Former U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden said on Jan. 23 in Washington, D.C., that he is “desperately concerned about the backsliding on the part of Kyiv in terms of corruption.”
Biden’s remarks came at a joint appearance with former Assistant U.S. Defense Secretary Michael Carpenter at the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations. Biden and Carpenter wrote an article for the January/February 2018 edition of “Foreign Affairs” headlined “How To Stand Up To The Kremlin: Defending Democracy Against Its Enemies.”
“The corruption is so endemic and deep and consequential that it is really, really hard to get it out of the system,” Biden said, speaking not just of Ukraine but also Russia and the rest of the Soviet Union where, instead of democratic institutions, people have been governed by dictators, oligarchs and kleptocrats.
Biden revealed, as he has in his recent memoir, “Promise Me, Dad,” that he favored taking a harder line against Russia than that favored by U.S. President Barack Obama and many European leaders. Biden now leads the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy & Global Engagement and is a possible Democratic Party candidate for president in 2020.
Biden said he long favored supplying Ukraine with modern lethal defensive weapons, such as anti-tank Javelins. Obama always opposed such a move, fearing that it would provoke the Kremlin to escalate. But his successor, Donald J. Trump, reversed course and approved the arms transfer.
“I think it was a wise decision. I was pushing that for two years before we left, so. And the reason is I think the more you up the ante, the cost to Russia for their aggression,” Biden said. He said he also favored public disclosure of unpleasant truths against Russian President Vladimir Putin — such as Putin’s net financial worth.
Biden also said that he warned President Petro Poroshenko and ex-Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk that Ukraine would more likely face defeat because of rampant, unchecked corruption than Russian military invasion.
He also said that if the government didn’t show more progress in combatting corruption, European allies would be less likely to stick with economic sanctions against Russia for its war against Ukraine, which began in 2014 with the military invasion and annexation of Crimea.
“I said, look, it’s a simple proposition. If, in fact, you do not continue to show progress in terms of corruption, we are not going to be able to hold the rest of Europe on these sanctions, and Russia is not going to roll across the inner line here and take over the rest of the country with their tanks,” Biden recounted his talk with Ukraine’s leaders. “What they’re going to do is they’re going to take your economy down, you’re going to be absolutely buried, and you’re going to be done. And that’s when it all goes to hell.”
Biden also talked about his longstanding efforts to get General Prosecutor Viktor Shokin fired for ineffectiveness and obstruction of justice in the fight against corruption. Poroshenko resisted U.S. demands before relenting and dismissing Shokin on March 26, 2016, after Biden threatened to withhold a $1 billion loan guarantee.
Even then, Biden said “they” — not indicating whether it was Poroshenko or Yatsenyuk or both — challenged his authority to make such a decision after a press conference during one of Biden’s six visits to Kyiv as vice president.
“So they said they had—they were walking out to a press conference. I said, nah, I’m not going to—or, we’re not going to give you the billion dollars. They said, you have no authority. You’re not the president. The president said—I said, call him. (Laughter.) I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion dollars. I said, you’re not getting the billion. I’m going to be leaving here in, I think it was about six hours. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. (Laughter.) He got fired. And they put in place someone who was solid at the time,” Biden said, referring to Yuriy Lutsenko, who is now under increasing fire for his ineffectiveness and protection of corrupt insiders as prosecutor general.
Obama assigned Biden responsibility for U.S. relations with Ukraine. Biden said he saw part of his job as keeping the pressure on Russia to call off its war, on Ukraine’s leaders to fight corruption and on maintaining Western unity in the face of Russia’s aggression and violation of international laws.
Carpenter agreed with Biden on the need for Ukraine’s leaders to do more to combat corruption.
“The major issue right now is helping Ukraine succeed,” Carpenter said. “And if they don’t succeed internally in terms of fighting corruption and establishing rule of law, then it’s a lost cause.”
