We are Ukraine! Army, language, faith!
So reads the ubiquitous billboards on the streets of Kyiv promoting the re-election of President Petro Poroshenko in March.
In the president’s world, our army has become stronger, our culture and language are on the rise and now we can even get an Orthodox Church independent from Moscow.
All thanks to Poroshenko.
And his slogans seem to be working as the president climbs higher in recent polls.
He came in third, after Batkivshchyna Party leader Yulia Tymoshenko (27 percent) and a comedian Volodymyr Zelenskiy (11 percent), who has not declared his candidacy yet, in the latest presidential poll conducted by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, the Razumkov Center, and the Rating Group sociological organization published on Nov.2.
Although the poll reads that Poroshenko has the highest anti-ranking among all three top candidates, 51 percent, he still has the chance to win.
Only Poroshenko and Tymoshenko have chances to enter the second round of the presidential elections since both have supporters in all regions of Ukraine, read the earlier Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation poll published on Sept. 4.
And in another presidential poll, Social Group Ranking published on Sept. 25 reads that, as of September, 18 percent of Ukrainians believed that Tymoshenko will win the elections, while 14 percent thought Poroshenko should stay president.
Unlike his rivals, constructing their election campaigns on unrealistic promises, Poroshenko is placing a bet on what he has already done for Ukraine as president: A strong and effective crisis manager who is leading the country to a prosperous future despite war and economic crisis.
Moreover, different popular bloggers, political experts and even media have already expressed their support for Poroshenko “as the most effective president that Ukraine has ever had,” the only one who can save us from Russia and who has brought a stronger Ukraine closer to NATO and the European Union.
I would vote for such president.
However, Poroshenko, who embraced reforms only partially and only after pressure from the West and activists, does not have a record as good as his campaign slogans.
But Volodymyr Fesenko said that he’s one of the best of Ukraine’s five presidents. Here’s a comparison:
Ukraine’s first President Leonid Kravchuk speaks in the Ukrainian parliament on Jan. 29, 2014. (AFP)
Leonid Kravchuk
Term: 1991-1994
Leonid Kravchuk was the first president of Ukraine after it became independent from the Soviet Union.
Nuclear disarmament
In 1993, the Ukrainian parliament ratified the Lisbon Protocol on nuclear disarmament, signed by the United States and former Soviet republics for disarmament. In return, Ukraine got security guarantees from the West and Russia.
Kravchuk decided to surrender Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal to Russia in 1994. He has said that he was forced to make that decision. He justified it by saying that Ukraine had no capacity to store its 165 nuclear warheads, made in Russia’s Azramas-16 town, after their expiration date in 1997.
Black Sea Fleet
Kravchuk signed the Massandra Agreements in September 1993 in Crimea on sharing the USSR sea fleet based in Crimea with the Russian Federation.
But in fact, Russia proclaimed itself as successor of the USSR’s Black Sea Fleet. Admiral Ihor Kasatonov has refused to take an oath to Ukraine until both countries make a deal on how to share the fleet.
First Russia and Ukraine agreed to share it 50/50. But in fact, Kravchuk let Russia base its fleet in Crimea. The negotiations continued until 1997, when his successor Kuchma agreed on Russian conditions that practically divided the fleet 15/75, giving the bigger part to Russia.
It was decided that the fleets of both countries would be based in Crimea on separate naval bases temporarily.
But that “temporarily” was extended to today as Russia continues to occupy the Crimean peninsula after its invasion in 2014 used its fleet bases for the occupation of Crimea.
Economic crisis
Kravchuk didn’t serve an entire term. Post-Soviet Ukraine was in deep economic crisis. In 1993-1994, Ukraine’s production decreased by 21 percent. Inflation in December 1993 was more than 90 percent. Ukrainians were surviving without salaries.
Donbas miners went on a long-lasting strike, demanding the dismissal of the president and the parliament. Parliament decided to conduct an early election in June 1994.
Former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma addresses the media after talks on resolving the Ukraine conflict in Minsk in May 2015. (AFP)
Leonid Kuchma
Term: 1994-2005
When Kuchma, a former prime minister of Ukraine, came to power in 1994, he had a lot of problems on his agenda: sky-high inflation, the rise of criminal clans inside the country, Russia’s fueling of separatism in Crimea.
Foreign agricultural investors such as AgroGeneration are interested in the end of the land moratorium in Ukraine which will allow land owners to sell their land as well as rent out at higher prices. This will create a more developed sector and benefit Ukraine’s economy altogether as more transparent businesses will compete against each other, experts say.
Oligarchs’ creation
Oligarchs and their influence on Ukrainian politics have become one of the strongest obstacles for Ukraine in fighting corruption and creating a competitive business environment to lure foreign investors.
Big business took over the collapsed Soviet plants and factories after the start of Kuchma’s 1995 Kuchma’s privatization reform.
They started restoring the whole industries, getting the profit and different benefits from the state. In return, they supported Kuchma in his conflicts with the Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko and the parliament, headed by Socialist party leader Oleksandr Moroz.
One of the oligarchs, Victor Pinchuk, even married Kuchma’s daughter Olena.
However, soon the oligarchs became too powerful and even Kuchma could not control them. Since then every presidential candidate in Ukraine has courted the oligarchs.
Some reforms
In 1996-1999, Kuchma’s government conducted agrarian reform that gave hundreds of former Soviet collective farm workers the land plots they worked on.
“That created the possibility to give the land for rent. As a result, numerous private farms appeared all over Ukraine. They’ve become a base for an agricultural boom we have now,” Fesenko said.
However, the farmers were not allowed to sell their land or pass it on to their children. As in 2002, parliament adopted a “temporary” moratorium on agricultural land sales “to avoid chaos on the agricultural land market.”
It continues today, keeping rent prices on Ukraine’s land low – about $300 per hectare per year. By comparison, the price in nearby Poland starts at $5,000 per hectare.
This keeps away new investors, who want to buy Ukraine’s fertile soils. At the same time, the moratorium allows Ukraine’s agricultural barons, like Poroshenko ally Yuriy Kosyuk, to pay peanuts for land that makes them multi-millionaires. In Kosyuk’s case, his net worth is more than $1 billion.
National currency
After five years of hyper-inflation, Ukrainians owned millions of worthless coupons. As of 1995, one U.S dollar was worth 140,000 coupons. In 1996, Kuchma signed an order that led to the birth of hryvnia, Ukrainian national currency, initially pegged at 1.8 to the dollar compared to nearly 28 to the dollar today.
Inflation slowed and Ukraine’s economy started growing by 2-3 percent yearly until the world financial crisis struck in 2008.
Ukrainian boys fish in the shadow of one of the Black Sea fleet’s vessel, moored in the bay, on September 19, 1994, in the port of Sevastopol. (AFP)
Dealing with Russia
In foreign policy, Kuchma was the only president who managed to keep good relations with the West and Russia, Fesenko said. Internally, Kuchma also tried to balance internally between pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian forces.
But by the time Kuchma left office in early 2005, Ukraine had missed its chance to join the European Union and NATO, something that the Baltics and former Soviet bloc nations managed to do.
“Kuchma entrusted the economy to the red directors (former Ukrainian communists) and gave the humanitarian sphere to nationalists,” Fesenko said.
In 1994 Ukraine, the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus signed the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurance, defining Ukraine’s new status as a nuclear-free state. This document drew Ukraine closer to the West and improved its international image.
It also forced Russia to guarantee it wouldn’t attack Ukraine, which was important, Fesenko said, because in 1994 Russia was actively trying to squeeze Ukraine out of Crimea.
In 1994-1995 Yuriy Meshkov, the pro-Russian president of Crimea, was openly challenging its status as a territory of Ukraine and had even imposed Moscow standard time on the peninsula.
Following Russia’s occupation of Crimea and start of the war in the Donbas in 2014, the U.S., U.K., Canada and many other countries accused Russia of violating its Budapest obligations. Russia said after the EuroMaidan Revolution, which drove pro-Kremlin President Viktor Yanukovych from power, that a new state came into being in Ukraine and the Kremlin offered no guarantees.
But in fact, Russia never respected Ukraine’s territorial integrity and the assurances in the Budapest Memorandum have proven to be worthless.
In 2003, Russia made another attempt to seize Ukraine’s Tuzla Island, located in the middle of Kerch Strait, a water channel that divides Russia and Crimea. Russians have constructed a seawall to Tuzla without Ukraine’s permission.
Tuzla, along with Crimea was included in Ukraine in 1954. So after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Russia and Ukraine were dividing the inheritance of the USSR, it went to Ukraine.
The Tuzla conflict was frozen after Kuchma and Russian President Vladimir Putin signed an agreement between Ukraine and Russia on cooperation and the shared use of the Azov Sea and Kerch Strait.
The agreement allowed Russia to start the blockade of cargo vessels going to and from Ukrainian ports the Azov Sea in the summer of 2018.
Orthodox bishops serve a funeral service for Georgiy Gongadze, Ukrainska Pravda news website co-founder on in March 2016 in Kyiv, 16 years after he was brutally murdered. (Volodymyr Petrov)
Tapes scandal
Some experts describe Kuchma as pro-European in his first term and authoritarian in his second term.
The diffusion of power — among the president, prime minister and parliament — caused lots of conflicts. Kuchma and parliament speaker Oleksandr Moroz, a Socialist Party leader, in particular, had many clashes.
Meanwhile, Vyacheslav Chornovil, a Soviet dissident and Kuchma’s main competitor during the October 1999 presidential election, was killed in a car crash in March 1999. The accident, like many in Ukraine, was never properly investigated.
But Kuchma’s rule was shaken on Nov. 28, 2000. That day Moroz released tapes of hundreds of hours of secret conversations in Kuchma’s cabinet that linked him to the disappearance and murder of Georgiy Gongadze, the opposition journalist and founder of Ukrainska Pravda news website.
The audio featured a person with a voice resembling Kuchma’s who ordered a person with a voice that sounded like then-Interior Minister Yuriy Kravchenko to “deal with the journalist.”. Gongadze disappeared in September 2000, his beheaded body was found in November the same year in a forest in Kyiv Oblast.
Kuchma denied having any ties to Gongadze’s murder.
In 2005, Kravchenko was reported to have killed himself with two gunshots to the head, in another death that caused great suspicion because it came on the day he was scheduled to give testimony in the investigation.
Interior Ministry General Olexiy Pukach was the highest-ranking police official convicted in the murder, along with three other police officers who participated in the actual kidnapping and murder. Pukach was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison in 2013.
However, despite Kuchma being named repeatedly over the years as the top suspect in ordering the murder, he has never been prosecuted. So a cloud of suspicion hangs over him.
Yulia Tymoshenko, a political partner of Ukrainian opposition leader and presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko reads the ultimatum to the outgoing President Leonid Kuchma during a protest rally in Kyiv in November 2004. (AFP)
Ukraine Without Kuchma
The tapes scandal eroded any remaining trust in Kuchma and started a protest movement Ukraine Without Kuchma in the winter of 2000-2001. More than 7,000 Ukrainians had demanded the resignation of Kuchma and law enforcement chiefs.
Unrest continued in 2003-2004, forcing Kuchma to abandon his attempts to manipulate the 1996 Constitution to run for another term.
Two main contenders emerged as Kuchma’s successor — Viktor Yushchenko, former head of the National Bank of Ukraine and Viktor Yanukovych, prime minister of Ukraine.
But voting irregularities, including a last-minute surge for Yanukovych that did not correspond with public opinion polls, triggered the popular uprising that became known as the Orange Revolution.
The Supreme Court, deciding the voter fraud was so extensive that it could not tell who won, ordered a re-run of the election. Yushchenko won that vote on Dec. 26, 2004. Yanukovych, with a Soviet-era criminal record for robbery and assault, went into the opposition and plotted his comeback.
A collage shows how Ukraine’s third President Viktor Yushchenko looked before(L) and after(R) he was poisoned by dioxin in September 2004 (AFP)
Viktor Yushchenko
Term: 2005-2010
A month before the presidential election, Yushchenko was poisoned by dioxin and was nearly killed. A dangerous toxin damaged his health tremendously and forced him to stop campaign in order to be treated in an Austrian hospital.
Yulia Tymoshenko, Yushchenko’s sidekick during the Orange Revolution, came to power as prime minister. Poroshenko, also a supporter of the Orange Revolution, got a top security post.
Oleksandr Zinchenko, a presidential administration head accused Poroshenko, Oleksandr Tretiakov, president’s aide and Mykola Martynenko, the head of the pro-presidential faction in parliament Our Ukraine, of corruption during a press conference in Kyiv in September 2005.
Poroshenko took over the courts and law enforcement system, as well as media, using power for his own business interests, Zinchenko alleged. But Poroshenko denied everything.
Yushchenko fired both.
Tymoshenko told journalists that Yushchenko fired her in 2005 because she was more popular and the president wanted to deflect public attention from the corruption scandal engulfing Poroshenko.
Bringing back Yanukovych
After the government was fired, Yushchenko signed a memo with his former rival, Yanukovych, who was a leader of the powerful opposition Party of Regions in 2005.
The memo delegated more powers, including key appointments in parliamentary committees to the opposition and guaranteed no political persecution for Yanukovych and his allies.
Also, the memo featured more freedom to the regional elites, stripping the central authorities of control over the local election.
That helped the Party of Regions to win the parliamentary election in 2006. The same year Yushchenko appointed Yanukovych the prime minister of Ukraine. That was the start of Party of Regions’ move into power.
No visa for the West
In summer 2005, Yushchenko canceled the visa regime with the United States, Canada, EU countries, making Ukraine more open for the West. Many European countries, by 2017, returned the favor by cancelling short-term visas for Ukrainians.
The flow of foreign visitors increased. According to the State Statistic Service of Ukraine, more than 12.5 million foreigners visited Ukraine in 2003. In 2006, that number rose to 18 million.
Recognition of UPA
For more than 50 years, the Ukrainian Insurgent Army was considered as Nazi collaborators and traitors of Ukrainian Soviet Republic – a Soviet-created myth that demonized Ukrainian insurgents seeking national independence. Yushchenko changed that, recognizing the UPA warriors as fighters for Ukrainian independence in the 20th century, in January 2010.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych winks at Russia’s President Vladimir Putin (R) during a signing ceremony at the Kremlin in Moscow, on Dec. 17, 2013. (AFP)
Viktor Yanukovych
Term: 2010 – 2014
Yanukovych got elected in 2010, beating Tymoshenko by 3.5 percentage points. But he never got to serve his full five-year term. He was driven from power by the 100-day EuroMaidan Revolution that sent him into exile in Russia on Feb. 22, 2014.
During his presidency, Yanukovych canceled the recognition of UPA, elevated the status of the Russian, seized a lot of state-owned property and, ultimately, his administration was responsible for stealing more than $40 billion from the nation, his successors said.
Fooling the West
Yanukovych had become the fourth president of Ukraine in 2010. Despite the Orange Revolution and accusations that he falsified the 2004 presidential election, the West accepted Yanukovych as the new president.
Paul Manafort, a U.S political consultant and former campaign manager of the U.S. President Donald Trump, rehabilitated Yanukovych, inventing a new image of him as a pro-European democrat.
The Family
Yanukovych created “the family,” a mafia-style governance in Ukraine. He appointed his relatives, business partners and friends to key positions in parliament and government. His Party of Regions became a powerful force, controlling business and politics.
Poroshenko continued to use a family-style method of governance.
His son Oleksiy Poroshenko has become a lawmaker as well as his friends and business partners Ihor Kononenko, Tretiakov and Oleksandr Granovskiy and many others.
Ukrainian lawmakers stand next to a giant poster, featuring former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko with the slogan, reading: “No political repression,” in the parliament while President Viktor Yanukovych addresses the floor during a ceremony marking the opening of a new parliament session in Kyiv in September 2011. (AFP)
Jailing opponents
In 2011, a Ukrainian court sentenced Tymoshenko to seven years in prison for abuse of office in relation to the 2009 gas deal with Russia that she brokered. The prosecution was widely seen as politically motivated. Manafort even hired a team of American lawyers who wrote a report, justifying Tymoshenko’s political arrest. But nobody bought it.
Moreover, in 2012, Yanukovych jailed Yuriy Lutsenko, an interior minister in Yushchenko’s government, to four years in prison for alleged embezzlement and abuse of power, another case seen as a political vendetta.
The West had repeatedly called on Yanukovych to back down and free them. But Yanukovych refused to do so. His behavior had widened the rift between Ukraine and the West.
Turn back to Russia
Yanukovych’s undoing came on Nov. 21, 2013, when the government abandoned a long-awaited association agreement with the European Union.
Instead, Yanukovych did a U-turn and decided to pursue closer ties with Russia. On Nov. 29, Yanukovych refused to sign the association agreement during the Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius, Lithuania. As he explained in March 2014, Yanukovych wanted to protect Ukrainian producers who compete with the EU. Russia had also threatened to raise the export prices for Ukraine.
A mass protest in Kyiv on Dec. 1, 2013, during the EuroMaidan Revolution. (Kostyantyn Chernichkin)
Calling Russian invasion
Yanukovych’s about-face triggered EuroMaidan Revolution, massive protests all over the country that lasted until Feb. 22, 2014, when Yanukovych fled power.
Police violence marred the protests almost from the start. Thousands suffered injuries while more than 100 were gunned down in the days before Yanukovych’s departure by police snipers.
When Yanukovych understood that his time was up, he wrote in March 2014 an official letter to Russian President Vladimir Putin to request Russian troops be sent to Ukraine to restore peace, law, and order.
The Russians invaded alright, seizing Crimea militarily in a matter of days and then spreading out to launch a war in the eastern Donbas. Today, the war has claimed more than 10,000 lives and forced more than 1.5 million people to flee their homes.
The loss of 7 percent of Ukraine’s territory triggered a deep 20 percent plunge in the economy.
Now, almost five years later, Yanukovych is still being tried for treason in absentia since he lives near Moscow. Most of the key officials of the Yanukovych government managed to escape justice, flee Ukraine or even continue working in the new parliament and government.
President Petro Poroshenko speaks at the Yalta European Strategy conference in Kyiv on Sept. 14. (Kyiv Post)
Petro Poroshenko
Term: 2014 until the present
Poroshenko became the fifth president of Ukraine on June 7, 2014, mostly because he had promised all of us will start living in a new way. More than 50 percent of Ukrainians voted for Poroshenko, an oligarch, just two weeks earlier, on May 25.
He promised to sell his business empire that included TV channel 5, Roshen Confectionary Corporation, Rybalska Kuznya Plant and much more. He has also promised to reclaim Crimea and end the war in the Donbas in several hours.
Soon after he was elected, Poroshenko refused to sell his TV channel. Two years later, he put Roshen into a blind trust. Only in 2018 did he apologize for his unrealistic promise to end the war in 2014.
Back to Europe
The long-awaited Ukraine-EU Association agreement was signed soon after the EuroMaidan Revolution. In March 2014, acting Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk signed the political part of the agreement and in June Poroshenko signed the trade part.
It took three more years and one referendum in the Netherlands for all 28 EU countries to ratify the agreement that came into force in September 2017.
According to Eurostat, in 2018 Ukraine has become the 25th largest trade partner of the EU in the world. Ukraine-EU trade rose from 14 billion euro in 2015 to 20.2 billion euro in 2017.
A Ukrainian woman smiles at Kyiv’s airport Boryspil on June 11, 2017 after she and her husband checked in for a flight to Amsterdam on the first day of visa-free travel to the European Union. (AFP)
Visa-free travel
On June 11, 2017, Ukraine finally got the visa-free travel to EU countries. Ukrainians with biometric passports got the right to travel to Schengen zone countries of Europe without visas. Many have seen it as a well-earned victory for Ukraine. Poroshenko, who has promised the visa-free travel after the first year of his presidency, has made it one of his personal achievements.
To get closer to the EU, the Ukrainian government had to conduct a significant number of reforms: educational, medical, anti-corruption, land, court, energy and much more.
But a familiar pattern emerged of the pro-presidential coalition, which includes 135 members of the Bloc of Petro Poroshenko, obstructing or stalling on strong reforms, often agreeing reluctantly and only under great pressure from civil society and Ukraine’s Western partners, particularly the International Monetary Fund.
Law enforcement collapse
Ukraine’s law enforcement apparatus — from police to prosecutors and judges — have never had the public’s trust. They are seen more as protecting the nation’s corrupt elite rather than prosecuting them.
However, as Zinchenko had warned in 2005, Poroshenko is a control freak. He took control over the law enforcement system by appointing his allies, such as General Prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko or Security Service of Ukraine head Vasyl Grytsak. Lutsenko didn’t even have the legal education required, but parliament change the law to accept him.
And no one of consequence has been tried, convicted or jailed for corruption and other high-profile crimes.
People hold a vigil for murdered activist Kateryna Gandziuk and demand a proper investigation into her murder at a rally outside the Interior Ministry in Kyiv on Nov. 4, 2018. “I know I look bad,” Gandziuk said in a video address filmed from her hospital bed on Sept. 28. “But still not as bad as current Ukrainian justice and rule of law. I’m getting treatment. But nobody is curing our justice system.” (Oleg Petrasiuk)
Enough to win?
The polls suggest that voters are in the mood to throw Poroshenko out of office the first chance they get, for broken promises, including the failure to combat corruption effectively and create strong democratic institutions.
He does, however, have accomplishments to tout that may get him re-elected. After an initial boost from volunteers, the army is holding its own against the Russian aggressors. Ukrainians enjoy visa-free travel to most of Europe. The economy has returned to growth, albeit of less than 3 percent yearly.
Poroshenko’s campaign slogans of army, faith and language may resonate with voters in March.
He has promoted wider use of the Ukrainian language and pushed to accelerate the independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from Moscow.
Poroshenko has also been effective in convincing the West to take strong stands on behalf of Ukraine and impose sanctions on Russia.
So voters could go either way: Emphasizing the accomplishments or punishing him for his failures, most glaringly in the anti-corruption fight and the anemic economic growth in a nation still starved of foreign investment.
Again, in comparison to his plundering and bumbling predecessors, Poroshenko looks good. But that doesn’t make him a good president. In fact, Ukraine’s first four presidents were so bad that Poroshenko looks OK, even acceptable.
