Lawmakers and civil society representatives who met with U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden during his Dec. 7-8 visit say that corruption – and what to do about it – dominated the agenda.
It also dictated the speech that Biden gave to Ukraine’s parliament on Dec. 8 and, presumably, weighed heavily in his private meetings with President Petro Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
The 90-minute meeting Biden held with civic activists was described as frank and intensive, according to various participants with whom the Kyiv Post spoke. U.S. officials have sent clear signals that while they expect more from Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk in tackling graft, they also continue to support the duo as the best choice of leaders currently in Ukraine.
Alex Ryabchyn, a lawmaker with Yulia Tymoshenko’s Batkivshchyna Party faction, told the Kyiv Post that Biden knows the situation in Ukraine on a “molecular level.”
“But he didn’t push us to do this or that; he didn’t name any specific people (to fire) either.
However, when he was giving a speech in the parliament and mentioned corruption – he looked to the side where people from the government were seated,” Ryabchyn said, adding that the discussion focused on international relations, Russia’s war in the east and Russian-annexed Crimea.
It was impossible not to talk about corruption, Ryabchyn said: “Biden used the word ‘corruption’ more often than ‘Donbas,’ but at the same time he assured that as soon as Ukraine shed corrupt practices, it could not only count on (more) U.S. support, but also international donors.”
Svitlana Zalishchuk, a lawmaker with the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, agreed according to her Facebook post. Biden is the “main partner” for Ukrainian activists and lawmakers in their fight against corruption.
Biden stressed that Ukraine has a historic battle: “Ukraine cannot afford for the people to lose hope again. The only thing worse than having no hope at all is having hopes rise and see them dashed repeatedly on the shoals of corruption.”
As Biden pushed a message of democracy during his fifth visit to Ukraine, some thought his message was undermined by the association of his son, Hunter Biden, with Burisma Holdings Limited.
Hunter Biden joined the Ukrainian natural gas producer‘s board in April 2014, a firm that is owned by former Ukrainian Ecology Minister Mykola Zlochevsky and which British authorities were investigating for money laundering. Zlochevsky was sanctioned by the European Union last year and $23 million in Burisma’s accounts were temporarily frozen by U.K. authorities.
The sanctions were lifted early in 2015 and a British court unblocked the accounts after Ukrainian authorities failed to provide requested evidence.
Kate Bedingfield, a spokeswoman for the vice president interviewed by the New York Times, said Hunter Biden’s business dealings had no impact on his father’s policy positions in connection with Ukraine.
In an interview with Bloomberg on Air Force Two on the flight back to Washington on Dec. 8, Biden said that he doesn’t have any doubts about the propriety of his son’s work.
“No one has ever raised that with me in Ukraine and no one I met with, no one has any doubt about my abhorrence of corruption and no one has any doubt that I don’t have any interest in any endeavor,” Biden was quoted as saying.
Another topic the vice president discussed at the meeting was full implementation of the Minsk peace agreements that are supposed to end Russia’s war against Ukraine.
Ryabchyn says that despite the problems, the vice president was upbeat and stressed the “historic” role of the new parliament.
“You have a historic opportunity to be remembered as the Rada that finally and permanently laid in place the pillars of freedom that your people have longed for, yearned for, for so many years,” Biden said while addressing Poroshenko, Yatsenyuk and lawmakers in parliament.
However, Sergii Leshchenko, a former investigative journalist and lawmaker in the Petro Poroshenko Bloc, believes that Biden mainly addressed the Ukrainian nation.
Leshchenko wrote recently in Novoe Vremya magazine that the vice president called on Ukrainians not to “give up on building truly democratic state” and spoke about the “cancer of corruption.”
He “avoided accusing anyone directly, which was frustrating for many, but I can tell that his private talks with Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk were rather unpleasant,” Leshchenko wrote on Dec. 9.
Olga Aivazovska, head of the OPORA election watchdog, boiled down the key takeaways of the meeting with Joe Biden.
“Biden’s and U.S. President Barak Obama’s message is the same – they know what Ukraine should do and has already done in terms of reforms,” Aivazovska told the Kyiv Post. “U.S. supports Ukraine as a friend and advocate, but the main problem – corruption exists and today is the last chance to change the country the way its nation deserves.”
The Minsk agreements were Ukraine’s “tough choice,” but its leaders should do everything to fulfill their part, even though Russia has a “chance” to derail its part, she said.
Oksana Nechyporenko, a member of the board of the Reanimation Package of Reform group, says Biden stressed that this Ukraine’s “last chance” to complete the EuroMaidan Revolution.
“We should finally build effective governance and we can’t waste this chance,” Nechyporenko posted on Facebook after the meeting with Joe Biden.
Kyiv Post staff writer Olena Goncharova can be reached at [email protected].
