Opinion Europe, Analysis & Commentary: By Adrian Karatnycky
The Wall Street Journal, NY, NY, Monday, February 8, 2010 But, notwithstanding the chaos, “Orange” rule also deepened Ukraine’s political pluralism, and allowed time for the political transformation of Mr. Yanukovych and his Party of Regions.

[1] First, the oligarchs around Mr Yanukovych became economically transparent. They hired first-rate managers, rigorously paid their taxes, promoted sophisticated philanthropy, and became globalized in their tastes and manners. Just as importantly, they now see their future prosperity integrally linked to a reduction in corruption, the expansion of free market policies, lower taxes, fewer regulations, and Ukraine’s eventual integration into the rich EU market.

[2] Second, Mr. Yanukovych and other Regions leaders have become public personalities irrespective of some rough edges, and have accustomed themselves and found success in the democratic rules of the game. Five years in the political wilderness has taught them that the world does not end with the democratic rotation of power, nor does it put anyone’s massive fortunes at risk.

[3] Third, after his political setbacks in 2005 and 2007, Mr. Yanukovych and his allies were treated dismissively and—say some of his closest confidantes—humiliated by Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin. This, and Mr. Putin’s tilt last year toward Ms. Tymoshenko, have created distance between the Regions leadership and Moscow. Coupled with Kyiv’s need to extract Ukraine from its deep economic decline, and a state budget deficit of 12%, this means the world can expect Mr. Yanukovych to eagerly work for close cooperation with Europe and the U.S., not to mention the International Monetary Fund.

Indeed, the signals emanating from Mr. Yanukovych’s closest aides, as well as key leaders from the Our Ukraine coalition with whom I met last week in Kyiv, suggest the new president and the government he will try to bring into office will likely represent a broad-based mix of longtime Regions party officials, and competent financial and economic technocrats and market reformers—including some from the former Yushchenko team.

For instance, there is a good chance that banker Serhiy Tyhypko, who finished a strong third in the presidential race, will be offered the prime minister’s post rather than Mr. Yanukovych’s longtime ally and campaign director, Mykola Azarov, who is also under serious consideration. The odds of a broad-based coalition are reinforced by the modesty of Mr. Yanukovych’s victory, clear-cut though it was.

At the same time, the agreement on uranium was a sign that Yanukovych is aiming to maintain a balance in Ukraine’s relationships with Europe, the U.S. and Russia. Strong and pragmatic relations with the U.S. – as with Europe – are essential for the new Yanukovych team, which understands that U.S. support is crucial within international financial institutions. The visit also suggests that Yanukovych appears to understand that Ukraine will have a stronger hand in shaping its relationship with Russia in the context of deepening relations with Brussels and the Washington.

As Jackson Diehl, a Washington Post editor and acute foreign policy analyst, noted: “By quickly accepting [Obama’s proposal to get rid of Ukraine’s highly enriched uranium], Yanukovych built a link to the White House to balance his longstanding connection to the Kremlin – and managed to stand out among the dozens of leaders jamming the luxury hotels of downtown Washington Monday.”

In addition to participating in the summit and meeting with Obama, Yanukovych held talks with International Monetary Fund managing director Dominique Strauss-Kahn. The Ukrainian president paved the way for the upcoming visit of Deputy Prime Minister Sergiy Tigipko to the World Bank-IMF annual gathering. He also held bilateral discussions with Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, President Nicholas Sarkozy of France, Prime Minister Manhmohan Singh of India, President Hu Jintao of China, Canadian Prime Minister Steven Harper and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.

And the schedule included a substantive meeting with members of the U.S.-Ukraine Business Council, an interview with CNN and a discussion with the editors of the Washington Post, who received a clear-cut message from Ukraine’s president: “Yanukovych’s ambition [is] to position Ukraine between Russia and the NATO powers – outside the Western alliance, but also not part of a Russian sphere of influence.”

No less energetic have been his other foreign travels, which have included an early trip to Brussels that yielded the most concrete official expression of Europe’s commitment to Ukraine’s eventual membership in the European Union, as well as two “atmospheric,” rather than substantive, visits to Russia and one to Kazakhstan.

To be sure, there are strong advocates inside the Party of Regions and among its coalition Communist partners, of a tilt toward Russia. But the early signs are that Yanukovych is resisting these lobbies and is seeking to create a genuine equilibrium that will allow Ukraine to protect its sovereignty as he works to rebuild the economy and move the country toward the aim of eventual membership in the European Union.

Ukraine’s president is yet to be tested by conflict or crisis. And his efforts to maintain equally friendly relations with Russia, Europe and the U.S. may in the end prove unsustainable. It is also an open question whether Ukraine’s security neutrality can be sustained and its security ensured solely by relying on its own defense capabilities.

While one swallow does not a spring make, the early weeks of Yanukovych’s presidency –and his U.S. visit – suggest that Ukraine’s international relations are moving forward in a balanced fashion. So, too, are the first indicators of Ukraine’s commitment to economic reform, fiscal stability and cooperation with international financial institutions.

Such pragmatism creates some hope that Ukraine’s new president will in the end also pursue a similar tack on matters of national identity and reject the divisive cultural and linguistic agenda being pursued by some in the current government.

These, at least, are the hopes and signals that come from a substantive and successful first foray to a city that is one the centers of our globalized world.

Adrian Karatnycky is a senior fellow with the Atlantic Council of the U.S. and the managing partner of Myrmidon Group LLC.

Wall Street Journal Europe, March 30, 2010

Ukraine’s Democracy in Danger

By Alexander J. Motyl

As Ukraine’s recently elected President Viktor Yanukovych prepares to
visit Washington in April, he will aim to project an image of stability,
confidence, and control. In reality, Mr. Yanukovych has committed a series
of mistakes that could doom his presidency, scare off foreign investors,
and thwart the country’s modernization.

Mr. Yanukovych’s first mistake was to violate the constitution by changing
the rules according to which ruling parliamentary coalitions are formed,
making it possible for his party to take the lead in partnership with
several others, including the Communists. That move immediately galvanized
the demoralized opposition that clustered around his challenger in the
presidential elections, former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

His second mistake was to appoint as prime minister his crony Mykola
Azarov, a tough bureaucrat whose name is synonymous with government
corruption, ruinous taxation rates, and hostility to small business. The
appointment dispelled any hopes Ukrainians had that Mr. Yanukovych would
promote serious economic reform.

His third mistake was to agree to a cabinet consisting of 29 ministers as
opposed to 25 before-an impossibly large number that will only compound
its inability to engage in serious decision making. That the cabinet
contained not one woman-Mr. Azarov claimed that reform was not women’s
work-only reinforced the image of the cabinet as a dysfunctional boys’
club.

His fourth mistake was to appoint two nonentities-a former state farm
manager, and an economics graduate from a Soviet agricultural institute-to
head the ministries of economy and finance. Meanwhile, he created a
Committee on Economic Reform, consisting of 24 members, to develop a
strategy of economic change. The size of the committee guarantees that it
will be a talk shop, while the incompetence of the two ministers means
that whatever genuinely positive ideas the Committee develops will remain
on paper.

His fifth mistake was to appoint the controversial Dmytro Tabachnik as
minister of education. Mr. Tabachnik has expressed chauvinist views that
democratically inclined Ukrainians regard as deeply offensive to their
national dignity, such as the belief that west Ukrainians are not real
Ukrainians; endorsing the sanitized view of Soviet history propagated by
the Kremlin; and claiming that Ukrainian language and culture flourished
in Soviet times. Unsurprisingly, many Ukrainians have reacted in the same
way that African Americans would react to KKK head David Duke’s
appointment to such a position-with countrywide student strikes,
petitions, and demonstrations directed as much at Mr. Yanukovych as at Mr.
Tabachnik.

These five mistakes have effectively undermined Mr. Yanukovych’s
legitimacy within a few weeks of his inauguration. The 45.5% of the
electorate that voted against him now feels vindicated; the 10-20% that
voted for him as the lesser of two evils now suspect that their fears of
Mrs. Tymoshenko’s authoritarian tendencies were grossly exaggerated. And
everyone worries that Mr. Yanukovych and his band of Donbas-based “dons”
are ruthlessly pursuing the same anti-democratic agenda that sparked the
Orange Revolution of 2004.

Several other key dismissals and appointments have only reinforced this
view. The director of the Security Service archives-a conscientious
scholar who permitted unrestricted public access to documentation
revealing Soviet crimes-has been fired. The National Television and Radio
Company has been placed in the hands of a lightweight entertainer expected
to toe the line. Most disturbing perhaps, several of Mr. Yanukovych’s
anti-democratically inclined party allies have been placed in charge of
provincial ministries of internal affairs-positions that give them broad
scope to clamp down on the liberties of ordinary citizens.

Democratically inclined Ukrainians are increasingly persuaded that Mr.
Yanukovych wants to become Ukraine’s version of Belarus’s dictator,
Alexander Lukashenko. But Mr. Yanukovych’s vision of strong-man rule rests
on a strategic, and possibly fatal, misunderstanding of Ukraine.

First, the Orange Revolution and five years of Viktor Yushchenko’s
presidency empowered the Ukrainian population, endowing it with a
self-confidence that it lacked before 2004 and consolidating a vigorous
civil society consisting of professionals, intellectuals, students, and
businesspeople with no fear of the powers that be. Mr. Yanukovych’s
efforts to establish strong-man rule already are, and will continue to be,
resisted and ridiculed by the general population.

Second, Ukraine’s shambolic government apparatus cannot serve as the basis
of an effective authoritarian government. Tough talk alone will fail to
whip a bloated bureaucracy into shape. Worse, Ukraine’s security service
and army are a far cry from those in Belarus. Mr. Yanukovych may try to
emulate Mr. Lukashenko, but without a strong bureaucracy and coercive
apparatus, he will fail.

Third, with an ineffective cabinet, all decision making will be
concentrated in Mr. Yanukovych’s hands. Even if one ignores his deficient
education and poor grasp of facts, Mr. Yanukovych’s appointment of Mr.
Tabachnik demonstrates that Ukraine’s president is either completely out
of touch with his own country, or arrogantly indifferent to public
opinion.

Fourth, Ukraine is still in the throes of a deep economic crisis. If Mr.
Yanukovych does nothing to fix the economy, Ukraine may soon face default,
and mass discontent among his working class constituency in the southeast
is likely. If Mr. Yanukovych does embark on serious reforms, that same
constituency will suffer and strikes are certain. So negotiating the
crisis will require popular legitimacy-which Mr. Yanukovych is rapidly
squandering; a strong government-which he does not have; and excellent
judgment-which is also missing from the equation.

Indeed, if Mr. Yanukovych keeps on making anti-democratic mistakes, he
could very well provoke a second Orange Revolution. But this time the
demonstrators would consist of democrats, students, and workers. The
prospect of growing instability will do little to attract foreign
investors, while declining legitimacy, growing incompetence, and tub
thumping will fail to modernize Ukraine’s industry, agriculture, and
education. Mr. Yanukovych could very well be an even greater failure as
president than Mr. Yushchenko.

Although the outlook is grim, it is not yet hopeless for Ukraine’s new
president. He could still grasp a modest victory from the jaws of an
embarrassing defeat by ruling as the president, not of Donetsk, but of all
Ukraine. All he has to do is restrain his appetite for power and learn to
rule with the opposition and with the population. It’s not so
complicated-it’s democracy.

Mr. Motyl is a professor of political science at Rutgers University-Newark.

Gender and anti-semitism were two important factors that probably tipped the balance in Viktor Yanukovych’s favour in the 2010 elections. Yanukovych won by only 3.5%, or approximately 900,000 votes, and became the first president to not win a majority of Ukraine’s regions or 50% of the vote.
The foremost expert on gender in Ukraine, Reed College Professor Alexandra Hrycak, believes that ‘traditionalistic attitudes’ towards women ‘are considered to be more prevalent within the ‘Orange electorate’. Much of this electorate originates in the country’s Western region and in rural areas of Central Ukraine’.
An October 2008 psychological portrait of Yushchenko published by Ukrayinska Pravda showed him to have patriarchal and traditionalist views of the role of women in society. Yushchenko’s inability to work with Tymoshenko is undoubtedly a product of her being a strong willed and self confident woman. Yushchenko surrounded himself with sycophants and motherly figures, such as his last chief of staff Vera Ulianchenko, and would never tolerate anybody talking back to him like Hanna Herman does to Viktor Yanukovych.
Anti-semitism was used against only two candidates in the 2010 elections: Tymoshenko and Arseniy Yatseniuk, but the campaign was more systematic and at a higher level against her. Marginal candidate Serhiy Ratshniak, Mayor of the Trans-Carpathian capitol city of Uzhorod, was openly anti-semitic against Yatseniuk. Ratushniak’s views did not win widespread support and Yatseniuk still won more votes than the mayor in Uzhorod. Ratushniak came in 16th out of 18 candidates with only 0.12% of the vote.
Anti-semitism was not a threat to Yatseniuk’s campaign as he was never going to enter the second round. He came in fourth with 7% of the vote. Yatseniuk, who is from Chernivtsi, has denied having Jewish origins.
The anti-semitic campaign against Tymoshenko presented more of a threat against her winning the presidency. I myself witnessed anti-semitic leaflets distributed throughout Galicia during the last week of the second round that called upon Galicians to not vote for Tymoshenko as she is allegedly ‘Jewish’.
Such spurious allegations had been around for the last 2-3 years but had come to the surface in the 2010 elections with the support of President Yushchenko. His allies in Lviv’s Rukh, such as Yaroslav Kendzior, who was expelled by Rukh leader Borys Tarasiuk, a supporter of Tymoshenko, had openly described Tymoshenko as the ‘Jew in the braid’.
The West Ukrainian branch of the Ukrainian Language Society ‘Prosvita’ had published booklets by the rabid anti-Tymoshenko former parliamentarian Dmytro Chobit which also claimed she had Jewish origins. Tymoshenko’s father had separated from her mother when she was three and his surname was Grigorian, suggesting an Armenian ethnic origin.
Regardless of Yatseniuk’s or Tymoshenko’s ethnic heritage they were both born in Ukraine and are therefore ‘Ukrainian’ as defined by Ukrainian legislation. The European norm is to use territorial and therefore civic criteria to determine citizenship, not ethnicity. The only exceptions who used ethnic criteria were Germany, Latvia and Estonia but all three have moved towards the civic norm.
Yushchenko stirred the issue of Tymoshenko’s ethnicity over the last two years by casting doubt on her Ukrainian patriotism. In August 2008 the presidential secretariat issued a 300-page dossier revealing her alleged ‘treason’. The dossier was returned by the prosecutor-general’s office as not constituting any criminal evidence of ‘treason’.
Although the dossier had been prepared by secretariat deputy head Andriy Kyslynskyi, who was then promoted to the position of deputy chairman of the Security Service (SBU), the allegations of ‘treason’ and ‘un-Ukrainian’ stuck to Tymoshenko. Kyslynsky was discredited and removed from the SBU after it was found that he had forged his University degrees on his CV.
Yushchenko repeatedly argued that Ukraine needed a ‘Ukrainian’ government indicating he did not believe that Tymoshenko is a ‘Ukrainian’. Yushchenko campaigned during the second round in favour of not voting for either of the two candidates, Tymoshenko and Viktor Yanukovych (see leaflet).
This served to dampen the ‘orange’ vote in Western Ukraine and reduce votes for Tymoshenko (Yushchenko’s call for a double ‘no’ vote would not have been listened to in Eastern Ukraine where he had no support). Tymoshenko received three million fewer votes than Yushchenko in December 2004 while Yanukovych won approximately the same number of votes in 2010 as he had in December 2004.
Yushchenko claimed that both candidates were allegedly ‘Moscow projects’, a view that he has stuck to. On a visit to Lviv on March 10, Yushchenko said that the Tymoshenko bloc are ‘not the kind of patriots who form the Ukrainian viewpoint’.
In the second round of the elections, nationalist groups in Lviv and the diaspora rallied to Yushchenko’s call to vote against both candidates. Yuriy Shukhevych, son of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army commander whom Yushchenko had honored in 2007, was a leading supporter of the ‘no’ campaign.
So too were nationalist parties, such as Oleh Tyanybok’s Svoboda (Freedom), the Congress of Ukrainian Nationalists (KUN), as well as the Andriy Melnyk (OUN-m) and Stepan Bandera (OUN-b) wings of the émigré Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. All four political forces supported Yushchenko’s double ‘no’ vote campaign.
Appeals to vote against both candidates were published widely in the Galician media. I was shown evidence that these were paid for by the Lviv branch of the Yanukovych election campaign, without, I was told, authorization from the central headquarters of his election campaign.
Views of Tymoshenko as ‘unpatriotic’, sometimes tinged with anti-semitism, had moved during the last two years to the Ukrainian diaspora. A senior member of the Congress of Ukrainians in Canada (KUK) lambasted Tymoshenko as a ‘Jew’ to myself last year.
I pointed out to him that mixed marriages, like those of my parents, was the norm for Ukrainian men in Britain who came from the military or slave labor camps, like my father, to Britain in the late 1940s because there were few Ukrainian women available to marry. The émigré OUN-b had a strong base in Britain which provided proportionately the largest financial contribution of any Ukrainian diaspora to that organization. How ironic that this was a diaspora composed of mixed marriages and therefore not ‘pure Ukrainian’ in Yushchenko and the KUK leader’s eyes.
The Ukrainian diaspora stayed very silent during most of the 2010 election campaign, unlike five years earlier, because it had partially bought into the Yushchenko view about both candidates lack of ‘patriotism’ who would enter the second round. Tymoshenko had successfully established herself with the diaspora during her speech and meeting with World Congress of Ukrainians (SKU) leaders at its August 2009 Lviv congress.
But, the SKU had entered the elections late in the day with a statement only issued on February 2, five days before round 2, that indirectly called upon Ukrainians to vote for Tymoshenko. Had the SKU been on holiday since the August 2009 congress and only woken up in February to the Yanukovych threat?
Former SKU head Askold Lozynsky issued strongly worded support for Tymoshenko. Lozynsky, as with SKU leaders, are from the OUN-b milieu and had therefore broken with the ‘no’ campaign initiated by Yushchenko and supported by both wings of the émigré OUN.
The supreme irony of the 2010 elections is that anti-semitism in Western Ukraine directed against Tymoshenko and fanned by Yushchenko could have been one of the factors that led to the election of the pro-Russian autocrat, Yanukovych. In a 50:50 election where every percentage point counts the ‘no’ vote could have proven to be decisive in Tymoshenko’s defeat.
A second conclusion is that the Ukrainian diaspora cannot hope to counter charges of anti-semitism against Bandera or itself unless it condemns such views within its ranks. When Yushchenko fanned the flames of Tymoshenko’s ‘un-Ukrainianess’ and his supporters went further and unleashed spurious anti-semitic allegations of her ‘Jewishness’ no Ukrainian diaspora organization issued a protest.
Suspicions about Yushchenko’s ‘patriotic’ motives should have emerged over the intentional timing of the decree to honor Bandera on the eve of the second round. This was undertaken to undermine Tymoshenko’s campaign by mobilizing Eastern Ukrainian voters against the ‘nationalists’. Nothing could have stopped Yushchenko issuing the decree any time during the last five years.
And yet diaspora Ukrainians and Galicians still have sympathy for the ‘patriotic’ Yushchenko. A majority of Ukrainians on the other hand, see him as the worst of the three presidents to have ruled the country and who did more than anything to bring about Yanukovych’s election.
Yanukovych’s thank you was not to make Yushchenko Primer Minister, as he had hoped, but to make the non-Ukrainian speaking Nikolai Azarov his Prime Minister and the Ukrainophobe Dmytro Tabachnyk the Minister of Education in the new Kuchma-2 government. Thank you Yushchenko.

Only psychologists would be able to diagnose this phenomenon. Wonder what Freud would have said?