In one of the last attempts to nudge Ukraine in the right direction before the May deadline runs out for the European Union to make a decision whether to sign a key association agreement with Ukraine this November, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Wendy Sherman came to Ukraine on March 19-20 for a series of high-level talks.
Her message to President Viktor Yanukovych was this: it’s time to act on selective prosecution because some are considering individual sanctions against top officials.
“We’re not going to resort to this tool today. We believe in direct engagement. I can’t tell you that never will we look at these tools, or other tools that we have in terms of tracking financial assets and looking at what the options are,” she told Channel 5.
The U.S. government has so far spoken against individual sanctions, especially financial. But last September, the U.S. Senate approved a resolution on Ukraine, calling on the authorities to end selective prosecutions and release former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko from prison. The resolution also called for individual sanctions against those officials who are instrumental for political prosecution.
In October, Renat Kuzmin, first deputy prosecutor general, had his U.S. visa revoked last as a result of violating the term of its use. The U.S. authorities said he traveled to the U.S. to question a key witness in a new case he was investigating against Tymoshenko, while using a tourist visa. He was then denied a new visa to visit the United States earlier this year.
The case he was investigating was the 1996 murder of Donetsk businessman Yevhen Shcherban. Tymoshenko was informed in January that she is a suspect in this case, which is currently in court undergoing investigation.
Kuzmin’s visa ordeal was meant to send a signal to the rest of Ukraine’s political elite, but Sherman said the government still prefers to engage at this point.
“Right now the U.S. policy is for direct engagement with Ukraine. We believe at the moment it is more helpful to have conversations directly, to talk about the changes that are needed, to use the prospect of European integration, to urge Ukraine to make the right choices and the right decisions for itself,” she said.
She also added that there are many voices in the U.S. who are speaking for other ways to get the message through that Ukraine should make a good historic choice and move to sign an association agreement with Europe this November.
“It is the most important, however, that Ukraine address selective prosecution, address the need for judicial reform, make economic reforms, integrate itself into international norms and standards in a way that says that in fact Ukraine has embraced the democratic freedoms, that it stands for independence that it has gotten, the territorial and sovereign interests it has for its people looking into the future,” Sherman said.
Kyiv Post editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at gorchinskaya@kyivpost.com.
