Editor’s Note: The following is a transcript of a UkeTube video blog by political analyst and author Taras Kuzio, posted to YouTube on Oct. 17, 2016. In it, Kuzio is critical of President Petro Poroshenko and predicts that Yulia Tymoshenko will likely win the presidency in the March 31, 2019 election. Since then, Kuzio has been writing commentary favorable of Poroshenko, including this one, and critical of Tymoshenko, such as this one. He did not respond to a question about whether he stands by his views of Poroshenko in 2016. It’s not rare that authors who call themselves political analysts and commentators on Ukrainian affairs demonstrate an astonishing flexibility and fickleness of political views. We are publishing this op-ed now because we think it’s our duty to point out this trend to our readers as a warning ahead of the March 31 presidential election. We feel especially obliged to do so since we are among news media outlets that published Kuzio’s op-eds in the past.
Ukrainian history often repeats itself and that is certainly true today.
In many ways, there is a kind of déjà vu about Petro Poroshenko presidency which is similar to that under Viktor Yushchenko.
We’re about halfway through the Poroshenko presidency. This is kind of like about 2007 or so with Viktor Yushchenko.
They are both similar, it’s not surprising. They both come from the same kind of background, they’re both, you can call them the pragmatic national democrats. They were always very willing to cooperate with oligarchs, to cooperate with the authorities, to the president and they were quite hostile, both Yushchenko and Poroshenko, hostile to the so-called radicals such as Yulia Tymoshenko.
Of course, we also should also remember that Poroshenko was one of the founding members, one of the founding five, of the Party of Regions in 2000s, everybody forgets that.
He has flipped-flopped between east Ukrainian oligarchy parties and pro-Western national democrats for the entire last 16 years.
So, in the middle of Poroshenko presidency, Ukrainian polls show him to be in third place. So, similar to Yushchenko back in 2007, he’s dropping in popularity, and the most popular politician now – again surprise-surprise! – is Yulia Tymoshenko.
The unpleasant news is that second place in Yuriy Boyko, one of the leading members of the gas lobby, linked to Dmytro Firtash.
‘Not a single soldier’ favors Poroshenko
Why is Poroshenko’s popularity declining?
Well, for a number of reasons. Just to give you one example: I’ve been to the front line twice this year, in March and May. I slept and hung out there for about a week. On both occasions, with soldiers. I went down there with civil society volunteers. These volunteers by the way tend to be women and they deliver a whole variety of things to the soldiers like food, medicine, water, sleeping bags, uniforms, boots, night and heat vision.
I didn’t meet a single soldier, and I mean a single soldier, who had a favorable positive thing to say about his commander-in-chief. That’s pretty stunning that not a single soldier had anything positive to say about Poroshenko.
In fact, I heard the exact opposite.
I heard a lot of negative things about Poroshenko and a lot of threats. Actually, that he for example signed a law that supported a new status or so-called special status for the separatist-Donbas regions and that the soldiers would come to Kyiv and deal with him literally.
I heard those kind of threats, so no wonder that Poroshenko is saying that he will not take that step because he’s obviously very concerned that this could happen.
An example of that anger from veterans and soldiers was the riots outside the Ukrainian parliament in August of last year where one or two grenades were thrown and three national guardsmen were killed.
There are important reasons. You can’t exclude the fact that today in Ukraine you have a new body of public opinion which is about 15 to 20 percent of voters and they are veterans, their families, their friends and these have a radical view of the war in the country and a radical view of developments.
Many of these people, many of the soldiers on the front line came from the EuroMaidan so for them there are two wars in Ukraine: one war with Russia but another war in Kiyv to finish implementing the demands and the objectives of the EuroMaidan revolution of dignity.
Reasons for unpopularity
Why is Poroshenko’s popularity declining?
Well… for soldiers, it’s obvious they don’t like the fact that they’re in a situation which is neither war or peace.
It’s a horrible situation for soldiers where there’s a pseudo-Minsk accord peace agreement on the table and yet many of the soldiers are being killed, something in the region of 500 soldiers have been killed since the Minsk Agreements were signed in February 2015.
So that’s one aspect but more importantly, we should get to grips with the term “reforms” because many kinds of commentators, journalists and experts use this term “reforms” without explaining what it means.
What does it mean?
Well, you have to divide reforms into popular and unpopular.
What Ukrainians have experienced on the whole are unpopular reforms and these are things like economic, social, energy and financial reforms, which should have been required and which Ukraine should have done them long ago.
Ukraine’s every government has been postponing them. It’s the demands of the International Monetary Fund and the European Union in return for financial assistance.
But these reforms, such as, for example, increasing utility prices for households so that the subsidy that the government pays reduces, eventually goes down.
During the Yanukovych presidency people were paying something around 20 percent of the true cost of utility prices.
In view of the fact Russia was charging in Ukraine the highest gas price in Europe, so those reforms were required there but they’re very unpopular.
‘Not a single person has gone to jail’
That’s why the (Arseniy) Yatsenyuk government became unpopular. That’s why his party Narodniy Front is extremely unpopular.
But the reforms which are popular have not been done.
By those reforms, I mean in the areas of fighting high-level corruption, rule of law and putting people in jail.
That hasn’t been done.
The reality is that nobody, not a single person has gone to jail from the Yanukovych presidency, who during his presidency who bankrupted Ukraine, when he (Yanukovych) created a mafia state, murdered over a hundred protesters and committed treason by calling in Russia to annex the Crimea.
These are serious charges. Why has nobody been prosecuted and more importantly – why has not any of the money they’ve stolen, which has been sent to offshores, to tax havens being returned and court cases pending.
On the contrary, Ukraine seems to lose these cases abroad and these criminal charges seem to sort of go out of the window so it’s a shame actually.
‘Disgusting’ that Poroshenko has not pursued justice
It’s actually disgusting that Poroshenko has not pursued justice for all of these crimes.
No wonder his popularity is declining because you have unpopular reforms and the stuff that could make him popular (putting heads on spikes, literally, putting people in jail), he’s is not doing it.
You’re (Ukraine) on your fourth prosecutor now since the EuroMaidan.
One was one was put in place by the Svoboda Party just after the EuroMaidan and three had been appointed by President Poroshenko.
All four have been corrupt and incompetent.
The current one doesn’t even have any legal background: Yuriy Lutsenko. The law had to be changed so he could be appointed because he has never had any legal training.
Poroshenko uses prosecutor to ‘protect the crimes of the rule elites’
So Poroshenko’s concern has not been the pursuit of justice, it’s really been to continue in the old Soviet and Kuchma-eyed tradition of using the prosecutor’s office to really defend and protect the crimes of the ruling elites and that’s what’s continued to happen.
It’s extremely sad and this will of course hurt him and is hurting him in the opinion polls.
If he’s now in third place in the opinion polls, by the time the elections happen in 2019, it’ll be the same as the elections in 2010, when Yushchenko was in 5th place with 5 percent of the vote. If you don’t do what voters and protestors wanted, fight corruption, put people in jail, bring justice, then you inevitably are going to suffer your popularity.
Repeating Yushchenko’s mistakes
Poroshenko is in that sense repeating the same mistakes of Yushchenko and people who will capitalize on that will be other politicians, such as you Yulia Tymoshenko who is very likely to be the main challenger against Poroshenko in 2019.
In the same way, she was against Yanukovych in 2010.
Tymoshenko ‘very likely’ to win presidency
She’s actually very likely to may be the next president of Ukraine because there isn’t really at the moment anybody else coming up to challenge Petro Poroshenko.
And I don’t see how things can change very radically in the next couple of years.
Poroshenko will therefore go down in history in a similar way to Victor Yushchenko – somebody who betrayed the revolution, betrayed the hopes of the people.
Now there is one difference between both eras Yushchenko and Poroshenko and that is that until 2008 the country was in an economic boom and there wasn’t a war with Russia.
Today Ukraine is in an economic depression so unpopular reforms are taking place at the same time as economic decline, economic depression, unemployment.
But more importantly – at a time when Ukraine is a war with Russia; so any political destabilization in Ukraine will work to Russia’s advantage and Russia is waiting for that.
Poroshenko is to blame for any ‘instability’
You know that Russia doesn’t have to do anything to stoke up this instability, the fault lies at the door of the president of Ukraine who’s not fulfilling the demands of the EuroMaidan.
It’s actually completely irrational: why is it so difficult to put one or two … even scapegoats in jail? Why is it so difficult to do that?
Well, obviously, it is the case of Poroshenko. Maybe he’s afraid that once he opens a Pandora’s box that all sorts of compromising material will come out about himself. Because of course he has skeletons in his closet, in the way he makes his business.
Now you might think: well why is that the case? Because you know, no one’s ever accused Poroshenko really of corporate raiding, nobody, unlike Kolomoisky, ever accused him of having blood on his hands, unlike Rinat Akhmetov. So, he did build a business from scratch. But he’s obviously afraid that there is something there, particularly during the Kuchma era, from 1994 to 2004 that he doesn’t want to come out and there aren’t really any other reasons why.
Poroshenko will be seen as a ‘failed leader’
He’s continued to protect other people as they are protecting him as opposed to pursuing justice. What could make him a popular leader is putting heads on spikes, putting people in jail and he’s not doing that. Because of that he’s going to be seen as a failed leader.
Veterans, soldiers and nationalist groups already find him to be a weak leader.
They don’t see him as a strong commander-in-chief so all of these factors together are going to impact on his popularity.
I predict therefore that he’s going to move from third place currently, in the middle of his presidency, to fifth place, to even lower down, just in the same manner as Yushchenko between 2007 and 2010.
What will come after that is a big question mark because in 2010 we had the Yanukovych pro-Russian counterrevolution.
What will come in the case of Ukraine after Poroshenko?
We hope it’s not going to be violent instability, we hope it’s not going to be another revolution, because it’s the last thing Ukraine needs.
Putin would love to try and get involved and stir up so the best hope would be that Poroshenko peacefully loses the elections and somebody takes charge of Ukraine, somebody’s elected as president.
Possibly, at the moment what the opinion polls showing is it is going to be Yulia Tymoshenko.
And although some people have reservations about her, remember she’s been in Ukrainian politics since the late 1990s and her position hasn’t really changed.
She hasn’t really shifted, she’s been quite consistent in her political views.
So maybe it is time for a woman to take the helm of Ukraine after the failure of two men – Yushchenko and Poroshenko. Thank you.
