Rob van de Water is the first official foreign consultant to the Cabinet of Ukraine. He cringes at the word “consultant,” though. “I am not a consultant,” he shoots. “That is, I am not a moneymaker trying to get rich in Ukraine. I am just a normal adviser to the Cabinet of Ministers.” Rob van de Water Age: 59 Citizenship: Dutch Position: Cabinet’s adviser on communication and European affairs Years in country: Since November 2012 Tip for success in Ukraine: “Be aware that Ukraine is bigger than Kyiv. Eat Ukrainian food. Do not only come in winter. The summer is very nice.”
He was appointed to the job on Nov. 1, and flies into Ukraine for four days every fortnight. He says his job is to advise the prime minister and staff on how people in Europe would like to see the government of Ukraine function, trying to make them aware of the kind of reactions that are coming and explain them, and help the Ukrainian government communicate in a more Western European way.
“When you look at the website of the government of Ukraine, you see that it’s… slightly out of date – they are still very fond of declarations that the harvest in Poltava was great, better than last year, and it will better next year,” he explains.
There is a personal motive to what he is doing: 15 years ago, he and his wife adopted two children from Ukraine. They are both 16 now.“They had a very bad start in life. This country did not offer them what it offered many other people,” van de Water explained. “So, [we have had] a general feeling that it’s possible to contribute to making this country where they were born and got a bad start, a better place.”
Until last year, Van de Water worked for more than 30 years in the European Parliament as adviser on foreign policy for the Social Democratic Party, which has an agreement with Ukraine’s ruling Party of Regions for intensified cooperation.
His wife Ina Kirsch, also a Social Democrat, is the managing director of a non-government organization set up in Brussels by the Party of Regions, called the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine. The organization was formerly chaired by Leonid Kozhara before he became foreign minister.
The organization’s aim is to promote dialogue between Ukraine and the EU, organize Ukraine-related roundtables and debates, and so on. It is also responsible for a fair share of lobbying activities, according to The Center for Responsive Politics, a U.S.-based research group tracking money in U.S. politics and its effect on elections and public policy.
The Center for Responsive Politics’ website, www.opensecrets.org, disclosed that the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine paid $800,000 in lobbying fees related to foreign and defense policies in 2012. The main recipients of the money were Podesta Group and Mercury/Clark & Weinstock, receiving $510,000 and $290,000, respectively.
Van de Water maintains that although he and his wife share a desire to help Ukraine for the sake of their children, his job is very different from his wife’s “We’re a very modern (family). What my wife does, is not what I do, and what I do is not something my wife is (involved) in.”
He says that a typical day in Ukraine for him is “a lot of talking to people and a lot of writing papers” on specific issues discussed in the European Union that Ukrainian officials have to pay special attention to, summarizing agendas in Brussels that the Ukrainians would normally miss.
Van de Water says he tries to explain to the prime minister how the government would be expected to act on certain issues in the West. Van de Water was also behind the prime minister’s initiative to have regular meetings with small groups of journalists – an obvious solution that had not existed in Ukraine until late last year. So far, Azarov has had several such meetings.
Van de Water says he likes working with Azarov. “What I realized about this prime minister is that he keeps surprising me,” he says. “From the outside, he looks like an apparatchik, but he’s contrary to that. We started these breakfasts with journalists. When he’s there, he almost swings. When given a chance, he’s great about (communication).”
Van de Water works directly with the prime minister on European integration, because Azarov is in charge of European affairs since a Cabinet reorganization last year.
Van de Water says he is under no illusion about corruption and nepotism, for which the government is infamous, but says he stays out of it. “That’s not my world, I am not part of it, I am not going to be part of it, I don’t want to be part of it. What I am interested in is this country trying to get a better government, and close relations between this government and the European Union.”
Kyiv Post editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at gorchinskaya@kyivpost.com
