After a long and protracted struggle, Ukraine’s civil society and its Western partners forced the nation’s kleptocratic elite to reveal their mind-boggling wealth in electronic asset declarations in September.
Now, the thievish establishment, exposed for the wealth marauders that they are, is striking back with a vengeance.
After failing to punish a single official for lying in asset declarations or revealing ill-gotten wealth since September, the ruling kleptocracy is taking revenge by cracking down on the anti-corruption non-governmental organizations and independent media that exposed their luxurious lifestyle.
President Petro Poroshenko on March 27 signed into law amendments that require anti-corruption activists and NGOs, their suppliers, investigative journalists and potentially any anti-corruption protesters to file publicly accessible electronic asset declarations similar to those of state officials.
Private NGOs and activists are not civil servants and do not have to publicly account for their wealth – unless they commit a crime – because they are not funded by taxpayers and do not serve them. Poroshenko supporters’ calls for activists’ accountability are a primitive communist instinct – a desire to look into other people’s pockets and peep into their windows.
In Ukraine’s upside-down world, it is not the anti-corruption groups who punish the corrupt but the other way around.
Poroshenko’s crackdown on NGOs and independent media is a declaration of war on civil society and free speech.
The EuroMaidan Revolution, which brought Poroshenko to power, was one gigantic anti-corruption effort similar to those that he seeks to punish under the new law. By signing the amendments, he has taken off his fake mask of a European democrat and exposed his true face: that of an autocratic oligarch and founder of disgraced former President Viktor Yanukovych’s kleptocratic Party of Regions.
Three offshoots of the Party of Regions voted for the dictatorial amendments in unison with Poroshenko’s party, many of whose members are also renegades from Yanukovych’s faction.
In fact, Poroshenko is a bizarre hybrid of all previous Ukrainian presidents: Leonid Kravchuk with a slightly democratic but still Soviet aura, the authoritarian Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Yushchenko, who was brought to power by a pro-Western uprising and miserably failed to fulfill its goals (just like Poroshenko), and Yanukovych, a primitive dictator.
But Poroshenko has also learned a lot from brutal Russian despot and war criminal Vladimir Putin.
Like Putin, Poroshenko’s supporters use false references to Western experience to justify their corrupt and authoritarian initiatives.
For example, when Russia introduced the law branding NGOs as foreign agents in 2012, it cited the United States law on foreign agents. However, in the U.S. this law applies to a very limited group of organizations under control of foreign principals or representing them. It is extremely difficult to prove that someone is a foreign agent, and since 1966 the Department of Justice has not won a single case to brand someone a foreign agent. Also, the U.S. law has not created any obstacles for these “foreign agents,” and even Russian propaganda outlets still freely operate in the U.S.
In Russia, the foreign agent law applies to any NGOs getting foreign funds, and the totalitarian application of this law has led to the destruction of NGOs and civil society in Russia.
In Ukraine, Poroshenko’s proponents claim that such public asset declarations for everyone, including anti-corruption NGOs, are a widespread Western practice. This is a lie.
The public declarations that Ukrainian anti-corruption activists and journalists will have to file are very comprehensive: they will include their cash, money on bank accounts, land plots and other assets, as well as income and expenses.
There is nothing like that in Western countries.
Although some NGOs and lobbying groups do file public declarations in the West, they are way less invasive and just indicate an organization’s income and spending and their top employees’ salaries. Also, they apply to organizations themselves, not specific activists or their wealth, and do not single out anti-corruption groups as if they are an enemy of the state.
In contrast with such Western practices, the Ukrainian amendments will allow the authorities to control every step of an activist or journalist like in a totalitarian state in a very similar way to the Russian “foreign agent” law. Given Ukraine’s highly politicized and corrupt law enforcement, the authorities are already fabricating criminal cases against their opponents and will use such declarations as just another massive tool of persecution.
Like Putin, Poroshenko is using effective propaganda tools to indoctrinate the people in an effort to maintain his power and destroy his enemies.
Such propaganda has managed to turn a large percentage of the Russian population into mindless zombies who support whatever narrative the Kremlin regurgitates on TV. In Ukraine, a similar propaganda machine has emerged and surprisingly proved to be also efficient in discrediting the government’s critics, though Russia is much further along on that road.
Instead of proving that his regime is righteous and non-corrupt (which is a joke no one would believe), Poroshenko is trying to create the false impression that all of his opponents are also very corrupt, and that there is no better alternative to him. Exactly the same propaganda technique has been used by the Kremlin – the slogan “Who if not Putin?” has become the motto of its endless indoctrination.
Like Putin, Poroshenko has created a troll army on the internet to discredit and attack his opponents.
Like Putin, Poroshenko is gradually usurping and monopolizing power. Surely, Poroshenko’s authoritarianism is far away from Putin’s outright dictatorship, but it may get more Putinesque unless society stops it.
Like Putin, Poroshenko is asserting control over the media. Poroshenko’s main political competitors, like ex-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, are effectively banned from major television channels, and there are almost no negative mentions of Poroshenko on major channels’ Sunday news shows, according to a VoxUkraine analysis.
Like Putin, Poroshenko’s loyal law enforcers fabricate political cases against his opponents to influence their behavior and have them on a leash. Putin has gone farther in that direction and jailed many of his political enemies. Poroshenko is more subtle: usually he is trying to intimidate and exhaust his critics with criminal cases without actually sending them to prison.
Like Putin, Poroshenko uses war rhetoric to label all of his opponents as traitors to the country and agents of the enemy. In Russia this works better, with the entire country united behind the bloodthirsty despot. But in Ukraine, it is also sometimes successful, with opposition media shut down or harassed for allegedly being pro-Russian even if they are actually not (like Radio Vesti).
Like Putin’s regime, Poroshenko’s government is becoming more anti-Western despite its pro-European façade. In Russia, the West is demonized and used as a scarecrow. In Ukraine, anti-Westernism is less pronounced but Poroshenko’s supporters often criticize Western officials’ attempts to persuade the ruling kleptocracy to respect the rule of law.
Like Putin, Poroshenko is using fake opposition parties to promote his goals. In Russia, the entire rubber-stamp legislature is under the dictator’s direct control. In Ukraine, the People’s Front is an ally of Poroshenko’s Bloc, and the three offshoots of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions and the Radical Party often toe the Poroshenko line. Only Samopomich, Batkivshchyna and some non-factional lawmakers can be considered truly independent from the president.
But there is a silver lining: Ukraine is not a nation fit for Putinism. Dictators don’t last long in this country.
