The question of how should the western Ukrainian Diaspora deal with Ukraine’s pro-Russian and anti-democracy stance has arisen several times since the election of the new Yanukovych government in February 2010.

The Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA) chose to ignore and bypass a meeting with the Ukrainian president, instead holding a protest rally in the streets of New York during the UN General Assembly meetings. “We understood that there is no sense to meet with Viktor Yanukovych. The president has not yet answered the list of grievances that the World Congress of Ukrainians presented to him at the meeting in June of this year despite his promise.” said Tamara Olexy, the head of Ukrainian Congress Committee of America in an Kyiv Post interview

This leads to the bigger question: Strategically, what other options are available to Ukrainian community leaders when be dealing with the current Ukrainian government? It’s not as simple as a yes or no decision and has not been well explored and discussed behind closed doors. Traditionally the Western Diaspora has exclusively used only two negotiation tactics in conflict situations with Ukraine, isolation and/or confrontation. Ask any MBA student, who has taken a basic course in conflict resolution and they will tell you that there are three more approaches, which the Diaspora is ignoring and is not utilizing in its negotiation tool kit.

I’m constantly amazed at this frequent lack of transfer from professional life to volunteer life. Skills and techniques that managers, executives, consultants and professionals regularly use that were taught and studied in business school and are applied in everyday business affairs are ignored in the evening when we sit down as volunteers in our Ukrainian organizations.

While the snubbing of Ukrainian president Yanukovych by the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA) in New York, could be considered by many as a short term public relations victory, in my mind, it was a tactical and strategic error. A much bigger and more important opportunity window was ignored and missed by the western Ukrainian Diaspora leaders.

Most people don’t realize that the Yanukovych government desperately needs the support of the leadership institutions in the Ukrainian Diaspora in both Canada and the USA.

Why? And why now?

One signal that was misinterpreted by the Diaspora, just before the Yanukowych visit to New York, was the token attempt at a last minute reproachment with the Ukrainian Diaspora, which included the sudden reappearance of an edited and watered down Holodomor web page on the Ukrainian presidential web site, a reply to the five month old letter of demands from the UCCA, an offer to open the KGB archives on World War Two and to set up a public TV broadcast station in Ukraine.

It has long been rumored in policy and strategy circles and blogs that I hang out in, that the Yanukovych government will be seeking a prestigious and influential two year seat at the UN Security Council table. That eventually requires convincing two thirds of the 192 member countries of the UN to vote for Ukraine. Currently Germany, Canada and Portugal are ferociously bidding for two vacant seats on the UN Security Council, which will be decided in a vote on October 12, 2010. The key influential player here are the USA and Canada. Without their overt support, any bids for a seat on the UN Security Council are doomed to failure.

On September 24, 2010, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych officially confirmed Ukraine's intention to get membership in the UN Security Council. "On this occasion, I have the honor to confirm Ukraine's intention to acquire a membership of the UN Security Council for a period of 2016-2017," Yanukovych said at the debate at the 65th session of the UN General Assembly in New York. The president stressed that the changes in the UN are impossible without the renewal of its core - the Security Council. "Ukraine is ready to discuss all the promising concepts of reform of the Security Council. We are convinced that the key to success is recognizing the interests of all regional groups, which are under-represented in this body, in particular the Eastern European one", the president said .(Interfax, September 24, 2010)

In addition to a Ukrainian seat, Ukraine is pushing for the increased influence of Eastern Europe. “Ukraine is continuing to insist that the Eastern European countries be given an extra seat on the United Nations Security Council, Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States Oleksandr Motsyk has said. "We have our own position, which foresees that the interests of the Eastern European group should be definitely taken into account during the reorganization of the Security Council. The Eastern European group should be given an extra seat," he told Ukrainian journalists in New York on Thursday. The ambassador noted that the negotiation process had started many years ago and that the issue was very complex, as it affects the interests of many member states of the United Nations."No consensus has currently been reached on this issue," he said (Interfax Sept 23, 2010).

With this pronouncement the Ukrainian Diaspora now suddenly finds itself in an elevated position, holding two strategically important trump cards in Ukraine’s bid for nomination to the Security Council. Sadly this issue is not even on the Diaspora radar. Ukrainian Diaspora does not even recognize that it’s a new “influencer” if not a new player at the table and that it already holds two key winning trump cards, in future negotiations with Ukraine.

The Yanukovych government needs to court the UCCA and the CUC and the UWC to convince both the American and Canadian governments and other strategic member countries to support Ukraine’s future bid. The Diaspora holds an important “Supporter trump card” where it can lobby both US and Canada to support Ukraine’s bid as well as a “detractor” trump card that can be used equally well to derail Ukraine’s bid.

According to Kyiv Post: “Olexander Motryk, the Ukrainian ambassador to the United States, called Askold Lozynskyj several days before Yanukovych’s visit and asked what the president could do to avoid the street protest. Lozynskyj answered: fire Soldatenko [head of the Institute of National Memory], Education Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk and recognize the Holodomor as genocide.”

With these two trump cards, the Diaspora can add many more demands to the negotiation table.

Wolodymyr (Walter) Derzko is a Senior Fellow at the Strategic Innovation Lab (sLab), and a lecturer in the MA program in Strategic Foresight and Innovation, Ontario College of Art & Design University (OCADU) in Toronto.

Education Minister, Dmytro Tabachnyk, in Ukrainian Prime Minister, Nikolai Azarov’s, government has always been a controversial figure because of his antagonistic views towards Western Ukrainians, Ukrainian nationalism and his pro-Russian view of history. Valery Khoroshkovsky continues to remain in his position as the Chairman of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) despite continually embarrassing President Viktor Yanukovych (EDM, September 23).
 

The appointments of Tabachnyk and Khoroshkovsky both negatively impacted on President Yanukovych’s international and domestic image. The fact that they remain in place is evidence that Russia was able to implement its demand to influence cabinet appointments in the Siloviki and humanities fields in exchange for support for Yanukovych in the 2010 elections. These demands were outlined in President, Dmitry Medvedev’s, August 2009 open letter to the then President Viktor Yushchenko (http://korrespondent.net, August 9, 2009).

Tabachnyk’s latest attacks on Ukrainian nationalism (http://2000.net.ua/2000/aspekty/amplituda/68928) was too much for Petro Pysarchuk, the Party of Regions candidate for Lviv Mayor in the October 31 local elections, who had drafted a parliamentary resolution for the ministers dismissal. “Tabachnyk has no authorization from the congress or the political council of the Party of Regions to be its ideologue,” Pysarchuk stated (Ukrayinska Pravda, September 22). Tabachnyk’s latest attack on Galicians would be a private affair, Pysarchuk says, if not for the fact that he is a sitting cabinet official. Pysarchuk points out that not all Galicians are “nationalists”. However, they are united in their loathing of Tabachnyk, adding that “it is without sense that Dmytro Volodymyrovych is seeking to collect arguments to denigrate Lviv as its Ukrainian spirit could not be destroyed over the centuries by many powerful colonizers.”

During the Viktor Yushchenko presidency (2005-2010) Tabachnyk regularly attacked Ukrainian nationalism, which he associated with the “Orange” leaders, Viktor Yushchenko, Yulia Tymoshenko, and Galicians. Tabachnyk perceives himself in the role of a Soviet era ideological secretary, for example, in his visceral denunciations of Ukrainian nationalists in the 1940’s, which positions him close to the Communist Party and neo-Soviet wing of the Party of Regions. Tabachnyk has banned the use of “World War II” from textbooks in favor of the “Great Patriotic War” (ignoring the 1939-1941 Nazi-Soviet collaboration) (Ukrayinska Pravda, April 12).

In his “what kind of textbooks should we use?” argument, Tabachnyk asserted that “Stepan Bandera and Yuriy Shukhevych will remain in history as nationalists and organizers of mass murder and will forever be stained by the brush of collaborationism” (www.partyofregions.org.ua, June 4). Tabachnyk used traditional Soviet discourse to describe the Orange camp as “national-radicals” and “nationalists” rather than “democrats” and “patriots.” Tabachnyk rejected the term “national democrat” as a contradiction in terms, “a euphemism, like ‘national socialism,’ which masks the ‘core-nationalistic’ substance of this trend” (Rossiiske Vesti, October 28, 2006).

Tabachnyk has pursued two commonly held Russian nationalist positions. First, Galicians are not really “Ukrainians” and that they are different from Ukrainians living in central and eastern Ukraine. “Galicians have virtually nothing to do with the people of Great Ukraine mentally, confessionally, linguistically or politically. We have different enemies and different allies. Furthermore, our allies, and even brothers are their enemies, and their ‘heroes’ (Stepan Bandera, Yuriy Shukhevych) are for us murderers, traitors and accomplices of Hitler's executioners,” Tabachnyk asserts. Moreover, Tabachnyk claims it is misplaced for the US and Europe to see the Orange Revolutionaries as “democrats; in reality, they are ‘Ukrainian nationalists.” Tabachnyk, like the Russian leadership and the Yanukovych administration, believes democratic revolutions were CIA conspiracies and the 2005-2010 Yushchenko administration received its orders from the US embassy (D.Tabachnyk, “Utynyi sup” po-Ukrainski. Kharkiv: Folio, 2008).

US conspiracy theories have proved popular among post-Soviet leaders and led to steps in Ukraine and Russia (where were successful) to introduce legislation limiting Western funding for NGO’s. Tabachnyk, like many in the Yanukovych administration, sees Western criticism of democratic regression, such as censorship, as the work of Ukrainian NGO’s funded by Western grants to slander the Ukrainian authorities. “Freedom of speech in their understanding (‘independent media’ and ‘Stop cenzura!’) is the freedom of the opposition to lie about everything about the authorities,” Tabachnyk suggested (http://2000.net.ua/2000/aspekty/amplituda/68928).

Former President, Leonid Kuchma, and Parliamentary Chairman, Volodymyr Lytvyn, both continue to point to the Georgi Gongadze murder scandal in the fall of 2000 as a US conspiracy (Ukrayinska Pravda, September 15). This prompted a strong rebuke from US Ambassador John Teft (Kyiv Post, September 22). Tabachnyk’s latest diatribe “Spiritual Capitulation of Ukrainian Nationalists” (http://2000.net.ua/2000/aspekty/amplituda/68928) was published in his favorite newspaper, 2000, established by “former” KGB officer, Sergei Kychygyn, who as Communist Party commissar at the Vechirnyi Kyiv newspaper, specialized in vitriolic attacks on dissidents and NGO’s. The newspaper has specialized in Soviet-style denunciations of the opposition as American hirelings and of “Ukrainian nationalism.” Political expert Mykola Riabchuk described 2000 to Jamestown as “an openly [Russian Federal Security Service] FSB product in Ukraine.” Their main agenda seeks to belittle support for Ukrainian nationalism. Tymoshenko’s main mistake was that after her defeat she began to rely on nationalistic rhetoric. “Nationalist forces” do not have any serious support among Ukrainians and cannot return to power because they discredited themselves during Yushchenko’s presidency.

Therefore, “nationalists” seek to retain power over a small part of Ukraine by separating Western Ukraine or expelling the Donbass and Crimea. This is a reference to Ukrainian writer Yuriy Andrukovych who in an interview in UNIAN (July 22) and Rzechzpospolita (August 1) triggered a major debate when he suggested that if “Orange” forces returned to power, and Donetsk or Crimea again raised the question of separating (as they did at the Severdonetsk congress on November 27, 2004 in response to the Orange Revolution) they should be allowed to leave (Ukrayinska Pravda, August 4, 5, 10, 30, UNIAN, July 29).

Tabachnyk alleges that “nationalists” now represent a threat to Ukraine’s territorial integrity. “Individuals from Ivano-Frankivsk seek to separate these regions where their ‘real’ nation lives and to build a state using apartheid and ethnic cleansing techniques” (http://2000.net.ua/2000/aspekty/amplituda/68928).

Tabachnyk’s latest denunciation of Ukrainian nationalism represents a set of inter-connected ideas, bad analogies and groundless accusations. Such an article would be intellectually ridiculed if written by an education minister within a Western democracy. Yanukovych's support for his education minister is evident in his September 30 decree establishing a Committee on Questions of Educational Quality, which Tabachnyk will head (www.www.president.gov.ua).The fact that Tabachnyk and Khoroshkovsky remain in influential positions, despite embarrassing the president, is evidence that Moscow retains large influence over the Yanukovych administration.

11.10.10. Stalin killed millions. A Stanford historian answers the question, was it genocide?

Mass killing is still the way a lot of governments do business.

The past few decades have seen terrifying examples in Rwanda, Cambodia, Darfur, Bosnia.

Murder on a national scale, yes – but is it genocide? "The word carries a powerful punch," said Stanford history Professor Norman Naimark. "In international courts, it's considered the crime of crimes."

Nations have tugs of war over the official definition of the word "genocide" itself -- which mentions only national, ethnic, racial and religious groups. The definition can determine, after all, international relations, foreign aid and national morale. Look at the annual international tussle over whether the 1915 Turkish massacre and deportation of the Armenians "counts" as genocide.

Naimark, author of the controversial new book Stalin's Genocides, argues that we need a much broader definition of genocide, one that includes nations killing social classes and political groups. His case in point: Stalin.

The book's title is plural for a reason: He argues that the Soviet elimination of a social class, the kulaks (who were higher-income farmers), and the subsequent killer famine among all Ukrainian peasants – as well as the notorious 1937 order No. 00447 that called for the mass execution and exile of "socially harmful elements" as "enemies of the people" – were, in fact, genocide.

A dispossessed kulak and his family in front of their home in Udachne village in Donets'ka oblast', 1930s.

[...]

The term "genocide" was defined by the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. The convention's work was shaped by the Holocaust – "that was considered the genocide," said Naimark.

"A catastrophe had just happened, and everyone was still thinking about the war that had just ended. This always occurs with international law – they outlaw what happened in the immediate past, not what's going to happen in the future."

In his book, he concludes that there was more similarity between Hitler and Stalin than usually acknowledged: "Both chewed up the lives of human beings in the name of a transformative vision of Utopia. Both destroyed their countries and societies, as well as vast numbers of people inside and outside their own states. Both, in the end, were genocidaires."

Shipment of grain from the Chervonyi Step collective farm to a procurement center, Kyivs'ka oblast', 1932. The sign reads 'Socialists' bread instead of kulak's bread.'

All early drafts of the U.N. genocide convention included social and political groups in its definition. But one hand that wasn't in the room guided the pen. The Soviet delegation vetoed any definition of genocide that might include the actions of its leader, Joseph Stalin. The Allies, exhausted by war, were loyal to their Soviet allies – to the detriment of subsequent generations.

Naimark argues that that the narrow definition of genocide is the dictator's unacknowledged legacy to us today.

Accounts "gloss over the genocidal character of the Soviet regime in the 1930s, which killed systematically rather than episodically," said Naimark. In the process of collectivization, for example, 30,000 kulaks were killed directly, mostly shot on the spot. About 2 million were forcibly deported to the Far North and Siberia.

They were called "enemies of the people," as well as swine, dogs, cockroaches, scum, vermin, filth, garbage, half animals, apes. Activists promoted murderous slogans: "We will exile the kulak by the thousand when necessary – shoot the kulak breed." "We will make soap of kulaks." "Our class enemies must be wiped off the face of the earth."

One Soviet report noted that gangs "drove the dekulakized naked in the streets, beat them, organized drinking bouts in their houses, shot over their heads, forced them to dig their own graves, undressed women and searched them, stole valuables, money, etc."

The destruction of the kulak class triggered the Ukrainian famine, during which 3 million to 5 million peasants died of starvation.

"There is a great deal of evidence of government connivance in the circumstances that brought on the shortage of grain and bad harvests in the first place and made it impossible for Ukrainians to find food for their survival," Naimark writes.

[...]

"How much can you move on? Can you put it in your past? How is a national identity formed when a central part of it is a crime?" Naimark asked. "The Germans have gone about it the right way," he said, pointing out that the Germany has pioneered research about the Holocaust and the crimes of the Nazi regime. "Through denial and obfuscation, the Turks have gone about it the wrong way."

Without a full examination of the past, Naimark observed, it's too easy for it to happen again.

Toward the end of his life, Stalin may have had another genocide in his crosshairs. We'll never know whether the concocted conspiracy of Jewish Kremlin doctors in 1952 would have resulted in the internal exile of the entire Jewish population. Whatever plans existed ended abruptly with Stalin's death in March 1953, as rumors of Jewish deportations were swirling.

One of Stalin's colleagues recalled the dictator reviewing an arrest list (really, a death list) and muttering to himself: "Who's going to remember all this riff-raff in ten or twenty years' time? No one. … Who remembers the names now of the boyars Ivan the Terrible got rid of? No one. … The people had to know he was getting rid of all his enemies. In the end, they all got what they deserved."

Complete article:
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2010/september/naimark-stalin-genocide-092310.html

11.10.10. The Kharkiv accord and Russia's sphere of influence

http://www.thetrumpet.com/index.php?q=7512.6081.0.0
September 24, 2010

Richard Palmer
[...]
 

Throughout Yushenko’s presidency, Russia did all it could to discredit Ukraine’s new pro-Western direction. Russia appears to have had an easy job—with all their petty squabbling and infighting, the leaders of the Orange Revolution seemed to do a good job of discrediting themselves.

Moscow’s chance to formally take back Ukraine came on February 14, with the election of Ukraine’s new president. Russia’s puppet, Yanukovich, won, albeit by a very slim margin of only 3.48 percent.

[...]
 

Russia’s puppet was firmly in charge of Ukraine, and so Russia’s agenda began to roll out.

On April 21, Yanukovich and Medvedev signed the Khariv accords, which allowed Russia to station its Black Sea fleet in the Crimea, and in return Ukraine was given a substantial discount on gas imported from Russia. The agreement, however, is heavily in Russia’s favor and ensures Ukraine’s dependency on Russia for decades to come. After the Orange Revolution, Yushchenko wanted to kick the fleet out of the Crimea in 2017. The Kharkiv accords guarantee that it can stay at least until 2042.

“The Kharkiv accords … have significant geopolitical implications,” writes James Sherr, head of the Russia and Eurasia program at Chatham House, an independent think tank based in the UK. “Not only do they signify a reversal of the policies adopted since 2005 by former President Viktor Yushchenko, they amount to a fundamental revision of the course that Ukraine has pursued since acquiring independence in 1991.”

The accords put Ukraine firmly within Russia’s sphere of influence. The accords “could preclude any further integration into the Euro-Atlantic security system for many years,” writes Sherr.

This change of direction for Ukraine will be very hard to reverse. If a future government decides it wants to kick the Russian fleet out of the Crimea, it will have to repay all of the gas discounts Ukraine has received.

[...]

On April 2, Ukraine tore down the six departments that coordinate Ukraine’s integration with nato. Even before the Orange Revolution, Ukraine worked with nato. But now Ukraine is burning the bridges that connect it to the alliance.

Instead it has invited the alliance set up by Moscow—the Collective Security Treaty Organization (csto)—to set up offices in Kyiv. The government has established a commission to investigate the potential for Ukraine to join the organization.

Russia is also undertaking an economic assault against Ukraine. Moscow has repeatedly urged a merger between Russia’s Gazprom and Ukraine’s Naftogaz—a merger that would give Russia control over Ukraine’s gas industry and nuclear power generation. Sherr writes that “Steel, chemical, shipbuilding, aviation and nuclear enterprises are now under pressure from Russian buyers, ostensibly private, but backed by state lines of credit.”

As all this has happened, Ukraine’s government has expanded its power to the point that Ukraine is looking more and more like the Soviet state it once was. Ukraine’s government have been carefully eroding the country’s democracy. Sherr writes:

Outright violation of the law by the state evokes outrage, but its selective and bias application might not. Punishment creates heroines and martyrs, but bribery and kompromat [putting pressure on a person using compromising information] create accomplices. Censorship provokes defiance, but the reallocation of broadcasting frequencies provokes technical arguments. The suborning of judges arouses condemnation, but not so emphatically when one’s predecessor has done the same, even if less brutally and with an arguably superior purpose.

[...]

After Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 1998, Trumpet editor in chief Gerald Flurry wrote that Ukraine “is the breadbasket of Russia, and surely it [Russia] is willing to wage war over that as well.”

He was right. Russia has waged war over the area—the kind of quiet, total war that Russia excels in. It involves security services and big business; political maneuverings and blockbuster movies. The Russian state has marshaled everything it can to take part in the assault.

Ukraine appears to be a major success for it. “For their part, Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, without international opprobrium or loss of life, have secured greater geopolitical dividends than were realized as a result of victory in the Georgian war,” writes Sherr.

Another country quietly falls to Russia, though this time without the world watching the 24/7 news coverage of the takeover—though you can be sure Europe is paying attention. For more information on Russia’s goals in Eastern Europe, see our article “Russia’s Attack Signals Dangerous New Era.”

26.10.10. Ukraine’s foreign and security policy and Russia

Taras Kuzio

President Viktor Yanukovych’s foreign and security policy is controlled by Russia and coordinated with Moscow. The same conclusion is already appearing among European elites after seeing first-hand how Ukrainian foreign policy personnel work closely with Russia.

Russian influence in Ukraine’s foreign policy is evident in two areas. The first is coordination between the Ukrainian delegation headed by the Romanian and Party of Regions deputy, Ivan Popecku, and the Russian delegation at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) that sought to moderate criticism of the October 5 resolution (http://assembly.coe.int/ASP/Doc/ATListingDetails_E.asp?ATID=11237). A detailed analysis of backroom negotiations described the Russian delegation as “the Big Brother of the Party of Regions” (Ukrayinska Pravda, October 6).

Russian support for the Ukrainian authorities on the PACE monitoring committee only served to increase the determination of the Estonian PACE co-rapporteur for the monitoring of Ukraine, Mailis Reps, to include tough criticism of the Ukrainian authorities. Russian and Ukrainian delegations repeatedly blamed the “Orange” authorities for alleged democratic infringements and repression of Russian speakers. “Yushchenko was a pseudo-democrat!” Russian Duma deputy Dmitriy Viatkin said, a comment followed by similar remarks by Russian Communist leader Gennadiy Zyuganov and the Russian political technologist, Sergei Markov (Ukrayinska Pravda, October 6).

Additional evidence of Russian influence on Ukrainian foreign and security policy emerged in the annual Yalta European Strategy (YES) summit headed by oligarch, Viktor Pinchuk (http://yes-ukraine.org/). This year’s summit on September 30-October 3 was the first occasion where Russia sent a high powered delegation from its political and business elites, including Deputy Prime Minister, Alexei Kudrin. The delegation included the ideologue of “Russian modernization,” Viktor Vekselberg, a strategy that is appealing to Yanukovych’s administration. (www.mg.co.za/article/2006-11-10-who-is-viktor-vekselberg). In previous YES summits, the Russian delegation included only “a few experts and marginalized politicians,” one Ukrainian expert wrote in the Ukrayinska Pravda blog (October 4).

One EU politician attending the summit said “Now maybe Russians will be taking care of Ukraine’s European integration.” Although said in jest, the diplomat was actually pointing to a new reality: Moscow’s determination to influence and keep the pulse of Ukraine’s European integration outside the CIS. Yanukovych acceded to Russia’s demand to end Ukraine’s aim of joining NATO and Moscow is now seeking to halt or slow down Ukraine’s integration into the EU. As one Russian participant confided: “They can still play a little with their European integration but sooner or later they will return to the (CIS) Customs Union” (Ukrayinska Pravda, October 4).

Yanukovych did not displease his Russian guests, as during his speech he never once mentioned Ukraine’s desire to join the EU. Instead, he said that Ukraine “will choose the speed, form and methods of integration that conform to its national interests” (Ukrayinska Pravda, October 4). Yanukovych is the first of four Ukrainian presidents to avoid supporting efforts to join NATO or to publicly endorse joining the EU. Yanukovych has repeatedly ignored requests by the G7 Ambassadors for a meeting in Kyiv (Ukrayinska Pravda, October 11).

These developments, coupled with the rollback of democracy in Ukraine (EDM, October 13), are being seen by Kyiv’s lack of interest in joining the EU, according to Elmar Brok, a member of the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs (Kyiv Post, October 4). On the eve of Yanukovych’s visit to France, French experts reached similar conclusions (Ukrayinska Pravda, October 6, Politychna Dumka, October 8). Russian influence on Ukraine’s security policy is evident in three areas. The first, and most obvious, is through the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) Chairman, Valeriy Khoroshkovsky, who over the course of only eight months has undermined Ukraine’s international image as well as domestic and international trust in Yanukovych’s commitment to democracy. The PACE resolution condemned the use of the SBU for political ends, a criticism which was not included for “technical reasons” on the report broadcast on Inter, Ukraine’s most popular television channel (owned by Khoroshkovsky).

During a September visit to Kyiv, the author asked a wide variety of Ukrainian political experts and parliamentary deputies to explain why Khoroshkovsky remains in place while he embarrasses the president, such as in July when Nico Lange, director of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung, was detained at Kyiv Airport a month before Yanukovych’s visit to Germany. The answers were that he is directly working for Russia to undermine Ukraine’s European integration. Moreover, he has presidential plans and wishes to receive Moscow’s support as a future “Ukrainian Putin.”

In addition, Viacheslav Zanevskyi, the head of Yanukovych’s presidential guard, is a Russian citizen, a scandal that was dismissed by presidential administration head, Serhiy Levochkin, as irrelevant (Ukrayinska Pravda, October 6, 9). Zanevskyi was hired in the summer of 2008 because the then opposition leader Yanukovych did not trust the SBU or the Directorate on State Protection [UDO], the former ninth directorate of the Soviet KGB. This is an outcome of Yanukovych’s pathological fear of being assassinated (EDM, June 28).

Zanevskyi’s unofficial title is “Head of the personal guard of the President,” but his official title is “non-resident presidential adviser.” It remains secret who is paying Zanevskyi’s salary and expenses as these cannot come from the state budget (Jamestown Foundation blog, October 13).

Zanvskyi “is the eyes and ear who sees everything and hears everything” (Ukrayinska Pravda, October 6). Zanvskyi has access to Yanukovych’s itinerary, his personal life, state secrets and telephone conversations, and he is able to install monitoring devices wherever Yanukovych is located. It would be naïve to believe that this intelligence is not being transferred to Russia.

In July, Dmitriy Salamatin, was appointed as head of the state-owned Ukrspetsexport, Ukraine’s arms exporting agency which has an annual turnover of $1 billion (www.ukrspecexport.com). Salamatin was born in Kazakhstan and worked in Russia from 1991 to 1997. Salamatin is the son-in-law of the former First Deputy Russian Prime Minister, Oleg Soskovets (Segodnya, July 14). Salamatin moved to Ukraine in 1999 and was elected to parliament in 2006 and 2007 in the Party of Regions. In the April 27 riot in parliament over the Sevastopol Black Sea Fleet base extension, Salamatin was seen fighting members of the opposition. During an August 11 altercation in Ukrspetsexport’s Kyiv offices he hit his opponent with a chair (Hazeta po-Ukrainski, August 15).

These examples confirm that Moscow’s demand, as outlined in President Dmitry Medvedev’s August 2009 open letter to the then President, Viktor Yushchenko, to influence Yanukovych’s appointments of the siloviki has been over-fulfilled. These steps will increasingly prevent Ukraine from undertaking a sovereign foreign and security policy.

26.10.10. Constitutionalism and the rule of law in Ukraine

October 13, 2010

Taras Kuzio

Three recent episodes reflect the degree to which the rule of law in Ukraine is under pressure from its already weak position after five years of instability under former President Viktor Yushchenko. This growing pressure on the rule of law comes after President Viktor Yanukovych has been in office for only nine months. On September 14, the Prosecutor-General’s Office concluded that the only person who ordered the murder of journalist Georgi Gongadze in September 2000 was the Interior Minister, Yuriy Kravchenko. Gongadze’s decapitated body was re-buried in such a way for it to be found, as it was in November 2000, leading to what became known as the Kuchmagate crisis.

Kravchenko committed “suicide” in March 2005 on the day he was set to give evidence to the Prosecutor-General’s Office. Kravchenko’s “suicide” has been in doubt ever since as he died from two gunshots to the head. The verdict has been ridiculed by Kravchenko’s friends and foes alike as a whitewash orchestrated by its organizers. Volodymyr Melnykov, General Oleksiy Pukach’s superior in the interior ministry, did not believe that Kravchenko gave the order to Pukach. Pukach admitted murdering Gongadze and was captured last year, after five years in hiding (Komersant-Ukraina, September 27).

Gongadze’s mother and widow both rejected the prosecutor’s findings. Meanwhile, the head of the Presidential Administration, Serhiy Levochkin, supports Kuchma’s innocence, contradicting the stance adopted by the Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration, Hanna Herman (Hazeta po-ukrainski, September 17, Ukrayinska Pravda, September 20).

Kuchma repeated the canard that the Gongadze scandal was a CIA operation to unseat him. CIA agents participated in protests after the disappearance, as Kuchma claimed: “It is an international scandal designed to compromise Ukraine.” US Ambassador, John F.Tefft, rejected the accusations, as did Ambassador Carlos Pasqual when these claims were first made in 2001 (Kyiv Post, September 23).

An additional legal regression was the de facto closure of the investigation of the poisoning of the then opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, in September 2004. The head of the prosecutor’s special team investigating the poisoning, Halyna Klymovych, resigned in March 2010 and gave her first long interview to Ukrayinska Pravda (September 27, 28). Klymovych re-affirmed the conclusion reached by the Prosecutor-General, Oleksandr Medvedko, that Yushchenko had been poisoned –the only occasion when Russia has intervened in a democratic revolution to assassinate an opposition leader. Klymovych resigned from the prosecutor’s office because the “current authorities will do everything to conceal the fact of the poisoning and this objective will be for them a priority” (Ukrayinska Pravda, September 27).

The third –and most important– legal setback was the constitutional court’s decision on October 1, to declare the 2004 constitutional reforms (which transformed Ukraine into a parliamentary system and came into effect following the March 2006 parliamentary elections) as “unconstitutional.” As a consequence of the annulment, Ukraine has returned to the 1996 presidential constitution.

The court’s ruling has thrown Ukraine into constitutional and legal chaos. The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) issued a strongly worded statement: “The functioning of democratic institutions in Ukraine’ five days later that was voted through by 102 out of 109 members, the highest majority vote ever recorded by PACE” (http://assembly.coe.int/main.asp?Link=/documents/workingdocs/doc10/edoc12357.htm).

Constitutional-legal chaos arises from four questions following five years of Ukraine being under an “unconstitutional” constitution:

1. Legislation will need to be amended.
    
2. Three elections (2006, 2007, 2010) were held under an “unconstitutional” constitution.
    
3. Yanukovych was elected under the 2006 “constitution” for five years but the presidential term was four years under the 1996 constitution.
    
4. Parliament was elected in 2007 for five years, but the 1996 constitution provides for a four year parliamentary term.

The court’s ruling and the threat of presidential authoritarianism has for the first time raised the genuine possibility of unity among opposition forces. Yanukovych, the Party of Regions he led in 2003-2010, and Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Tigipko have supported Ukraine’s return to a presidential system using the same rationale used in the 1990’s: a concentration of power is needed to undertake reforms. They failed to take into account that a presidential system has been synonymous with democratic regression, authoritarianism and weak reforms throughout the CIS. All Central-Eastern European and Baltic post-communist states, that conducted the greatest number of reforms and advanced towards democratic systems and market economies, adopted parliamentary systems. Mikhail Pogrebynsky, Director of the Kyiv Center for Political and Conflict Studies, and an opponent of the Orange political camp, concluded that “Ukraine’s system is moving closer to the Russian system of power” (Christian Science Monitor, October 1). Russian-style presidential power will move Ukraine away from European integration.

Indeed, speaking at the seventh Yalta European Strategy on June 18, Yanukovych did not state that his aim was to seek EU membership, a factor in conveying the wrong signal to European and American elites who were present (Ukrayinska Pravda blog, October 4). A resolution for Ukraine to officially apply for EU membership received only 61 votes (Ukrayinska Pravda, October 6). Ukrainian media sympathetic to the opposition were unanimous in their pessimism about the deterioration in Ukraine-EU relations (Hazeta po-Ukrainski, September 14, Komentari, March 12, May 28, June 18, September 17).

The court’s decision deepens already skeptical views in Brussels and Strasbourg that Yanukovych is disinterested in EU membership. Speaking at Harvard University, the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton said: “Ukraine does not see itself in the EU, but sees itself as part of Europe’s identity” (Ukrayinska Pravda, September 28). European Peoples Party (EPP) MP, Michael Haller Gahler, described Ukraine as retreating backwards, “returning to Sovietization” (Ukrayinska Pravda, September 23). In September, the EPP and EU issued critical statements of democratic regression in Ukraine (http://www.epp.eu/press.asp?artid=1447&fullview=1, Ukrayinska Pravda, September 17).

The prosecutor’s ruling on the Gongadze murder enables the Yanukovych administration to control Kuchma, and thereby his son-in-law oligarch, Viktor Pinchyuk, and Lytvyn, who received the position of Parliamentary Chairman and the eponymous bloc, defected to the ruling coalition. Three senior members of the administration have no interest in the truth on the poisoning case emerging: Yanukovych, who in 2004 was Prime Minister, and the former presidential candidate, Sergey Tigipko, who then headed his election campaign, and First Deputy Prime Minister, Andriy Kluyev, who led the authorities “dirty tricks” campaign. Finally, the desire for revenge by Yanukovych for his humiliation in 2004 is an important driving force in the constitutional court reversing the 2004 constitution. 

01.11.10. Survey shows every fifth Ukrainian ready to sell vote

http://www.rferl.org/content/Survey_Shows_Every_Fifth_Ukrainian_
Ready_To_Sell_Vote/2197889.html
October 22, 2010
 

07.11.10. Joint statement by Ukraine’s opposition on elections

http://www.kyivpost.com/news/politics/detail/88623/#ixzz14Inc3LBQ
November 3,2010

[...]

The new government began the erosion of democracy with the elimination of elections and then attacked a major component of the democratic process by curtailing the freedom of speech in all its manifestations. As a result, the international media watchdog Reporters Without Borders downgraded Ukraine by 42 places in its 2010 annual index of media freedom. There is no need to add anything. All opposition forces were discriminated in their right to be present in the national and many regional media. The main reason behind the situation is that total control of the mass media by the clan groups in the President’s circle. The people’s understanding of the real situation in the country, in all spheres of life, is deliberately and significantly distorted because of the manipulation of the media.

The violations that give us grounds to conclude that the elections were biased and undemocratic arose before the election campaign with the unlawful postponement of the elections, which, according to the Constitution, should have been held in May. Today it is obvious that the postponement of the voting date was driven by the desire to finalize the formation of administrative resources, to take control over law-enforcement structures, subordinate the judicial system and to rewrite the legislation to satisfy the needs of the Party of Regions and its allies.

The adoption of the Law on Elections of Deputies of the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Local Councils and Villages, Town and City Heads was the next stage in the process for systemic vote-rigging. It was designed in the interests of the Party of Regions that acted under the principle of “playing with rules” rather than “playing by the rules.” The Law facilitated the flagrant disproportional representation of the composition of the territorial and district election commissions. In practice, it permitted the President to grab control of the territorial election commissions and their heads, and form exclusive district election commissions that became a major element in facilitating vote-rigging. The completely subordinated law-enforcement agencies provided a mechanism for protecting vote-rigging facilitated by the commissions at different levels.

[...]

In the night before polling day, the illegality of the bogus Batkivshchyna party organizations was proved in courts, but it changed nothing. As a result, the largest opposition party Batkivshchyna and other opposition forces were effectively barred from running in Kyiv, Lviv, Kirovograd, Ternopil and some other regions. Thus, millions of citizens were deprived of their right to choose.

Furthermore, for the first time in the history of Ukraine’s independence, the mass printing of false ballot-papers was organized throughout the country.

[...]

The campaign itself was marked by strong pressure applied to the opposition parties, their candidates and representatives in election commissions. The most wide-spread trick against undesirable candidates was intimidation of election participants by the law-enforcement agencies, and threats to those opposition candidates working in the state sector (doctors, teachers, functionaries) to deprive them of their jobs. In some towns, there were cases of the authorized detention of mayoral candidates who had a good chance to defeat the Party of Regions’ candidates. In many cases, opposition candidates were pulled out of the electoral race as a result of decisions made by commissions that had an overall majority of government representatives. In general, over two thousand of candidates for deputies, candidates to village, town and city heads were barred from participating in the elections because of repressions by the law-enforcement agencies, or as a result of ordered court decisions, or illegal actions by the subordinated territorial election commissions. Some regional political parties were barred from participation in the elections in the same way, only because they had a good chance to be elected to local councils as a counter to the ruling party. We have the detailed lists of all candidates and parties illegally deprived of their right to participate in the elections, as well as the illegal court decisions that formalized this lawlessness. We are going to publish them.

The abuse of home voting, without proper cause, was also wide-spread. It is an instrument of vote-rigging in Ukraine that first emerged before 2004, and which has now been restored by the government. In some regions, the number of people voting at home sharply increased even in comparison to the second round of the presidential elections 2004.

One could only describe the local elections as “fair and democratic” if unduly biased or in an information vacuum.

The organization of voting on Election Day and after deserves separate assessment. By 10 a.m. on November 2, there is no official information published on the turnout. This is again indicative of the vote-rigging taking place at full pelt all over the country at the level of uncontrolled district and territorial election commissions. In all previous elections there were no such violations.

[...]

The current government has put an end to the tradition of fair elections established after the Orange Revolution. It is rolling back democracy in Ukraine and, in the process, is consciously dismantling the mechanism of free and fair elections which it will replace with regular farces offering a foregone result.

We consider these elections to be unfair, and held with mass and systemic vote-rigging which violates the fundamental rights of Ukraine’s citizens for free choice. 59 percent of citizens agree with us, according to an IFES survey, they consider the elections rigged and that is why they did not vote.

According to the same survey, only 8.5 percent of citizens think that the elections are fair. Ukrainian society has passed its verdict.

These local elections are training for, and the trial of systemic vote-rigging to be used during the next parliamentary and presidential elections. If we, Ukrainian and international forces, do not take action now at this early stage, the government will take it as carte-blanche for further attacks against democracy, human rights and freedoms; and for the establishment of authoritarian rule in Ukraine. A rule that is alien both to Ukraine’s people and the whole of Europe.
Complete article:
http://www.kyivpost.com/news/politics/detail/88623/#ixzz14Inc3LBQ

07.11.10. Yanukovych and the Holodomor

November 2, 2010

Askold S. Lozynskyj

On October 4, 2010, President Yanukovych issued a decree regarding Ukraine’s Taras Shevchenko National Award, which is recognized as the most prestigious award for creative work in the area of cultural development. The decree was largely unnoticed except perhaps by those who continue to expect the worst from Viktor Yanukovych. New presidents in Ukraine routinely redact the procedural issues regarding the award upon coming to office. Viktor Yushchenko made amendments to the award process in force during President Kuchma’s administration. Since additions/deletions are generally of a procedural nature, there was no alert when Viktor Yanukovych issued his revisions.

 Except with this one difference: Yanukovych went beyond procedure. In December 2007 President Yushchenko expanded the subjects for Shevchenko Award consideration by inserting the following language, “works which serve to enlighten the topic of the Holodomor 1932-33…” Apparently this was a major problem for his successor. Viktor Yanukovych decreed to strike the Holodomor reference. He did not address any other substantive issues in the award criteria.

Certainly Yushchenko’s initiative can only be perceived as part of an agenda to enhance the study of the Holodomor. Likewise, Yanukovych’s reaction three years later can only be interpreted as an attempt to undermine that initiative.

Yanukovych’s personal war against the Holodomor has become legendary in Ukraine and beyond its borders. A week ago he bizarrely and rudely did not accompany Canadian Prime Minister Harper to the Holodomor Memorial in Kyiv. Is all this simply sycophantic pandering to Moscow?

Yanukovych’s opening salvo against the Holodomor was delivered on the very day of his inauguration. Reference to the Holodomor was deleted from the presidential website. On April 27, 2010, in Strasbourg, Yanukovych stated to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, “We consider it incorrect and unjust to consider the Holodomor a fact of genocide of a certain people.” He then proceeded to replace highly respected Ihor Yukhnovsky as chair of the National Memorial Institute with communist Valeriy Soldatenko, who not only dates his communist membership well into the period of Leonid Brezhnev and Volodymyr Scherbytsky, but also flaunts the fact that he has not renounced his communist membership to this day. Soldatenko has not only denounced the Holodomor as not being a genocide of the Ukrainian people, but has on more than one occasion mentioned that draft legislation is ready to be introduced in the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine to repeal Ukraine’s law from November 2006, which declared the Holodomor to have been Genocide.

Yanukovych’s denouncement of the Holodomor has been tendentious and gratuitous. Were he simply passively intellectually opposed to characterizing the Holodomor as genocide, he would not have acted as expeditiously in deleting the website reference; he would not have made a special effort to address PACE only to denounce the Holodomor; and, certainly, he would have replaced Yukhnovsky with a moderate. In all instances he went out of his way to manifest that he was waging and unconditional war on the Holodomor.

Over the past few years Ukraine, together with the Ukrainian World Congress (UWC), has been organizing Holodomor commemorative events at the United Nations in New York. This year the UWC received no signal of any interest in this topic from Ukraine as it had in the past. The UWC on its own then attempted to reserve a conference room at UN headquarters in New York for such an event. Going back and forth over several weeks, the UN Economic and Social Council, with which the UWC has consultative status, declined the UWC’s request ostensibly based upon its opinion that commemorating the Holodomor does not fall within its purview and suggested that the UWC seek the sponsorship of a UN member-state. It should be noted that the head of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs NGO office is a Russian.

The UWC turned to Ukraine’s Permanent Representative to the UN. Ambassador Sergeev responded: “The Permanent Mission together with individual activists from Ukrainian organizations in the United States for several months now have been preparing a commemorative assembly at the UN to honor the memory of the victims of the Holodomor, as had been done in prior years. Representatives of the UWC, the UCC, WFUW, Ukrainian National Association, New Wave will be invited for this event.”

The Personal Representative did not include the UWC, the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, the World Federation of Ukrainian Women’s Organizations or the Ukrainian National Association in the planning, leaving us to presume that it, i.e., the Ukrainian government of Yanukovych, will handle all of the arrangements. We’ll see what happens. Hope springs eternal!

13.11.10. Ukrainian Populist Movement in the late 19th and early 20th century

Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine.

The Ukrainian populist movement that emerged in the second half of the 19th century, first in Russian-ruled Ukraine and soon afterwards in Western Ukraine, played a cucial role in the evolution of Ukrainian national life and the formation of modern Ukrainian national identity.

The populists, who included primarily members of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, idealized the people (narod), which, practically speaking, meant the peasantry. The main tenets of Ukrainian populism were federalism, the emancipation of the peasantry, and the recognition of the cultural distinctiveness of the Ukrainian people. While some populists became involved in revolutionary activities, the dominant trend was for peaceful change and the majority of populists focused on the "organic work" among the peasants. Initially, this work focused on educational and cultural endeavors, such as Ukrainian Sunday schools for adults and children, village reading rooms, and various publishing activities of such organizations as the Prosvita (Enlightenment) society. Later, in their attempt to help Ukrainians improve their lives through their own resources, populist organizations became involved in economic activities, most notably in the co-operative movement. Populists also played an inportant role in various aspects of social work (including sports, physical-education, and scouting organizations) and health care (such as the temperance movement whose efforts to battle the wide-spread problem of alcoholism among the peasants were particularly effective in Western Ukraine)...

Learn more about the Ukrainian populist movement in the late 19th and early 20th century by visiting: http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/featuredentry.asp or by visiting: http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com and searching for such entries as:

ABOUT IEU: Once completed, the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine will be the most comprehensive source of information in English on Ukraine, its history, people, geography, society, economy, and cultural heritage. With over 20,000 detailed encyclopedic entries supplemented with thousands of maps, photographs, illustrations, tables, and other graphic and/or audio materials, this immense repository of knowledge is designed to present Ukraine and Ukrainians to the world.

At present, only 20% of the entire planned IEU database is available on the IEU site. New entries are being edited, updated, and added daily. However, the successful completion of this ambitious and costly project will be possible only with the financial aid of the IEU supporters. Become the IEU supporter (http://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/donor.asp) and help the CIUS in creating the world's most authoritative electronic information resource about Ukraine and Ukrainians!

13.11.10. Ukrainian FEMENists against Putin

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/new/blogs/motyl

Alexander J. Motyl

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister, came to Kyiv that day to pursue negotiations with his Ukrainian counterpart, Mykola Azarov, over energy. While policymakers and pundits debated the pros and cons of closer Russo-Ukrainian energy cooperation, FEMEN — a Ukrainian feminist group — staged a symbolically fascinating anti-Putin demonstration in downtown Kyiv (see the video clip here).

Six young women, bare-chested, clad in stylish, tight-fitting jeans, and wearing beribboned wreaths typical of traditional Ukrainian folk costumes, held placards and shouted slogans in front of the capital city’s most famous statue of Lenin, at the foot of Shevchenko Boulevard. The site is witness to periodic tussles between anti-Communists, who detest Lenin and want to deface his image, and Communists, who worship the Father of Communism and want to preserve it.

This time, the Communists were nowhere to be seen. After all, why worry about a few half-naked girls? Little did Ukraine’s Stalinists suspect that FEMEN’s topless protest could be far more destructive than anything the anti-Communists could do. One can always fix or clean a statue. Nudity, on the other hand, is freedom from social constraints par excellence; as such, it stands in diametrical opposition to the dictatorship of the prudish proletariat and Lenin’s baleful totalitarian legacy.

[...]

Whether FEMEN actually reflects the views of all of Ukraine is debatable. Public opinion surveys show that significant parts of the population in the southeast of the country might be quite happy with giving Putin “parts of Ukraine.” And FEMEN itself, established in 2008 by a group of Kyiv university students, has hardly become a mass movement. On the other hand, FEMEN probably does reflect the views of significant portions of Ukrainian students and its ability to attract media attention with well publicized happenings has transformed it into an important part of Ukraine’s ongoing symbolic wars.

Significantly, FEMEN has managed to combine several seemingly disparate ideological trends. The group is unquestionably feminist and hopes to shock Ukraine’s straightlaced society and sexist establishment. But it is also openly modern and nationalist, aspiring to a contemporary, independent, and liberal homeland. It has also adopted a progressively broader and more overtly political agenda — beginning in 2009 with actions against sexual harassment at universities, the Miss Universe competition, and sex tourism, then moving to protests against electoral fraud, the absence of women in the Yanukovich-appointed cabinet, and, now, Vladimir Putin.

Committed to “the principles of social awareness and activism, intellectual and cultural development” and “the European values of freedom, equality and comprehensive development of a person irrespective of the gender,” the FEMENists are clearly the intellectual and cultural offspring of the Orange Revolution.

Yanukovich’s Stalinist supporters will consider FEMEN to be one more reason to damn everything Orange. Ukraine’s young people, on the other hand, may take heart. The “Sixties” could finally be coming to Ukraine.

Update. After the protest, the Kyiv city militia has attempted to crack down on FEMEN for “hooliganism.” Since the Kyiv City administration is now in the hands of President Yanukovich's allies, the harassment is obviously an attempt by Yanukovich to kowtow to the Kremlin. The group remains unrepentant, and its leader, Anna Hutsol, stated: “We assert that FEMEN's topless form of protest is an act of civil disobedience and not a form of hooliganism. The FEMEN women's movement has all the legal grounds for conducting protests in any form not forbidden by law and against anyone, whether it's the president of Ukraine or the premier of Russia!” — AJM, Nov 09

Complete article : ehttp://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/new/blogs/motyl

13.11.10. Charles Stewart Mott Foundation’s support for two Ukrainian NGOs under question

http://www.jamestown.org/blog/
November 4, 2010

Taras Kuzio

The Charles Stewart Mott Foundation has given grants to two Ukrainian election-monitoring organizations: the well known Committee of Voters of Ukraine (KVU) and the lesser known Opora. KVU obtained $200,000 in 2007 and $140,000 in 2010, while Opora received $100,000 in 2007 and again in 2009. Unfortunately, only funding given to Opora has been money well-spent.

KVU and Opora also received funding from the National Democratic Institute (NDI), but in the case of KVU, a decade-long relationship ended in the first two years following Viktor Yushchenko’s election. The reason was KVU’s financial shenanigans.

Opora grew out of the “black” wing (based on its symbols) of the Pora (It’s Time) youth NGO that modeled itself on Serbia’s Otpor and Georgia’s Kmara. The “yellow” wing of Pora, headed by Vladyslav Kaskiv, was a parody of the Serbian and Georgian youth NGOs, acting more as a vehicle for his political ambitions. Yellow Pora became a political party, but failed to enter parliament in 2006. It succeeded, however, in 2007 as one of nine parties in the Our Ukraine-Self Defense bloc.

After Yanukovych’s election, Pora leader Kaskiv defected to the new administration and joined the Nikolai Azarov government. It seems as though the KVU has also been bought.

The reputation of the KVU, which was stellar during its decade-long cooperation with NDI, deteriorated, ironically, during the Yushchenko presidency, when Ukraine held three free elections. Suspicions of corruption first surfaced during the pre-term March 2009 Ternopil oblast council election, which was endorsed by the KVU as “free” despite numerous, significant infringements. The KVU worked with Presidential Administration head Viktor Baloga, who used the Ternopil elections to ensure that the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc received poor results (and in the same breath permitting the nationalist Svoboda party to win).

The link between KVU and Baloga was confirmed when KVU leader Ihor Popov was appointed deputy head of the Presidential Secretariat immediately after the Ternopil elections. The final proof of this relationship was evident this year when Popov was elected leader of the United Center party that Baloga established in 2008 to compete with Our Ukraine to become the president’s party of power.

Popov’s replacement as head of KVU, Oleksandr Chernenko, gave the October 31 local elections a similar clean bill of health four hours before the polls closed, claiming they were held in a “free atmosphere.” He was already insisting to the mass media that the elections could not be declared illegitimate (also before the polls closed).

This statement points to Chernenko’s biased work on behalf of the authorities, Ukrainian experts and journalists believe. Opora, other Ukrainian and foreign NGOs, the Ukrainian opposition, the U.S. Embassy and the Council of Europe, as well European Parliamentarians from all the major political groups (including the Socialists, with whom the Party of Regions signed a memorandum of cooperation last month), were highly critical of the October 31 elections and believed they were a step back from the free presidential elections held in January-February.

Even the Odesa branch of KVU stated that the local elections in their city had a greater number of violations than the infamous fraud in the 2004 elections that sparked the Orange Revolution. The Odesa election commission committed egregious violations that led to a “scandalous situation” in the city, Odesa’s KVU stated.

The Charles Stewart Mott foundation should investigate this blaring contradiction between the corrupted KVU and objective and unbiased Opora. The KVU’s reporting of the October 31 local elections shows that only Opora has proven that it is worthy of U.S. assistance.

23.11.10. Janukovytj afviser energiindrømmelser til Rusland (eng.)

http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/new/blogs/motyl/Is_Yanukovich_in_Putins_doghouse

23.11.10. Covetous Putin calls the sovereign nation 'Little Russia'

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/nov/18/will-ukraine-survive/
November 18, 2010