Taras Kuzio’s Blog

Bankova’s Conspiracy-Mania

It has been commonplace in Ukraine to ascribe conspiracy-mania to political forces that have a neo-Soviet political culture who are pro-Russian. In Ukraine this would be of course supporters of former President Leonid Kuchma and since the Orange Revolution, the Party of Regions.
The Kuchmagate crisis revived conspiracy-mania; the Kuchma camp believed it was an American conspiracy (the so-called ‘Brzezinski Plot’). Meanwhile, the nationalist right, Yushchenko and national democratic ‘derzhavnyky’, together with some elements of the Ukrainian diaspora, saw it as a ‘Russian plot’ designed to undermine Ukraine.
Conspiracy-mania is no stranger to Russia either which inherited more Soviet political culture due to the blending of Soviet and Russian identities (the Russian SFSR was the only republic with no republican institutions). This has expanded to at times an amusing component of the regime built by Vladimir Putin after he came to power in Russia in 2000 as seen in recent protests  in Vladivostok at higher import tariffs that have been described as a continuation of the political technology behind the orange revolution by subversive Japanese seeking to detach the Far East from Russia.
We would expect conspiracy-mania in the Party of Regions and Russia. But, how do we explain conspiracy-mania in the pro-Western orange camp? Is President Viktor Yushchenko after all not a pro-Western politician who does not succumb to conspiracy-mania?
The inherited legacy of Soviet political culture influences all Ukrainian politicians to varying degrees and the orange camp has never been devoid of conspiracy-mania. In 2005 then Minister of Justice Roman Zvarych pointed to a ‘conspiracy’ to remove him after it was found out that he was a fraud who had lied about possessing an MA and PhD from Columbia University. Zvarych brought with him OUN-conspiracy mania that deepened after living in Ukraine. As with other Ukrainian politicians, Zvarych’s main problem was his refusal to accept any responsibility for his actions.
Conspiracy-mania is strongest during times of political crises and conspiracy-mania re-emerged during the Kuchmagate crisis and continued to the orange revolution. Politicians who believed in conspiracy-mania during the Kuchmagate crisis, such as Kuchma’s presidential representative – Roman Besmertnyi  – are now in a position to revive conspiracy-mania in their new position as the deputy head of the centre of all conspiracy theories in Ukraine – the presidential secretariat.
We should not be surprised by Besmertnyi’s pathetic (just read the comments in Ukrayinska Pravda) attack on Tymoshenko ahead of her visit to Moscow where he alleged that she is on a “hachka” of the Russian intelligence services. This is after all the “Little Medvedchuk”  who as the presidents representative in parliament  threatened to disband parliament during the Kuchmagate crisis if it voted to impeach Kuchma.
The statement was withdrawn by the presidential secretariat but we have to ask the question why it was ever written by Bankova? After a short interlude during the gas crisis, Bankova returned to Besmertnyi’s conspiracy-mania immediately after the gas contract was signed and even before they had seen a copy of it, ordering the SBU and Prosecutor’s Office to investigate the deal for alleging infringing Ukraine’s national interests.
When Ukrainian political leaders are in crisis – whether Kuchma after November 2000 or Yushchenko since September 2005 – they fall back on neo-Soviet conspiracy-mania political culture.  In crisis, Ukrainian political leaders retreat into their own worlds and become even more out of touch with reality. Only a week in Kyiv in December gave me more of a sense of Ukrainian reality than the conspiracy-mania coming from Bankova.
Conspiracy-mania is directly linked to the central problem of Ukrainian politics that was not resolved by the orange revolution: Power Without Accountability. Ukraine’s elites have continued to remain above the law and ‘Bandits’, instead of going to prison, were given  state medals or lobbied for favours and coalitions.
Ukrainian journalists are partly culpable in the lack of progress on Politicians without Accountability. Although a ‘free media’  is often touted as an important outcome of the orange revolution how really ‘free’ is the Ukrainian media?
Ukrainian journalists still do not act as one of the watchdogs of democracy by seeking to make politicians accountable for their actions. In December in Kyiv I asked a Western journalist to ask the president next time he interviewed him to ask questions that Ukrainian journalists never seek to ask, such as “Mr. President, why do you think you only have 3 percent support?”
When I asked the president ten questions ahead of his visit last year to Canada, questions that a Western journalist would ask of Western politicians, Iryna Bilyk retreated into conspiracy-mania in a crude and counter-productive attack against myself that hinted that I had connections to the Russian FSB. How could a pro-Western president permit HIS secretariat to write such intellectually nehramotni tracts that, when one read the comments on Ukrayinska Pravda, merely brought ridicule on the president as with Besmertnyi’s allegations?
President Yushchenko has refused to ever accept any responsibility for any of his actions. It is therefore not surprising that, as Western policy makers who go to see him tell me,  he lives in a complete fantasy world. Criticism is not permitted, advice is not sought, while all the while the president surrounds himself with sycophants.
Yushchenko has refused to attend European Peoples Party meetings since Lisbon in December 2007 or to meet with the EU troika in Kyiv because he does not want to hear the criticisms of Europeans. But, he still wants the EU to send Ukraine a ‘signal’ on membership. If the EU did send a signal would it ever arrive?
It is not surprising that the president and Bankova saw a Russian ‘conspiracy’ in the large number of critical question posed to him in internet questions organized by Ukrayinska Pravda and Korrespondent last month. According to the president, ‘two thirds of the authors of these questions are to be found not in Ukraine and not among representatives of the Ukrainian people’.
The Security Service (SBU) came to the rescue and advised the president that they had ‘studied’ the questions and found this to be indeed a Russian conspiracy, no doubt similar to the Russian conspiracy that Yushchenko and Besmertnyi believe was launched by Mykola Melnychenko and Oleksandr Moroz nine years ago.
In reality, Ukrayinska Pravda and Korrespondent can sleep calmy as the SBU probably never undertook an investigation of the IP addresses. As good sycophants, they simply told Yushchenko what he wanted to hear without undertaking an investigation. What is telling is that even Yushchenko has limits to listening to his sycophants, he could not stomach the rosy reports on battling corruption submitted by the SBU and Prosecutors office this month.
Deputy NRBO head Stepan Havrysh repeated the common unwillingness of Ukrainian politicians to not understand opinion polls. If a politician continues along a path that has led to his popularity collapsing to worse figures than those ever recorded for Kuchma while  continuing to ignore them then there is a serious problem in the political system that  needs to be resolved. In Western democracies, opinion polls are not sacrosanct and politicians cannot undertake policies by continually watching over their shoulders as to the impact of the policies on their popularity.
On the other hand, Western politicians do not completely ignore opinion polls either. This would be very foolish and suggest an arrogant detachment from the concerns of voters. There is therefore a need for a certain balanced approach by politicians to opinion polls as indicators of trends.
If the collapse in a presidents ratings to 2.4 percent (Democratic Initiatives, January 2009) do not influence his policies and actions then there is a major democratic deficit in the country.  In effect, the country’s political leadership is not listening to what the voter is saying and instead using conspiracy-mania to avoid responsibility for his actions. If politicians listen to voters only during elections and then ignore voters between election’s these politicians are taking power without accepting any personal accountability.
President Yushchenko believes that discussions of his impeachment is also a Kremlin plot pursued by Tymoshenko and Symonenko. Meanwhile, he ignores the real domestic reasons why politicians and the media are discussing the impeachment issue even though it is unlikely, as Volodymyr Lytvyn says, to go ahead.
The presidential secretariat’s conspiracy-mania exploded in 2008 serving to discredit the president at home and abroad. 2008 could have been the year that revived the presidents fortunes but instead they were buried by the tactics adopted by himself and his secretariat.
The summer 2008 treason charges against Tymoshenko revealed the depth of the conspiracy-mania on Bankova. Since these allegations, and following the signing of the 2009 gas contract, Bankova has focused on an alleged conspiracy between Tymoshenko and Putin that is disbelieved by most Ukrainians and most Westerners. As a former American pro-Yushchenko supporter told me, ‘He has really lost it!’
The entire range of allegations is so ridiculous as to defy logic. Conspiracy-mania is an easy solution for Orange ProFFessors who seek to deflect responsibility from their own incompetence.
Who, for example, has conspired to undermine Ukraine’s national interests? The politician who re-introduced RosUkrEnergo into Ukraine (Yushchenko), permitted its co-owner Dmytro Firtash to capture control over three quarters of oblast energy providers that in turn permits the gas lobby to finance the pro-Russian Party of Regions?
Or, the politician who has removed RosUkrEnergo, seeks to remove Firtash from any involvement in Ukraine’s energy trade and by doing so cleans up Ukrainian politics (Tymoshenko)? Is it Yushchenko or Tymoshenko who will enable Ukraine to pursue an independent foreign policy after it adopts ‘market’ prices next year?
Was it not Bankova’s  Andriy Honcharuk that congratulated the government for storing four months gas  and thereby enabling Ukraine to withstand Russia’s energy pressure. Why did Yushchenko’s government not store gas so that the Yekhanurov government did not have to collapse to to Russian pressure on 4 January 2006 and sign a badly flawed contract that harmed Ukraine’s national interests?
Who then has conspired with Putin? The allegedly ‘pro-Russian’ Tymoshenko or the ‘anti-Russian’ Yushchenko and former Naftogaz Ukrainy head and velykyi Banderivets Olexiy Ivchenko?
The sycophants behind Bankova’s conspiracy-mania keep telling Yushchenko that only HE can save Ukraine from the Moskali while Tymoshenko, Symonenko and Yanukovych, zmahayutsia for Russia’s favour. It would seem that this issue more than any other keeps deputy presidential secretariat Andriy Kyslynsky awake most nights.
Kuchmagate, the orange revolution and the Yushchenko presidency have shown that neo Soviet political culture is alive and well in the orange camp as much as it is in the Party of Regions. The real sources for Bankova’s conspiracy-mania are the incompetent sychophant team that the president has collected on Bankova who seek to deflect any responsibility from the presidents shoulders.
There are two important policies that a new incoming president in December of this year should immediately undertake upon coming into office. First, remove all of the Orange ProFFessors on Bankova  and ensure they do not enter other areas of Ukrainian politics. Second, accept the central premise of any democracy that Power comes always with Responsibility.