Canned Democracy

Halya Coynash

It was a bad week for democracy in Ukraine with formal democratic processes as close to the real thing as canned laughter on a TV show to genuine mirth.

The door to Europe, and specifically the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement was all but slammed shut by the rejection on Wednesday of former Interior Minister Yury Lutsenko’s cassation appeal.  Ukraine’s High Specialized Court upheld the outcome of a trial, which, as repeatedly pointed out by the EU and the democratic community, “did not respect international standards as regards fair, transparent and independent legal processes.”

Rule of law was just as removed from a courtroom in Zaporizhzhya, which on 2 April convicted two former sacristans of the Svyatopokrovsk Church and the brother of one of them to 15 and 14-year prison sentences over the bomb blast in the Church on 28 July 2010.  Judge Minasov ignored the fact that there was no evidence in the case aside from multiple “confessions” made without proper defence, and almost certainly under physical and psychological pressure.  The confirmation of this by two forensic psychologists was ignored, while a third report which interpreted smiles, gestures etc during the night interrogations as evidence of an “inclination to crime”  was quoted in detail in the judgement.  Minasov had rejected applications to have all forensic psychologists summoned to give evidence.  The list of irregularities in this case is as long as that in the trial of Lutsenko, and widely believed to be linked with the fact that President Yanukovych at the time demanded arrests within the week.

In both these cases, as well as the ongoing attempt to charge former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko with murder, few believe that the judges – or prosecutor – in the cases are acting autonomously.

The case against Tymoshenko encountered a bump on 2 April with a key witness Serhiy Taruta testifying that at the time of the killing of MP and businessman Shcherban, there was no conflict between him and Tymoshenko.

The case is so dodgy that inconvenient bleeps may not overly worry those pulling the strings.  Renat Kuzmin, Deputy Prosecutor General, whose trips abroad to justify the trials of opposition leaders are organized by such PR companies as Burson-Marsteller, will simply accuse all critics, including authoritative western observers of defamation if they suggest any political motivation.

There were plenty of other uncomfortable subjects during the week.  They included the President’s income declaration which, for the second year in a row, declared 15 and a half million UAH in “royalties.”  The latter must be understood very loosely since the President did not publish a single word in 2012.  In fact, had he published even one book the royalties received per word would quite possibly outdo many international bestseller writers. The amount would also instantly bankrupt most publishing houses, at least in Ukraine.  Not, however, the Donetsk publisher Novy Svit which in 2011 paid 16.4 million UAH for all President Yanukovych’s works, past, present and future.  It now transpires that this was only the first instalment of an ongoing fee.

The use of the rightwing VO Svoboda Party to present the Party of the Regions as antidote to creeping fascism and xenophobia had a novel application on Wednesday with a number of Svoboda activists detained by police in Kyiv and interrogated for many hours.  The events had seemed to promise high drama with a Party of the Regions MP Iryna Horina reporting on Tuesday that after the close of the Verkhovna Rada’s evening session she and other women MPs had been pelted with snowballs, ice and dirt by members of a political protest.  She later apparently claimed that there had been an attempt to kill her.

A criminal investigation is underway, and the police felt no need to follow the restrictions of the new Criminal Procedure Code on how many hours witnesses can be interrogated. From a PR point of view, a trial would be as much of a loser as trying now to bring charges of hooliganism against the young man who so famously felled the then presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych with an egg in 2004.

Thursday was a full-on day for Ukraine’s MPs though few of the events bore much relation to parliamentary democracy.  With the opposition continuing to block the Verkhovna Rada tribune, the Party of the Regions, Communists and others who vote with the government decided to attempt a kind of outreach parliament – in the premises of the parliamentary committees on Bankova St.   There was supposedly a vote on this with 244 in favour (226 is a simple majority), however leader of the Batkivshchyna faction in parliament, Arseny Yatsenyuk asserted that only 168 MPs were actually present.

It was one side’s word against the other’s since opposition MPs were not allowed into the building on Bankova St.

Interpretation of the Parliamentary Regulations also depends on which side you listen to, and how one is to understand “exceptional circumstances”.

This is of enormous importance since the pro-government MPs (in person, or in name and MP card alone) managed to vote on 22 laws, one of which changed the 2013 State Budget.  All of this without open discussion and without the presence of the opposition who numerically cannot override a government vote, but can at least point to dangers in the laws passed.

What is particularly disturbing is that analysts asked by the Deutsche Welle Ukrainian Service considered the votes to be illegitimate, but were not at all confident that they would be revoked. Former MP Yury Klyuchkovsky pointed out that there had been similar situations during the 2000s and the laws passed, however dubiously, remained in force.  The Constitutional Court then refused to consider submissions from MPs asking for the laws to be declared unconstitutional.  In this regard it’s worth noting that the Constitutional Court in March for the fourth time refused to consider the highly controversial language law signed into force by President Yanukovych in August 2012.  This law effectively ignores the constitutional norm stipulating that Ukrainian is the sole official language and significantly increases the role of the Russian language.

Another specific smell from Ukraine’s parliamentarianism comes from turncoats or, in the Ukrainian, “tushki” (carcases).  On Thursday Speaker Rybak announced that four Batkivshchyna faction MPs had changed sides.  Interpretation of motives and / or incentives will inevitably depend on whose version you trust, however the phenomenon cannot under any circumstances be considered healthy.

It is also difficult to see it as democratic. Even during the last elections where 50% of the candidates entered parliament on party lists and 50% stood for election on an individual basis, the vast majority of voters would have voted for the party.

If MPs can then choose where the grass for them is greener, the voters’ electoral choice is rendered meaningless, like so many other fundamental components of democracy increasingly treated as cosmetic props.

Where Optimists and Pessimists Meet

Mykola Riabchuk

Three years ago, when Viktor Yanukovych was narrowly winning elections over Yulia Tymoshenko, very few people predicted future developments that would result in the full usurpation of power by a well-organized and extremely resourceful group of unscrupulous rent-seekers. It was an open secret, both then and now, that many regional bosses had a criminal past. Hennadiy Moskal, a former deputy minister of internal affairs, maintains that there are at least 18 of them in today’s parliament, all of them in the Party of Regions faction http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2013/03/21/6986155/.

Even without this (and many other) warnings, the living experience under two governments of Viktor Yanukovych – in 2002-2004 and 2006-2007 – should have been sufficient to understand what his ultimate victory would mean for the country. Sapienti sat, but Ukrainians seem to be incurable optimists. This might seem paradoxical in view of all the ordeals they suffered throughout their history. But maybe some resilient optimism is exactly what they need most to survive under unfavorable circumstances.

Even today, three years after Yanukovych’s victory and the complete destruction of state institutions, any warnings about the most probable steps to be undertaken by his devious team usually fall on deaf ears. Even seasoned experts typically respond: “No, they would not go that far!”

But they do. And there are no signs they are going to stop anywhere due to some legal, or moral, or merely technical reasons. If any rule, or law, or even the constitution restrain the usurpers, they easily change them, bypass, misinterpret, or ignore. This is how they created the illegitimate government, reshuffled the Constitutional Court, abandoned the Constitution, changed the electoral law, falsified local and, then, national parliamentary elections, imprisoned political opponents, subordinated the entire judiciary to the unconstitutional body called the Supreme Council of Justice, a mere handmaiden of the presidential administration, and more http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2013/03/25/6986377/.

Until recently, very few people imagined the tame courts could be used, four months after the elections, to withdraw mandates from a couple of disobedient deputies on the dubious legal ground of some alleged electoral violations. No Ukrainian law stipulates such an odd procedure but the goal of the legal novelty is clear: to send a message to all MPs that any of them could lose their mandate at any point, depending on the president’s whim and his team’s calculations. If the MPs refuse to accept carrots in a form of six-digit bribes, they should be ready to face the sticks http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2013/02/8/6983167/.

Sehiy Vlasenko, Yulia Tymoshenko’s legal adviser, became the latest victim of Ukraine’s notorious selective justice when the Supreme Administrative Court stripped him of his MP’s mandate on the grounds that he could not combine the activity of a professional attorney and work in the legislature. Despite the fact that all the evidence indicated that he did not represent Tymoshenko in court as an attorney but merely assisted her as a consultant (which is not forbidden by law), the judges adhered to their decision http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2013/03/6/6985032/.

Now, the Ukrainian optimists have got one more field to perfect their positive thinking. As the crucial presidential elections in 2015 loom large and the incumbent has virtually no chance to win them fairly, the possible tricks are pondered, ranging from possible changes of the constitution that would enable the election of the president by the (domesticated) parliament to a more sophisticated manipulation of the electoral process that would secure an easy victory for the incumbent against the radical rival in the second round. The first scenario was put in doubt after the parliamentary elections did not bring the Party of Regions the needed majority it needed to change the constitution at some later point. The second scenario was questioned recently by an opinion poll, which revealed that Yanukovych might lose the second round not only to Vitaliy Klychko (30% to 49%), Arseniy Yatseniuk (33 to 40) or Yulia Tymoshenko (33 to 36), but even to Oleh Tiahnybok, a radical nationalist, who was considered easy prey for the incumbent and therefore the most preferable sparring partner in the second round. Now, Tiahnybok lags only one per cent behind Viktor Yanukovych (32 to 33) and, as time passes and the situation deteriorates, may overrun the incumbent as a lesser evil in the eyes of the electorate http://ratinggroup.com.ua/products/politic/data/entry/14049/.

Therefore, Ukrainian authorities are musing over a new ploy: to conduct the presidential elections in a single round, that is to employ the first-past-the-post system, which largely helped them to win parliamentary elections last year. This does not require any changes to the constitution, other than to amend the law on elections to that of a simple majority. And once again, the Ukrainian optimists contend that the Regionals would not go so far. They argue that such presidential elections would not be internationally accepted and that the legitimacy of such a president would be very low. But there are no proofs that Ukrainian rulers care much about international practice, legality and legitimacy. Occasionally, they make some concessions to public opinion and international policy-makers but only to a degree that would not threaten their monopoly on power.

Their general approach to all the boring legal principles and procedures was aphoristically expressed by Mykhaylo Chechetov, the Party of Regions band-master who conducts the  “right” voting of his party fellows in the parliament by raising the hand (that means “yes”) or waving it (that means “no”). Last year, after his faction brazenly violated all the procedural requirements to push through the parliament a highly controversial law on languages, he boasted cynically to journalists: “Just realize the elegancy of our play! We tricked them (the opposition) like kittens!”

The meaning of “elegancy” of their play is perfectly characterized by a leading member of the Party of Regions who, back in 2004, headed the shadow, i.e. real electoral headquarters of Viktor Yanukovych, responsible for all electoral manipulations, contrary to the official headquarters, assigned the role of a show-window. According to Taras Chornovil, who worked at the time for Yanukovych, all his attempts to discourage colleagues from blatant falsifications encountered a typical response from the headquarters’ chief: “Why worry? Everything is under [our] control!” (Ne boysya! Vse skhvacheno”—the word “skhvacheno” comes from criminal jargon and means literally “is captured!”).

There are an increasing number of experts who believe that Yanukovych has already passed the point of no return and will now stay in power at any cost. Many Ukrainians used to have the same feeling about Leonid Kuchma after his alleged involvement in Heorhiy Gongadze’s murder. But, as Mykhaylo Dubyniansky argues, Kuchma had some internal restraints that are completely missing in Yanukovych. Kuchma was prone to bargain for security guarantees and retreat peacefully. Yanukovych would not trust in any guarantees since he destroyed the non-aggression pact among the elites himself. “He does not stand upon ceremony with the Constitution, does not stand with MPs, and would definitely not stand with protesters, however many of them go into the streets. Any attempt to dismiss Yanukovych – real, not farcical – would end up with violence. If anybody had cherished rosy illusions, they should have faded away last fall. We saw a bloody battle in Pervomaysk [during the elections], and tear gas in Kyiv, even though there was nothing particularly valuable to fight for. In two years, the stakes will be much higher – the personal security of Viktor Yanukovych, his family assets, and his beloved Mezhyhirya residence. Coercion would grow proportionally to the price of defeat”: http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2013/03/21/6986081/.

These gloomy predictions might contrast dramatically with some optimists’ views. A leading Ukrainian historian Yaroslav Hrytsak believes that “Ukraine has never had such a weak regime. To dismiss it is an easy and even joyful task” http://gazeta.ua/articles/grycak-jaroslav/_mudrist/415453.  Oksana Zabuzhko, a prominent Ukrainian writer, argues that: “by all indications, they are short-term rulers… And, when they—like teenagers who encourage themselves—cry threateningly that they have come to power ‘for a long time,’ it sounds ridiculous” http://unian.net/ukr/news/news-385145.html.  Yulia Mostova, the editor of the reputable Dzerkalo tyzhnia weekly, contends that “today’s authorities are weaker than ever before” because they are not able to “withstand the challenges that our nation encounters” http://gazeta.dt.ua/POLITICS/slabkist_silnih.html.  And Alexander Motyl, one of the most perceptive observers of current Ukrainian politics, is confident that Yanukovych’s deeply dysfunctional system “will collapse under its own dead weight. Most probably, that collapse will come in 2015, during the next presidential elections, or in 2020, after Yanukovych finishes his second term” http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/alexander-j-motyl/yanukovych-ruin-and-its-aftermath-part-1.

What both the optimists and the pessimists have in common is a profound concern about the regime’s succession. Indeed, whether the regime’s collapse occurs sooner or later, peacefully or violently, the new authorities, in any case, would have to solve an enormously difficult task of complete reconstruction of state institutions, from top to bottom. And, as Mykhaylo Dubyniansky aptly remarks, the tougher an authoritarian regime, the more likely its opponents-cum-successors would be very similar, as we have witnessed in Libya, Syria, and quite a few African states. In other words, Vitaliy Klychko may easily win an election against Viktor Yanukovych if it is free and fair. But if it were not conducted democratically, it would likely not be Klychko who orchestrates the dismissal of the usurper. Suffice it to recall the dismissal of Ceausescu, Qaddafi, or Assad to understand the challenges Ukraine is approaching.

 

The Viktors Go to Brussels

David Marples and Myroslava Uniat

After the February 25 16^th EU-Ukraine summit in Brussels, Ukraine’s chances of signing an Association Agreement later this year in Vilnius appeared as uncertain as they were before the meeting. What is lacking is a single unequivocal statement from President Viktor Yanukovych that he is prepared to meet the EU halfway and agree to the preconditions that have been outlined and reiterated numerous times by various leaders of Brussels. Meanwhile, Ukraine’s relations with the Russian-led Customs Union seem equally as ambivalent, but continue in parallel form in the background.

The Europeans have made it plain that the continuing imprisonment of opposition politicians Yulia Tymoshenko and Yuri Lutsenko is part of the equation. If the EU has compromised, then it may be on the issue of the former. While Brussels-based politicians condemn the escalation of the charges against Ukraine’s former Prime Minister, there is less emphasis today than hitherto that the release of Ms Tymoshenko is an essential prerequisite for the signing of the agreement. Regarding Lutsenko, on the other hand, the situation is simply confusing. Evhen Balitskiy, a deputy from the Regions Party, speaking on Ukraine’s Channel 5 on February 21, stated firmly that the two detained figures would be released only when they had completed their sentences, and that Ukraine would not cave into outside pressure for an early end to their confinement (http://www.unian.net/news/554646-regional-otpuskat-timoshenko-i-lutsenko-ranshe-sroka-nikto-ne-sobiraetsya.html).

Another report of February 23 suggested that Yanukovych was indeed willing to compromise on both cases, but without setting a time frame (http://www.unian.net/news/555201-ukrainskiy-interes-anketa-evrointegratsii-i-ansambl-dlya-igryi-na-trube.html). Lutsenko’s wife expressed her view that the president had paid close attention to issues dealing with her husband and that his detention was a political matter, i.e. that he had been imprisoned for criticizing the government (http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2013/02/22/6984173 ). Just three days later, a report from the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, maintained that after his meeting with the presidents of Poland and Slovakia, Yanukovych had promised to release Lutsenko in order to demonstrate Ukraine’s commitment to joining Europe. But the press service of the Polish president Bronislaw Kororowski would neither deny nor confirm the statement (http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2013/02/25/6984254/).

Meanwhile EU politicians were expressing optimism both before and after the Brussels summit. European Commission president Jose Manuel Barroso enunciated his vision of Ukraine as future member of the European Union and expressed his faith that Ukraine has a European future. The effort to get an Association Agreement signed in November at the Eastern Partnership summit in Vilnius was endorsed not only by Barroso, but also by President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy, EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Catherine Ashton, and European Commissioner for Enlargement and European Neighborhood Policy Stefan Fule. They did add the proviso, however, that Ukraine should resolve the issue of “selective justice” and remove “deficiencies” in the conducting of parliamentary elections (http://zaxid.net/home/showSingleNews.do?kerivnitstvo_yes_hoche_shhob_ukrayina_stala_chlenom_yevrosoyuzu&objectId=1279188).

There was, however, another familiar Ukrainian visitor in the Belgian capital. Prior to the summit, at an evening meeting with Barroso that lasted over an hour, former president Viktor Yushchenko commented that the Tymoshenko case should not hold up proceedings (http://zaxid.net/home/showSingleNews.do?yushhenko_pered_samitom_govoriv_z_barrozu_pro_ukrayinu_i_timoshenko__zmi&objectId=1278974). The future of the Ukrainian state, stated Yushchenko, should not be a hostage of the “Tymoshenko affair.” Whether the Europeans still perceive Yushchenko as a credible authority is a moot point. The former president has rarely missed an opportunity to denounce his former Prime Minister, whose lengthy jail sentence was due in part to his testimony, and he appears content to serve the Regions government in his new role as an informal negotiator.

The delayed visit of Yanukovych to Moscow, on the other hand, finally took place on March 4, following its postponement last December. The main topics on the agenda were cooperation in energy, trade, and the economic sphere, particularly the conditions on which Ukraine might join the Customs Union. In addition Yanukovych returned to an old conundrum of the Kuchma era, namely the notion that there could be a joint Ukrainian-Russian venture to rent out Ukraine’s gas transportation system (http://zaxid.net/home/showSingleNews.do?yanukovich_u_rosiyi_zaproponuye_stvoriti_spilne_pidpriyemstvo__taran&objectId=1279284; http://www.rferl.org/content/putin-yanukovych-moscow/24918397.html ). Russia, however, is insisting that Ukraine recognize the validity of previous agreements, which include not only the unfortunate 2009 deal on gas prices negotiated by Tymoshenko, but also cooperation and progress toward the integration of the Russian and Ukrainian nuclear industries in accordance with the July 12, 2012 memorandum signed in Yalta. One possible component of this agreement is joint construction of units 3 and 4 of the VVER nuclear power station at Khmelnyts’kyi (http://www.unian.net/news/556804-yanukovich-i-putin-pogovoryat-o-gaze.html ).

 In April 2011 Yanukovych suggested that Ukraine might join the Customs Union in a 3+1 format precluding its full integration. That notion received qualifiede support from Regions deputy and Deputy Prime Minister Serhiy Tihipko, a former chair of the National Bank of Ukraine. Tihipko observed that Ukraine’s entry into the Customs Union has been under negotiation since 2010 and that the proposed treaty details are about 1,000 pages in length. Good progress has been made in his view. But neither side has started to work seriously on the 3+1 idea, an approach that he would not reject. Still, the EU market is seven times larger, which renders it more interesting for the Ukrainian economy (http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2013/02/22/6984174 ). Implicitly therefore the Customs Union is a viable back-up plan should negotiations with Brussels result in failure.

 If, as seems plausible, Yanukovych is using talks with Russia to persuade Brussels to void the various conditions for signing the Associaton Agreement, he is demonstrating remarkable political naivety. The outcome could be the failure of the November meeting with the EU and equally unfruitful negotiations with Russia, which has considerable sway over the immediate future of Ukrainian energy policy in several of its major spheres, but especially oil, gas, and nuclear power. Andrew Wilson of the European Council of Foreign Relations commented that if the president was a wise man, then he would at least agree to release Lutsenko, but [he] «is not wise» (http://zaxid.net/home/showSingleNews.do?yes_pidpisav_bi_ugodu_pro_asotsiatsiyu_navit_z_timoshenko_v_tyurmi__ekspert&objectId=1278880 ). Valery Chaliy of the Kyiv-based Razumkov Center maintains that the chances of the Association Agreement being signed are no better than 20%. And Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt declared that «To put it mildly, the current signs of progress in Ukraine are quite limited» (http://zaxid.net/home/showSingleNews.do?imovirnist_pidpisannya_ugodi_pro_asotsiatsiyu_z_yes__20__ekspert&objectId=1278849).

 The EU has no doubt taken into consideration the overwhelming support for Ukraine’s European aspirations in the Ukrainian Parliament and the fact that even the government, despite its vacillations and the lack of firm directions at the level of the presidency, is generally in favor. It should take note, however, that negotiations on the side of Kyiv are not taking place with sincerity or even an evident willingness to compromise. All too often the vindictiveness toward former enemies and fear of retribution at some future date for more conciliatory policies, particularly in dealing with the Tymoshenko and Lutsenko cases, mean that at best, the Europeans will see no more than sluggish and very reluctant steps to comply with even modest requests. As Wilson has noted, however, a failure in November could seriously undermine the very existence of the Eastern Partnership. Ukraine might then have no immediate options other than the Customs Union, either in the so-called 3+1 formation or deeper integration on terms emanating from Moscow.

Triumph of the Cargo Cult

Mykola Riabchuk

Six years ago, I published an article under the (perhaps too optimistic) title “Farewell to the Cargo Cult” (Berliner Zeitung, 13 April 2007). It was about the ongoing protests in Kyiv organized by the Party of Regions against president Viktor Yushchenko’s decree dissolving the parliament and declaring early parliamentary elections. The decree was indeed controversial but probably it was the only way to stop the creeping coup d’etat: the buying up and blackmailing of deputies in the parliament to form a pro-Yanukovych constitutional majority.

The protests staged by Yanukovych’s supporters looked like a parody of the Orange Maidan — a dull, uninventive imitation of the revolutionary events that had occurred in Kyiv two years earlier. The pathetic turnout of the “protesters,” their passivity and lack of enthusiasm, inability to explain what they were fighting for and off-record confessions about banal remuneration received for the participation in that political show made a striking contrast to the powerful civic spirit revealed during the 2004 revolution.

For me, it was a clear sign that Yanukovych and his Party of Regions believed sincerely that the Orange upheaval was brought about by money, and if they invested in similar fashion they would get the same result.  The “Cargo Cult” metaphor referred to a quasi-religious cult that emerged allegedly in the Pacific islands among the aboriginal tribes after the Second World War. During the war, aborigines witnessed American soldiers who received delightful goods, called “cargo”, from the sky. After Americans left, they decided to appease the sky gods in the same in order to get the same bounties. They developed a sophisticated ritual that imitated the landing of airplanes with bonfires around the landing stretch cut out of the jungle and native priests with wooden headphones communicating with their gods in some incomprehensible sacral language.

I confess I was wrong in using the word “farewell.” The Cargo Cult is alive and well in today’s Ukraine where the governing Party of Regions has made it a kind of a state religion. They worship it everywhere: in both political statements and institutional practices. Here and there, they imitate democratic elections, legal procedures, and parliamentary deliberations, with the candid hope that the European gods would bestow some sort of democratic legitimacy upon them or at least would not sanction them for skullduggery.

The new indictments of Yulia Tymoshenko for bribery, theft, tax evasion, and even killing a rival businessman back in 1996, represent a perfect example of “cargo” mentality: if our wooden headphones do not help us to communicate with the EU, let’s produce more wooden headphones. If there are no reliable proofs of Tymoshenko’s wrongdoing, let’s produce more unreliable proofs, hoping that sheer quantity would substitute for the dismal quality. It would be funny, if was not so depressing. If very shaky evidence sufficed to sentence Yulia Tymoshenko to seven years in prison for the gas deal with Putin, even shakier evidence – but a greater amount – may well suffice to give her a life sentence in a country where no independent judiciary exists.

So far, the court process looks even more farcical than it looked two years ago when the routine political-cum-economic decision was notoriously criminalized. All the witnesses summoned by prosecutors are reasonably suspected of being in their pockets [http://blogs.pravda.com.ua/authors/chornovol/511cf62064a09]. All of them had either a criminal past and long history of cooperation with the authorities, probably as paid agents [http://blogs.pravda.com.ua/authors/chornovol/511e5bc4a816d], or some would-be criminal problems today that are likely to be solved only through their “cooperation” [http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2013/02/13/6983385/]. Remarkably, none of them has had any personal contact with Yulia Tymoshenko, nor they have any direct proof of her involvement in the criminal case. All their testimony to the court is based on some ambiguous information they presumably heard from others who have typically disappeared and can neither confirm nor deny the allegations. Remarkably, all of them kept this hearsay evidence unrevealed for seventeen years, ostensibly because they were afraid of Tymoshenko’s revenge, even though she became the prime minister only in 2005. Before that, she was persecuted and even imprisoned briefly by Leonid Kuchma. He was not so inventive, however, to accuse her of murder. And, surprisingly, none of today’s witnesses gave him a hint.

The authorities not only failed to produce any serious evidence of Tymoshenko’s involvement in the 1996 contract killing of Yevhen Shcherban. They failed even to explain persuasively what might have been her interest in such a plot [http://blogs.pravda.com.ua/authors/chornovol/5122684597f9f/]. The only argument is that there were some tensions between Tymoshenko’s boss (and Ukraine’s prime minister at the time) Pavlo Lazarenko and the victim, hardly an unusual situation in Ukrainian business environment. Yet, as two business partners of the late Mr Shcherban — ­Serhiy Taruta [http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2013/02/8/6983135/ ] and Vitaliy Hayduk [http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2013/02/19/6983862/] — testify, all the disputes had been solved by that time and Lazarenko had no reason to embark on such crude methods as killing. Actually, as prime minister, he had much more subtle instruments to promote his own business and intimidate disobedient rivals. Viktor Yanukovych must be perfectly aware of this.

Furthermore, even if one imagines that Mr Lazarenko went crazy and decided to do something irrational, he certainly did not need any assistance and mediation from Mme Tymoshenko, a minor pawn in his business empire, much more suitable for performing clean rather than dirty jobs [http://gazeta.ua/articles/479282]. There have always been plenty of professionals in this field in Ukraine, and even today such a job does not cost $3 million as the prosecutor alleges. Back in 1996, the experts claim, it was about ten times cheaper.

It is not clear, indeed, whether the Ukrainian authorities expect to sentence Tymoshenko to life imprisonment on such dubious legal grounds. What is clear, however, is they may well do so, since the previous case that cost Tymoshenko seven years in prison was not much better substantiated. Hatred is blind, and fear makes people vengeful. In Yanukovych’s case, all these unpleasant characteristics are only multiplied by his poor culture and education, provincial outlook, and lack of wise and committed advisers.

Taras Chornovil, who closely cooperated with him in 2004-2007, believes that “Yanukovych has many complexes, including the ‘blockaded Leningrad’ complex: “he cannot feed himself, he still is hungry for money, property, luxury.” And Tymoshenko, Chornovil contends, threatened to imprison him and re-nationalize “Mezhyhirya,” a government residence on 100 hectares of land near Kyiv, illicitly privatized by Yanukovych when he was prime minister. “I guess, he read these words shortly before he made his decision on Tymoshenko. I know for sure that two weeks earlier there was a large meeting and big debate in his administration on how to continue the process and what to do with her. The prevailing opinion was that Yulia should be accused but left free. But the subsequent denunciation made her arrest unavoidable” [http://gazeta.ua/articles/480185].

This evidence renders any hopes for the imminent release of Yulia Tymoshenko ephemeral, as also any chance of signing the Association Agreement with the EU in the foreseeable future. People who preach the “Cargo Cult” simply do not understand what real airplanes – let alone real democracy, rule of law, and European integration – actually mean. The only good thing is that here, in the post-Soviet realm, they do not practice ritualistic cannibalism. Luckily for us all, they follow a somewhat different political and gastronomic tradition. So far, they have indulged themselves only with the ritualistic imprisonment of their political rivals.

“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]

On Brave Faces and a Sorry Business

Mykola Riabchuk

Shortly after the European football championship ended in Kyiv on July 1, a leading Ukrainian independent outlet, Ukrainska Pravda, featured a bitter article by Borys Bakhteyev that qualified the tournament as a great propaganda victory for the local authoritarian regime:

“Our authorities carried out a special operation aimed at a thorough elimination of Poland from the information context of Euro 2012. They imposed upon us the only possible answer to the question ‘Who hosted the championship?’ – Surely, Viktor Yanukovych, Mykola Azarov, Borys Kolesnikov and no one else! They celebrate now, and are not going to share their triumph with anyone. ‘Let Europeans not teach us how to handle our business’, they say. ‘Let them rather learn from us a little, from our excellent management of the tournament!’ The trouble is not that they carried out this special operation. The trouble is they succeeded” http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2012/07/4/6968065/.

Two days later, the same newspaper published an article by investigative journalist Mustafa Nayem based on the secret instructions sent by the ruling Party of Regions to its local headquarters on how to carry out the forthcoming election campaign and which arguments to employ in party propaganda. Three concepts are featured in the document: first, the so called “social initiatives” by the president, which basically are no more than populist slogans about various social benefits to be accrued from the empty state coffers; second, the language policy aimed at mobilization of the Russophone and Sovietophile portion of the electorate; and third, the alleged “success story” of Euro 2012 as proof of the government’s efficiency and good international standing http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2012/07/6/6968257/.

The first two may deserve a separate analysis, but the third one seems to confirm Borys Bakhteyev’s gloomy observations. The Party of Regions instructs its activists to praise extensively the country’s leadership for “rescuing the tournament, which was practically lost for Ukraine by the ‘orange’ predecessors,” and for the excellent management of the event despite the coordinated anti-government-cum-anti-Ukrainian campaign of domestic and international enemies. The attached slogans speak for themselves: “Chaos is overcome. Stability is achieved!”; “Euro 2012: a goal for Ukraine”; and “Tournaments pass, achievements remain.” Now, as these slogans are placed on billboards everywhere in Ukraine, with glamorous pictures of stadiums, airports, high-speed trains and airplanes, one may wonder whether the championship has actually been appropriated by the Party of Regions as a real success story and is boosting its popularity on the eve of the October parliamentary elections.

On the one hand, there is little doubt that, partial achievements and minor success stories notwithstanding, Euro-2012 was a wasted opportunity for Ukraine in terms of both substantial modernization and positive image making. While political instability and rampant corruption discouraged foreign investors—80 per cent of related bills had to be paid by the Ukrainian government (with reported 40 percent kickbacks from government-friendly contractors)—the political scandals, persecution of opposition, and reports of racist excesses at Ukrainian stadiums fundamentally undermined any possibility for the country’s positive rebranding. Indeed, as Janek Lasocki and Lukasz Jasina put it, international headlines were “clearly not encouraging investment or political cooperation, nor proving the country’s European credentials” http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/janek-lasocki-%C5%82ukasz-jasina/football-politics-legacy-of-euro-2012-in-ukraine.

The event that back in 2007 was envisaged to “help change Ukraine’s image from that of a gray, ‘semi-Russian’ backwater to a country that shared European values and strove for democracy” (http://www.tol.org/client/article/23201-ukraines-european-aspirations-meet-the-buzz-saw-of-post-soviet-habits.html), and to “symbolise common heritage and cooperation across the EU border, and a bright future for an ever-expanding Europe” (http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2012/05/18/guest-post-ukraines-boycott-blues), turned out to be a “public relations disaster for the Yanukovych regime,” “farce of the century,” and one the most expensive entries in the “Regionnaires’ remarkable chronicle of failures” http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/alexander-j-motyl/looming-soccer-disaster-ukraine.

Although all this is true, one cannot deny that, on the other hand, the Ukrainian government tries to capitalize, at least domestically, on the relatively smooth running of the championship, and that its propagandistic efforts were not entirely in vain. First, the propaganda campaign is facilitated by firm control over the domestic mass media, primarily television (the only independent Ukrainian channel TVi lost its airwaves to the government’s loyalists shortly after Viktor Yanukovych became president in 2010, and now has encountered even stronger pressure after the tax police raided its office on July 12, seized financial documents and opened a criminal case against its director Mykola Kniazhytsky based on scurrilous accusations).

Secondly, the western mass media had managed to create a favorable context for the Ukrainian regime to dismiss their criticism and to mobilize part of the population to support the government on presumably patriotic grounds: against indiscriminate accusations against Ukrainian society at large of indulging in endemic racism and xenophobia. (See Uilleam Blacker’s article on this site at http://ukraineanalysis.wordpress.com/2012/06/05/eastern-european-xenophobia-under-western-eyes-euro-2012-in-poland-ukraine). The campaign launched by the reputable BBC and supported by a number of British tabloids presented both Poland and, especially, Ukraine as dangerous places where crypto-fascist violence and intolerance reigns supreme and where visitors with a non-white skin are very likely to “come back in coffins” http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2150542/Nazi-mob-lies-wait-England-fans-Riot-police-march-battle-thugs-Euro-2012-terraces–turn-blind-eye-racist-chants-violence.html.

The accusations, however substantiated (at least in the BBC Panorama film “Stadiums of Hatred”), missed the point in two important respects. First, racism is certainly not the main problem that hounds Ukraine, and secondly, Ukraine is certainly not a European leader in terms of racism, fascism and football hooliganism – it lags far behind Russia where Asian immigrants are beaten and killed on regular basis.

Regretfully yet, the moderate voices that tried to present a more balanced view and tame the “anti-Ukraine overdrive” (as Brendan O’Neill defined it), remained largely unheard: “Like every other country in the world, Ukraine no doubt has some nasty racists – but British hacks have continually depicted the entire nation as a cesspit of xenophobic attitudes… What we’re really witnessing in the hysteria about Ukrainian attitudes is the expression of a prejudice against strange Easterners disguised as an enlightened anti-racist sentiment. If it is stupid for small numbers of Ukrainian football followers to sneer at blacks and Asians, it is also stupid for the British media to sneer at the whole of Ukraine” http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/brendanoneill2/100160992/the-fear-of-racist-ukraine-is-itself-xenophobic/.

The main problem, as Rory Finnin has correctly suggested, “was less media sensationalism than public knowledge about Ukraine. Reports of racism in the country were essentially made in a vacuum, with precious little beyond stories of made-man famines, environmental catastrophes, and feuding politicians to help frame them constructively. Ukraine is the largest country within the European continent… Yet after 20 years of independence, Ukraine remains badly known and poorly understood. It is Europe’s perennial terra malecognita” http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/dr-rory-finnin/ukraine-europes-terra malecognita_b_1653469.html.

As if such hyperbole was not enough, the Western mass media broadly discussed the idea to boycott not only Ukrainian leadership marred with corruption scandals and persecution of their political opponents, but Ukraine in general by removing the final stage of the tournament either fully to Poland or to some other country. This irresponsible appeal (which came too late to accomplish anyway) was effectively manipulated by the Ukrainian authorities in a similar way, as the wholesale accusations of Ukraine as racist: first, it was used to distract popular attention from the real (political) reasons for the international boycott of the Ukrainian leadership and to switch it to the alleged anti-Ukrainian bias of Westerners; and secondly, it helped to channel popular resentment against the opposition, which had arguably conspired with ugly Westerners and who sacrificed the national interests (Euro-2012) for the sake of some particularistic gains (liberation of Yulia Tymoshenko).

Angela Merkel’s notorious comparison of Ukraine with Belarus played directly into the hands of Mr. Yanukovych and his acolytes since the bias was obvious here to all, including the fiercest of Yanukovych’s opponents. The bias was even more pronounced given Merkel’s (and that of other European bigwigs) exchange of amiable hugs and smiles with much more authoritarian bosses in Moscow. There is a sad truth in the words of an unnamed German journalist quoted in Open Democracy by a Ukrainian colleague: “It’s quite easy for Merkel to attack Ukraine and demand respect for human rights. Unlike Russia, you have no oil or gas and you’re not as strong and influential as China. It’s convenient to criticise Ukraine and it does great things for [her] popularity rating” (http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/valery-kalnysh/are-european-calls-for-euro-2012-boycott-meaningless).  This truism may not strengthen significantly the position of Viktor Yanukovych but it definitely weakens those of his pro-Western opponents.

Viktor Yanukovych, as Michael Willard sarcastically remarks, “doesn’t seem to be losing much sleep due to the downward spiral of his country’s reputation in the eyes of the West or, apparently, even Russia.” The Western boycott of authoritarian rulers resembles hitting them with the proverbial wet noodle: “One feels it, but it doesn’t sting” http://www.kyivpost.com/opinion/op-ed/back-story-ukraine-proved-naysayers-wrong-in-euro-.html.

“Statements such as those made by Angela Merkel or Hillary Clinton are political, but they are only words, unless they are backed up by force, pressure, breaking contracts, isolation, refusal of entry visas and freezing officials’ bank accounts… The Ukrainian president does not understand hints. The language of diplomacy is completely alien to him… The EU and USA appeals will remain just that, appeals, heard only by those making them” http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/valery-kalnysh/are-european-calls-for-euro-2012-boycott-meaningless.

“The EU has more power than it thinks, and boycott is not the only weapon. A travel ban on officials linked to Tymoshenko’s jailing could rein in a few of Ukraine’s corrupt kleptocrats” http://blogs.ft.com/beyond-brics/2012/05/18/guest-post-ukraines-boycott-blues.

“Rather than staying way from Ukraine to no point (except to mollify their own domestic critics), Merkel, Barroso and the rest should use the very real powers they have to hit Kyiv where it really hurts” http://eastofcenter.tol.org/2012/05/yellow-bellied-european-pols-deserve-yellow-cards/.

It may take some time before experts’ opinion gains sufficient credibility and influence to prompt policymakers to apply tougher sanctions against the rogue government. The rigged parliamentary elections in October may catalyze the process. Yet, in the meantime, the president and his team can boast of their great victory, both against the sinister West and treacherous opposition. “A goal for Ukraine,” they claim, and might well be right, unless they mean “Ukraine c’est moi.”

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.

Casus Vynnychukus and Freedom of Speech

Mykola Riabchuk

On January 23, 2012 two policemen approached writer Yuri Vynnychuk at his home in the Western Ukrainian city of L’viv and demanded from him a written explanation of the poems he had presented a few months earlier in Kyiv at the “Night of Erotic Poetry” festival. The policemen said they were authorized to do so by the prosecutor general who had received a complaint from the Communist MP, Leonid Hrach, which unabashedly qualified Vynnychuk’s poems as “pornography” and a “call for the violent overthrow of Ukraine’s government” (http://world.maidan.org.ua/2012/statement-on-the-political-persecution-of-the-ukrainian-writer-yuri-vynnychuk).

Yuri Vynnychuk is a renowned author with some international fame, so he has not been arrested, beaten, and forced to confess, as happens on a daily basis all over Ukraine to his less fortunate and not so famous compatriots. Oleksiy Cherneha, for instance, a young activist of the “Patriot of Ukraine” from the provincial town of Vasyl’kiv (Kyiv Oblast), recollects his encounter with the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) officers as follows:

Immediately after I was detained [on August 23, 2011], I was taken to the regional SBU center where I was held without charge or sanction from the investigator or court until Aug. 27, much longer than the 72 hours allowed by law […]
While I was at the regional SBU center, I was questioned around the clock. During the interrogation, physical methods were used against me repeatedly – I was beaten on my neck and the soft parts of the body, forced to do the splits, humiliated, threatened with physical violence and also mocked with accusations of pedophilia.
The SBU officers also tried to force me to give untruthful evidence against my acquaintances… After I had refused to give this untruthful evidence, I was shackled and they continued to beat me.
For four days I was interrogated and not allowed to sleep or eat.
During the torture and humiliation I repeatedly demanded to be told my official status in the case and also information about the examination of the things found at my place during the search. But I received no answer to any of my questions. I was also refused a meeting with my lawyer, and all interrogations happened without his presence.
While I was in custody, I informed the SBU that I had been diagnosed with epilepsy and that the doctors had recommended that I stick to a sleep pattern and eat regularly, because not to do so could affect my health and even lead to death.
However, the SBU officers ignored this and for four days I was interrogated without sleep or food. Such behavior is a flagrant violation of human rights and guarantees of respect for dignity contained in the Constitution.
During interrogation on Aug. 25, SBU officers forced a compact disk into my hand which had allegedly been found at the place on Hrushevskogo Street on Aug. 22.
There, like at my residence, the SBU alleged it had found information about assembling a homemade explosive device and a video of child pornography.
Afterward I was told they had “evidence” against me and in a similar way they could create any “evidence,” and for this not to happen I had to write that my acquaintances Shpara and Bevz had left the things in my room that had been found during the search.
When I refused, painful injuries were inflicted on me.
On the night of Aug. 26, I was informed that I would be released if I signed a few documents. I was forced to sign a letter to the head of the SBU saying that no physical coercion had been applied to me and that I voluntarily consented to give evidence from Aug. 23 to Aug. 27.
I assert that all signatures that I made during that time were extracted in ways banned by the Code of Criminal Procedure ( http://www.kyivpost.com/news/opinion/op_ed/detail/112476/). (See also: Katya Gorchinskaya, “Allegations of SBU horrors recall cruel Stasi methods,” 15 September 2011: http://www.kyivpost.com/news/opinion/op_ed/detail/112911/.)

Stories like this are typical in Yanukovych’s Ukraine. They vary in detail but have one thing in common: rampant lawlessness that reigns supreme in the country and unscrupulous use of law-enforcement agencies for the regime’s political goals. The Kyiv Post editorial aptly described Ukraine’s judicial system as “broken, corrupt and manipulated by oligarch-controlled politicians, chief among them president Viktor Yanukovych”:

Police still beat, torture, falsify evidence and extract false confessions. They conduct armed raids with masks with the permission of the manipulated courts.
Prosecutors operate in a web of secrecy in which they are accountable to no one but the chief prosecutor, who is appointed by Yanukovych.
Judges cannot exercise independence for fear of losing their jobs – or worse.
The presumption of guilt replaces the presumption of innocence through the pre-trial jailing of suspects for up to 18 months in horrible conditions, the denial of bail and adequate legal representation, the denial of speedy trial by jury and so on (http://www.kyivpost.com/news/opinion/editorial/detail/114769/).

Yuri Vynnychuk predictably rejected the accusations as absurd and stated that the interference in literary matters by politicians, prosecutors and other officials was illegal and anti-constitutional. The story got broad publicity in the mass media; Ukrainian PEN-center endorsed a protest; the writer himself used a public commemoration of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s birthday in downtown L’viv to read his subversive poems to his cheerful fans. And finally, the sweetheart Hanna Herman, Yanukovych’s advisor and a writer herself, called a L’viv colleague and apologized for the excessive zeal of her boss’s subordinates (http://life.pravda.com.ua/person/2012/01/30/93822/).

Personally, I would prefer her to call Mr. Cherneha, or Ms. Hanna Synkova, or many other victims of the regime’s brutality, and to deal with the officers that tortured and humiliated them rather than the two pathetic policemen sent by their dull bosses to Yuri Vynnychuk’s place. So far, it looks like a Bad Cop versus Good Cop show. However it ends, it should not obscure the much more serious, brazen, innumerable cases of human rights violations in Yanukovych’s Ukraine. The very addition of “pornography” to the alleged “call for a violent overthrow of the government” tends to make the entire story farcical, to downplay and de-contextualize the political message of Vynnychuk’s work. Yet, whatever the initial intentions of both the writer and his opponents, the actual implications of the conflict seem to be broader and more complex.

First of all, the poem in question is certainly not Vynnychuk’s chef d’oeuvre, nor is it an exemplary case of political correctness. There are two English translations of this poetical pamphlet, one of which is entitled “Kill the Bugger” and the other “Kill the Pidaras” (http://durdom.in.ua/uk/main/news_article/news_id/27029.phtml).

The former translation is a much better reflection of the poem’s idea, yet the latter renders properly the ambiguity that exists in the original. The obscenity “pidaras” borrowed from Russian criminal slang has a sexual (actually sexist) connotation related to “pederast,” but in a colloquial speech it means typically a sodomite or a “total idiot” (therefore the female form “pidaraska” can also be used). Nevertheless, the underlying sexist connotation makes the text rather tasteless and implicitly homophobic, even though it clearly hints that the Ukrainian government and the incumbent president may well be considered sodomites rather than homosexuals.

The slogan “kill” (whoever) is also distasteful, though it should not be interpreted literally. The poet may mean symbolic/political “killing,” or even refer to Anton Chekhov’s famous dictum: “to kill a slave within ourselves,” and to Shevchenko’s classical “Testament”: to “wake up and rise up, and break the shackles, and sanctify freedom with the enemy’s evil blood.” Still, in the society with a weak tradition of tolerance and political liberalism, and deeply rooted tradition of homophobia, xenophobia, and daily coercion, all these ambiguities and provocative slogans may reverberate and fuel even more hatred and brutality rather than the desired purification.

As a vice-president of the Ukrainian PEN-centre assigned by the colleagues to draft the protest, I was really in a difficult position. I had to condemn the police interference in literary matters and, at the same time, distance myself and the center from the controversial poem, which I would have certainly advised the author neither to read, nor to publish or produce – at least in its current form. I attempted to solve the dilemma by placing the case in the broader context of the government’s systemic infringement of the freedom of speech and political persecution of writers, scholars, journalists, and civic activists. At the same time, in a personal conversation, I expressed to the author (a friend) disapproval of his dubious text.

The point seems to be obvious: we may profoundly disagree with a writer’s views and forms of their expression but we should guarantee him/her the right to express those views without censorship and political pressure. It is up to the public and literary critics to evaluate the text, not the police, prosecutors, and security service. We defend the general principle, and not a specific author or text. A few years ago, I happened to disapprove of then president Viktor Yushchenko’s intention to criminalize the denial that the Great Famine of 1932-33 in Ukraine was Genocide. By the same token, I staunchly disagree with similar decisions of some other governments to make the denial of Armenian and other genocides a criminal offense. People should have a right to express the most ugly and stupid ideas as long as they do not call directly for illegal and violent actions against other people. This is particularly true about the writers and artists who may bear moral, political, professional, and, in some cases, administrative responsibility for their words but definitely should not be considered criminals. It seems self-evident, but I have noticed from pending public debates the subtle difference between the defense of a general principle and of specific texts. It is usually blurred and politicized.

Yuri Vynnychuk’s case, in a way, resembles that of Yulia Tymoshenko. Here, again, we protest against her political persecution not because we support her politically, share her views or consider her own governmental policies consistent with liberal democracy and rule of law. We simply believe that political decisions should not be criminalized – exactly like poems, novels, or artistic performances.

So, the second question emerges: why does President Yanukovych commit or, rather, allow his lieutenants to perpetrate the blunders that compromise him and his regime both domestically and internationally? The simple answer is that no authoritarian regime can survive without some lawlessness and coercion. However, it is one thing to torture inmates in provincial prisons, to harass young and as yet unknown civic activists, or to take over one’s opponents’ businesses via sheer racket or kangaroo courts. It is quite another to attack outstanding figures whose ordeal draws immediately broad and sometimes even exaggerated public attention.

Viktor Yanukovych may be neither wise enough to adequately understand politics, or diligent enough to keep a careful eye on his political menials. But he has a huge apparatus, doubled in size and salaries since Yushchenko’s times, and he should have no problems with professional analysis, political advice and ultimate decision-making. And this is the point. So far, after two years of his presidency, he has been moving from bad to worse in all his decisions, and steadily losing his popular rating from over 60 percent to single-digit figures. If his advisors are as incompetent as their leader, it is very unfortunate. If they are smart but manipulate him in a cowardly fashion –for Moscow’s or their personal benefits, or both – it could be catastrophic.

The Vynnychuk affair might have been initiated by a senile communist, who felt insulted by the writer’s mockery of Communist rhetoric and paraphernalia. At least, this is what Hanna Herman suggested. One may wonder however to what degree the communists in Ukraine are independent players. So far, they behave like government puppets assigned to do the dirtiest jobs that the government prefers not to engage in openly. Smearing Ukrainian NGOs as subversive agents of the West might be the most graphic example. Neither the Kuchma nor the Yanukovych governments dared to do this themselves since this might have undermined their fake “pro-European” rhetoric. Yet, remarkably, they provided the communists with full logistic support, publicity, and the needed votes in the parliament to pass the anti-NGO laws.

In the Vynnychuk case the manipulators could play one more game and try to capitalize on the president’s fears and phobias. Viktor Yanukovych, indeed, seems to be preoccupied with his personal security. This may stem from his unfortunate 2004 presidential campaign when he was attacked by an egg and became so terrified that he lost consciousness. Taras Chornovil, Yanukovych’s ally and former close adviser, claims that the president’s phobias originate from his peculiar experience in the Donbas region – dubbed the Ukrainian Sicily. Yanukovych sincerely believes that “someone wants to kill him,” Chornovil says http://www.kyivpost.com/news/nation/detail/116724/.

The President’s paranoia might be an excellent tool for those in his entourage who know how to use it. And Vynnychuk’s poem “Kill the Pidaras” fits them well. Back in September, there was a huge scandal in Kyiv when people wore teeshirts that featured the slogan: “Thanks to inhabitants of Donbas for the [election of the] president-pidaras.” Police raided the store, confiscated the T-shirts, and forced the businessman who produced them to flee abroad. The word “pidaras,” however, has acquired one more connotation hardly unknown to either Yuri Vynnychuk or Viktor Yanukovych.

The Vynnychuk case, even though on a much smaller scale, is as ambiguous as that of Tymoshenko. Both shed a light on the lawlessness that reigns in the country. But both can be used also be used to obscure the scale of repressions and to trivialize the political essence of the events. Therefore, whatever we think about both heroes and their work, we should remember the broader context and perceive the general tendency rather than unpleasant, albeit isolated, incidents.