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Ukraine

All you wanted to know about Ukraine’s Donbass region

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lugansk

For the second time in as many months, Ukraine’s crisis threatens to spiral out of control, with the Ukrainian military now trying (mostly in vain) to secure several cities in the Russian-speaking east from a band of pro-Russian separatists. Russia Flag IconUkraine Flag Icon

Just over a month ago, Russia annexed Crimea, the peninsula region in the south of Ukraine with an overwhelmingly large Russian ethnic population. For all the bluster between Washington and Moscow, you’d have thought that Crimea was as important to the international world order in 2014 as Cuba was in 1963 or Hungary was in 1956.

But the world largely seemed to accept Russia’s annexation of a region that was, after all, part of Russia until 1954. Yesterday in Geneva, after as the United States, Russia, Ukraine and the European Union reached a somewhat thin agreement to reduce the current tension in eastern Ukraine, US secretary of state John Kerry tersely declared, ‘we didn’t come here to talk about Crimea.’

So what’s so different now? Will the latest framework, agreed just on Thursday, succeed? Was Crimea just a warmup act for a larger Russian annexation?

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RELATED: Why more protests won’t solve Ukraine’s political crisis — and why the Orange Revolution didn’t either
RELATED: What comes next for Ukraine following Yanukovych’s ouster

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Not to worry. Here’s everything (and more) you probably ever wanted to know about the Donbass, the eastern-most region of Ukraine that’s now center-stage in the latest round of the fake Cold War.

What is the Donbass?

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The Donbass — or the Donbas (It’s Донбас in Ukrainian, Донбасс in Russian, and if we’ve learned anything about linguocultural conflict, it that language matters a lot) gets its name from the Donets Basin, which is the coal-mining, heavy-industry heart of eastern Ukraine. As a formal matter, the Donbass includes just the northern and center of Donetsk oblast (an oblast is Ukraine’s version of a state), the south of Luhansk oblast, and a very small eastern part of Dnipropetrovsk oblast.  Continue reading All you wanted to know about Ukraine’s Donbass region →

Ukraine

What comes next for Ukraine following Yanukovych’s ouster?

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maidan

There’s apparently a limit on what Ukraine’s president can get away with.Ukraine Flag Icon

He could preside over massive amounts of corruption, he could jail his chief political opponent on ridiculously politicized charges, he could swerve disastrously between a pro-Russian worldview and a pro-European worldview, and he could even brazenly change Ukraine’s election law to win more seats.

But when the government of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych became responsible for the deaths of 88 protesters last week, even members within his own Party of Regions (Партія регіонів) were defecting from Yanukovych.  Arguably, until his police force unleashed lethal fire on hundreds of civilians, Yanukovych could point to a relatively legitimate electoral mandate in the previous 2010 presidential election (and, though it was flawed, the 2012 parliamentary elections).

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Since Friday, when the European Union seemed to broker a deal between Yanukovych and Ukraine’s opposition leaders, events galloped at a dramatically rapid rate (though apparently not too fast for Ukraine’s leading oligarchs, Rinat Akhmetov and Dmitry Firtash), leaving Yanukovych in hiding in eastern Ukraine, under charges of mass murder.  The country’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, voted in quick succession to elect speaker Oleksander Turchinov (pictured above), an opposition, pro-European politician, as interim president.

It also elected to restore the 2004 constitution, which restores more power to Ukraine’s parliament and away from its president, and set a tentative May 25 date for new presidential elections.  The parliament also cleared the path to free Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister and a leader of the center-right ‘All Ukrainian Union — Fatherland’ party (Всеукраїнське об’єднання “Батьківщина), who narrowly lost the 2010 presidential vote to Yanukovych.  Tymoshenko (pictured below) was jailed in late 2011 by Yanukovych’s government on charges related to her handling of the natural gas crisis in 2009 during her premiership.  That precedent, ironically, may be one of the reasons that Yanukovych remained so keen on holding onto power in Kiev — having established that he was willing to throw Tymoshenko in prison on politically motivated grounds, it’s Yanukovych who now faces imprisonment on the basis of far more serious charges.  Tymoshenko, who has ruled out leading Ukraine’s soon-to-be-announced interim government, will nonetheless be a leading candidate in the upcoming presidential ballot.  Though she’s been imprisoned throughout the current crisis, she’s also unsullied by having negotiated with Yanukovych, a group that includes another opposition favorite, heavyweight boxing champion Vitaliy Klychko.

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Russia, who had delivered $3 billion of a promised $15 billion bailout, is obviously dismayed.  Though Yanukovych was never quite the Russian puppet that some Western leaders believed him to be, it’s clear that his sympathies lied to the east more than to the west.

So what comes next for Ukraine?  Past experience demonstrates that the story won’t end with ‘happily ever after’ upon the appointment of this week’s new interim government.  As I wrote last December, the Maidan protests — even if they succeed — won’t by themselves end Ukraine’s political crisis.  Just a year after the ‘Orange Revolution’ of December 2004 and January 2005 that brought Viktor Yushchenko power, the pro-European government crumbled into infighting that lasted until Yushchenko left power, massively unpopular, in 2010.  Yanukovych took advantage of the ongoing disunity of the Ukrainian opposition in October 2012’s parliamentary elections, winning largely by dividing the supporters of Tymoshenko’s Fatherland and Klychko’s newly formed Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform (Український демократичний альянс за реформи).

crimea

Almost on schedule, this morning brings news of serious counter-protests in Crimea, the peninsula that lies in the Black Sea on the southeastern coast, one of the 24 oblasts that comprise Ukraine.   Continue reading What comes next for Ukraine following Yanukovych’s ouster? →

Ukraine

Why more protests won’t solve Ukraine’s political crisis (and why the Orange Revolution didn’t, either)

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kiev

Despite what you may believe from the example of Egypt and from the various ‘color’ revolutions of the past decade, power isn’t transferred by popular revolt, at least not in mature democracies.Ukraine Flag Icon

That’s important to bear in mind as much of the US and international media keeps its attention focused on Kiev, where protesters continue to demand the resignation of Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, who is largely seen as favoring closer ties to Russia than to the European Union and the West.  Despite last weekend’s protests of up to 250,000 Ukrainians, which featured violent clashes with the police (the Ukrainian government has since apologized), Yanukovych has so far survived the blowback from his decision last month to reject an association agreement that would have brought Ukraine into closer alliance with the European Union.  While the most conspiratorial commentators believe that Yanukovych rejected the agreement at the insistence of Russian president Vladimir Putin, a more plausible explanation is that Yanukovych hopes to avoid the kind of short-term disruption to Ukrainian industry that could result from opening Ukraine’s markets to European-wide competition just months before he hopes to win reelection in February 2015.  Theres also plenty of blame for the European Union itself, which didn’t go out of its way to make the path for Ukraine incredibly easy, in light of Ukraine’s longstanding relationship with Russia.

But too much of the international media’s coverage attempts to frame the Ukrainian protests as some kind of ‘Orange Revolution’ redux, with Western media almost gleefully urging Yanukovych’s overthrow by mob acclamation.

It’s true that Yanukovych is relatively pro-Russian and many of his opponents are relatively pro-Western, and it’s very true that Yanukovych’s record is littered with authoritarianism and corruption.  But that interpretation both overstates the differences among the Ukrainian political elite (when hasn’t Ukraine been relatively corrupt?) and it understates the massive economic, demographic and social problems that Ukraine has faced since the end of the Cold War.  The much-hyped Orange Revolution didn’t settle the question of Ukraine’s relative identity vis-à-vis Russia and the West, and the current round of protests won’t likely settle the question either.

Here’s a look at the map of the 2010 Ukrainian presidential election results, which pitted Yanukovych against the relatively pro-Western Yulia Tymoshenko, a former prime minister who is now jailed on what many agree to be politically motivated charges:

ukraine2010

Here’s a look at last October’s parliamentary election results — blue represents Yanukovych’s governing party, the Party of Regions (Партія регіонів), and pink represents Tymoshenko’s party, the center-right ‘All Ukrainian Union — Fatherland’ party (Всеукраїнське об’єднання “Батьківщина), which emerged as the largest opposition party:

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Now here’s a map of Ukraine’s regions that shows the percentage of the regional population that speaks Ukrainian (rather than Russian):

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Notice any similarities?

You should — the lesson here is that Ukraine is split between a western Ukrainian-speaking population and an eastern Russian-speaking population that’s divided not only by language, but by cultural, political and economic differences.

Here’s a look at average salary by region, for example, which shows that the Russian-speaking east, where many of Ukraine’s major cities are located, is economically stronger than the Ukrainian-speaking west, except the region surrounding Ukraine’s capital Kiev (and, to a lesser degree, the region surrounding Odessa on the Black Sea coast, where tourism boosts the local economy):

percapitaukraine

It’s difficult to overstate the differences between the ‘two Ukraines.’ Continue reading Why more protests won’t solve Ukraine’s political crisis (and why the Orange Revolution didn’t, either) →

Ukraine

More final thoughts on Ukraine’s election and Tymoshenko’s future

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It’s been a busy week, but it’s worth taking a moment to explore the results from Ukraine’s parliamentary election on October 28 in greater detail.

We have a final set of preliminary numbers now, which lines up with what exit polls had forecasted after polls closed Sunday night — the governing pro-Russian party of president Viktor Yanukovych, the Party of Regions (Партія регіонів), won just 30.08% of the vote, but it will take 42% of the seats in the 450-member Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s unicameral parliament.  Indeed, Yanukovych and his allies quickly declared victory on Sunday night.

It was able to do so because of a change in the electoral law — in the previous election in 2007, all of the parliamentary seats were determined by proportional representation, but in 2012, half of the seats were elected through single-member districts, allowing Yanukovych’s united party to take advantage of a split opposition.

In this case, the opposition party of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, the center-right ‘All Ukrainian Union — Fatherland’ party (Всеукраїнське об’єднання “Батьківщина, Batkivshchyna) wound up competing, to some degree, with the new reformist Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform (Український демократичний альянс за реформи), formed by heavyweight boxing champion Vitaliy Klychko.

 On the proportional representation vote, Yanukovych’s Party of Regions won 73 seats, versus 61 for Batkivshchyna/Fatherland and 34 for UDAR.

In the constituencies, however, Yanukovych’s party won 114 to just 42 for Batkivshchyna/Fatherland and a mere six for UDAR.

The result will be a parliamentary majority that gives Yanukovych and his prime minister Mykola Azarov slightly greater control over government.

The somewhat fragmented results also show, however, an electorate that is none too pleased with Yanukovych’s increasingly authoritarian rule, his grip over Ukraine’s economy, the graft benefitting his friends and family, and the ongoing economic malaise, unemployment and stalled economic reform.  Despite his apparent gains last Sunday, it’s not clear that Ukrainians — especially members of Ukraine’s increasingly fragile business elite — will remain pliant in the face of policies that pull the country further from the goal of eventual integration into the European Union.

Indeed, the victory comes in an election that was far from free and fair — the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe has a detailed report on the unfair advantages that Yanukovych brought to the election.

Tymoshenko, who served as prime minister in 2005 and then again from 2007 to 2010 under former reformist president (and ‘Orange Revolution’ leader) Viktor Yushchenko, narrowly lost the 2010 presidential election to Yanukovych.  Since then, she has been imprisoned on politically-motivated charges stemming from her negotiation of an energy deal with Russia following a 2009 crisis when Russia stopped the flow of natural gas to Ukraine and to the rest of Europe.  It’s puzzling, however, that the relatively more Russian-friendly Yanukovych would pursue those charges against the relatively more Europe-oriented Tymoshenko, and he certainly hasn’t bothered Moscow with a request to renegotiate the agreement.  Indeed, Moscow will be happy to see gains for the pro-Russian party, following a month of elections in former Soviet republics generally seen as wins for Russia’s attempt to restore its influence in what it calls the ‘near-abroad.’

Nonetheless, Tymoshenko’s support held up despite her imprisonment, with her party winning 25.47% of the vote.  That’s in no small part due to the capable leadership of Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who served as minister of the economy from 2005 to 2006, foreign minister in 2007 and chairman of the Verkhovna Rada from 2007 to 2008.  Although the party will have lost 53 seats since the last parliamentary election in 2007, they will retain the strongest opposition group in Ukraine’s parliament — by far.  It’s a tactical and political victory for Yatsenyuk, of course, who could well be the opposition presidential candidate in 2014, but it’s also a moral victory for Tymoshenko, whose imprisonment now remains the primary symbol of Ukraine’s legal, democratic and economic backslide under Yanukovych.

Although it was UDAR’s first elections in Ukraine, Klychko will have been disappointed to have won just 13.92% and 40 seats.  Surely, Klychko hoped that his campaign would install him as the major opposition figure in Ukraine and perhaps given him an opportunity for a knockout punch against Yanukovych as well.  That’s clearly not going to be the case, although Klychko has established himself as a key reformer in Ukraine, and I expect his bloc of reform-minded MPs will certainly work with Batkivshchyna/Fatherland to make the case for liberalization, other economic reforms, rule of law, and keeping Ukraine’s wider orientation toward eventual European Union membership.

But Klychko’s support was not much more than the other major parties in Ukraine — for example, the Soviet retro Communist Party (Комуністична партія України), which has allied with Yanukovych in the past, won 13.20% and 32 seats.

More troubling, the far-right nationalist All-Ukrainian Union “Svoboda” (Всеукраїнське об’єднання «Свобода») won 10.42% and 37 seats. Although Svoboda, like UDAR and Batkivshchyna/Fatherland, opposes making Russian a national language in Ukraine, the similarities stop there — think of Svoboda as closer to Greece’s Golden Dawn than to, say, a moderately nationalist Christian democratic party in Western Europe. Continue reading More final thoughts on Ukraine’s election and Tymoshenko’s future →

Ukraine

Yanukovych declares victory in Ukraine with exit polls showing narrow win

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Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych (pictured above) and his pro-Russian Party of Regions (Партія регіонів) appear to have won Sunday’s parliamentary elections in Ukraine, and his prime minister Mykola Azarov has declared victory, although there were indications Sunday of electoral fraud. 

One exit poll out of Kiev early Monday morning showed the following result:

  • The Party of Regions has apparently won 30.1%, which may yield enough seats for a majority in the 450-member Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament.  Because the vote is based one-half on proportional representation and one-half on direct districts, it’s believed that the Party of Regions will win a significantly
  • The main opposition party of former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, the center-right ‘All Ukrainian Union — Fatherland’ party (Всеукраїнське об’єднання “Батьківщина, Batkivshchyna) won a robust 22.8%, according to the exit poll, a strong result notwithstanding Tymoshenko’s imprisonment.  Tymoshenko, who narrowly lost the 2010 presidential race to Yanukovych, has been convicted on charges related to the natural gas deal that she negotiated as prime minister in 2009 with Russia — European Union leaders have expressed concern that the conviction seems politically motivated.
  • Heavyweight boxing champion Vitaliy Klychko’s Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform (Український демократичний альянс за реформи) finished a bit far behind in third place, with 14.8%, according to the exit poll.  The result will be enough to make Klychko a player in Ukrainian politics, but it will be a bit of a disappointment for his supporters who had hoped he could displace Tymoshenko’s party as the chief opposition.
  • The far-right, Ukrainian nationalist  All-Ukrainian Union “Svoboda” (Всеукраїнське об’єднання «Свобода») has apparently won a stronger-than-expected 12.6% — a troubling sign, perhaps, given the ultranationalist turn, but nonetheless a sign that Ukrainians are not incredibly enthusiastic about Yanukovych.
  • Ukraine’s Communist Party (Комуністична партія України), which is the current iteration of the former Soviet Ukrainian communist party and an Yanukovych ally, has apparently won around 11.6%.

Notwithstanding the vote, a loss for Ukraine’s minority could embolden Yanukovych to turn more toward Russia and away from Europe, and to allow a once vibrant movement for reform to wither under corruption and soft authoritarianism.  An absolute majority for Yanukovych’s allies would likely further stall Ukraine’s potential entry into the European Union.

But for now, let’s wait until we see some hard numbers from Kiev.

Brazil, Italy, Lithuania, Sicily, Ukraine

Four key elections underway today in Ukraine, Italy, Lithuania and Brazil

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It’s a quadruple-threat Sunday for world elections!

Ukraine: parliamentary elections. In Ukraine, voters will go to the polls for legislative elections to select 450 members of the unicameral parliament, the Verkhovna Rada.  The elections will be a key test for Ukraine’s fledgling democratic institutions eight years after the ‘Orange Revolution.’  Pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, whose support is based in the eastern half of the country, is hoping to win an outright majority in a campaign that has been far from free and fair.  Two center-right groups are vying for the opposition vote — a bloc led by former prime minister and presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko, who has been imprisoned on politically-motivated charges and a new anti-corruption group led by heavyweight champion Vitaliy Klychko.  Unlike in the previous 2007 parliamentary elections (which were fully by proportional representation), today’s elections will be determined one-half by proportional representation and one-half through direct single-member districts.  That means the anti-Yanukovych vote could splinter, allowing the government to consolidate its control over Ukraine.  The election result will likely determine whether the former Soviet republic of 45 million people will continue its turn toward Europe as a potential European Union member.

Lithuania: parliamentary runoff. Nearby, in another former Soviet republic of just over three million people — Lithuania, voters return to the polls for a runoff after a vote two weeks ago that saw the triumph of two leftist parties: the populist Darbo Partija (DP, Labour Party), led by Russian-born Viktor Uspaskich, won 19.96% and the more center-left Lietuvos socialdemokratų partija (LSDP, Social Democratic Party of Lithuania) won 18.45%.  The governing Tėvynės sąjunga – Lietuvos krikščionys demokratai (TS-LKD, Homeland Union — Lithuanian Christian Democrats)  of prime minister Andrius Kubilius won just 14.93%, a defeat for Kubilius after a difficult campaign that reflected the realities of four years of grinding austerity and difficult economic conditions.  Half (70) of the seats in Lithuania’s unicameral parliament, the Seimas, were determined by the October 14 vote, while 71 more seats are determined in single-member districts, and many of those will be determined in today’s runoff vote. It’s virtually certain that the Social Democrats and Labour will form the next government, likely under the leader of the Social Democrats and former finance minister, Algirdas Butkevičius rather than the corruption-plagued Uspaskich, although either the Social Democrats or Labour may ultimately wind up with more seats after today’s vote.

São Paulo: mayoral runoff. In Brazil’s largest city, São Paulo, home to nearly 11 million people, voters will choose a mayor in a contest that will have implications for Brazil’s national politics.  Voters will choose between the top two candidates from the Oct. 14 vote: Fernando Haddad, the candidate of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT, Workers’ Party) of Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff and former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, and a former education minister in Lula’s administration; and José Serra, the candidate of the center-right Partido da Social Democracia Brasileira (PSDB, the Brazilian Social Democracy Party), who lost the Brazilian presidency to Lula in 2002 and, more narrowly, in 2010 to Rousseff.  Serra, himself a former mayor of São Paulo from 2004 to 2006, when he won election as the governor of São Paulo state, despite a pledge to serve his entire term as mayor,  Serra led the vote two weeks ago with 30.75% to 28.99% for Haddad.  Serra and Haddad edged out Celso Russomanno, a famous television consumer advocate in the 1990s, with support from the evangelist Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, who had been the frontrunner throughout the campaign, who finished with just 21.6o%.  Polls show Haddad with a double-digit lead over Serra, however, which could effectively end Serra’s hopes for a third run at the presidency.

Sicily: regional parliamentary elections.  Finally, in the southern Italian region of Sicily, voters will select the 90 members of Sicily’s unicameral regional parliament.  Three parties are vying for the largest share of the vote, and 80 seats are awarded by proportional representation: a center-right coalition led by European parliament member Nello Musumeci and backed by former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi (who was convicted Friday for tax fraud) and his Popolo della Libertà (PdL, People of Freedom); a center-left coalition led by Rosario Crocetta (pictured above, top), the openly gay mafia-fighting former mayor of Gela (Sicily’s sixth-largest city); and the new anti-austerity protest party, the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S, Five Star Movement) of blogger and comedian Beppe Grillo, who kicked off his party’s Sicily campaign by swimming across the Strait of Messina.  Radical leftists and a conservative Sicilianist/autonomist coalition are also expected to win significant support. The election is a significant test in advance of national elections expected to come in April 2013 following the technocratic government of prime minister Mario Monti, who has pledged not to run in his own right.

Ukraine

Klychko hopes to deliver knockout punch in Ukrainian election

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As Ukraine’s elections approach this Sunday, WBC heavyweight Vitaliy Klychko is hoping he can deliver a terminal blow to the government of president Viktor Yanukovych.

He’s in many ways the latest beta version of Ukraine’s opposition — after the disenchantment with former president Viktor Yushchenko, whose presidency from 2005 to 2010 degenerated into a splintered majority that failed to enact the promise of 2004’s ‘Orange Revolution,’ and after the imprisonment of former presidential candidate Yulia Tymoshenko, jailed on the politically-motivated charge of negotiating too unfavorable of a contract with Russia on behalf of Ukraine during the 2009 natural gas crisis (even though Russia had essentially turned off the gas to Ukraine and its neighbors), the newest kid on the block is Klychko, the reigning heavyweight world champion.

Klychko heads a new upstart opposition party,  the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform (UDAR, Український демократичний альянс за реформи) that has gained the most momentum throughout the campaign — the latest poll, heading into Sunday’s election, shows UDAR with 17.9%, versus only 23.0% for Yanukovych’s relatively unpopular pro-Russian Party of Regions (Партія регіонів) based in eastern Ukraine.

UDAR also means ‘punch’ in Ukrainian — get it? Vote for the boxer!

Within western and central Ukraine, UDAR will be competing for the more reformist pro-European vote with the center-right ‘All Ukrainian Union — Fatherland’ party (Всеукраїнське об’єднання “Батьківщина, Batkivshchyna), which wins 16.9%, although its leader Yulia Tymoshenko remains imprisoned over what most observes believe are politically-motivated charges.  Tymoshenko, who parted ways with her one-time ally Yushchenko, only narrowly lost the 2010 president election to Yanukovych.

Ukraine’s Communist Party (Комуністична партія України), which dates back to the Ukrainian branch of the Soviet Communist Party and which has backed Yanukovych in the past, won 12.8% in the latest poll.

Klychko has ruled out any coalition with Yanukovych — he is firmly in favor of liberalization and economic development and in favor of Ukraine’s continued turn toward the EU and toward further integration with NATO as well.  As someone who’s made his fortune as a boxer on the world stage, many Ukrainians see him as less likely to succumb to the temptation for corruption in the less-than-pristine environment of Ukrainian politics.

Klychko entered electoral politics with a run for mayor of Kiev in 2008 — he lost that race to Leonid Chernovetskyi, but placed a strong second and won a seat on the Kiev city council.  It probably made no difference, however, as Yanukovych essentially pushed a law through Ukraine’s parliament in 2010 to allow the president to appoint the city administrator directly; Yanukovych dismissed Chernovetskyi and named a loyalist in his place.

Yanukovych is hoping to take advantage of the split in this weekend’s elections for the 450 members of the unicameral parliament, the Verkhovna Rada.  Unlike in 2007 parliamentary elections, when all seats were determined by proportional representation, only half of the seats will be elected by proportional representation (parties with over 5% support will be awarded a share of those seats).  There are already doubts about how free and fair the elections will be, amid media suppression, political-based assaults and outright bribery, with Yanukovych’s government deploying state resources in the furtherance of winning the election. At stake is Ukraine’s potential entry to the European Union — a strong win by Yanukovych and his allies would pull Ukraine ever closer to Russia and further away from possible EU accession.  Yanukovych and his family enjoy considerable control over much of the country’s economy.

The other half will be elected directly in districts — a significant change from the last elections in 2007, which were fully determined by proportional representation, and which Yanukovych could win if UDAR and Batkivshchyna split too much of the opposition vote in the single-district constituencies.  Although UDAR and Batkivshchyna have agreed on a mutual support pact to withdraw certain candidates in favor of a united opposition candidate, but the two parties are still apparently fielding their own candidates in some of the more competitive districts in Kiev.

So while in many ways Klychko is essentially Reformer 3.0 in the mould of Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, and he seems to have the most momentum just two days before Ukrainians vote, the broader fear is that the pro-European opposition based in the western part of the country will splinter, allowing Yanukovych to consolidate power and pull Ukraine in a less democratic direction, toward Russia and away from Europe.  Continue reading Klychko hopes to deliver knockout punch in Ukrainian election →

Ukraine

Fear of democratic backslide under Yanukovych as Ukraine prepares for elections

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In the same month as voters went to the polls in the country that spawned the ‘Rose’ Revolution in 2005, voters in the country that launched the ‘Orange Revolution’ in 2004 will elect a new parliament on October 28.

Unlike in Georgia, where the election has so far augured a peaceful transition of power following a mostly free and fair election, Ukraine’s parliamentary elections seems likely to showcase conditions that are only partly free and fair.  In, Ukraine, the once-robust push for democratic reforms and a stronger rule of law has stalled in the past eight years, with the country’s chief opposition leader, Yulia Tymoshenko, languishing in prison on politically motivated charged.

The former president whose candidacy launched the Orange Revolution, Viktor Yushchenko, is widely unpopular after his presidency was marked by infighting among various pro-Western allies (including Tymoshenko) and the failure to live up to the promise of his candidacy.  Despite being poisoned in advance of the election and a rigged vote that aimed to install the pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych as president, Ukraine re-held the election under international pressure — Yushchenko won the second election and served as president until 2010.  In the first round of the 2010 presidential election, however, Yushchenko barely won over 5% of the vote.

In that same election, Yanukovych (Yushchenko’s rival in 2004), won a narrow election against the more pro-Western prime minister Tymoshenko (Yushchenko’s subsequent rival).

Since 2010, Yanukovych and his prime minister Mykola Azarov have governed Ukraine with a more pro-Russia foreign policy, but have backtracked somewhat on human rights and rule of law — the most notable instance being Tymoshenko’s trial on charged filed almost immediately after the 2010 president election and her imprisonment in 2011.  Her former minister of internal affairs, Yuri Lutsenko, has also been tried and convicted.

Tymoshenko was found guilty of abuse of office with respect to brokering the Russian gas pipeline deal in 2009 as prime minister.  The European Union and outside observers believe the charges and imprisonment are politically motivated, despite insistence from Yushchenko (after the fact) that the pipeline deal was criminal.  The deal came after Russia had shut off access to gas flows for 13 days to Ukraine and accordingly, much of southeastern Europe.  Yanukovych and Yushchenko both argue that the deal was unfair to Ukraine, although Tymoshenko is hardly a Russian shill and, in any event, the more pro-Russian Yanukovych administration has not so much as tried to renegotiate the deal following Tymoshenko’s conviction.

So it’s not incredibly clear how a former prime minister’s conduct in negotiating an agreement under duress is criminal conduct.

As such, there’s cause for concern that the upcoming elections will memorialize a significant backslide for Ukraine’s fragile democratic institutions.

Ukrainians will elect the 450 members of the unicameral parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, half of whom will be elected by proportional representation (only parties that win over 5% of the vote will be eligible to be awarded seats) and the other half will be elected directly in districts — a significant change from the last elections in 2007, which were fully determined by proportional representation.

Ukrainian politics is highly polarized between Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the east of the country more oriented toward Moscow and Ukrainian speakers in the western half of the country more oriented toward the European Union.   Continue reading Fear of democratic backslide under Yanukovych as Ukraine prepares for elections →