By Taras Kuzio
The appointment of Leonid Kozhara as Ukraine’s foreign minister to
replace Kostyantin Hryshchenko was expected
(http://mfa.gov.ua/ua/about-mfa/minister/biography). Although Kozhara and Hryshchenko
are from two different influential groups (oligarch Rinat Akhmetov and the gas
lobby, respectively) in the Party of Regions, they are both handicapped in
their position by a Soviet mindset of provincialism and inferiority complexes
vis-à-vis the West.
Washington and Brussels had come to view Hryshchenko as
arrogant and a cynic. During a visit to Washington last year, Hryshchenko’s performance
was very poor, and he kept interrupting everybody, including his own ministers,
during meetings with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and during a dinner
organised by Party of Regions consultant Bruce Jackson.
In the mid to late 1990s, Kozhara was Congressional liaison
officer at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington and those who met him believed
him to be patriotic and pro-European. But, as with many former officials from
the Leonid Kuchma era, he changed following the Orange Revolution. During his
recent BBC HARDtalk interview, Kozhara proudly said “My party did not support
the Orange Revolution” (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5WvlR4NwNtE).
The sources of Soviet provincialism lie in the fact that only a small
minority of Ukrainian political elites and political experts speak English; and
of this number, even fewer have been educated in the West and are
intellectually integrated into European intellectual ideas.
In the last decade only four Ukrainians, all English speakers, have been
interviewed by BBC HARDtalk—Hryhoriy Nemyria (now deputy leader of the
Batkivshchina party), Zhenya Tymoshenko (Yulia Tymoshenko’s daughter), then
head of President Yushchenko’s presidential secretariat Oleh Rybachyk and
Kozhara (before he became foreign minister). Of the four, only the first two
had successful interviews because they were Western educated and intellectually
understood the way in which the West worked. Rybachuk and Kozhara gave low
quality answers and believed it was unnecessary to prepare for them. Kozhara,
like his predecessor Hryshchenko, does not understand the need to discuss
Western criticism of democratic failings and to occasionally admit that these
criticisms are correct. This would be the way forward for those who sincerely
desire to join Europe. Hryshchenko routinely wrote letters to Western
newspapers rejecting such criticism.
The Party of Regions and its foreign ministers condemn every Western
resolution, such as that issued in May 2012 by the US Senate, and most
absurdly, demand that European integration be undertaken without any outside
interference in Ukraine’s domestic affairs. Integration into any international
institution—whether the World Trade Organization, European Union or the Russia-Belarus-Kazakhstan
Customs Union, or even receiving an International Monetary Fund assistance
program—will always require the giving up of some sovereignty.
In his BBC HARDtalk interview, Kozhara rejected former US Ambassador to
Ukraine Steven Pifer’s criticism of the 2012 elections as a “political
statement.” Similarly, Prosecutor Rinat Kuzmin claimed the US Senate resolution
condemning the imprisonment of Yulia Tymoshenko was a product of lobbying by
Tymoshenko supporters—which is not true (http://www.kyivpost.com/content/ukraine/ukraines-foreign-ministry-says-it-doubts-that-us-senate-resolution-reflects-opinion-of-all-senators-313463.html).
On the BBC, Kozhara refused to discuss the criticism by the Organization
for Cooperation and Security in Europe (OSCE) that the 2012 elections were a
step backwards, said Tymoshenko was imprisoned by a judiciary that is
politically independent, claimed Ukraine was closer to European integration
than ever before, and the ruling authorities were committed to combating
corruption. The BBC HARDtalk presenter replied that “This is just a fantasy.”
Kozhara claimed that Ukraine was the best example of democratic progress
in the former Soviet Union (excluding the Baltics). In reality, Georgia and
Moldova are more advanced in their democratic progress and more committed to
upholding European values, and both countries will sign their Association
Agreements with the EU this year (see EDM,
June 26, 2012). The EU has frozen the signing of the Association Agreement with
Ukraine until a selective use of justice is no longer state policy.
Although Hryshchenko was from the pro-Russian gas lobby, Kozhara will
not represent any pro-European alternative. In 2006, then Party of Regions
leader Viktor Yanukovych’s foreign policy advisors Anatoliy Orel and
Kozhara told US Ambassador William Taylor that Yanukovych would defer to “Russia’s
red lines” and “central Russian interests when defining its foreign policy
priorities” (http://wikileaks.org/cable/2006/03/06KIEV1036.html#).
Yanukovych had always adopted a hard line
against North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) membership as well as Ukraine
receiving a NATO Membership Action Plan. Whereas in private conversations with
Western audiences, Party of Regions foreign policy spokespersons Hryshchenko
and Kozhara downplayed anti-Americanism and opposition to NATO in a bout of
typical deception, telling the audience what it wanted to hear. At a dinner
sponsored by the US Embassy in Kyiv, Kozhara said, “Regions was not opposed to
NATO membership […] but preferred to cooperate with NATO to enhance mutual
security” (http://wikileaks.org/cable/2009/11/09KYIV2054.html#).
To not follow in the failed footsteps of his predecessor, Foreign Minister
Kozhara will need to understand and follow four policies:
Firstly, Ukraine is not as geopolitically important to the West as Kyiv
wrongly believes. The EU and the United States have other domestic and foreign
priorities, and Ukraine will never be treated like nuclear weapons state or an
energy superpower like Russia.
Secondly, the old Ukrainian game of milking two cows (Russia and the
West) is over. Russia was correct in pointing out that Ukraine wanted the best
of both worlds, and therefore President Yanukovych has to choose between
integration into the Commonwealth of Independent States or into Europe.
Thirdly, Ukraine will be expected to sign a new IMF agreement and
implement its demands to show that Ukraine is committed to reforms.
Fourthly, the West will demand that Ukraine release Tymoshenko, Yuriy
Lutsenko and others, sentenced by the selective use of justice, and permit them
to participate in politics and elections.
