Finally, the spotlight is on Ukraine. Ukraine the geostrategic entity, that is.
The Ukrainians themselves, however, nobody seems to care much about.
Recently, editorials in leading Western newspapers have been warning against a Red Revanche in Ukraine: a victory for the left in the presidential elections this autumn, resulting in Ukraine turning away from the West toward Russia. Some argue this would have vital consequences for the strategic balance in Europe.
That is, however, only half the story.
The other – more important – half has been completely overlooked: Namely that when it comes to the less-lofty level where real Ukrainians live, President Leonid Kuchma has long been turning Ukraine away from the West.
Eight years after independence, Ukraine is at odds with practically every single organization promoting Western norms and values, such as democratic accountability, human rights, rule of law, free media and free trade.
The root of the problem is the gross discrepancy between the words and deeds of the Kuchma administration.
This summer has illustrated the pattern.
First, at the beginning of July, the Ukrainian president lambasted the European Union for failing to support economic reform in Ukraine.
The EU’s response was delivered this week, in Kyiv, by Finnish Premier Paavo Lipponen, who expressed his ‘admiration for the leadership of President Kuchma and the concrete achievements of Ukraine in the past five years.’
At the same time as their political boss was playing geopolitik, EU officials and Western experts working in Kyiv explained to me that Ukrainian violations of the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement today are, in fact, on the increase: unfair trade and investment barriers, discrimination against foreign companies, arbitrariness in the courts, insufficient legal framework for establishing and doing business here, poor implementation and overload of laws. The list goes on.
Last summer, the EU brutally rebuffed Ukraine’s request to be upgraded to associate membership in the EU. One year later, associate membership is an even more distant goal. One example of Ukraine-EU ‘cooperation’ is enough to prove that: As one of the conditions for a recent ‘balance-of-payment-support loan,’ Ukraine eliminated the discriminatory registration fee for pharmaceutical products (up to one hundred times higher for foreign companies).
The EU finalized the first tranche of the loan – only to realize that the next day the Ukrainian government had reinstated the fee!
‘No, unfortunately, I am not joking,’ the EU official told me exasperatedly.
One month ago, the Council of Europe said it would exclude Ukraine in six months if it failed to implement reforms it promised upon becoming a member in 1995 – reforms on human rights, freedom of the press, rule of law and decentralization.
Council of Europe rapporteurs have accused Ukraine of ‘not taking the Council of Europe seriously,’ and the comments from Borys Oliynyk, chairman of the Ukrainian CE delegation and Adam Martynyuk, deputy chairman of the Rada, that Ukraine would not lose much from exclusion, show as much.
Friedmut Duve, the media ombudsman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) is decidedly unimpressed after his visit: ‘Ukraine cannot expect Western help if it does not allow free debate. Harassing reformers is a barrier against getting Western help.’
Duve is especially worried about the ‘very, very difficult’ situation in the provinces; the use of ‘structural censorship,’ whereby he who controls the premises controls the press (e.g. Kievskie Vedomosti); and leftover Soviet laws that enable the gagging of critical papers by throwing massive libel claims at them.
‘Some leading politicians in Ukraine think that if they just knock on the money door of Brussels, they will not have to listen to the OSCE going on about free media. They are wrong.’
So far, Ukraine has avoided open rifts with NATO. However, the war in Kosovo strained NATO-Ukrainian relations. In public, Kuchma limited himself to criticizing the use of force, unauthorized by the United Nations.
In private, a very senior presidential adviser recently revealed to me the actual extent of the Kuchma administration’s disagreements with NATO: ‘NATO’s war in Kosovo was a mistake – both parties were responsible. NATO only facilitated the humanitarian catastrophe. Many Ukrainians believe the Russian propaganda, which was not that untrue.’
NATO’s new strategic concept (i.e. the readiness of the alliance to defend its interests, not, as earlier, just its territory) and U.S. State Department spokesman, James Rubin’s condescending remarks about Ukrainian peace efforts ‘were taken very, very negatively here. But they are unfortunately characteristic of the attitude to Ukraine and the kind of partnership the Americans really are offering us,’ the Kuchma presidential adviser said.
During the war, NATO, on its side, criticized Ukraine for breaking the oil embargo against Serbia and thereby keeping Slobodan Milosevic’s military machine going longer than expected.
Add to that the constant wrangling with international financial institutions about the stop-go privatization program and Ukraine’s insistence that the West pay for completion of the nuclear-power reactors in Khmelnytsky and Rivne, and it is clear that Ukraine under Kuchma has already left ‘the Western way.’
Under strict conditions of anonymity, one EU official in Kyiv explained to me how he felt Ukrainian government officials looked at him after years of working with them: ‘They think you are stupid, smile at you but don’t pay attention; you cannot trust them. All they ask is: What is in it for me?’
Why is the West downplaying this outrageous Ukrainian behavior? Because even though the world has changed, the West’s thinking is still stuck somewhere in the Cold War.
Ironically, with ‘humanitarian intervention’ being the new buzz word, our relations with Ukraine are focused on military strategy and not human beings.
Two questions arise: does the West – by prioritizing the military-strategic level and ignoring the real lives of Ukrainians – sustain a corrupt regime?
And how do you help a country if its leaders do not want to be helped?
As one EU expert working in Kyiv put it, perhaps it would be best if the EU closed all its programs except those dedicated to education.’
Michael Andersen is a visiting lecturer at the Ivan Franko University in Lviv and a former NATO research fellow.
