WASHINGTON, D.C. – After listening to several speeches during the U.S.-Ukraine Business Forum on July 13 in America’s capital, I thought I would be writing another column about soaring rhetoric and lack of substance between the two friendly but not particularly close nations.
After all, the event started with Tom Donahue, president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (which co-hosted the event with the U.S. Commerce Department), saying: “This is a time of great promise for the Ukraine.” When people who know Ukraine listen to a speaker putting the article “the” before Ukraine, they know they are hearing from someone who doesn’t know much about the nation.
But then U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden came along to save the day and steal the show.
He started slow. He seemed to be ad-libbing. If he was, the reason, as some in the crowd said later, was that his teleprompter wasn’t working properly during the first moments of his speech.
He more than made up for it with his impassioned criticism of Russia’s war against Ukraine and, the real headline-grabber of the event: His scolding of Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and Ukraine’s government for failing to curb corruption and oligarchs, punish criminals and put people in jail.
By the end of the speech, Biden brought into focus the order of America’s priorities in Ukraine, and they’re pretty good: First, the welfare of the Ukrainian people; second, encouragement of the new batch of young, reformist ministers; and third (or even lower), Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
Some of the great quotes:
“This may be the last genuine opportunity the people of Ukraine have to establish a democratic republic that is economically prosperous.”
“It’s profoundly in the self-interest of the United States to see Ukraine emerge as prosperous, democratic, independent and reform-oriented.”
“The changes being enacted now have to be real and lasting. They cannot just be reforms on paper.”
“Above all, Ukraine needs to confront the corruption that has stopped this country from reaching its potential.”
“Corruption siphons away resources, destroys trust in government, hollows out the military. It’s an affront to the dignity of the people of Ukraine. As Ukrainians know in their bones, it’s not enough to talk about change, we have to deliver change. You have to deliver change.”
“Ukraine has a strategy and new laws to fight corruption. Now you’ve got to put people in jail.”
“You have to..investigate and prosecute corruption, past and present…at all levels…get rid of monopolistic behavior that has characterized the country for so long…get rid of sweetheart deals.”
“Keep listening to your people. Make sure your work remains transparent and make sure civil society has a voice in this process.”
“This is it Mr. prime minister. The next couple of years, the next couple months will go a long way to telling the tale.”
The stirring speech contrasted with what almost everybody I talked with considered to be Yatsenyuk’s two lackluster performances that day at the conference, the first filled with platitudes and generalities and the second one so short that it put the event 20 minutes or more ahead of schedule before Biden arrived. Some thought Yatsenyuk squandered a big chance to sell Ukraine to new investors. I am not sure about that point. While the event organizers didn’t release the participant list, many of the 150 attendees are familiar faces in Kyiv, not new ones.
I also thought about criticizing U.S. President Barack Obama as a no-show. The host U.S. Chamber of Commerce is right across the street from the White House. And, according to Obama’s public schedule, he wasn’t having a busy day. At 10 a.m., he got the daily briefing, then delivered remarks at the White House Conference on Aging, then had lunch with Biden. That was about it, according to the White House website.
This seemed to be more evidence that Ukraine was a second-tier concern to Obama. But the Obama-Biden team had other plans. They teamed up in a meeting with Yatsenyuk and some of his aides, joined also by U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt. People who have talked to the participants say that, while expressing strong support for Ukrainians and Ukraine, the president and vice president said they were fed up with inaction on corruption and that future U.S. aid would be in jeopardy if faster progress wasn’t made. “It was a pretty rough meeting at the White House,” one conference attendee told me.
Judging from Biden’s public speech, I believe this version of events — that the private remarks must have been at least as blunt.
President Petro Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk have not put an end to Ukraine’s crony capitalism. They’ve made little headway in making the criminal justice system work properly, in changing the Sovietized and bureaucratic civil service and in ending favors to oligarchs and insiders.
Yatsenyuk compounded his own weak performance this week by complaining publicly that European Union member nation Greece is getting more than $300 billion in bailout loans while loan commitments to Ukraine are generously estimated at $40 billion.
Given the poor performance to date of the Poroshenko-Yatsenyuk team in delivering on the promises of the EuroMaidan Revolution that ousted President Viktor Yanukovych last year, it is more understandable why the West is rationing aid and putting heavy conditions on it.
Even though the Kyiv Post has editorialized in favor of the West sending arms to Ukraine, a better approach may be for the West to help finance Ukraine’s own domestic weapons production.
But before any significant financing or investment comes, the West needs to be satisfied that Ukraine’s leaders are not corrupt and that they will punish crime — that the weapons won’t get sold on the black market, that those who stole billions of dollars will be punished and that those who murdered will also go to prison.
This is simply not happening in Ukraine. And until it does, the frustration will only deepen until the day comes when the nation’s political leaders find they have few friends in the West and among the Ukrainian people.
Kyiv Post chief editor Brian Bonner can be reached at [email protected]
