Kuzio’s remarks can be watched here
“Crime continues to pay in Ukraine. Still nobody goes to jail. We still don’t have a single person who has gone to trial and who has been criminally convicted for the murder of unarmed protesters on the Maidan and for the bankruptcy of Ukraine, where literally billions of dollars were stolen during the Viktor Yanukovych presidency.”
President Petro Poroshenko as an oligarch who made his wealth in the 1990s, is “afraid like everybody in that group of publicity surrounding his past in that 1990s…if he were honest, people would repay him with their support. The fear is that if people are put on trial from the oligarchic or economic elites, they’d begin to blab their mouths off. This happened when Dmytro Firtash was on trial in Vienna. He began to brag about how he put Petro Poroshenko into power, and how he convinced Vitali Klitschko to back down and stand for Kyiv’s mayor and bragged he had been financing Klitschko since 2012. This was a union of Firtash, Poroshenko and Klitschko to keep (Yulia) Tymoshenko out of power. Firtash also funded Arseniy Yatsenyuk as the non-Tymoshenko candidate. The fear is that if Firtash is on trial in Ukraine they would also blab their mouths off…
“This is another reason why nothing really is done…(and there are) more likely to be deals done at the top rather than an attempt to get rid of that very closed, inward-looking conglomerate of old elites.”
A key problem is “the general prosecutor’s office, which is incompetent, corrupt and overmanned. Some 20,000 prosecutors live off bribes and state salaries and state financing and they h ave zero productivity to their name. Compare this to Britain, which has 8,000 prosecutors divided over three regional branches. This problem of overmanned, incompetent and corrupt institutions (is the) same with the Security Service and Ministry of Interior.
“So we still have in place a Soviet prosecution office. They still wear uniforms, which is not like Western prosecutors. They have always been an ally of the president. They are more likely to defend and protect corrupt elites rather than actually prosecute them. I don’t know of a single case where the prosecutor has prosecuted any elites in Ukraine. They’ve always managed to slip way.”
Serih Klyuyev, “one of Yanukovych’s money launderers” who registered the billion-dollar Mezhyhyra estate in his name, “had his immunity stripped by the Ukrainian parliament just a few weeks ago. Surprise, surprise! He’s allowed to slip away from Ukraine. The SBU and prosecutors blame each other. This isn’t just incompetence, this is more part of a deal done at the top for people like him not to go on trial.
“There’s an aspect of deception. A week or so ago, Petro Poroshenko published an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal. He claimed 2,700 officials had been convicted of corruption. The Kyiv Post requested a list, but they couldn’t find it. I ask for the list of the 2,700 officials…they are investigating which of those officials their names can be released publicly. I never knew that convictions of people on corruption charges in Ukraine could be deemed a state secret…I believe it is very unlikely that I am going to receive it.
“Why did Poroshenko include this disinformation in the article in the American media? Is it because he still thinks he can hoodwink Western governments and Ukrainians. I think there is a sense that there is yes, he can get away with this hoodwinking.
“They also are absolutely convinced that Ukraine is far more important to the West geopolitically than it really is. They are absolutely convinced that Ukraine is the geopolitical priority of the US, Canada and Europe. I wish it was. That’s not the case. (The European Union) has tried to appease Russia on many occasions and only really introduced sanctions after the shooting down of the Malaysian airliner in July of last year, not after the annexation of Crimea.
“We have inter-elite deals, disinformation and very incompetent institutions and we have a political leadership that doesn’t seem to understand that it needs to send signals very early on so the political-economic elites know it’s not business as usual. It’s not going to be very difficult nearly two year after the EuroMaidan Revolution for Petro Poroshenko to do that. You need to do that as soon as you come into power. You need to send a signal from the top down that things have changed…he’s not done that…
“If the issue of oligarchs in Ukraine are not dealt with, if there is not a complete de-monopolization, then Ukraine will continue to sit at the crossroads, it will not move forward in its European integration and it will continue to be a very weak state, vulnerable to Russian pressure. What do I mean by that? The oligarchs in Ukraine are not only corrupt. They have political and economy monopoly on power…Political monopoly means that they control the political system…They also control Ukraine’s economy…The small middle class is always going to be pro-Western, pro-European and in favor of the rule of law and a rules-based political system. They have been squeezed out. They have been prevented from naturally growing.”
Without de-monopolization of political and economic power, Ukraine will be only a “quasi-democracy. Ukraine will continue to be a very weak state. The budget will continue to be extremely small and week and Ukraine will limp on from crisis to crisis.
“Poroshenko has some time, but the window of opportunity is slipping fast. He has until the end of the year to prove himself or he will be in a similar position to Viktor Yushchenko in 2007…Ukrainians won’t take it. They demand accountability and they demand justice from those who rule them. It’s really a shame they are not listened to by the elites who govern them.”
