“Family” on the March

Mykola Riabchuk

Ukraine has entered the New Year with a new government approved in the parliament by the Party of Regions, their Communist satellites, and a dozen “independents” engaged by both hook and crook. There are few changes in the content of the new-old government, either in personalities, or (even less) in its spirit, i.e. the expected policies. Some ministers, like Borys Kolesnikov, moved into the parliament to serve as MPs; others, like Valery Khoroshkovsky, resigned citing policy disagreements; and still others were moved to honorable positions as presidential advisers, like SBU chief Ihor Kalinin and Minister of Defense Dmytro Salamatin, or were promoted to seemingly prestigious but less influential positions of deputy prime ministers, like former Minister of Foreign Affairs Kostiantyn Hryshchenko and former Minister of Energy and Coal Industry Yury Boyko.

There are no signs, however, that all these moves were connected to the incumbents’ policy failures or corruption scandals, and no signs that the new nominations are merit-based and policy-driven. Again, more than half of the ministers were either born in the Donbas region or made some crucial part of their careers there. It seems the president and his team feel no need to hide or justify this peculiar regional cronyism—staffing police, judiciary, and tax services all over Ukraine with Donbas people [http://expres.ua/main/2012/01/31/59312], giving various preferences to regional business, or endorsing over 46% of the budget subventions for social and economic development to two privileged oblasts, Donetsk and Luhansk, – 618 million UAH ($76.2 million)  [http://www.epravda.com.ua/columns/2012/12/24/352306/].

The only shamelessness overshadowing this regional cronyism is the nepotism of the president and his son. The latter is particularly notorious for the promotion of his close friends and business associates to top governmental positions. Now, his clients have taken an even firmer grip over Ukraine’s economy and law-enforcement agencies. Besides the General Prosecutor’s office, which fully staffed with Yanukovych’s loyalists from Donbas, and the Security Service and Ministry of Defense subordinated directly to the president, the Family controls the Interior Ministry, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Agrarian Policy, National Bank, and a newly created Klondike—the Ministry of Revenues and Duties, which has replaced the Customs Service (loaned out until recently to the Communist allies) and National Tax Administration. The most conspicuous event is the rise of the 36-year-old Serhiy Arbuzov, within a few years, from the manager of a minor bank in Donetsk to the head of the National Bank and, now, to first deputy prime minister. Rumors are afoot that it is only a matter of time until he replaces incumbent Prime Minister Mykola Azarov.

Serhiy Leshchenko, a leading Ukrainian investigative journalist, aptly characterizes the new government as representing the “undisguised advance of the ‘Family’ into the main power cabinets and onto the major budget flows… Whereas filling and distribution of the budget was already under the ‘Family’s’ control, the really new acquisition by Sasha-the-dentist [Yanukovych junior] is the Ministry of Energy and Coal Industry given to Eduard Stavytsky” [http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2012/12/25/6980434/].

According to Leshchenko, Stavytsky facilitated a number of business schemes for the Family, including the murky privatization of the Mezhyhirya estate for Viktor Yanukovych [http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2009/11/5/4293541/].

These six persons—Arbuzov, Stavytsky, the Interior Minister Vitaly Zakharchenko, the Minister of Finance Yury Kolobov, the Minister of Revenues and Duties Oleksandr Klymenko, and the Minister of Agrarian Policy Mykola Prysiazhniuk are nicknamed the “Big Six”—the core of the inner circle of the extended Yanukovych “Family.” Consolidation of their positions in the government, Leshchenko argues, reflects Yanukovych’s increasing distrust of outsiders. “He agrees to entrust his future exclusively to the people with whom he has profited within the past years in power.”

Whether these people will be able and willing to carry out the much-needed reforms, which would inevitably undermine the Family’s profits, is a rhetorical question. No one has ever heard of any reformist plans, or even serious activities among them. They have very “limited competence to rule the country”, the Polish analyst Slawomir Matuszak implied delicately in his report last year on the “Oligarchic Democracy. The Influence of Business Groups on Ukrainian Politics.” Therefore, he concludes, “While future reshuffles among the groups of influence are possible (and will certainly take place), there is still little chance that the model of relations between the ruling class and big business will change, at least in the medium term” [http://www.osw.waw.pl/sites/default/files/Prace_42_EN.pdf].

Dmytro Mendeleyev defines these types of managers as “typical schemers” (схемотехніки) – people whose major goal and main skill is to “extract more money [for the Family] by means of newer, faster, and more efficient schemes” [http://politikan.com.ua/8/11/0/51147.htm].

Such a deeply dysfunctional regime, Alexander Motyl argues, is a “leading candidate for stagnation and decay. And, sooner or later, the sultanistic Yanukovych system will collapse under its own dead weight.” Motyl tends to believe that this will happen rather sooner than later because the regime has already attained the “highest stage” of sultanism and can experience little institutional development in the next three to eight years: “Yanukovych and his family cannot acquire more power, the other institutions of government cannot become more meaningless, and the Regionnaires cannot become more rapacious” [http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/alexander-j-motyl/yanukovych-ruin-and-its-aftermath-part-1].

He is wrong. The Family has acquired a lot of power but can take still more by destroying alternative centers of power and wealth and eliminating the remnants of relative pluralism in Ukraine. At least one institution, the parliament (not to mention some city and regional councils), is not yet meaningless, and the Family might be tempted to emasculate it completely. And the rapaciousness of the ruling “elite” still has some space for development (privatization of land, takeover of citizens’ bank savings, sale of the national sovereignty, and the like): intestinal worms basically do not care much about the organism they exhaust.

We, the experts, may be perfectly aware that such a system has no prospects for the future and sooner or later “will collapse under its own weight.” But this does not mean that the rapacious “elites” understand this as well, and that even they do, they believe in a “sooner” rather than “later.” As Alexander Motyl himself acknowledges: “Because sultanistic regimes are invariably corrupt and conservative, there is no reason to think that the avaricious mediocrities who man the Yanukovych system will be able or willing to sacrifice their well-being to vague notions of reform, especially if reform undermines their power and privilege.”

Rather, logically, they would try to tighten the screws and accelerate the looting of resources, while keeping the population, as it always has been in this country, at the minimal subsistence level.

A few years ago, an influential member of the Party of Regions and of the parliament, former “red director” and current oligarch Volodymyr Landyk made a revealing statement at the end of a lengthy interview. It reflects the mentality of his class and the political force that runs the country but is seldom expressed so candidly:

“What is the difference between Ukraine’s East and West?” – the journalists asked.

“Well, just take a look how a steel worker or machinist works in the East. There are terrible conditions. He earns $200-300. In the meantime, vuyko [a derogatory name for Westerners] says: ‘Why should I work for such money? I’d rather go to a Pole, and do some house work for him, he’ll give me a 100 bucks, and then I’ll come again [to Poland].’ They have such a mentality. We planned to open our factory in Ivano-Frankivsk. But failed. We had to bring our people there by train because vuykies did not want work. Even though we offered the same salary as in Donetsk.”

And what is Mr. Landyk’s conclusion? Should he increase the salary at least to the Polish level? Or, maybe, ameliorate the “terrible conditions”? Definitely not!

“Everyone must work. We should close the borders and produce our own products. We’ll try to do this within the next ten years: or longer, if necessary” [http://obkom.net.ua/articles/2010-11/05.1739.shtml].

Unfortunately, this tells more about Ukraine’s probable future than all the government’s programs, president’s statements, and the shrewd analytical deliberations of political pundits.

HAVING THE CAKE AND EATING IT TOO

Mykola Riabchuk

On the eve of President Vikto Yanukovych’s visit to Moscow on December 19, many Ukrainian experts were confident that the game was over and the beleaguered Ukrainian president would accept Putin’s invitation to the Customs Union as a sine qua non condition for the much-needed lowering of gas prices. The visit was postponed, however, because the agreement on energy cooperation had not been yet finalized http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2012/12/21/6980243/.

There are also some unofficial explanations of the canceled event, ranging from Putin’s whim to a miraculous call from Brussels and promise to soften the EU’s stance on the association agreement. The most feasible argument was discussed in detail in Ekonomichna pravda: some Ukrainian oligarchs have raised a new rescue idea, very similar to the old one realized by the unforgettable RosUkrEnergo http://www.epravda.com.ua/publications/2012/12/19/351560/.

Since his accession to power, Viktor Yanukovych has seemed to be musing over the classical question: how to have one’s cake and eat it too? In other words, how can one exploit the economy for the benefit of cronies and kinsmen, yet keep it alive? How to imitate a democracy and retain authoritarian power? How to befriend the West but avoid the burden of incorporating Western values and the rule of law in particular? How to gain concessions from Moscow without conceding one’s own and one’s clan’s sovereignty?

So far, the process of eating has gone much more smoothly than that of keeping the country afloat. Those perusing Ukrainska Pravda or other independent news sites regularly, would find, every day, a whole series of new facts about some government schemes: misuse of funds, tax evasion, dubious purchases at exorbitant prices from murky off-shore intermediaries, raider attacks, scandalous court rulings, and various examples of lawlessness that make up a fabric of Ukrainian social reality. Remarkably, all these facts that would cause scandals in a normal country and lead to dismissal of corrupt officials and a court investigation, evoke typically no official reaction in Ukraine. If something does not exist on TV (fully controlled by the government), it does not exist at all. Actually, only 20 per cent of the population obtains information from the Internet, whereas 80 per cent receives it primarily or exclusively from TV.

The government seems to believe in the virtual TV world it created for the gullible population. Nothing the government did within the past two months signals any desire to change course, tame the appetites of the “Family,” and carry out comprehensive reforms that may be the only way to save the country. Neither the clear popular vote against the incumbents, nor international condemnation of the rigged elections, nor the dire state of the Ukrainian economy and the even bleaker prospects for the future have compelled the president and his team to revise a single item of their impending disastrous policies.

First, the 2013 national budget was rubber-stamped by the parliament in the best traditions of the ruling Party of Regions: without any discussion but with numerous loopholes and tasty morsels for the “Family” insiders and associates.

Secondly, the new parliamentary majority was formed through the familiar pattern of bribery, blackmail, and intimidation of independent MPs. Many of the latter are connected to various businesses, either personally or via close relatives, and are therefore highly vulnerable to government influence. Opposition MPs are also subjected to pressure. So far, only two of them, from Yatseniuk’s party, have switched sides openly, but reports suggest that many more are being “persuaded” by various means to make the “right” choice http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2012/12/13/6979494/.

Thirdly, even though the new government has not yet been formed, the approved return of Mykola Azarov to the position of the prime minister does not bode any significant changes to the previous stagnant and corrupt policies. The election of 66-year Volodymyr Rybak, Yanukovych’s close friend from Donetsk, as chairman of the Ukrainian parliament, also confirms the desire to preserve the status quo and keep away any strong figures from top governmental positions that might provide them a good platform in the future to threaten Yanukovych http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2012/12/14/6979768/.

And fourthly, the outgoing parliament has rubber-stamped one more document that might pose grim consequences not only for Ukraine but also for Yanukovych himself. This was the law on national referendums that is widely believed to be a vehicle for his re-election for a second or even third term but might also become a tricky instrument in the hands of pro-Moscow forces to undermine the sovereignty of both Yanukovych and Ukraine in general.

The controversial law was passed at the first reading two years ago and seemed to have been forgotten until last November when the de-facto electoral defeat of the Party of Regions buried the “Family’s” hopes of mustering a qualified majority of two-thirds of MPs in the new parliament to amend the constitution at Yanukovych’s convenience, as has occurred in several post-Soviet states to satiate local dictators. Now, the anti-constitutional law on referendums means that the authorities can bypass the last remnants of constitutionalism in Ukraine by transforming the results of any plebiscite directly into law, without the need for parliamentary approval.

The referendum can be initiated either by Verkhovna Rada or the “people.” That latter make take such an initiative is very unlikely, however. Even if the “people” collect the required 3 million signatures to support a proposal, there is no independent judiciary in Ukraine to protect these signatures from being dismissed as “fake” by authorities, as happens on a daily basis in Putin’s Russia http://zakon1.rada.gov.ua/laws/show/1286-12.

It is a ticking bomb that is much more dangerous for Ukrainian democracy and sovereignty than any other of Yanukovych’s initiatives, including joining the ominous Customs Union. So far, all the Moscow-led “integration” projects have brought unimpressive results. All Russia’s neighbors are well aware what that kind of “integration” means. Few of them dare, however, to utter a definite “no” to those tricky initiatives (Georgia might be the very graphic exception). Therefore, they typically say “yes, but…” And that “but” stands for various forms of lip service and sabotage that undermines effectively “integration” projects without a direct and potentially dangerous confrontation with Moscow.

There is no reason to believe that Yanukovych’s “Family” is eager to give up Ukrainian customs to any “union” and deprive themselves of such a powerful source of income. The greed of these people might be the best if not the only guardian of Ukraine’s sovereignty–at least as long as their personal security in Ukraine is not under threat. But their incompetence and provincial naivety can make them (and all the nation, alas) an easy prey of the seasoned KGB hunters. Neither the 2010 “Kharkiv agreements” nor the recent scandal with LNG terminal (when the government signed an agreement with a bogus representative of a Spanish company) give much credibility to the alleged “professionalism” of the ruling team.

In October 2012, a leaked conversation of a Russian “political technologist” Semen Uralov, who worked in Odesa for the leader of the “Rodina” party Igor Markov, referred to the eventual victory of the unambiguously pro-Russian forces in Ukraine supposedly led by Viktor Medvedchuk. They implied also an honorable exile for Mr. Yanukovych in his opulent Mezhyhirya mansion, with a private zoo among other luxury possessions. The interlocutors joked about him being “locked in with his kangaroos”: “Ігор днями зустрічався з ВВМ [Віктором Володимирoвичeм Медведчуком]. Той підтвердив загальну концепцію. Не пізніше 15 року все зміниться, а цього пiдoра заженемо до його кенгуру у Межигір’я, а поки що – збираємо групу у Раді” (http://pr-portal.com.ua/peredovitsa/15895.php?sphrase_id=5446311).

It might be a good time to ponder whether a Putin-sponsored and Medvedchuk-led referendum, with a properly formulated question, would not be a much quicker way to push Ukraine into the Russian orbit than the awkward, barely functioning, and a priori unworkable Customs Union.

DUPING THE PUSSY-CATS

Mykola Riabchuk

The last hopes some Ukrainians harbored for president’s veto over the highly divisive language bill, faded away on August 8, after Viktor Yanukovych signed it into law http://www.president.gov.ua/news/24960.html.

The result was largely predictable since the promotion of Russian language – at the cost of Ukrainian, as many critics opine – was a cornerstone of Yanukovych’s 2004 and 2010 presidential campaigns as well as of his Sovietophile Party of Regions. The propagandistic materials leaked from the party headquarters before the bill was even approved reveal a key role assigned to the language law by the party spin-doctors in the pending parliamentary elections campaign. And the brutal, extremely unscrupulous, and illegitimate way the bill was pushed through the parliament proves that the stakes are too high for the Party of Regions and, apparently, for the president.

Therefore, it was rather naïve to expect that the president would destroy what his team had been building so ruthlessly, breaching various laws and dismissing procedural subtleties. The calculation looks simple: whatever the president and his party do, they will not garner support from the democratic, Ukrainophile, and pro-European part of society. So, the main task is to mobilize the traditional, Sovietophile part of the electorate, which would probably never vote for the “democrats” perceived as “nationalists” and “Western hacks,” but may also reject the “Regionals” because of dissatisfaction with their disastrous social and economic policies. Some protest votes would probably benefit the Regionals’ satellites: the Communists on the virtual left and Natalia Korolevska’s “Avanti Ukraine!” in the quasi-liberal “center.” Still, the problem of mobilizing the Regionals’ core electorate remains topical since many of those people may simply ignore the elections, facilitating thereby the chances of the opposition.

The estimated size of the Sovietophile electorate in Ukraine is about 40%. This does not comprise a majority but the Party of Regions has good reason to believe that the half of the parliament elected from the territorial districts (not from the party lists) will bring them the much-needed majority thanks to the so-called independents. Most of them ultimately appear very dependent on the incentives or intimidation or both from the authorities and usually end-up in the pro-government camp.

The plot of the “Language Bill” was essentially clear but some dramatic devices were invoked to create an effective atmosphere of suspense and intrigue. First, there was last year’s precedent when the law on official use of the Soviet red flags was passed and even signed by the president but cancelled eventually by the hyper-loyalist constitutional court. (This actually may happen again but probably only after the parliamentary elections. The abandoned law would not bring Yanukovych much love and gratitude from Ukrainophiles anyway but would certainly give him an additional trump-card for some manipulative games in the future – something that his predecessor Leonid Kuchma understood perfectly).

Secondly, the head of the parliament Volodymyr Lytvyn refused to sign the bill citing multiple violations of the procedure http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2012/07/4/6967984. But his resignation was not accepted by the parliament and he was ultimately forced to comply, possibly blackmailed by the “Regionals” because of his alleged involvement in the Gongadze affair http://news.liga.net/ua/news/politics/707846-litvin_p_dpisav_skandalniy_zakon_pro_movi.htm.

Thirdly, the professional “doves” in Yanukovych’s team strained every sinew to convey to the public the president’s deep concern with the le controversies and his sincere desire to find a reasonable compromise that would not harm the Ukrainian language. Maryna Stavniychuk, his adviser, went so far as to recognize unequivocally that “the law was passed with flagrant violations of the articles 47, 116-122 and 130 of procedural statute (регламент) of the parliament, and many of its provisions contradicted the respective paragraphs of the Ukrainian Constitution and international documents ratified by Ukraine, including the European Charter of Regional and Minority Languages”http://obozrevatel.com/politics/16482-umovna-movna-krapka.htm. Moreover, Viktor Yanukovych himself recognized the controversial character of the law, referring to it as a crude document “splitting society” and therefore requiring “some improvements.”

And finally, on the very eve of the signing of the bill, President Yanukovych summoned a number of what still is called in Soviet newspeak “representatives of intelligentsia” to his summer residence in the Crimea to get their first-hand opinion on the hot issue. Next day the bill was signed into law to the great shock of the “representatives,” who justifiably considered themselves “tricked like kittens.” (The phrase became a popular description of the Party of Regions’ behavior after its informal parliamentary “director” Mykhaylo Chchetov used it boastfully to explain how they had cheated the opposition when pushing through the bill against all procedural requirements: “Мы их развели, как котят.” Remarkably, the Russian word “razvesti” – to sucker somebody – comes from the criminal jargon openly favored by the dominant Donetsk clan) http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2012/07/3/6967926.

To sweeten the pill, the president ordered the government to create an ad hoc working group that would elaborate proper changes to the law, with a stated goal to “ensure the full-fledged functioning of the Ukrainian language in all spheres of social life over the entire territory of the country.” This belongs next to the initial intention of the document to “guarantee the free development and use of other mother tongues of Ukrainian citizens” http://www.president.gov.ua/documents/14941.html.  Raisa Bohatyriova, the deputy prime minister in charge of humanitarian issues, was assigned to head the group, while the president’s guests, a.k.a. “representatives of intelligentsia,” were invited to participate in the deliberations. Ironically, the same offer was made also to the bill’s sponsors, Messrs. Kivalov and Kolesnichenko – a decision that some Ukrainian journalists declared was rather like asking Himmler and Goebbels to work on a law of de-Nazification.

The excessive demonization of two petty swindlers and opportunists is hardly appropriate but the metaphor is actually not about ideological similarity. It refers primarily to the intolerant, aggressive, and arrogant approach of these two persons and their use of political force to resolve any issue that requires a dialogue and consensus building. Serhiy Kivalov was the cynical head of the Central Election Commission that falsified notoriously the 2004 presidential elections and provoked the popular uprising known as the “Orange Revolution.” Today, he reportedly owns the TV channel “Academia,” a source of pro-Russian and anti-Ukrainian propaganda, with a flagship program “Background” full of unrestrained innuendos and overt propaganda of hatred http://rutube.ru/tracks/5357980.html.

Vadym Kolesnichenko, the other self-professed promoter of European charters and values in Ukraine, has a similar reputation as a professional crusader against “Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism.” Since Soviet times, the term has been used exactly like “Zionism,”i.e. to denigrate all things Ukrainian and to criminalize any vestiges of national identity beyond ethnography. Kolesnichenko’s fame in the parliament is based primarily on his pugilism, parading with Russian state symbols, and making disparaging remarks about Ukrainian language and culture. A dense cloud of scandals accompanies his activity. Within the few past months, he managed to steal Timothy Snyder’s article from the New York Review of Books for his own “antinationalistic” collection http://news.liga.net/news/politics/669428-professor_yelskogo_universiteta_vozmushchen_postupkom_kolesnichenko.htm, to organize “mass approval” for his draft bill by forging “letters of support” from various academic and minority institutions http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2012/05/23/6965117, and to falsify quotations and references in the explanatory notes to the document he submitted with Mr. Kivalov http://www.pravda.com.ua/columns/2012/07/30/6969744.

Perhaps the best characterization of this provocateur-at-large comes from his 2009 speech in the parliament where he lobbied for another “antinationalistic” bill: “On banning the rehabilitation and heroizing of fascist collaborators of 1933-1945.” To make his propagandistic speech more appealing to the fellow-MPs and especially for the general public, he embellished dry bureaucratic formulas with some personal details. At one point he referred not only to the UN documents and Nuremberg court decisions but also, as stated in the official stenogram, to the “bright memory of millions of Ukrainians who perished in their fight against fascism and bright memory of my father who burnt in a tank in Belarus defending the Soviet Motherland from the German-fascist occupants”” http://www.pravda.com.ua/columns/2012/07/30/6969744.

The only problem with the credibility of this speech (and Mr. Kolesnichenko in general) is that the speaker was born in 1958, roughly 15 years after his father reportedly perished in Belarus. (One may recollect here a reputed similar statement by Aleksander Lukashenko who was also impassioned so much by his own rhetoric that forgot he was born seven years after the war and, moreover, had actually never heard anything about his father).

Now one may guess how the “kittens”, a.k.a. “representatives of the Ukrainian intelligentsia,” would cooperate with the two very peculiar personages on the expected improvements to the law that has been absolutely lawless – illegal and illegitimate – in its spirit and letter, causes and effects, inception and delivery. My bet is that the crusaders might tone down their Ukrainophobic zeal on the boss’s orders; the “representatives” would receive from the president soothing promises of further support for Ukrainian language and culture; the law would be amended to meet (more or less) provisions of the constitution; so that little will change in today’s ambiguous situation, which is determined primarily not by laws but by the authorities’ goodwill and political expedience. All this will happen, however, after the elections, when logic suggests Yanukovych will backtrack a little bit in order to have more space for the eventual political bargaining and maneuvering.

Today expediency means appeasing supporters and undermining opponents. Kivalov, Kolesnichenko, and Chechetov accomplished the first part of the project, while the “representatives of intelligentsia” helped to complete the other part. First, they ran, at the president’s whim, to his dacha and, second, they got virtually nothing. To enhance the humiliation, the information was leaked that all of these affluent citizens flew at the cost of Bohdan Havrylyshyn, a Swiss-Ukrainian businessman, fully in line with the Regionals’ propaganda that the Ukrainian language issue is merely a Diaspora hobbyhorse http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2012/08/7/6970338.

Even though most of the “representatives” are not directly connected to the political opposition (actually most of them have successfully cooperated with both Soviet and post-Soviet authorities), all of them represent, in the popular mind, the “Ukrainian party,” i.e., the opposition as it is broadly understood. To discredit the opposition on the eve of elections is definitely a favored policy, but probably even more important for the regime is to involve as many public figures as possible in its illegal activity. This helps to normalize things abnormal and legitimize the illegitimate. The cheaters become the partners; the swindlers assume the role of respectable statesmen. The story may resemble the classical parable about Faust and Mephistopheles. The only problem is that the Ukrainian Mephistos are merely petty crooks, and the Ukrainian Fausts are merely dull and insipid collaborators.

[Editor's note: the views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of the Stasiuk Program for the Study of Contemporary Ukraine]

LANGUAGE LAW A PLOY TO DISTRACT VOTERS

David Marples

On July 3, the Ukrainian Parliament passed the second draft of a language law that would grant official status to minority languages in areas in which they are spoken by at least 10% of the population. Its acceptance sparked furious protests outside Parliament, with riot police using batons and tear gas against demonstrators.

Some analysts maintain that the law would undermine the status of Ukrainian, which has been the only official state language since the country gained independence in 1991. Others anticipate a deepening of a regional divide between the Ukrainian-speaking Western regions, and the mainly Russophone areas of the south and east.

Yet as usual with events involving the ruling Regions Party and its president Viktor Yanukovych, there is more to this move than is at first evident.

The circumstances of the bill’s passing were calculated to inflame. It was introduced without forewarning, when many deputies and Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn were absent. It received votes from 248 deputies, well over the required minimum of 226. The Regions deputies were supported by the Communist Party and People’s Party. Speaker Lytvyn subsequently offered his resignation, but it was rejected by the assembly the following day. Seven deputies announced they were starting a hunger strike in protest. There were angry demonstrations in Kyiv and in the western Ukrainian city of L’viv, the heartland of Ukrainian speakers. Protests are also planned by the Ukrainian community abroad in centers like Toronto.

In theory the bill—it still requires the signatures of the President and Speaker before it becomes law—would mean that Russian would take on official status in 13 of Ukraine’s 27 designated regions, i.e. 11 “oblasts” (provinces) and the cities of Kyiv and Sevastopol. In the far western area of Transcarpathia, Hungarian would gain official status. In Chernivtsi and southwestern Odesa, the same would apply to Romanian and Bulgarian. On the Crimean peninsula, the Tatar language would also gain such status. Altogether, Ukraine would have 18 “official languages”!

There is little logic to its sudden passing other than perhaps to enhance the electoral standing of the Regions Party in Russian-speaking regions prior to the parliamentary elections, anticipated in October. Language issues are hardly a priority in a state riddled with corruption and human rights issues, and suffering a sharp economic downturn. And although tempers are frayed, the number of protesters is small. A mere 1,000 turned out in central Kyiv on July 4, for example, barely enough to cause a flutter on the bustling Khreschatyk.

Also, should the law attain official status its implementation would be a bureaucratic and financial nightmare. Indeed, a representative of the Finance Ministry, Valentyna Brusylo, commented, perhaps indiscreetly, that it would likely cost some $1.5-$2 billion to introduce. Such expenses in an election year would be an issue of much greater contention than the language law itself. The Ukrainian government is in financial trouble: it recently agreed terms for a $3 billion loan from China’s Eximbank, payment for which will be partly in exports of grain up to 2.5 million tons per year.

Third, why do Regions deputies need to introduce a law formalizing the status of Russian, which already enjoys a privileged position? No doubt it will impress Russian president Vladimir Putin who visits Ukraine on July 12. But the question has been dragged up, by Yanukovych and earlier presidents, at every election and then ignored once a new president entered office.

The answer to all these questions appears to be that it is a calculated ploy to inflame and divide residents of Ukraine, a diversion from other issues that should be considered more urgent. The electorate has been sidetracked for the past month by Euro-2012, a successful but costly soccer competition that was well organized and won convincingly by the Spanish. The language law is the new diversion.

After its passing, as opposition deputies gathered in the streets to protest, the remaining 73 deputies passed a total of 20 new laws in a single day. These included new subsidies for the Donbas coal mines, which are at the center of Regions’ power base, a new rail connection to Kyiv international airport, and more funding for the Ministry of Justice and the Office of the State Prosecutor. The costs of the new laws amount to billions.

Because so few deputies were present, others simply voted in their place, pressing the “yes” button in the absentees’ seats in order to secure a majority for each new law. The strategy could be seen as cynical. But Regions deputies habitually pay lip service to the democratic process while finding ways to circumvent it.

The uproar over the language bill may be justified. But it is also a diversion, carefully calculated so that deputies are preoccupied and the rules of Parliament can be circumvented. In the meantime the ruling elite of Ukraine fritter away state funds without a care for the long-term consequences.

The language law is simply impractical, but it is not the main issue. Language does not divide the residents of Ukraine. The real problem is the ruling Regions Party, which treats the country as a personal fiefdom to be robbed at will and finds ingenious ways to ensure that it can continue to do so.

This article first appeared in the Edmonton Journal, 7 July 2012. [http://www2.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/ideas/story.html?id=0a732fad-db3f-4777-b245-c73bcf13873f&p=2]

LIKE FATHERS, LIKE SONS

Mykola Riabchuk

Recently, 18-year-old Oksana Makar was beaten and raped by three drunken youngsters in the South Ukrainian city of Mykolaiv. To hide the crime, the miscreants tied her up and set her on fire. Oksana later died in hospital from horrendous burns.

The city was shocked and hundreds of people took to the streets to protest after a rumor spread that the culprits had been released, placed under house arrest, and were likely to avoid punishment, which typically happens in Ukraine when the children of big bosses and wealthy businessmen are involved in crimes.

The rumors proved unfounded, but people have become so accustomed to daily lawlessness and the rampant impunity of the strong and wealthy that they tend, naturally, to overreact.

A few years ago, Dmytro Rud, the 25-year-old son of the Dnipropetrovsk prosecutor, ran down three women at a marked road crossing and disappeared after being placed under house arrest. Serhy Kalynovsky, the 23-year-old son of a rich oil trader, crashed at high speed into a parked car containing two passengers, killed both, and eventually escaped from the hospital and took a chartered plane to Israel. Oleksandr Shpyrko, the son of a colonel of the National Security Service in Odesa, heavily drunk, plowed into a boat on his scooter killing one person and injuring three. Again, as the typical story goes, he was released on probation and, after due pressure on victims, witnesses, investigators and judges, received a four-year suspended sentence, later repealed by an amnesty [http://tsn.ua/ukrayina/mazhorni-vitivki-yak-diti-vplivovih-batkiv-unikayut-pravosuddya.html].

By late 2010, as such tendencies became all too obvious, I began to collect the stories of violent crimes committed by Ukrainian VIPs and, especially, their offspring. The list is certainly not exhaustive since I picked up the stories occasionally, inter alia, while searching materials for different projects and screening only a handful of sources. Yet, having gathered about a hundred stories of this kind in less than a year, I found out it tempting to classify them and to denote some distinct features and tendencies.

First of all, the lion’s share of violent incidents in which VIPs and their progenies are involved pertains to speeding (usually in a state of drunkenness), or to some restaurant and post-restaurant brawls (again most frequently with the perpetrators in an inebriated condition). Predictably, young people are much more prominent in this activity, partly because of the age and respective hormones, and partly because their progenitors use (as a rule) personal drivers and bodyguards, in order to preclude such problems.

So, when a minor oligarch and MP from Luhansk, Volodymyr Landyk, happened to be stopped by a traffic policeman because his car was traveling at double the speed limit, he had no need to contest the charge. It sufficed to order his bodyguard: “Go and sort him out!” (The Russian form is much cruder: “Пойди въeби его”) [http://gazeta.ua/articles/374929)] and the issue was settled. The policeman ended up in a hospital with concussion and bruises to his chest, whereas Mr. Landyk swore solemnly that nothing illegal had occurred: “The injuries he has got, well, he had probably inflicted them upon himself, no one beat him!” (“Ті травми, які він отримав, напевно, завдав сам собі, ніхто його не бив!”).

This spectacular chutzpah seems to be the Party of Region’s trademark. Back in 2010, after the bloody melee in the parliament, when oppositionists blocked the podium protesting procedural violations and Mr. Landyk’s colleagues broke their noses in response, Mykhaylo Chchetov, the informal “director” of the Party’s parliamentary faction, brashly explained the incident to the journalists: “There was no assault. Maybe they [hospitalized oppositionists] beat their heads [against a wall] themselves and now decided to blame it on us.” («Драки никакой не было… Может, они сами головой бились, а теперь на нас сваливают” [http://glavred.info/archive/2010/12/17/170622-9.html].

In any case, whenever senior VIPs or their junior offspring are involved in killing a pedestrian or beating a commoner, the pattern of investigation and the subsequent findings are virtually the same. The speed of their cars is always recognized as being within the permissible limits and is never found to be 150-200 km per hour, the speed at which they usually drive. Alcohol is never found in their blood, even though witnesses often attest that they are barely able to speak or even stand. All of them are placed on probation, even though many fled from the accident scene rather than help the victim. In every case, the victims’ relatives and victims themselves (if alive) are intimidated or bribed or both, to withdraw their claims [http://gazeta.ua/articles/403732]. And witnesses are pressed by both the defendants and investigators to reconsider their earlier testimonies or merely to forget some details [http://gazeta.ua/articles/375925].

Another habitual feature of all these stories is their almost exclusive localization in Southeastern Ukraine—the area firmly controlled by the Party of Regions, alongside the capital city of Kyiv where an enormous number of national VIPs is ominously concentrated. It is no accident that all the heroes of these stories are either members of the Party of Regions or their close political-cum-business associates. The only story in my collection that occurred in the West of the country refers to a young man and his cronies at Kalush, Ivano-Frankivsk region, who tried to solve a road incident with the help of gas and traumatic [rubber bullet] pistols. Remarkably, the main culprit, yet again, was the son of the local Party of Regions MP Volodymyr Lychuk.

All these youngsters, like their parents, are strongly convinced that might is right. And they are very cognizant of the open secret of who holds the real power in this country and how. They have no doubt that the law, or whatever this silly word may mean in Ukraine, is on their side. Actually, it is them and their parents and friends who own it. They have captured the state like an alien army, and can pillage it now as they wish.

Police, as a rule, avoid confrontations with these new landlords and their bubbling offspring. (The poor fellow from Luhansk who dared to stop Mr. Landyk was an exception: his singular bravery, or perhaps naivety, would rarely be replicated by anyone, including himself.) One can see in this video how reluctant they are to detain an aggressive youngster whose heavily inebriated monologue sounds like a motto for his entire generation:

“I’m Vladimir Kryvko, f…! Get off my way, f…! I’m having a good time, as I like it. It’s up to me, f…, either to smell coke, or inject, or drink, or drive, or f…, or shoot. I’m Vladimr Kryvko! Any questions?” ["Я - Володимир Кривко, бл... ь! Відійдіть з моєї дороги, бл... ь! Я торчу, відпочиваю як я хочу. Я хочу, бл... ь, нюхаю кокаїн, хочу колюсь, хочу п'ю, хочу їду на машині, хочу е...у, хочу стріляю. Я Володимир Кривко! - Є питання?" [http://gazeta.ua/articles/425850)].

Last year, a big scandal occurred in Luhansk when Roman Landyk, a deputy of the city council and, yes, the son of the same Volodymyr Landyk whose bodyguard knocked out the traffic policeman, brutally attacked a young woman in a night club because she refused his gentle offer to have a good time with him at some other place [http://www.unian.net/ukr/news/news-444915.html]. The story would have probably have had no consequences for the junior, just as the earlier incident had had no impact on his father. But, unfortunately for him, it was recorded on camera and placed on the Internet. The authorities had to react, so they brought the playboy to court and sentenced him to three years in prison – suspended, despite the fact he had never repented. On the contrary, he constantly and openly threatened the victim and journalists with revenge, behavior that in a normal country may have cost him more than three years in prison. Today, the cheerful owner of a 230,000 Euro Bentley Continental needs only to wait for the next pardon (likely in August, by Independence Day) and then try to fulfill all his promises and concealed desires, perhaps with a better luck, i.e. no cameras around.

This assumption may sound somewhat grotesque, but all those who know the story of Dmytro Kravets, the son of a member of the Odesa regional council (one can guess from which party), would certainly recognize it as quite common. This car-lover had killed, at high speed, a young man and seriously mutilated his partner. The prosecutor (under the Orange government) demanded six years in prison for him but the government changed meantime, and the speedster received a pardon. What makes the story even more poignant is that Mr. Kravets Jr. had already been pardoned twice after receiving minor sentences for stealing 16 (!) cars, just for fun [http://tsn.ua/ukrayina/mazhorni-vitivki-yak-diti-vplivovih-batkiv-unikayut-pravosuddya.html].

One should not be surprised, however, by the leniency of Ukrainian judges, if they belong to the same caste as their VIP clients (and patrons). They cooperate in a mutually beneficial enterprise of state capture and looting. And in most cases, they expose the same love for a dolce vita and disrespect for the law. My favorite story of this kind is that of Dmytro Chernushenko, a former deputy of the Odesa city council and, now, a consultant for the anti-corruption (!) committee in the Ukrainian parliament. His drift to the capital coincided, remarkably, with his father’s career jump from the position of a judge in Odesa to the head of the Court of Appeal in Kyiv. Both events (and many more of the sort) coincided with Yanukovych’s ascendancy to power.

Last July, a young lawyer with his girlfriend who also appeared to be a member of the legal profession, a judge of the district court in Kyiv, went to a nightclub in Odesa in which all visitors were required to pass the metal detector gate. The pair refused and, reportedly tipsy, began a brawl with the club personnel. When the police arrived, the “Kyiv lawyers” badmouthed them with obscenities and promised all would be fired. The journalists also got their portion of slander: “I don’t give a s…t whether you’re journalists,” the young district judge put it elegantly, “You will pay for this!”

“We cannot do anything,” a police officer confessed to journalists, under conditions of anonymity, “If we detain them, we would have a lot of trouble. The most we can do is compile a protocol and charge them a minor fine for petty hooliganism…. We encounter problems like this all the time. Children of judges, MPs, top officials behave here like hoodlums. They even spit on the police. They can beat anybody and will be released regardless.” [“Сынки судей, чиновников и депутатов ведут себя в Аркадии, как последние хамы. Плюют даже на милицию. Могут избить любого - все равно их отпустят" (http://zadonbass.org/news/crime/message_33711)%5D.

It is depressing even to read the titles of these stories: “Policeman in Kyiv charged 225 hryvna [$28] for killing a mother with a child at a street crossing” [http://gazeta.ua/articles/375237]; “Judge from Kupyansk [Kharkiv region] who killed two people with his Jeep is acquitted” [http://gazeta.ua/articles/402656]; “A judge from Luhansk who killed a women with a boy at a street crossing is promoted to the High Court” [http://blogs.pravda.com.ua/authors/svirko/4d486d5f00cab/] ; “A young member of the Valky city council [Kharkiv region] kicked a 17-year-old girl” (the story is very similar to that of Mr. Landyk Jr., with the only difference that here the hero’s father, the head of the local council, did not try to excuse his scion: “He drinks too much. We tried to cure him but in vain. He is 26 years old, all I can do is give him a good telling off” [http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2011/10/24/6698926/].

Perhaps the ugliest story in this collection of the lawlessness that reigns supreme in Ukraine comes from the recent publication in Kyiv Post about three mobsters who, back in 2007, kidnapped a man’s business partner-cum-rival, tortured him for three days, and then, as the story relates, “tied an iron radiator battery to his back and tossed him over a bridge into a Dnipro River canal with the words: “Say hello to [Jacques] Cousteau!”

Only one of the killers, Oleksander Kudrin, was convicted for intentional murder and received a seven-year prison sentence, exactly like Yulia Tymoshenko for her unfortunate gas contracts with Putin. Two other accomplices, Serhiy Levchenko and the alleged ringleader Serhiy Demishkan, were given milder sentences on the lesser charges ofkidnapping and concealing a crime. District judge Volodymyr Yeremenko provided this remarkable revelation about the possible usage of heating radiators tied to victims’ backs: “There was no intent of premeditated murder,” he told the journalists. “They (the culprits) wanted to take him (the victim) to a notary public… Perhaps their actions led to accidental manslaughter” [http://www.kyivpost.com/news/nation/detail/122175/].

However strange the court decision, a real miracle happened in December 2010, when a Kyiv appellate court judge ordered an additional investigation into the case and freed Mr. Demishkan with a suspended sentence. The reason for the court’s lenience was very simple: Volodymyr Demishkan, Serhiy’s father, was the head of the state roadway service Ukravtodor and a good friend of the incumbent president Viktor Yanukovych.

Demishkan Senior deserves a book to himself, but it requires a genre that I would rather leave for Ukrainian followers of Mario Puso or Martin Scorsese. Suffice it to say that he is cofounder (with Messrs. Yuri Boyko and Serhiy Tulub, the incumbent and former ministers of fuel and energy) of the Society of the Hunters and Fishermen “Cedar,” patronized by the chief hunter of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych. Such patronage pays off: at the end of last year, “Cedar” received 9,000 hectares of highly valuable reserve lands in Crimea at cut-price rates [http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2011/12/26/6868443/].

To Mr. Yanukovych’s credit, neither of his two sons is alleged to have beaten traffic police or uncooperative girls, or to have tied radiators to the backs of their political rivals or business competitors. There was a minor incident with Viktor Yanukovych Jr. last year when journalists filmed him roaring drunk in the street and cursing with his full vocabulary. He did not asault anyone, however, nor even sue, though he threatened to do so after the video was placed on Youtube. Both he and his older brother Oleksandr are serious statesmen and businesmen (in Ukraine it is a normal combination), with personal bodyguards and therefore the state apparatus that can do the dirty jobs rather than they themselves [http://obkom.net.ua/articles/2012-03/02.1713.shtml].

Oleksandr Yanukovych came to prominence as the alleged shadow owner of “Tantalit,” a murky offshore company that lends the president the estate on which his opulent residency is located, as well as a helicopter and other facilities—using taxpayers’ money, of course, and doubtless at exorbitant prices [http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2011/11/21/6773868/].

This is how the pyramid ends. Or, rather, begins. And everything one sees at the bottom is just a reflection of what is happening at the top.

Toward an Anecdotal History of Ukrainian Politics

By Mykola Riabchuk

The second anniversary of Viktor Yanukovych’s presidency passed on February 25, and his presidency can be briefly defined in three possible ways: as a period of authoritarian consolidation, of imitative “reforms,” or of permanent and pervasive scandals. The latter definition is perhaps the best since it sheds revealing light on the previous two. In February, there were at least four major scandals – dramatic for their participants, anecdotal for outsiders, and highly instructive, in many ways, for political scientists and cultural anthropologists.

First of all, Roman Zabzaliuk, a member of the Parliament from the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, who switched sides at the end of the last year and joined the governing coalition, revealed the typical mechanism of recruiting opposition MPs by Yanukovych’s cronies. He confessed that he had acted as an “undercover agent” on behalf of his party leadership and, therefore, simulated acceptance of a tempting offer to join the pro-Yanukovych faction “Reforms for the [sake of the] Future,” at an impressive price of $450,000, plus an additional monthly allowance of $20,000 in cash for proper voting (http://www.telekritika.ua/doc/images/news/69665/page%2012-15.pdf).

The news by itself was hardly revealing since many other MPs have reported similar offers made to them at various times by Yanukovych’s people. The practice was not invented yesterday and certainly not by the Party of Regions. Observers remember how the pro-Kuchma majority was forged in the parliament in 2002, when two pro-presidential parties won only 20 per cent of votes but mustered eventually a formidable majority of both “independents” and opposition defectors.

Enormous and largely unrecorded and uncontrolled wealth accumulated by post-Soviet oligarchs enabled them to buy a host of officials, MPs, judges, journalists, et al. at dizzying prices. This is why an amendment was made to Ukrainian constitution in 2004 that required the pro-government majority in the parliament to be formed by factions and not by single MPs, i.e. defectors from other factions. In March 2010, Yanukovych’s supporters blatantly violated this law, which resulted in a sort of parliamentary coup d’etat and paved the way to further violations of Ukrainian laws and creeping usurpation of power by the increasingly autocratic ruler.

The only new thing in Zabzaliuk’s revelations is that he recorded his conversations with Mr. Ihor Rybakov, head of the faction “Reforms for the Future,” who allegedly gave him a bribe and discussed with him some other delicate matters. Thus, we can learn from the horse’s mouth not only the price-list for various deeds that can be considered immoral at best and criminal at worst but also how “Mr. Rybakov” (the real Mr. Rybakov, of course, denies any authenticity of the records) encourages Mr. Zabzaliuk to attract more defectors from the opposition and, most interesting, to recruit more “slaves” (in his words) in Western Ukraine in particular to work for the ruling party in the local electoral commissions as fake representatives of the opposition. This is a clear hint, one of many, at how the regime is going to stage the parliamentary elections later this year. Actually, the incumbents have little choice given that the popularity of the president and his party has fallen to the low teens and their staunch desire to stay in power indefinitely.

Zabzaliuk’s accusations were predictably downplayed by the government and pro-government media. The audio-clips are worthless since Ukrainian law does not consider unauthorized records as evidence. The fingerprints on “Rybakov’s money” are also no proof since he and his friends have already admitted they collected $100,000 for Mr. Zabzaliuk at his request, allegedly for a treatment abroad. And Mr. Pshonka, the prosecutor general (and president’s soldier, in case anyone has forgotten his earlier self-designation), announced that he saw no reason for a criminal investigation in this case since it was merely an internecine quarrel among MPs.

Zabzaliuk passed the money on to the Kyiv Children’s Hospital, but the major TV channels, predictably, ignored his generous move. Although the Tyzhden weekly that did report the story in detail and illustrated it graphically with fragments of “Rybakov’s conversation,” it was immediately withdrawn from the newsstands by some enigmatic order “from above” (http://www.telekritika.ua/news/2012-02-17/69665).

This might be considered the second biggest scandal of the month but since the official reaction of the Tyzhden managers to the incident is not yet clear, we can illustrate the creeping censorship in Yanukovych’s Ukraine with a no less revealing event. On February 14, Judge Olha Salamon of the Desniansky district court in Kyiv suspended the popular website “Dorozhny kontrol” (roadcontrol.org.ua) in response to a libel action by Hennady Hetmantsev, a traffic police officer, who had abused and humiliated a driver and then denounced the website for publicizing the video-record of his misbehavior. Remarkably, the judge shut down the site by a simple order, not by a court decision. Moreover, she closed all the content, not just the material in question. Still worse, she suspended the site for the whole period of court deliberations, which could last, in practice, for years. This is how multiple ways to destroy independent media in Ukraine are perfected.

Hetmantsev, one of the heroes of this ugly story, attained notoriety a year ago in Odesa after he tried to intimidate the Roadcontrol activists who had filmed his colleague Oleksandr Shvets insulting a Ukrainian-speaking driver by calling his speech a “cow language.” After the scandal, Shvets was reportedly dismissed from the traffic police, whereas Hetmantsev survived and retaliated as promised (http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2012/02/15/6958817/).

There are probably no business or personal ties between Mr. Hetmantsev and Judge Salamon. Her responsiveness to his groundless demand reflects not only widespread incompetence of Ukrainian judges in legal matters (it is an open secret that many of them simply buy their university diplomas and court positions), but also the arbitrariness of the entire system and its fundamental bias for the government against members of society. The judges, police, and prosecutors protect primarily the state and the authorities – with all their privileges and entitlements—but not the rights and freedoms of Ukrainian citizens.

The third scandal in February was related, once again, to the new government nominations. This time, Viktor Yanukovych surprised everyone by appointing Ihor Kalinin head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), and Dmitri Salamatin as Minister of Defense. Neither is a personal friend of the president nor a native of the Donbas region, as has been the norm for appointments over the past two years. Both of them seem to be acts of patronage by the president’s older son Oleksandr, a dentist who has emerged as a successful businessman. Last year, he reportedly placed his acolytes in the upper echelons of the National Bank, Ministry of Interior, and National Tax Administration (http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2012/02/3/6951682/).

None of them as yet gained prominence as major specialists in their fields. But this is probably not why they were hired (http://dt.ua/POLITICS/oy_ti,_ksivonko_moya_bogatirskaya-97141.html). Ihor Kalinin was a Russian KGB officer and Afghan war veteran who in 1992 for unknown reasons moved from Moscow to Kyiv and made a career in the SBU – all the way to the top, which may give Ukrainians pause for thought about Vladimir Putin’s dictum that KGB agents are appointed for life. Salamatin lacks even such dubious professional credentials. His entire experience in defense, to the best of our knowledge, amounts to a couple of scuffles with opposition MPs in the parliament during which he skillfully broke a few noses and jaws of his political opponents, and was rewarded henceforth by the president with the position of the head of the State Arms Trade Agency.

Born in Kazakhstan, Salamatin moved to Ukraine in 1999 as a Russian citizen and how he acquired Ukrainian citizenship remains a mystery. Even less clear is whether he relinquished his Russian citizenship, as Ukrainian law requires. Thus his appointment has led some observers to speculate on the “Russian hand” in Ukrainian politics and Yanukovych’s readiness to cave in to Moscow (http://tyzhden.ua/Politics/42594). More likely, however, is that Yanukovych does not trust his fellow-oligarchs and party bosses any longer, relying instead on a kind of Praetorian Guard. Or, as Alexander Motyl suggests, Yanukovych’s reliance on “complete outsiders can only mean that [he] is expecting serious trouble at home in the coming year and doesn’t think native cadres can do the job” (http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/alexander-j-motyl/yanukovych-brings-russian-thugs-back).

The fourth scandal is probably the most interesting and unusual. Earlier this month, in Odesa, customs officers confiscated 38 kilos of cocaine worth $7.5 million, hidden in pineapples and transported from Costa-Rica inside a refrigerator. The unusual part of the story is that the incident should not have happened because the cargo was “supervised” by one of four “fashionable” (as they are euphemistically called in Odesa) broker companies that de facto control the green corridor at the seaport. They have, reportedly, such influential patrons in Kyiv that neither customs nor security service officers dare to interfere in their business. At the moderate price of $10,000-$15,000 in kickbacks, therefore, they provide clients with a virtually customs-free access to the Ukrainian market (http://www.segodnya.ua/news/14340652.html).

There are two explanations of why the fashionable company failed to protect its client’s cargo from customs on this occasion. One story is that the power supply was disconnected from the refrigerator for a few days and the customs officers were surprised that the cargo owners were unconcerned. A more realistic version is that the cargo was tracked by the American anti-drug service from the outset and the search in Odesa was made at their request.

And here the unusual part of the story ends and the interesting part begins. The scandal was reported in detail by the popular tabloid Segodnia, owned by Rinat Akhmetov, the leading Ukrainian oligarch and Yanukovych’s main sponsor in the past. Whereas analysts muse on the real meaning of this publication – either Akhmetov is doing a favor for the Americans to persuade them to grant him finally a U.S. visa, or else he is fighting some business competitors, or merely tries to distance himself from the potentially damaging affair: no one (!) believes that the Ukrainian customs merely did their job, that it was a case of business as usual, and they caught the smugglers. And this is the point.

We live in the country in which no one believes the mass media simply report the news, customs take care of smugglers, and law-enforcement agencies protect the citizens rather than themselves and their real masters. Viktor Yanukovych is certainly not the main culprit and did not invent this system. But he is definitely someone who does his best to exploit its faults rather than to fix them. And, frankly, there are no reasons to believe that the next three years of his presidency are likely to be any different.

Under Western Eyes

Mykola Riabchuk

Ironically, the annual EU-Ukraine summit held in Kyiv on December 19 overshadowed all other political events in Ukraine over the past few weeks, even though its actual results were close to zero. Moreover, the meager results had been rather predictable since the Ukrainian government had not indicated any intention to ease its multifaceted pressure on civil society, nor had the EU looked ready to condone Kyiv’s increasingly authoritarian behavior.

Yet, the drama under the title “Ukraine–EU Association Agreement” had been played for so long and by so many actors, that most of the viewers could not merely give it up. Some expected a miracle, but many more simply watched the ship sinking, taking down with it sheaves of toughly negotiated documents.

Still, the Ukrainian crew looked surprisingly cheerful and the foreign guests apparently unworried. Unlike the viewers, all the participants of the performance had got what they wished. Ukraine’s friends like Poland or Sweden left the door open, i.e., the Agreement negotiations pending, albeit at the lowest speed possible and with the slimmest chance of being completed in any form in the foreseeable future. Ukraine’s opponents, like France and Germany, got a plausible excuse not to initial the Agreement they had not wanted to sign anyway. And the Ukrainian president got one more opportunity for publicity photographs with the EU Big Bosses and could display them ad nauseam on all the loyalist TV channels and newspapers. Now, he can continue his “European” rhetoric with even greater confidence.

Very few people believe in this rhetoric but this is of little importance. The main goal of president’s talks is not to bring Ukraine closer to the EU, but rather to prevent his own and his cronies’ expulsion from this prestigious club. Most of them, on a personal level, integrated into the EU long ago, with their families, businesses, bank accounts, and all the daily habits like shopping, holidaying, or health and relaxation. They may dupe Moscow, Brussels, and their own electorate with ideas of a Russian-led Customs Union, Single Economic Space, or Eurasian integration. This is for fools’ consumption—for ‘lokhi’, as they say. But for the real men, the “krutye patsany,” as they define themselves, there is a much better place called “Europe.” And they have already joined it—with no action plans and association agreements, merely with some stolen assets, laundered money, and diplomatic passports that allow them, unlike common Ukrainian “lokhi,” to enter the Schengen fortress without visas.

“Lokhi’,” i.e. Ukrainian society, seems to be the only loser in this whimsical game between the Ukrainian government and EU bureaucracy. Half-measures and general incoherence badly hamper EU policies everywhere, not only in Ukraine. On the one hand, the EU was right to postpone the initialing of the Agreement for some technical reasons, and to condition its signing and eventual ratification with clear demands for restoration of democratic practices in Ukraine. On the other hand, this reasonable decision was not buttressed by a set of additional sticks and carrots. EU politicians seem to believe that the Association Agreement per se is a sufficient bonus for the Ukrainian leaders to strive toward. This might have been true if Mr Yanukovych et al cared a little about something they barely understand: the national interest. This is hardly the case, however. Therefore, a tougher approach is needed, something the feckless EU fails to apply even against bloody dictators from Central Asia.

Such an approach was clearly outlined by Andrew Wilson, a leading expert on Ukrainian affairs, in his policy memo for the European Council on Foreign Relations. He suggested the EU leaders adopt a twin-track approach: “The agreements cannot be formally signed, but should be kept alive until Ukraine is ready to implement the conditionality laid out in resolutions by the European Parliament and other bodies. But lecturing Ukraine on human rights at the summit will have little effect. The EU should also move towards sanctions that show its red lines have not been dropped; targeting the individuals most responsible for democratic backsliding and signaling more general vigilance against the Ukrainian elite’s free-flowing travel and financial privileges in the EU” http://www.ecfr.eu/page//UkraineMemo.pdf .

Since the EU has been reluctant to introduce any serious sanctions against the post-Soviet autocrats, especially in resource-rich countries like Russia, Kazakhstan, or Azerbaijan, their Ukrainian twins have very little to worry about. In December, Yanukovych and his Party of Regions continued their Gleichschaltung in both political life and the economy. First, the Constitutional Court of Ukraine approved (what a surprise!) the decision of the parliament that allows the government to pay social benefits to various categories of people at its whim—even though in past years the Court, not yet staffed with the president’s loyalists, twice rejected similar claims as a violation of the national constitution http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2011/12/27/6870668 . Second, the government of Crimea ceded 9,000 hectares of valuable land to a murky hunters’ society registered to three pals of the president http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2011/12/26/6868443/. Third, the President’s 38-year-old son acquired a few more industrial assets and entered the lists of Ukraine’s top hundred richest men http://www.jamestown.org/single/?no_cache=1&tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=38740. Fourth, the President’s friend and sponsor Rinat Akhmetov received a concession for the virtually monopolistic export of electricity http://www.epravda.com.ua/publications/2011/12/15/309807/, just as another friend and sponsor of the president, Yuri Ivanyushchenko, allegedly acquired a monopoly over the export of grain a few months ago http://lb.ua/news/2011/03/28/90044_Yura_Yenakiivskiy_stav_generalom.html. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has been completely emasculated and de facto subordinated to the presidential administration, under the pretext of the so-called judicial reform http://www.kyivpost.com/news/opinion/op_ed/detail/119708/. And another band of “professionals” from Donbas has occupied several dozen top governmental positions in both Kyiv and other regions of Ukraine http://gazeta.ua/articles/politics-newspaper/_yanukovich-priznachae-na-posadi-lyudej-yakih-znayut-jogo-diti/409143.

Once again, Ukraine was downgraded in 2011 by various international agencies in terms of democracy, civil rights, freedom of speech, corruption, inequality and injustice, conditions for doing business, etc. This might be a part of a global anti-Yanukovych conspiracy, as his propagandists suggest, but domestic opinion surveys confirm the same tendencies. In May, a revealing poll was carried out nationwide by the reputable Institute of Sociology of the National Academy of Sciences. The respondents were asked how, in their opinion, the situation had changed in various social fields within the past few months. The answers (below) shed some light on the essence of Yanukovych’s “reforms” that arguably required some curbs on civic freedoms and democratic institutions:
Changed
for worse Not
changed Changed
for better
Economic situation in Ukraine in general 58.1 37.1 4.8
Level [standards?] of living 68.4 29.4 2.4
Level of corruption 37.2 59.8 3.0
Level of democracy in the country 33.1 63.9 3.0
Protection from authorities’ arbitrariness 36.1 61.4 2.5
Job guarantees and possibilities of employment 51.6 46.6 1.8
Source: Krytyka, 15:7-8 (2011), 6.

On December 21, at the annual Putin-style president’s press-conference, Mustafa Nayem from the news portal “Ukrainska Pravda” dared to put to Yanukovych the question that perplexes virtually all Ukrainians: “Viktor Fedorovych, you mentioned many times that the economic situation in the country is bad, people do not feel any improvements in their life, there are no money in state coffins for the victims of Chornobyl, or veterans of Afghanistan… At the same, we observe every day how your personal life is improving. We see how you rent a helicopter at $1 million [a year] from the company controlled by your son http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2011/07/20/6405659/. We know that in Mezhyhirya [Yanukovych’s 140-hectare estate near Kyiv, controversially privatized http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2011/11/16/6760109/%5D the construction work is continued by the companies controlled by your son. What is the secret of your success – why is everything so bad for the country and so good for you?” «I do not know what happy life and gossip about my family you are talking about,» responded the president, «I just want to say that I don’t envy you» http://blogs.pravda.com.ua/authors/leschenko/4ef2403ec1268/view_print/.

It is not clear whether the president lost his temper and overtly threatened the journalist or just completed one his numerous linguistic faux pas. It is remarkable also that he completely ignored the essence of the Nayem’s question about corruption, nepotism, and lack of restraint, and interpreted everything as indiscreet interference in his family life. This is a minor story that tells, however, a lot about both intellectual and moral quality of the ruling “elite.”

One may praise the EU for its reluctance to make a deal with these people, but one should also censure the EU for still tolerating these people far too much.

CORRUPTION AT THE TOP–DISAFFECTION BELOW. [STASIUK BLOG NOTES 2/11]

David Marples

The most recent survey conducted by the Razumkov Centre, conducted from over 2,000 respondents in all regions of Ukraine between 29 September and 4 October, i.e. prior to the conviction of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko on 11 October, indicates that the approval rate of President Viktor Yanukovych is falling. Only 10% of those surveyed “fully support” his policies, compared to 14.3% for Tymoshenko, 11.9% for Arsenii Yatsenyuk, and 10.2% for boxing champion Vitalii Klychko (better known in the Western media as Vitali Klitschko). Other politicians are to be found even further down the list, including Serhii Tigipko and Anatolii Grytsenko with 5.8% each, Dmytro Tabachnyk at 2.6%, and former president Viktor Yushchenko at 1.5%.

Those who answered “I do not support” showed negative ratings for both Tymoshenko (56.7%) and Yanukovych (54.6%), as well as for Yushchenko (80.4%). Not a single figure had a high rating in “fully support” than in “do not support,” suggesting the disillusionment of the electorate with the current crop of leaders (Zerkalo Nedeli, 18 Oct). Another poll also shows that more residents of Ukraine prefer integration with the European Union than the Russian-led Customs Union, particularly in the western regions where 76.9% support Euro-integration compared to only 6.2% who favor joining the “Common Economic Space” with Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. Overall 43.7% of those polled support integration with the EU and 30.5% the Customs Union, both relatively high figures. Support for the former is highest among young people between 18 and 29, and lowest among those over 60. Those who favor the Customs Union offer a reverse generational demography, with backing highest among those over 50 and lowest among those 18-29 years of age (news.zn.ua, 25 Oct).

The behavior of the ruling administration continues to elicit concern both inside and outside Ukraine. Following the postponement of a scheduled visit of Yanukovych to Brussels, the European Parliament expressed regrets that the European Commission and Yanukovych would not have the chance to reestablish “a constructive dialogue” that could have resulted in an Association Agreement between Ukraine and the EU. The European Parliament “deplored” the sentencing of Tymoshenko to seven years in jail, noting that the law by which she was convicted dates back to Soviet times, and other laws do not conform to EU standards (Interfax Ukrainy, 27 Oct). The scheduled EU-Ukraine summit in December may deal with some of these issues. In general the EU response to the sentencing of Tymoshenko was relatively mild, perhaps because the Eastern Partnership group, which recently gathered in Warsaw, is preoccupied with the situation in neighboring Belarus, which was notably excluded from its decisions and about which a separate statement was issued by the Joint Declaration on 29-30 September (Council of the European Union, press release, 30 Sept).

However, little seems to improve as far as Ukraine’s ruling group is concerned. In late October, there appeared a report from Mariupol that employees of the giant Azovstal’ and the Illich Corporation, both of which are owned by tycoon Rinat Akhmetov, were being forced to take out membership in the Party of Regions. Employees were given two forms, one for membership in the PR and the other about payment of membership dues and asked to return the forms to the heads of their sections. Membership dues were said to be 1 UAH monthly for workers, 3 for engineers, 5 for senior foremen, and 10 for the head of the shop floor. Azovstal’ employs over 15,000 people, so the annual amount collected would be around 250,000 UAH annually, or double the budget of the Mariupol branch of the Party of Regions. Those who are reluctant to join could also be punished by deprivation of “bonuses” that account for as much as 40% of regular salaries. The report also indicated that those who were unwilling to join the PR and pay such dues could lose their jobs through reorganization of branches of the company. There were similar stories from Zaporizhzhya and Kharkiv, and in the latter city similar pressure was placed on students of the Skovoroda University (Ukrains’ka Pravda, Oct 26).

Tymoshenko’s Case versus the Ukrainian Cause

Mykola Riabchuk

The pessimists were right: the Pechersk district court has fully approved the criminal charge against Yulia Tymoshenko, the former prime-minister of Ukraine, and sentenced her to seven years in prison. This is the maximum term provided by the respective article of the Criminal Code. Additionally, Ms Tymoshenko was barred from occupying any public office within three consecutive years, and fined $190 million for the damages to the Ukrainian economy that she arguably incurred in 2009 by signing an unfair gas contract with her Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.

A few weeks ago, rumors emerged in Kyiv that the decision on Tymoshenko’s case had been decided in advance by President Viktor Yanukovych himself, and that the court had only to rubber-stamp the maximum prison term for his arch-rival. Even though Yanukovych defeated her narrowly last year in the presidential election, Tymoshenko still is the leader of the opposition and his main challenger. Whether the rumors were based on accurate information leaked from the president’s office or merely a gloomy intuition of Tymoshenko’s supporters, optimists had some reason to expect that the Western criticism of the kangaroo process would not be completely ignored by the Ukrainian authorities. The president who boasts of his “pragmatism” would surely not put at risk the entire project of Ukraine’s European integration for the dubious purpose of personal vengeance.

The additional three-year ban on taking a public office imposed by the court on Yulia Tymoshenko, suggests that the main driving force behind Yanukovych’s decision was not only vengeance but also fear. Tymoshenko is believed to be not merely the strongest challenger for the incumbent regime but also its real nemesis who would not hesitate to pay them in kind, and would likely do so on much stronger legal grounds. Now, through the court ruling, she is effectively excluded from both the 2015 presidential election with Mr. Yanukovych and the 2020 competition with his likely handpicked successor.

The court decision, announced on 11 October, provoked a storm of protest in Western capitals, especially in the European Union. The EU leaders, indeed, placed high stakes on pending negotiations about the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA) and Association Agreements with Ukraine and expected to finalize them by the end of the year. On many occasions, they warned Kyiv that they would hardly be able to maintain close relations with a country that applies selective justice against the leaders of the political opposition and criminalizes legitimate decisions of the previous government. That the warnings have been ignored has filled the Westerners with sheer indignation. Leaving diplomatic courtesy aside, they state clearly now that no Association agreement, with DCFTA as part of it can be signed until Ukraine proves its full commitment to European values.

It signifies not only a demand to release Yulia Tymoshenko and other political prisoners but also to stop government pressure on civil society, harassment of independent media, manipulation of laws (the election law in particular), and so on. The government seems to be lost. Its leaders apparently do not understand why a minor, in their view internal, issue has caused such a huge international furore, and how to get out of this lose-lose situation. Ironically, the Westerners themselves have greatly contributed to the current confusion. Since March 2010, they have benignly neglected the growing roughness and lawlessness of Yanukovych’s regime, starting with a de facto parliamentary coup d’etat and ending up with the shamelessly manipulated local elections and even more unscrupulous changes of the national constitution. In fact, the Europeans sent Yanykovych and his associates a very wrong signal: guys, as long as you can restore and maintain some order in this chaotic country, we don’t care much about law and democracy in your fiefdom. What the Westerners offered as a benefit of doubt, the Ukrainian authorities took as a carte blanche.

Now, the both sides are badly surprised and bitterly disappointed. The Westerners simply do not understand why Yanukovych ignored so defiantly their quite clear message to leave Tymoshenko in peace. And Yanukovych seems to be equally puzzled why they decided finally to react, having accepted tacitly all his tricks throughout a year and a half. He may believe, quite sincerely, that the EU reaction is just a show staged by the smart Western politicians for their candid electorate – exactly like the Tymoshenko trial is staged by his “goodfellas” for domestic purposes.

Whatever the rationale, Yanukovych seems not to fully understand that his reprisal on Tymoshenko is not the main reason for ostracizing him but just the last straw that broke the camel’s back, i.e. the patience of the EU leaders. One may speculate how many of them are truly concerned about Ukraine’s democracy and how many (likely the majority) that are using the case as the pretext to exclude a nuisance like Ukraine from the European project and, inter alia, to please the old pal Vladimir http://dt.ua/POLITICS/vin_pilyae_suk_pid_soboyu_a_vpade_krayina-89690.html. The fact is that the Ukrainian government has crossed the red line and entered uncharted land where they no longer receive the benefit of doubt and benign neglect for thuggish behavior, cheating and bluffing, for whatever reason.

In a way, Yanukovych committed the same mistake as his former boss Leonid Kuchma. He delegitimized himself, both domestically and internationally. He has lost credibility and, henceforth, will be seen not as a leader trying to fix a dysfunctional democracy, but as an arrogant autocrat who is striving to dismantle the remnants of political pluralism and genuine competition inherited from his predecessor Viktor Yushchenko. Hitherto, to maintain good relations with the EU, Yanukovych needed only to prove that he is not completely hopeless and autocratic – a not so difficult task in the context of post-Soviet sultans, dictators, and “national leaders.” After the Tymoshenko conviction a minimum pass will no longer suffice. A strong “C” is required, and this is a sea change since neither mentally nor institutionally are the Ukrainian authorities able to qualify.

Yanukovych may pardon Yulia Tymoshenko now, as some experts suggest; or may push the new Criminal Code through the parliament that decriminalizes Tymoshenko’s transgressions, as he hinted himself; or, vice-versa, he may open a new criminal case against her, as the Security Service of Ukraine has already announced http://news.dt.ua/POLITICS/sbu_spravu_za_borgi_pered_rf_porusheno_proti_timoshenko_i_lazarenka-89574.html. In either case, he would remain a lame duck president, despised at home and distrusted abroad, squeezed between the EU and Russia, and torn between two mutually exclusive but equally unreliable strategies of survival. One of them means submitting to the EU demands and accepting European values and respective behavior. This sounds promising, but looks very unlikely since neither the president nor his oligarchic team understands what those values mean and how they can be treated seriously, nor are they ready to accept fair play and expose themselves to free political and economic competition.

The alternative strategy is much more likely – to play possum as long as possible, defy the European Union’s pressure, to look for support in the Kremlin, to promise and not to deliver, to be smart like Aliaksandr Lukashenka, or at least Leonid Kuchma. The problem however is that Yanukovych is not that smart, nor are Ukrainians obedient enough, nor is the Kremlin eager to support all these smarties for a song. And last but not least, the Ukrainian officials-cum-oligarchs are not very happy with the looming prospect of being blacklisted in the EU like their Belarusian brethren.

The most probable scenario is that Yanukovych’s regime will make another attempt to cheat the Westerners. To this end, they may release Tymoshenko in order to continue reprisals against opposition, civil society, and the independent mass media, with the implicit goal to monopolize all the political and economic power http://www.pravda.com.ua/columns/2011/10/14/6665143/. If society resists the latter, they will employ coercion; if the EU applies sanctions against Ukraine, they will turn to Moscow.

Paradoxically, the same people who nurtured Yanukovych might become his political gravediggers. The Ukrainian oligarchs are very unlikely to follow the president in his drift to Moscow, and even less so his break with the EU. This group, however, is highly opportunistic and would never oppose the president openly until and unless society demonstrates its strength and the West steps up pressure.

Yanukovych’s Motives Murky

David Marples

The news that imprisoned former Premier of Ukraine Yulia Tymoshenko is now facing charges of embezzlement, linked to her time as the president of United Energy Systems of Ukraine in the 1990s, raises questions about the motivations of the Ukrainian government and President Viktor Yanukovych in particular.

Why was she jailed in the first place? And why has an old issue, linked to a time when virtually all the Ukrainian oligarchs had their hands in the public trough, suddenly resurfaced?

On October 10, Tymoshenko received a 7-year prison sentence for her part in a gas deal negotiated with Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin in 2009 that was “disadvantageous for Ukraine.” Throughout the trial she had expressed her contempt for the judge and prosecutor and argued that the procedure was politically motivated. Virtually all the Western governments concurred while Russia was furious that the 2009 agreement had been so publicly reopened.

Yanukovych, supposedly, wished to rid himself of his main political opponent before the parliamentary elections scheduled for October 2012. However, the trial and verdict endangered Ukraine’s chances of signing an Association Agreement with the European Union, which has been under negotiation for some time. Some critics, such as David Kramer of Freedom House, maintain that the discussions should be postponed until Tymoshenko and other opposition leaders have been released and pardoned.

But why was she tried and imprisoned at all?

One suggestion, offered by Dominique Arel, Chair of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Ottawa, is that Yanukovych persecuted Tymoshenko because he believed he could get away with it. The premise is that for the Europeans, relations with Ukraine are too important to be imperiled by a domestic quarrel.

Writing in a Russian source, analysts Maksim Logvinov and Vladislav Zhukovsky, think that the goal of the original trial was to force Russia to revise the price of gas sold to Ukraine. They also maintain that targeting Tymoshenko was a means to divert blame from the government for the economic crisis that Ukraine will face shortly because of the high prices of gas. However, the gamble failed because all the relevant parties—Russia, the EU, and the United States—took the side of Tymoshenko and criticized the Ukrainian authorities. In many ways the trial became a cause célèbre for the embattled Ukrainian opposition.

Yet the actions of Yanukovych still lack rationale and these analyses perhaps attribute a degree of Machiavellianism and political astuteness to the president that have not always been evident, despite his triumphant election victory in January 2010.

Ukrainian analyst Vitalii Portnikov has provided the most logical explanation: the initiatives in the Tymoshenko case are not coming from the president but from a “party of war” within the leadership that includes the head of the Secret Service (SBU), Valery Khoroshkovsky, Serhii Yevochkin of the presidential administration, the Energy Minister Yury Boyko, prominent businessman Dmytro Firtash, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Kostyantyn Hryshchenko. Their goal is to isolate Yanukovych and undermine any plans for integration with the EU or the Russian-led Customs Union. Both are perceived as threats to their own power.

The presence within this group of Firtash is possibly the most significant. An ally of former president Viktor Yushchenko, he established a position for his company RosUkrEnergo as an intermediary in the bitter gas war between Russia and Ukraine. Firtash offered to buy the gas from Russia and resell it to Ukraine.

Tymoshenko, a woman of formidable business acumen, cut Firtash out of the equation with the 2009 agreement. He is now officially back in business (he also controls much of Ukraine’s titanium industry), and out for revenge. The goal appears to be to ensure the complete demise of his rival.

As for the new charges, there is little question that Tymoshenko—then known as the “gas princess”—benefited from state patronage. From 1995 to 1997, when she was president of United Energy Systems of Ukraine, she was given highly lucrative government contracts—including control over imported gas from Russia—by then Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko, who was later convicted for money laundering and wire fraud by a US court. Yet the list of those who could be tried for past crimes in Ukraine is a long one that includes many current oligarchs, and one past president.

It seems safest to assume that either Yanukovych is far more scheming than many have surmised hitherto, or else (and more likely) he is being prodded and pushed by powerful interest groups whose goal is to keep Ukraine free from economic ties so that they are left free to amass wealth.

Such “freedom” requires the obliteration of the opposition and its leader, manipulation of elections, and systematic deployment of the SBU against their critics. In Arel’s view, by targeting Yulia Tymoshenko the Ukrainian government has demonstrated it has the wherewithal to stop opponents from challenging the president. The main casualty is democratic Ukraine.

But few of the “party of war” are likely to lose sleep over that.

This article first appeared in the EDMONTON JOURNAL, 15 October 2011