Editor’s Note: This feature separates Ukraine’s friends from its enemies. The Order of Yaroslav the Wise has been given since 1995 for distinguished service to the nation. It is named after the Kyivan Rus leader from 1019-1054, when the medieval empire reached its zenith. The Order of Lenin was the highest decoration bestowed by the Soviet Union, whose demise Russian President Vladimir Putin mourns. It is named after Vladimir Lenin, whose corpse still rots on the Kremlin’s Red Square, more than 100 years after the October Revolution he led.
Ukraine’s Friend of the Week: Ulana Suprun
In heady, hopeful weeks and months after the EuroMaidan Revolution that ended the corrupt reign of President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014, several foreigners took top government jobs with the aim of reforming Ukraine, weeding out corruption and inefficiencies, and satisfying Ukrainians’ demands that their country finally become “normal” – a European-style state with democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human rights.
Five years later, Ulana Suprun, Ukraine’s acting minister of health, is practically the only one left of these foreigners (although she is of Ukrainian descent, she was brought up in Detroit, Michigan in the United States.)
Now she is under attack from those who seek to block reforms that would stamp out corrupt schemes that plague Ukraine’s crumbling healthcare system, which has rotted after years of neglect. While Ukrainians are supposed to benefit from free healthcare provided by the state, the health sector was bled dry of funds by corrupt officials, meaning most people effectively had to pay for drugs and doctors if they got ill.
Suprun enraged those who profited through corrupt drug procurement schemes by outsourcing the purchase of medicines to international organizations, which deprived corrupt officials and intermediary supply companies of a source of cash. In turn, Ukraine saved Hr 700 million ($25 million) in budget funds for drugs to treat cancer in 2018 alone, according to the United Nations Development Program in Ukraine.
On top of that, Suprun’s medical reform bill introduces a medical insurance, market-based health sector based on the principle of the “money following the patient.” In short, doctors and institutions compete for patients, and the funding they provide, instead of relying on state allocations that were in the past plundered with ease.
Naturally, these reforms have met stiff resistance from vested interests in the sector, and on Feb. 5 a Kyiv court ruled that Suprun could no longer exercise her powers as acting minister. However, as Suprun was appointed directly by the Cabinet of Ministers, and did not assume her role though being instated by a health minister as a deputy, there are doubts about the legality of the court ruling. The case was filed by Ihor Mosiychuk, a lawmaker from the populist Radical Party of Oleh Lyashko.
President Petro Poroshenko and the Cabinet of Ministers have expressed support for Suprun, and she is Ukraine’s Friend of the Week and a winner of the Order of Yaroslav the Wise for her efforts to reform Ukraine.
This is a real test for Ukraine: If one of the last true reformers can be forced from government and her reforms reversed, it will send a signal to the world that corruption still rules in Ukraine, and not the law.
But if she stays in her job, it could mean that Ukraine’s sickly healthcare sector will finally be on the mend. It’s time for parliament to show its commitment to reform by voting to confirm Suprun as health minister.
Ukraine’s Foe of the Week: Viktor Yanukovych
Viktor Yanukovych thinks Ukraine’s presidential elections at the end of March are going to be rigged.
Speaking at a press conference in Moscow on Feb. 6, Ukraine’s runaway former president said his legitimately elected successor, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, would use all the dirty tricks at his disposal to hang on to power, as he had no chance of winning the election fairly.
Yanukovych, of course, knows all about such dirty tricks, having attempted to steal the 2004 presidential election in Ukraine. He should have been tried and sent to prison for that assault on Ukrainian democracy, but Ukraine’s weak judicial system is incapable of holding high officials to proper account.
Instead, he was allowed to remain at liberty, and employed the sleazy U.S. political consultant Paul Manafort to resurrect his political career. That allowed him to win the presidency, more or less fairly this time round, in 2010, and launch another attack on democracy in Ukraine.
First, he changed the Ukrainian constitution back from its 2004 version to its 1996 version, taking powers from the parliament and handing them to the presidency. Then he jailed his main political opponent, Yulia Tymoshenko, whom he had narrowly beaten in the second round of voting in the 2010 presidential election. Next, he and his “family” of cronies set about looting the Ukrainian economy, seizing control of entire sectors and channeling money flows into a web of offshore companies.
Yanukovych, meanwhile, continued to develop his vulgar palace complex at Mezhyhirya, to the north of Kyiv. This tacky and tasteless example of kitschy excess has since become a museum of corruption. It also seems clear that this was to be Yanukovych’s dictator’s lair, as the Berghoff was to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, Bab al-Azizia was to Muamar Gaddafi, and as the Novo-Ogaryovo Residence is to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin (he actually has about 20 palaces dotted around Russia.) Yanukovych seemed not to expect to leave power anytime soon, and appeared to be grooming his sons for power.
However, real resistance to this misrule by Yanukovych only appeared when he started to reverse Ukraine’s geopolitical course – since the Orange Revolution in 2004, which deprived Yanukovych of his stolen presidency, Ukraine had started to gradually drift away from the Kremlin and approach the West.
The event that sparked the EuroMaidan Revolution was Yanukovych’s reneging on a promise to sign an association agreement with the European Union, and instead take a $3 billion bribe (part of a $15 billion “financial aid package”) from Putin to keep Ukraine in the Kremlin’s orbit. It was to be his downfall.
After three months of protests, and a final, bloody massacre in the center of Kyiv, Yanukovych abandoned his post, breaking an agreement to end the protests. He fled to Russia, and in a final act of treachery invited Putin to intervene militarily in Ukraine.
Now, from his bolthole in Russia, Yanukovych is audaciously lecturing Ukrainians on how they should vote in the upcoming election. He advised Ukrainians not to vote for Poroshenko, but avoided endorsing any of the other candidates, perhaps indicating that the Kremlin sees the least favorable outcome of the elections being a second term for Poroshenko. By not endorsing, Yulia Tymoshenko, one of Poroshenko’s main rivals, the Kremlin protects itself from boosting Poroshenko’s fortunes (an endorsement by the Kremlin would damage any Ukrainian candidate in the eyes of Ukraine’s largely anti-Kremlin electorate.
Yanukovych, Ukraine’s Foe of the Week and a winner of the Order of Lenin for his baleful and mendacious comments ahead of the election, which are meant to stir up trouble in the tense run-up to Ukraine’s presidential election.”
“Try to unify!” Yanukovych advised Ukraine’s next government at the Feb. 6 press conference.
Well, if he really wanted so see some unity in Ukraine, he could surrender himself to the Ukrainian authorities and start serving his 13-year prison sentence for treason. Many people on both sides of the front line in Ukraine, which his treachery helped create, would be happy to see him finally behind bars for his crimes.
