Taras Kuzio’s Blog

Analyzing Yanykovych Article: Ukraine’s Choice: Towards Europe

Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych’s re-assurances in his very nicely written Washington Post article Ukraine’s choice: towards Europe, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/04/AR2006100401541.html
about his commitment to reform and Euro-Atlantic integration do not stand up to public scrutiny. But, before we analyze his article let us who wrote it, a question that has been put to by quite a few people. There are two American think tank persons who have always been supporters of a Grand Coalition of Our Ukraine and the Party of Regions. A third American heads a pro-Viktor Yushchenko lobby group but also supported the Grand coalition. They represented a minority of those in the USA who wrote on, or conducted policy towards, Ukraine, the majority of whom (like myself) who favoured an Orange coalition.
Alternatively, the Washington Post article could have been written by a K Street (famous Washington street for high powered government relations institutions and think tanks) Public Relations company. They were hired by the Party of Regions for the 2006 elections and had a great deal of influence on their rebound from defeat in 2004 to victory in 2006.
Ironically, the Party of Regions is the only Ukrainian parliamentary party which has a US-based Public Relations firm, a shift from Yanukovych relying upon Russian “Political Technologists” in the 2004 elections. I remember Yanukovych in 2004 hiring a Washington Public Relations firm for whose services they paid $120,000 per month (US-based companies who work for foreign governments are required by law to disclose this relationship to the Department of Justice of the US government). The difference between 2004 and 2006, I was told by US Public Relations people, is that Yanukovych and his Party did not listen to their advice in 2004 because they were confident they would win but did listen to their advice in 2006 when they found themselves in opposition and sought “revenge”.
It has never been clear to me why Yushchenko or Our Ukraine have not hired US Public Relations or consultants? Is it that they are so arrogant in believing that there is no need as the US supports them anyway? This may have been true in 2005 but US support is declining. The Orange Circle NGO (www.orangecircle.org) is a pro-Yushchenko lobby group led by a former Freedom House official, not a professional Public Relations firm. It has earned for itself a reputation as being “Yushchenko apologist”, defending the president in a way that that is usually the job of Embassies and diplomats, rather than NGO’s.
Yanukovych’s Washington Post article portrays a fantasy world, not contemporary Ukraine. It ignores the presence of two left-wing parties in the Anti-Crisis coalition and the Yanukovych government. The Communist Party is an un-reconstituted, Stalinist party that has no place in any allegedly pro-reform coalition or government. The Party of Regions, led by Prime Minister Yanukovych, has refused to replace the Communists with the President’s Our Ukraine bloc which went into opposition last wek in protest to the Party of Regions refusal to abandon “its political satellite, the Communists.
Both left-wing parties in the Anti-Crisis coalition are opposed to WTO membership and have blocked the passage of legislation to permit Ukraine to join this year. How can Yanukovych therefore write in the Washington Post that his government supports WTO membership? Ukraine will again miss, for the second time, its chance to join WTO, probably only now joining next year with Russia.
The Party of Regions is a Kafka-like political force that continues, like in the Kuchma era, to say one thing and do another (maybe this is what is meant by “multi-vectorism”). Prime Minister Yanukovych’s actions inside government and in opposition markedly differ.
When it was in opposition in 2005-2006, the Party of Regions voted together with its two left-wing allies against WTO membership while in government they will vote in favour. During the first Yanukovych government it purportedly supported Ukraine’s NATO membership. However, public support for NATO membership declined during his first term as Prime Minister because of actions his own government undertook, such as sending troops to Iraq and unfurling an anti-American election campaign.
When in opposition Yanukovych and the Party of Regions voted against legislation for the holding of military exercises with foreign troops in Ukraine. In the Washington Post, Yanukovych hypocritically takes credit for the passage of this legislation which his party had earlier blocked under Orange governments.
Yanukovych’s Party of Regions and its extreme left allies orchestrated vicious anti-American and anti-NATO campaigns both in the 2004 elections and as recently as this summer when US military personnel were physically attacked by his party and its allies in the Crimea. At a talk I gave last week at the National Defense University in Washington, a US Marine officer told the class how his colleagues had been stoned in the Crimea this summer.
Was this not embarrassing internationally? I remember at the time asking, like many others, why is the president not halting this? As I wrote in Ukrayinska Pravda (http://pravda.com.ua/news/2006/10/10/48810.htm), the President and Our Ukraine have a lot to blame for losing Ukraine’s chance of being invited into a Membership Action Plan at NATO’s Riga’s summit.
According to a recent poll 44 percent of Ukrainians said Prime Minister Yanukovych is the most influential political figure in Ukraine, while 19 percent credited President Yushchenko with this position. These ratings reflect not our increased trust for Yanukovych but Ukrainian disillusionment at Yushchenko and his Our Ukraine.
These figures do not yet prove that the Party of Regions is a post-Kuchma or post-oligarch political force. When I attempted to initiate an open discussion at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute seminar on if the Party of Regions could evolve towards post-Kuchmizm and become a normal democratic party I elicited a skeptical look on the audience’s faces. Professor George Grabowicz, editor of Krytyka, was especially skeptical (and maybe rightly so?).
Yanukovych’s comparison of Ukraine to Canada or Switzerland shows his total ignorance of Ukraine and these two countries. Both Canada and Switzerland are confederations while Ukraine is a unitary state plus an autonomous Crimea. Canada has two state languages because it has two founding peoples, the British and French. Ukraine has one titular nation, Ukrainians.
The entry of Yanukovych and the Party of Regions back into government will be seen as Yushchenko’s biggest strategic blunder and probably cause him not to be re-elected in 2009. Whenever I have given talks recently to academic and policy making audiences in the USA they have found it mind boggling that Yushchenko and Our Ukraine could have adopted such poor leadership and strategy that has permitted Yanukovych’s return to power.
In the USA and in Ukraine there is a pause to see if there will be a return to Kuchmizm, or Kuchma-lite (I have not met anybody who believes the Washington Post article)? Yushchenko meanwhile, is responding to this threat by bringing in even more Donetski into his secretariat and National Security Council, but this time from the Industrial Union of Donbas. Even Oleksandr Zinchenko has returned as an “adviser” to protests from Yushchenko’s Liubi Druzi. Ukraine really is like Groundhog Day.