Granted, it must be tough for any person — even a vice president — to squeeze in three countries in three days, as Biden did last week with his blitz trips to Morocco, Ukraine and Turkey.
Perhaps Biden achieved great substance in his private meetings on Nov. 21 with President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk. But I have no idea and neither does the public.
We have some glimmers of what he said in an extended meeting with new members of parliament and civil society leaders and, if accurate, that would be the most encouraging part of his visit.
Biden said “the U.S. is willing to finance the changes (in Ukrainian society). However, now they will control every penny,” according to newly elected member of parliament Alex Ryabchyn, the former manager of international communications for the Ukrainian Crisis Media Center.
Ryabchyn, according to his Facebook post and confirmed by participants, also wrote that Biden does not expect miracles from Ukraine, but rather expects genuine progress in combating corruption and launching judicial and other reforms.
Ryabchyn said Biden, who attended the meeting with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt, was told that Ukraine needed “a Marshall Plan” — a massive aid program to rebuild, reform and install such items as energy-conservation technologies to lessen consumption and dependence on Russian natural gas.
I am sure that all Ukrainians and Americans, except those who benefit directly by corrupt schemes, want to ensure that any aid gets spent well. And the inability of Ukraine’s elite — new or old — to change quickly remains a justifiable sticking point to more generous Western assistance.
But the rest of the vice president’s visit seems to be a bust, leaving the public on the outside as usual trying to guess what’s happening behind the closed doors of the powerful elite.
I figured that not much would come of the trip when Biden chose, on the eve of his Nov. 20 arrival, an obscure Ukrainian newspaper for “an exclusive interview…with the support of the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.” It was published in a question-and-answer format, with only four questions. It’s not clear if the interview took place by phone or by email or whether the vice president actually answered the questions himself. In any case, Biden skirted the tough issues and repeated the same American policy and talking points heard now for many months despite an increasingly dire situation.
His trip didn’t get any more illuminating. He reportedly tried to go to Maidan with President Petro Poroshenko to commemorate the victims of the EuroMaidan Revolution on the Nov. 21 anniversary of its start. But evidently his security team was dissuaded by a hostile crowd that heckled Poroshenko for not bringing to justice the killers of more than 100 protesters murdered, allegedly on the orders of former President Viktor Yanukovych. Then pictures surfaced of Biden and Myroslava Gongadze, widow of slain journalist Georgiy Gondgadze and Voice of America journalist traveling with him, at one of the memorials in the center.
Biden also read a prepared statement to the TV cameras with Poroshenko by his side. They took no questions from the news media whatsoever.
I find such visits disappointing and believe that many Ukrainians do too.
As an American, I think that a country whose leaders preach freedom of the press and speech should behave less like Russian President Vladimir Putin — gathering around loyalist media or simply just talking to TV cameras — and more like the world’s most powerful democracy in which political leaders should actually spar in the public arena with journalists and credible critics who will actually ask tough questions.
The real reason for Biden ducking questions and the public probably lies in the substance, or lack thereof, of his visit: He announced another $20 million in U.S. assistance to Ukraine for help in reforms, bringing to $320 million the amount of direct aid this year, on top of a $1 billion loan guarantee. Every dollar counts, but considering my government’s annual budget is $3.9 trillion, the amount spent on Ukraine during its struggle for national survival is unimpressive — and even cheap.
When it comes to Ukraine, I find U.S. President Barack Obama’s policy disappointing and the president himself disengaged. I find myself more in agreement with U.S. Sen. John McCain, U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, former U.S. ambassadors to Ukraine Steven Pifer and John Herbst, retired Gen. Wesley Clark and others.
Shamefully, America is effectively disowning its 1994 Budapest Memorandum commitments to guarantee Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. The sanctions imposed so far on Russia are too weak to change President Vladimir Putin’s course — 2/3 on a scale of 10, as the Financial Times recently said. And since this is Ukraine’s war to defend its own territory, Ukrainians should be given the money and weapons to fight it. This will drive up the cost of the war to the Kremlin, certainly, and even possibly force Putin to change course.
We see the results of the weakness of American and European Union policy: Former Soviet republics such as Azerbaijan, watching as Russia carves up Ukraine while the West does so little, have suddenly become much more obedient to Moscow.
We have heard various statements — America is at Ukraine’s side, America has Ukraine’s back — and so on. I will believe it when I see Obama in Kyiv announcing a generous financial aid package — measured in billions of dollars — and when I see Ukraine’s military having what it needs to defend the nation against Russia’s war.
But Ukraine is not living up to its side of the bargain, either.
I will believe Ukraine is a worthy partner for the West when I see real justice coming out of its courts, no more immunity from prosecution for any public official and the complete abandonment of the Soviet way of governance and all of the corrupt schemes that only enrich oligarchs and impoverish a nation. I will believe it is serious about defeating Russia when its political leaders ramp up military spending, officially declare a state of war, sell war bonds, impose a draft on most men of fighting age and levy a war tax on the richest and most able to pay.
Until then, the power of visits from people such as Biden will only equal the quality of the rhetoric coming out of the mouths of politicians from both nations — not enough to bring peace and prosperity anywhere.
On balance, it’s better that the vice president came than didn’t come. I am glad that he and Ukraine’s leaders get along and am especially happy that my nation and the nation where I live are allies. But I just wish there were more substance and transparency to the bilateral relationship and such events.
Kyiv Post chief editor Brian Bonner can be reached at [email protected].
