Are Ukrainian politics to be taken that seriously?
September 7, 2006 – 3:50 amMy two weeks in Ukraine in late June proved to be eventful. During the first week, Kyiv was awash with rumors that there would be a Grand Coalition of Our Ukraine and the Party of Regions. The atmosphere was bleak in Kyiv with rumors of a pending Grand coalition being only offset by Ukraine’s early successes in the World cup.
The creation of the Orange coalition uplifted my spirits during a week when Ukraine had been removed from the World cup. We even watched World cup games with young, enthusiastic members of the presidential secretariat who were brimming with optimism now that an Orange coalition had finally come together. The Orange coalition finally seemed to be a certainty when I left Ukraine.
During my visit to Kyiv I inevitably visited the Baraban (Drum) bar, one of those which is impossible to find. Located behind the Maidan it became an important place for Western and Ukrainian journalists to fortify themselves from the cold before returning to the Orange Revolution. I bumped into Orange Circle President Adrian Karatnycky who got into a loud debate defending President Yushchenko and Donetsk oligarch Renat Akhmetov from criticism by the Ukrainian Financial Times journalist and NGO leader. Adrian was on his way to an energy conference on Ukraine to be held in Warsaw he had organized. I asked if this was the event rumored to be financed by Akhmetov? He replied in a round about way that it was.
Any leader or manager in Yushchenko’s predicament would seek the advice of his staff and advisers, as well heed opinion polls. But, this common practice has never been a policy followed by President Yushchenko. Over lunch in Kyiv a presidential secretariat staffer told me how Yushchenko does not feel the need to listen to advisers. This is because, the staffer told me, he feels he has suffered enough for Ukraine.
My “deep throat” told me that Yushchenko would never propose Yanukovych as Prime Minister, preferring to go instead for a new election. Well, I thought, maybe Yushchenko has political will after all. If somebody inside the presidential secretariat gets such a prediction wrong one wonders how experts on the outside like myself are supposed to predict Ukrainian events? In reality, no one even remotely predicted the return of Yanukovych, the only Prime Minister to ever serve two terms, both as Prime Minister and in prison. Ukraine may well enter the Guinness Book of Records with 15 Prime Ministers since independence.
The return of Yanukovych came as a shock not only to Ukrainians but to many of us in the West, and not only those with a diaspora connection to Ukraine. Depression and disbelief at the turn of events depressed our summer. It was not just the August holiday season that led to a drop in e-mail traffic. People were literally in shock by the unexpected turn of events. My presidential secretariat staffer, who had regularly sent me e-mails on the state of negotiations, stopped replying to my e-mail.
In early August I updated information on a British web site about Ukraine, something that I had been doing for them for the last fifteen years. The last time the Ukraine section had been updated was in November 2005 and it was then written brimming with optimism that the Orange camp would win the March elections, create a majority coalition and government. My update took far longer than usual because of the summer 2006 crisis and proved to be a depressing toil. Much of it had to be re-written. The optimism was gone.
At first I thought maybe I was being too critical in my writings about the latest developments. After all, there had to be a silver lining in some of this. But, my views proved to be the prevailing mood. A former Ukrainian soldier, now a pensioner, asked me over dinner in Toronto What did you expect, Tarase? The President is not a leader and he is a coward. Such views were not confined to the diaspora. A non-diasporan academic introduced a new word to my vocabulary. Yushchenko, he explained to a group of us over a long dinner during the Ukrainian festival in Toronto, is a Wuss, or a weak softie.
These are strong words, but they are surprisingly common these days.