Eurasia Daily Monitor

March 26, 2010

President Viktor Yanukovych and Prime Minister Nikolai Azarov are both
ignoring the sensitivities of "Orange" Western and Central Ukraine by
returning to positions of power individuals from Leonid Kuchma's second
term in office. Moreover, defectors from the Kuchma regime, who had
received asylum in Russia out of fear that Viktor Yushchenko would
implement the Orange Revolution slogan of "Bandits to Prison!" are in
the process of returning to Ukraine (EDM, April 14, May 25, 2005).


On March 21, Ukrayinska Pravda reported the return of two individuals
(Borys Kolesnikov and Viktor Tikhonov) involved in organizing the
November 2004 separatist meeting in Severodonetsk (EDM, November 28,
2004). Criminal charges against separatists that were filed in 2005, as
in other prominent cases involving Ukraine's elites, were never
completed (EDM, June 23, 2005).


Many of those returning to the security forces were wanted by Interpol,
but had received asylum in Russia, ready to return if and when their
patron, Yanukovych came to power. They have returned to the Interior
Ministry (MVS) and head oblast branches in "Orange' Western and Central
Ukraine (Ukrayinska Pravda, March 21). First Deputy Sergei Popov headed
MVS internal forces despatched to crush the Orange Revolution on
November 28, 2004, but were turned back by the intervention of the
Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) and the military.


Vasyl Vartsaba served as a militia officer and was removed in December
2004. Seven months later he was placed on an Interpol international
watch list. He helped to organize the first incident of violence that
shook the 2004 elections in the Mukachevo mayoral election in April of
that year (EDM, May 5, 2004). Vartsaba is to head the Galician region of
Ivano-Frankivsk's MVS, while his deputy in 2004, Viktor Rusyn, will head
the Trans-Carpathian MVS. Rusyn spent six months in jail in 2005, for
his part in election fraud and violence in the previous year (Ukrayinska
Pravda, March 21).


Defectors currently living in Russia, ready to return to Ukraine,
include the former Odessa Party of Regions leader, Ruslan Bodelan, and
General Mykola Bilokin, who headed the MVS in 2004 (EDM, July 20, 2004).
The most notorious returnee will be the former Deputy Chairman of the
SBU Volodymyr Satsiuk (in 2004), who owned the dacha where Yushchenko
was allegedly poisoned. Another individual set to return is Ihor Bakay,
who fled to Russia in December 2004 after misappropriating over $1
million as head of the DUS (department that serves senior officials).


Korrespondent magazine (March 18) analyzed the Azarov cabinet and found
it was not only dominated by "Donetski" and Party of Regions members,
but also by wealthy businessmen such as Deputy Prime Ministers
Kolesnikov, Sergei Tigipko and SBU Chairman Valeriy Khoroshkovsky (EDM,
March 18).


Another factor that Korrespondent exposed was that 12 out of 29 members
of the Azarov government had been implicated in criminal cases or were
witnesses to them. Nearly half the cabinet are former high ranking
members of the Soviet Ukrainian nomenklatura or KGB. Among the 29
cabinet members, 13 were former KGB officers or had collaborated with
the Soviet security departments The best known example is Deputy Prime
Minister Volodymyr Sivkovych, who has responsibility for overseeing the
security forces.


Foreign Minister Kostyantyn Hryshchenko, the Ukrainian Ambassador to
Russia under Yushchenko, had high ranking ties to the communist
nomenklatura. Hryshchenko's career was developed in Moscow during the
Soviet era. Although Hrushchenko has a reputation as a professional
diplomat, the political expert Oleh Medvedev pointed out that
Hryshchenko had admitted that the Russian leadership lobbied for him to
receive the post (Ukrayinska Pravda, March 22). On March 21, Hryshchenko
said on Inter channel that "Ukraine will never allow any organization
she remains within to be used against Russia."


After the Orange Revolution, Hrushchenko joined the Republican Party
(RPU) established by the "Godfather" of the opaque gas intermediary
RosUkrEnergo and now Minister of Fuels and Energy, Yuriy Boyko
(Ukrayinska Pravda, March 13). Hryshchenko was number 18 on the "Ne
Tak!" (Not Like That!) election bloc organized by the Social Democratic
United Party (SDPUo) for the March 2006 elections.


Ne Tak! stood on a virulently anti-NATO platform and failed to enter
parliament after receiving only one percent of the vote, thus ending the
SDPUo's hopes of re-entering post-Kuchma politics. Boyko, who was on the
verge of arrest in summer 2005 for abuse of office when he was head of
Naftohaz Ukrainy in 2002-2004, switched to the stronger Party of Regions
with which the RPU merged in 2007. Boyko stood in the Party of Regions
list in the 2007 elections.


Yanukovych and Azarov have claimed they would prioritize the struggle
against corruption but this, as in the Kuchma and Yushchenko era's, is
very likely to become a "virtual" struggle. A real campaign against
corruption requires political will demonstrated by the Georgian
President Mikheil Saakashvili, but which Yanukovych lacks. The German
think tank, Transparency International, assigned Ukraine and Russia both
146th rankings last year and Georgia 66th in their annual corruption
index. In the past two decades, Ukraine has adopted and passed on
corruption, seven laws, two criminal codes, 16 presidential decrees, ten
government resolutions, two instructions, two supreme court resolutions,
and two orders from the finance ministry and civil service (Natsionalna
Bezpeka i Oborona, no.97, 2009, http://www.uceps.org/ukr/journal.php.
Despite one of the largest and most rapid transfers from state to
private control of any economy, the SBU and prosecutor-general's office
has never convicted a single member of the Ukrainian elites for abuse of
office or corruption.


Half of Ukraine's 14 wealthiest oligarchs are parliamentary deputies and
most of these were elected as members of the Party of Regions. An
opinion poll quoted in Natsionalna Bezpeka i Oborona (number 7, 2009)
asked which parliamentary political forces are most prone to corruption
and which most seek to combat it. The Party of Regions was considered to
be most prone to corruption (14.3 percent) and only 5.1 percent believe
that they actively combat the phenomenon. The Yulia Tymoshenko bloc
scored 13 percent and 14.9 percent respectively, the only political
force where more Ukrainians believed that they fought corruption.


Yanukovych and Azarov have not implemented cadre policies that would
unite Ukraine, as the former promised in the election campaign, and the
government cannot in any shape or form be considered reformist.



--Taras Kuzio