Taras Kuzio’s Blog

De Ja Vu

When I opened up Ukrayinska Pravda yesterday morning and saw the headline ‘Internal Troops Heading for Kyiv’ I had a severe déjà vu from 28 November 2004. Then US Ambassador Herbst and US Secretary of State Colin Powell desperately tried to reach President Leonid Kuchma to halt the advance of Internal Troops on the Orange Maidan. On Saturday, two and half years later, the same Internal Troops were sent to the Blue Maidan.

In 2004 then Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych (and Viktor Medvedchuk) ordered the sending of Interior Ministry Internal troops to the Orange Maidan and this week President Viktor Yushchenko did. Thank God on both occasions they never arrived. On the first occasion their route was blocked by Kyiv’s taxis (and the Commander of ground military forces who threatened to intervene to support the Maidan) and on the second occasion they were blocked by traffic police.

In football language this makes it a 1:1 draw.

Last year the Socialist Party agreed to support the removal of Yuriy Lutsenko as Interior Minister only if the Socialists obtained this ministry. The SPU offered it to Vasyl Tsushko whose actions on two occasions should give cause for concern whether he is fit for the position.

The first was in the third week of March when the Interior Ministry raided Yuriy Lutsenko’s apartment and those of Narodna Samoborona that he leads where they planted explosives to incriminate them as ‘terrorists’. This resembled the failed tactic used against Pora in October 2004 (and even earlier against Otpor in Serbia in 2000). This was one reason why President Viktor Yushchenko issued his April 2 decree.
Tsushko also badly miscalculated on Thursday by sending in Berkut riot police to the prosecutor’s office. This was the first occasion in Ukraine’s history where two law enforcement units clashed: the Interior Ministry’s Berkut and the presidential guard. The seriousness of this could be seen by placing it in an American context: it would be the equivalent in the USA of police SWAT (Special Weapons and Tactics) teams fighting with the US Secret Service over control of a building.

Tsushko has installed new deputies who have poor reputations from the Kuchma era. He also demanded that regional Internal Ministry heads with Orange sympathies be transferred to other duties.

The most criticized appointment as deputy Interior Minister and head of the Interior Ministry General Staff has been that of Serhiy Popkov. Popkov was commander of Interior Ministry’s Internal Troops from November 2004-February 2005.

This is where I had an earlier sense of déjà vu.

On 28 November 28 Popkov dispatched Internal Troops with live ammunition to central Kyiv to suppress the Orange Revolution. In 2007 these same Internal Troops travelled to Kyiv without weapons. That, it would seem, is a sign of democratic progress.

The Orange opposition and President Yushchenko protested at the return of Popkov to the Interior Ministry. Yet, in January, Prime Minister Yanukovch defended Popkov as ‘an expert of the highest kind who commands great respect’. Yanukovych continued, ‘there was never any infringements on his part throughout his entire career during which he worked in a qualitative manner’.

A number of conclusions arise from my déjà vu.

Tsushko is not fit to head the Interior Ministry. His replacement should be part of any compromise package.
Tsushko should be criminally charged for sending Berkut police units to illegally occupy a central government building (only the presidential guard has the right to protect these buildings and the officials who inhabit them).

President Yushchenko has ordered his prosecutor (Ukraine has two) to criminally charge Tsushko. I doubt this will ever happen. Ukraine’s ruling elites never charge one another: the only member of the Ukrainian elite was charged by the US (Pavlo Lazarenko).

Kuchma’s 2004 book Ukraine is not Russia is correct. When Ukrainians send Troops to suppress protestors they never – thank God – seem to arrive. In Russia (and the remainder of the CIS) they always arrive and, as in Uzbekistan in 2005, they shoot to kill.

Yushchenko’s personnel appointments have been notoriously poor. His four National Security Council Secretaries have been without foreign policy experience. The re-appointment of Svyatoslav Piskun as prosecutor made no sense to anybody I talked to. I agree that his removal, which precipitated a near military conflict, was also legal double standards as members of Our Ukraine have routinely remained parliamentary deputies while keeping government or presidential positions. Does Ukraine really not possess younger, Western educated legal experts who could be prosecutors?

If Ukraine is serious about integrating into Europe then the very concept of ‘Internal Troops’ has to be changed. Jozef Stalin was a tyrant who used NKVD Troops to murder millions of Ukrainians and other Soviet peoples. A democracy cannot have Troops to be used against its own people.

My recommendation is that Ukraine’s ‘Internal Troops’ should be broken up into a civilian prison police force and the remainder (including the four special forces unit sent to Kyiv) should become the core of the revived National Guard that was disbanded in 1999.

Yushchenko should not return the Internal Troops to the Interior Ministry, especially while Tshushko remains its Minister. He should use his control over the Internal Troops to re-establish Ukraine’s National Guard modeled on Italy’s Carabineer and Spain’s Civil Guard.

That way I will never again have another déjà vu of Internal Troops heading to Kyiv.