Ukraine: It Isn’t What You Think

By Henry Srebrnik, [Summerside, PEI] Journal Pioneer

Thanks in part to people like our foreign minister, Chrystia Freeland, we have a picture of Ukraine as a plucky democracy, fending off the Russian bear.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman visited Canada in late October, met with Justin Trudeau, and was feted with a Ukrainian Day on Parliament Hill, at s reception organized by the Canada-Ukraine Parliamentary Program.

He was here primarily to promote his country as a great Canadian opportunity for trade and investment.

Pointing to the “deep friendship between Canada and Ukraine,” Trudeau expressed his government’s intention to “build on the growing economic ties between our countries.” 

The coming into force of the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement in August, he said, is “an opportunity to create even greater opportunities for our citizens to grow the economies and to deepen the friendship we have with Ukraine.”

Canada will always stand with Ukraine, Trudeau added, “whether it’s against illegitimate, illegal Russian actions or in other world spheres.”

Groysman also visited Toronto, where he addressed the Ukrainian-Canadian Business Forum on October 30, and traveled to Montreal, to seek investment from Canadian aerospace companies in Ukraine’s airplane industry.

The love-in during the Ottawa visit was only marred when one MP asked Groysman about Ukraine’s anti-corruption initiatives in light of recent protests in Kyiv by thousands of people calling for the resignation of his government for failing to tackle the country’s culture of corruption.

In fact the reality in today’s Ukraine is just that. Its president, Petro Poroshenko, has been accused of delaying efforts to set up a specialised anti-corruption court, while undermining the independence of the agency tasked with investigating corrupt officials. 

Christine Lagarde, Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), on Dec. 6 stated that the IMF is “deeply concerned by recent events in Ukraine that could roll back progress that has been made in setting up independent institutions to tackle high-level corruption, including the National Anticorruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) and the Special Anticorruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO). 

She was referring to a bill under parliamentary consideration that would undermine the country’s only independent investigative body by dismissing its chief.

The European Union and United States, too, warned Ukraine against moves that would hinder its fight against entrenched corruption.

Anti-Poroshenko protesters have now set up a camp outside Ukraine’s parliament. Of late, this has even involved, of all things, a former president of Georgia.

Mikheil Saakashvili rose to power in Georgia in 2003 with a crusade against corruption. But after he launched a war with Russia in 2008, his country suffered a catastrophic defeat. He lost power in 2013 and arrived in Ukraine in 2015.

Given Saakashvili’s anti-Russian credentials, at first he and Poroshenko were friends. Saakashvili was given Ukrainian citizenship and made governor of Odessa. But 18 months later Saakashvili resigned, accusing the president of failing to support him in the fight against endemic corruption and graft. 

The two are now enemies. Poroshenko stripped Saakashvili of Ukrainian citizenship while he was out of the country in July, but he came back in September, helped by supporters who broke through a police line at the Polish border. 

On Dec. 8 Saakashvili was arrested in Kyiv. Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuri Lutsenko claimed that Saakashvili had received $500,000 from an ally of Ukraine’s former President Viktor Yanukovych to finance his protests.

 “We will go to parliament and call for the impeachment of Poroshenko, who is a thief, who is mega-corrupt and is plundering the whole of Ukraine,” he had told a BBC reporter prior to his detention.

A few days later, several thousand protesters shouted ‘Shame’ and ‘Impeachment’ as they marched to Maidan Square in his support and in opposition to the president.

Saakashvili won support from other Ukrainian opposition leaders, including former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. She criticized the arrest as “political terror.”

Ukraine remains a relatively poor country, with a per capita GDP of $2,800. Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index places it very low, at 131 out of 176 countries.

The main causes of corruption in Ukraine are a weak justice system, an over-controlling non-transparent government, combined with overly-close business ties to government, and a weak civil society. 

Some go so far as to describe it as a kleptocracy in which oligarchs enrich themselves with public money. You may not hear about these things from our foreign minister.