only return to Kuchma era levels following Tymoshenko's election.

5. Yanukovych is seeking to embolden his pro-European credentials
(Ukrayinska Pravda, January 19), but there is strong suspicion that the
rhetoric is as empty of content as it was under Kuchma. The Party of
Regions has not shown itself to be a pro-European political force by
turning, for example, its back on the election fraud five years ago.
Yanukovych continues to argue that there was no fraud and that he was
legitimately elected in November 2004.

The Party of Regions has a cooperation agreement with Unified Russia,
but not with any other political group in the European Parliament.
Batkivschina, the party that Tymoshenko has led for 11 years, is the
most active Ukrainian party in the European Parliament. The center-right
European Peoples Party, in which Batkivschina is a member, issued a
statement in support of Tymoshenko calling upon all "Ukrainian
democratic forces" to back her in the second round
(http://vybory.tymoshenko.ua, January 18). Ultimately, what is important
is which of the two candidates will reset relations with the EU and NATO
after three years of Ukraine-fatigue? This is more likely to be
Tymoshenko, than Yanukovych in whom there is still lingering suspicion
in Brussels that he represents the ancien regime.

6. The Tymoshenko government was instrumental in ensuring that Ukraine
completed its entrance into the WTO in 2008. When in opposition in
2005-2006, the Party of Regions aligned itself with the Communists in
voting against the legislation required to enter the WTO. WTO membership
is the major stepping stone to the signing of a Free Trade Zone
agreement with the EU in 2010 or 2011. Ukraine's oligarchs see the Free
Trade Zone and visa free regime in a positive light, as opening up a
large market and trading area, while looking aghast at the huge number
of Copenhagen criteria-style requirements that Ukraine will be forced to
undertake. Yanukovych cannot decide in which customs union he wishes the
country to join: the SND YES or the EU Free Trade Zone.

Since the onset of the global financial crisis, the Tymoshenko
government has proven its commitment to work with the IMF when it
negotiated a $16.4 billion standby agreement. In December 2009, its
fourth tranche of funding was delayed after the Party of Regions
initiated populist legislation that increased social payments and
undermined the budget parameters negotiated with the IMF.

7. The Party of Regions backed separatism within the Crimean and
Ukrainian parliaments (alongside the terrorist organization Hamas, as
well as Nicaragua and Russia), while the Tymoshenko bloc (BYuT)
supported Georgia's territorial integrity. In the 2010 elections, the
Party of Regions protested over the appearance of 2,011 Georgian
observers, whom it described in Russian-style tones as a pro-Tymoshenko
paramilitary force seeking to emulate the democratic revolutions of
2000-2004 (Ukrayinska Pravda, January 18, 19).

These seven points show the deep seated differences between the foreign
and security policies of both candidates. Yushchenko and Tymoshenko both
hail from the Orange Revolution camp and the only difference between
them is that their approaches to the above seven issues reflect those
commonly found between western and central Ukraine.

--Taras Kuzio

Kyiv Post

Roman Kupchinsky, long time activist, writer, dies of cancer

January 21, 2010

Roman Kupchinsky, who founded and headed Radio Free Europe/Radio
Liberty's Ukrainian bureau in Kyiv and became an expert on corruption
and energy issues in the former Soviet Union, died on Jan. 19 after
battling cancer. 

(Kyiv Post Staff) - Roman Kupchinsky, who founded and headed Radio Free
Europe/Radio Liberty's Ukrainian bureau in Kyiv and became an expert on
corruption and energy issues in the former Soviet Union, died on Jan. 19
after battling cancer. He was 65.

Kupchinsky was born in Vienna, Austria and immigrated to the United
States in 1949. He graduated with a degree in Political Science from
Long Island University and was decorated with a Purple Heart for his
service in the U.S. Army as a rifle platoon leader in Vietnam. From
1978-88, Kupchinsky was President of Prolog Research Corp., a Ukrainian
language publishing house and research company.

Kupchinsky over the years wrote extensively about corruption in Ukraine,
authoring numerous investigative articles during the late 1990s and
early 2000s about government shenanigans, shady natural gas deals and
illegal arms sales.

One of his most famous investigations was titled "The Tractor Driver of
the State - the Case of Pavlo Lazarenko," a 3-part investigation
chronicling how former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko siphoned billions
of dollars out of Ukraine into offshore accounts in the late 1990s
before fleeing abroad.

>From 1990-2002, Kupchinsky was the director of Ukrainian service of
RFE/RL. Summing up his stay in Ukraine before relocating to RFE/RL's
Prague headquarters in 1998, Kupchinsky said then that he had concluded
that Ukraine is "a country where the unwilling are led by the
incompetent to do the unnecessary." "Hopefully this will change," he
added.

Kupchinsky worked as a senior analyst at RFE/RL in Prague until 2008,
specializing in Ukrainian affairs, Russian energy and international
politics, editing RFE's Organized Crime and Corruption Watch as well as
two collections of articles, "The Nationality Problem in the USSR" and
"Pogrom in Ukraine."

More recently, the Arlington Virginia based writer served as a partner
for AZEast Group, a consultant on Eurasian issues, contributing articles
to a variety of publications, including the Kyiv Post. One of his last
articles appeared Jan. 4 on the Jamestown Foundation's Eurasia Monitor
web site.

"Roman Kupchinsky devoted virtually his entire life to the cause of
Ukraine's independence and democracy," Adrian Karatnycky, senior fellow
for the U.S.-based Atlantic Council and former head of Freedom House.
"After serving in the U.S. Army in Vietnam in the late 1960s, he
returned to the United States and energetically engaged himself in the
cause of Ukraine's freedom."

"Roman Kupchinsky is no more ... but his contribution to the rebirth of
a movement for Ukrainian statehood remains a lasting legacy," he added.

In the 1970s, Kupchinsky was an active leader of the Committee for the
Defense of Soviet Political Prisoners, mobilizing eminent Americans and
Europeans on behalf of Ukrainian, Baltic, Jewish and Russian dissidents
serving long terms in forced labor camps for their defense of human
rights. In the 1970s and 1980s, the Committee was the key liaison with
the Ukrainian Helsinki Monitoring Group. Kupchinsky worked closely with
Tatyana Yankelevych, step daughter of the late Russian dissident, Andrei
Sakharov, and his widow, Elena Bonner, among other democratic activists.

Colleagues have praised Kupchinsky for his strong dedication and the
impact his work brought. They also said he will be remembered and dearly
missed for his sense of humor. Upon learning of his terminal disease,
Kupchinsky said he was not certain where he was heading, but promised to
make contact, letting friends know where he ended up.

Kupchinsky is survived by a son, Markian Kupchinsky. Funeral services
are pending. Burial will take place at Arlington National Cemetery with
military honors. 

 

 

Roman was, indeed, a larger than life figure.  His work -much of it
behind the scenes -  on behalf of Ukraine's independence and democracy,
and his support of human rights in the Soviet Union, was truly
significant and lasting.  He will be missed.  Vichna Pamyat (Eternal
Memory)  OD

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