Something odd happened in Kyiv on Dec. 5. Mikheil Saakashvili was arrested by law enforcement but later freed by his supporters.
The media scrutiny of these events is unsurprising. Saakashvili is always going to attract headlines – as a former president he is a public figure, and the fact that he initially evaded arrest by taking to the roof of his apartment building made for interesting viewing for many.
As the story unfolded over the next few hours, Saakashvili supporters obstructed the work of law enforcement and then vandalized road surfaces to prevent the extraction of their man from the scene of the arrest. All of this was covered in minute detail across today’s array of social media channels and accounts.
Some of the hot takes made note of Ukraine’s previous proclivity for political arrests. However none (that I have seen) contained as much as a basic analysis of Saakashvili’s recent actions, or statements, which are actually of far more relevance. Indeed, it is Saakashvili’s actions and statements that are fundamental to understanding what lay behind yesterday’s events; by ignoring this, many reporters or commentators have greatly missed the point.
Some steps back…
Saakashvili entered the country illegally. In what place in the world could that happen, in a very public way?
He then participated in the establishment of a permanent (but very small) protest camp outside of the parliament building in mid-November. Alongside Yulia Tymoshenko, Saakashvili has participated in engineering a potentially lethally dangerous situation – Armed Forces veterans, whose legitimate grievances are exploited by these populists, remain camped out in high numbers.
We know from the deadly events of August 2015 that the cynical exploitation of people who have served their country can lead to tragedy; Tymoshenko and Saakashvili continue to ignore this danger.
While he himself has carefully not crossed the line in talking directly about an armed uprising against the (admittedly unpopular) but elected government of Ukraine, the movement of which he is figurehead certainly does have people calling for such actions. And yesterday specifically, his supporters simply dragged him away from legal detention by law enforcement authorities where he was and is wanted for questioning in relation to such serious matters. Whether those accusations are genuine, a court should decide.
But imagine for a second, a similar scene on the streets of Moscow: a person taken into custody is then released from custody by a mob… How would the Russian police react? Would they show the restraint of Ukraine’s law enforcement, or would lives have been lost?
It’s all Poroshenko’s fault, of course
Some more popular wisdom is that President Petro Poroshenko has foolishly given oxygen to a spent rival: Saakashvili’s star is receding in Ukraine and Poroshenko gave him a bunch of free publicity by having ordered the arrest. But what was he supposed to do? Stand back and allow Saakashvili’s allegedly illegal and/or dangerous activities to continue?
On that same topic, if you’re a reporter and your beat covers Ukraine, if you tweeted the whole charade leading up to the illegal border crossing and then tweeted dozens of times on the events as they unfolded yesterday, if you then claim Poroshenko is to blame for giving Saakashvili continued publicity, please sit down with a cup of tea and have a quiet word with yourself.
Then there is the school of thought that Poroshenko is moving to cull political rivals, and that he’s now therefore just as bad as ex-President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled the nation amid the EuroMaidan Revolution on Feb. 22, 2014. The first hurdle that “logic” fails to jump comes from opinion polls. Saakashvili has a popularity rating so low he cannot be considered a serious political rival.
It is true that in his small circle of support, Saakashvili has managed to position himself as the key to defeating the system of oligarchy and corruption not yet fully eradicated in Ukraine, and that effort has been successful in a wider audience to whom any criticism of Saakashvili is then interpreted as tacit support for Poroshenko. That’s another faulty line of thinking that needs to stop, and maybe the way yesterday ended will be enough to fully move us past this ridiculous Saakashvili episode once and for all.
The incriminating tape
In a press conference convened later in the day, the country’s top cop Yuriy Lutsenko played a tape of what he claims is Saakashvili in conversation with Moscow resident and fugitive Ukrainian billionaire Sergey Kurchenko. In the recording, the two men are heard discussing financing for Saakashvili’s activities in Ukraine. (The full version is available here.)
One problem for some is that Lutsenko himself has image and credibility issues, however, what we now have is one of two things: either this is an elaborate hoax the prosecutor general and almost certainly the president as well is involved in, or, the nickname “Moscow Misha” doesn’t only apply to General Mike Flynn.
It is fairly easy to conclude that one of the voices on that tape is indeed that of Misha Saakashvili, whether the second voice is that of Kurchenko is not so certain. Nonetheless, Lutsenko is presenting evidence that funding for these destabilizing actions is being supplied from Moscow; possibly from persons linked to Yanukovych, another fugitive from law for whom Kurchenko was a bagman.
After the release of that tape, some who had aligned themselves with Saakashvili have since said that he has some serious questions to answer. Let’s hope that a larger number of his supporters now question their actions over the last weeks, or months, and realize that if we want to live in a country where the rule of law is respected, ripping people out of police vans is not accepted practice, regardless of who does it and however right we may believe their cause to be.
Exploiting story to plant a narrative
Never one to miss a chance to sling mud at Ukraine, Russian journalist Leonid Bershidsky shared his analysis on the Saakashvili situation and at the same time on Ukraine in general via his platform at Bloomberg. It was a decent and fair look at the myriad of problems Ukraine still faces, mixed in with a not-well-veiled but still swallowed-by-many megadose of disinformation. It should not have been hard to miss: it was the headline and opening two paragraphs. Many people who should know better shared this article.
What did Bershidsky do? He cast doubt over the integrity of democratic processes in Ukraine by suggesting that this has essentially been subverted by the United States and the European Union, with the headline reading, “The West Backed the Wrong Man in Ukraine”. As the article continues, the writer clearly implies that the word “backed” is interchangeable with either “picked” or installed.”
In Bershidsky’s analysis, because Poroshenko “looked worldlier than his predecessor” and “spoke passable English”, and because he and former Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk “knew what the U.S. State Department and Vice President Joe Biden … wanted to hear”, “as Ukraine emerged from the revolutionary chaos … the U.S., and with it the EU, backed Poroshenko and Yatseniuk as Ukraine’s next leaders.” Then, Bershidsky follows, “They won elections.”
That this narrative of a Ukraine subservient to western powers and incapable of making his own choices is in line with what the Kremlin would have us believe is not a simple coincidence. It also reflects the influences Bershedsky has been exposed to and chosen to accept. That others do not see this when reading and sharing that article is, well, surprising and saddening.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk became Ukraine’s prime minister on Feb. 27, 2014. He took office five days after Yanukovych fled to Moscow taking with him the most corrupt of his cohorts, including the previous Prime Minister Mykolo Azarov. Yatseniuk became prime minister in the correct legal manner, via a vote in Ukraine’s legitimately elected parliament. That parliament was elected in 2012, and of the full complement of 450 members 371 people’s deputies cast their votes in favor of Yatseniuk. Ninety-four of those 371 votes approving him to the PM’s post came from the Party of Regions. The process had nothing whatsoever to do with the US or the EU; they had no say in the matter and zero influence on the choice of the elected members of parliament.
Poroshenko became president for one prime reason: he was the least bad choice. On a sweltering day on May 25, 2014, Ukrainians across the country saw him as their best hope and cast their ballots. The margin of his victory was such that no second round of votes was needed – Poroshenko received in excess of 50 percent of the votes in the first round of the election, and it had nothing to do, again, with the EU or the US or their choices, opinions, or preferences.
We can only hope that in the next presidential election in Ukraine, the people of Ukraine might actually have the novelty of being afforded a chance to vote for a good candidate instead of needing to select the best out of a bad few, but that’s an article for another time.
