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  Kuchma was now under intense pressure. He pledged to undertake constitutional reform but also pledged not to seek reelection. Yanukovych took up the president’s mantle and would a few months later become the candidate of the Party of Regions. On the other side, representing Our Ukraine, would be Viktor Yushchenko. The presidential election that followed was the stuff of Hollywood—intrigue, drama, and a poisoning.

  “Meet Viktor Yanukovych”

  Vladimir Putin was justifiably proud of his new office in the president’s dacha some twenty kilometers outside Moscow. On that day in May 2004, he had invited me to chat before our formal meeting with others. Now we stood looking through the French doors at an extraordinary expansive, sunlit garden. Reminds me a bit of the Rose Garden. But bigger, I thought.

  Before I could reflect on that much further, a side door suddenly flew open. Out walked a tall, graying man who grasped my hand in a firm handshake. “Meet Viktor Yanukovych,” the Russian president said to me. “He is running for the presidency of Ukraine.” It was one of those odd moments that often happened with Putin. He was never subtle. He might as well have said, Meet Viktor Yanukovych. My man in Kiev.

  Yanukovych undoubtedly appreciated Moscow’s support. But his real advantages came through Kuchma, who used the state apparatus to tip the scales in his favor. International observers reported threats against students, workers, and government employees who dared support Yushchenko. The increasingly cowed media was heavily biased toward the president’s handpicked successor. European, U.S., and Canadian officials all expressed concern about the course of the electoral campaign, but to no avail. The playing field was by no means level.

  Then events took a melodramatic turn. Viktor Yushchenko woke up violently ill the morning after a dinner with the chief of the Ukrainian security services. The doctors could not immediately determine what was wrong with him, but he believed that he had been poisoned. One of Kuchma’s representatives suggested that Yushchenko use a food taster “as they did in the Middle Ages.” The signal wasn’t in the least bit subtle: Challenging the president could cost one his life. A team of Western doctors would later determine that Yushchenko had indeed been poisoned with dioxin.

  Despite his deteriorating condition, he pressed on in the campaign. The battle lines were becoming clear—this was a contest between a conservative, pro-Russian camp and one that looked west toward Europe. On the campaign trail, Yanukovych promised to hold a referendum that would not only grant Ukrainians new pathways to dual citizenship with Russia but also codify Russian as the country’s second official language. This was popular among some constituencies in the east of the country, but terrifying to the pro-Western liberals in Kiev.

  As the election proceeded, the corruption of the process by Kuchma’s forces intensified, so that when the balloting was finally held on October 31, 2004, it came as no surprise that, in the understated assessment of an international monitor, the voting “did not meet… the standards for democratic elections.”3 The Central Election Commission actually stopped counting ballots as Yushchenko started to gather momentum, fueling theories that it intended to block his victory no matter what. In any case, neither man received the 50 percent of the vote required to avoid a runoff.

  Less than a month later, Ukrainians voted in record numbers in the second phase. It would take three days to certify the vote. In the interim, large crowds turned out in major cities to support Yushchenko. Several city councils, including that in Kiev, recognized him as president. Meanwhile, the Russian president congratulated his man, Yanukovych, based on the initial but incomplete findings of the commission. When the final vote was certified on November 24, Yanukovych was declared the winner—49.46 percent to 46.61 percent.

  International monitors did not believe the results. The United States, Europe, and Canada did not believe the results. Most important, the supporters of Viktor Yushchenko did not believe the results. Protesters blocked government offices, cheering as their standard-bearer symbolically took the oath of office in the parliament building. Huge crowds, some estimated at two hundred thousand people, occupied the square every day. The Ukrainian parliament, responding to the people in the streets, passed a nonbinding resolution calling the elections invalid.

  The country’s allegiances were split, however. It was a very different story in the east, where several regions threatened to secede if the election results were not upheld. Counterdemonstrations dotted the landscape in that third of the country. Ukraine was in crisis.

  In these chaotic circumstances, Ukrainian institutions had what may have been their finest hour. The Ukrainian Supreme Court stepped in and agreed to take Yushchenko’s case, delaying certification of the results until a hearing set for November 29. The evidence presented to the court personally implicated Yanukovych in election fraud. Now on the defensive, Kuchma called for new elections. Four days later, the Supreme Court invalidated the November 21 ballot. Yushchenko won the revote, 51.99 percent to 44.19 percent. Yanukovych stepped down as prime minister and leader of his party. On January 23, Viktor Yushchenko became Ukraine’s president. Luminaries from across the West attended, including Secretary of State Colin Powell. The Russian ambassador represented Moscow.

  President Bush and I finally had a chance to meet Ukraine’s new democratic leader at the NATO summit in February 2005. We were a bit early for the meeting, as was often the president’s habit. We all looked forward to meeting the brave and somewhat legendary Yushchenko. But now there was a bit of apprehension settling on our delegation. “Don’t be surprised,” John Herbst, our ambassador to Ukraine, warned. “His appearance is shocking.” John was emphatic, but nothing prepared us for what we were about to see.

  Yushchenko was tall, and it was easy to imagine that he had once been very handsome. Now, due to the poisoning, his face was a pockmarked mess of purple and green splotches and his ears had ballooned in size. His beautiful, elegant wife accompanied him, holding on to his arm. No one said anything about his appearance, of course, though the president did ask if he was feeling okay now. “Yes, I’m recovering,” Yushchenko said.

  President Bush soldiered on through the conversation, looking him in the eye but trying not to stare. They talked about Yushchenko’s election pledge to remove Ukrainian troops from Iraq. The president reassured him that he understood. They discussed the state of the economy. Yushchenko pledged to fight corruption and secure private investment. Everyone tried to stay on point. But it was hard to concentrate on what the Ukrainian said. The whole situation was just so sad. It must have been awful to look in the mirror every morning and see how much his commitment to his country had cost him.

  Still, the personal sacrifice had to be put into perspective: Ukrainian democracy had held and this man was the freely elected president of the fledgling independent country. Yushchenko told President Bush right then and there that he wanted to join NATO. “It will guarantee our democracy,” he said. The president of the United States demurred—not wanting to promise something he might not be able to deliver. But he never forgot that moment when the president of Ukraine—disfigured by a clumsy assassination attempt—asked for America’s protection.

  The Orange Revolution Turns Sour

  The leitmotifs of Ukrainian politics—corruption, personal animosity between key figures, shifting alliances, and Moscow’s interference in the affairs of the country—emerged soon after independence and have complicated its road ahead ever since. This has led to the repeated breakdown of politics in Ukraine, leaving the population with no recourse but to take to the streets. And each time, the institutions have become less trusted and less legitimate.

  The afterglow of the Orange Revolution, as the events of late 2004 came to be called, lasted less than a year. Yushchenko nominated Yulia Tymoshenko to be his prime minister. The two had apparently signed an agreement before the election promising her support in exchange for the post if he won. The parliament enthusiastically approved her appointment in February 2005. By September 2005, she wa
s gone. The frustrated Ukrainian people watched during that time as personal animus between these two veterans of the Orange Revolution stalled the process of governing.

  Tymoshenko was a force of nature in her own right—beautiful, rich, popular, and fiercely competitive. She wore fashionable clothes, her blond hair arrayed in a crown of braids that made her look like a cross between Princess Leia and that Swiss Miss character of hot cocoa fame.

  When we first met, she took care to remind me that we were both women in a tough world. But I was stunned to hear her continuously refer to herself in the third person. “Yulia is really concerned. Yulia is determined to do it.” It was just bizarre. But it revealed a kind of aggressive self-confidence and a significant ego. Well, one did need both as a woman in East European politics, so I was inclined to ignore the implications of her personality. Still, it left me with the sense that I never quite knew where she stood, though I found her easy to like.

  Knowing the two protagonists, it wasn’t hard to see why they clashed. Both were strong-willed and stubborn—and jealous of each other. Still, the disagreements between the president and the prime minister were not wholly personal. Real policy differences emerged almost immediately. Tymoshenko undertook populist measures that undermined the economic reforms that Yushchenko—a banker by trade—championed. She tried to impose price controls, eroding market forces. She raised stipends for students, pensions for older people, and salaries for workers, ignoring the budget implications of her decisions. The president feared that she was running for office, not governing the country.

  But rather than work through his differences with his prime minister, Yushchenko became one of her most vocal and public critics. They simply couldn’t work together and their hatred for each other grew, becoming legendary among Ukrainians and the rest of the world.

  This fracturing of the Orange coalition allowed Viktor Yanukovych to reemerge in the parliamentary elections of 2006. Though Tymoshenko and Yushchenko garnered larger shares of the vote, they were unable to form a government. The smaller Socialist Party that had been part of their coalition switched sides and, together with Yanukovych and the Party of Regions, took control. The new coalition demanded the post of prime minister. Left with no options, Yushchenko agreed and ceded the role to his old rival. Not surprisingly, the two were an even more combustible duo.

  Over the next months, the government lost good and sound people, hounded by one or the other leader and ultimately just fed up with the daily intrigue. Among them was the highly regarded foreign minister, Borys Tarasyuk. I had come to admire this former Soviet diplomat, an understated and intelligent man, who served Ukraine’s interests well in international affairs. When he resigned I called him to thank him for what he had done. He didn’t mince words. “It just isn’t possible to work—to do anything—to accomplish anything,” he said. That was the perfect description of Ukrainian politics. Less than a year after forming the new government, Yushchenko dissolved the parliament and called for elections yet again.

  Ukrainian politics began to resemble a game of musical chairs. Each time the music stopped, either Yushchenko or Tymoshenko or Yanukovych was left with nowhere to sit. In 2007, Tymoshenko’s Fatherland Party received 30.7 percent of the vote, Yanukovych’s Party of Regions 34.5 percent, and the once popular Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine only 14.1 percent. This left the latter with only one option—go back into coalition with Yulia. He did. They fought again. Both lost popularity among the people, who were weary of their personal jousting while the country’s problems festered. Yushchenko became an even more outspoken critic of Yulia. But it was his credibility that was severely damaged. In the presidential election of 2010 he was odd man out, not really a factor in the balloting. In two electoral rounds, Yanukovych defeated Tymoshenko by a margin of three points. She refused to concede and insisted on remaining prime minister. This time the last chair would belong to the new president. The parliament ousted Yulia in a vote of no confidence on March 3, 2010.

  Yanukovych moved swiftly to wipe out opposition. He brought in a prime minister from his own eastern region. Just to make sure that he was secure, he turned to Constitutional Court—now made up of his loyalists—to weaken the position. The Orange Revolution reforms that had divided power between the two were overturned in favor of the presidency.

  Then, in December, Tymoshenko and the former interior minister, Yuriy Lutsenko, were indicted on allegations of mishandling state finances. Several months later, the former prime minister was hauled off to jail, accused of harming Ukraine’s interests in carrying out negotiations with Russia over the price of natural gas. She was to be excluded from politics for ten years and fined $190 million.

  The sentence provoked an outcry internationally. While no one was willing to vouch for the deal that Tymoshenko struck with the Russians, the charges clearly carried a taint of political retribution. Yanukovych gratuitously noted that the decision was not final and there was always the possibility of appeal. Tymoshenko was jailed for four more years—out of the political process but not out of the limelight. She remained a popular figure as her supporters proclaimed her innocence at home and abroad.

  Tymoshenko’s imprisonment complicated Yanukovych’s efforts to carve out a reputation as a man who could do business with both Europe and Russia. On the one hand, he desperately wanted to complete an association agreement with the European Union. On the other, the president was clear that Ukraine should not seek to join NATO. This was a very big departure from the views of his predecessors.

  From that first meeting with President Bush when Yushchenko mentioned NATO membership, Ukraine had sought closer association with the alliance. Everyone knew that membership would be far into the future, if at all. Ukraine simply didn’t meet the criteria. Still, it got closer to its goal at the NATO summit in Bucharest in July 2008.

  As we saw earlier, the question of Georgia’s and Ukraine’s desire to join MAP—effectively an interim step toward NATO membership—had been contentious in the alliance. It was a hard decision for the Bush administration too—trying to balance relations with Russia and our commitment to democracy in the former Soviet states.

  When the president asked for my recommendation during our deliberations, I told him that I was torn. I didn’t think that I could deliver the allies, particularly Germany. There was even some uncertainty about whether support for MAP was really solid in Ukraine, particularly in the east. Yet the Ukrainians and the Georgians deserved their chance to earn NATO membership. I told my NSC colleagues that I had been very much affected by Yushchenko’s personal appeal a few months earlier.

  The Ukrainian had asked to see me on the margins of the Davos Conference in Switzerland in January 2008. It had been difficult to get to him, with my driver trying to navigate the traffic and the treacherous, narrow roads. We were sitting in the car and going nowhere. I was checking my watch. Finally, I said, “We’ll walk.”

  “You’re kidding,” Marty Kraus, the head of my security detail, said.

  “We’ll never get there by car,” I replied.

  So we got out and trudged up the hill toward the president’s hotel, the Belvedere. I was thankful that I’d spent a lot of my early years as an ice skater—it was pretty slick. But we made it, breathing a little hard but on time.

  Yushchenko didn’t waste a moment. “We must have MAP,” he said. I started to explain the difficulties and suggest that maybe it was best to put off the decision until the alliance was more united. He interrupted, “It will be the end of our democracy if we don’t get in. We don’t know who will come after President Bush, and we trust him.” I looked at his disfigured face and noticed that his eyes were welling up with tears. I had to fight hard not to cry too.

  To President Bush’s credit, he didn’t try to split the difference between Moscow and Germany on the one hand, and the Ukrainians and the Georgians on the other. We went to the NATO summit intent on trying to secure MAP for Kiev and Tbilisi. The East European members of NATO delivered impass
ioned pleas in favor of MAP. At one point, the Polish foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, called out his German counterpart in an unforgettable exchange. Frank-Walter Steinmeier said that NATO should not import frozen conflicts. Georgia had disputed territory—Abkhazia and South Ossetia, which was essentially occupied by the Russians. Sikorski retorted, “You were a frozen conflict for forty-five years,” referring to the postwar division of Germany. “NATO saved you from Stalin. How dare you leave others unprotected from Moscow.” Well, I thought. That was rough. But in the end, we couldn’t unite the alliance to deliver MAP for Ukraine and Georgia. The Bucharest communiqué was a compromise, and a good one. It stated unequivocally that Ukraine and Georgia would one day be members of NATO.

  The Ukrainian parliament closed off that pathway in 2010, with President Yanukovych pushing through a vote to end Ukraine’s aspirations to join the military alliance of Europe’s democracies.

  Ukraine’s Third Revolution

  The parliamentary elections of October 2012 again pitted Yanukovych against Tymoshenko. Yulia organized the challenge to the president from her jail cell. The Front for Change, several smaller groups, and her own Fatherland Party united in opposition to the Party of Regions. Tymoshenko’s coalition, not surprisingly, was particularly strong in the west. But Yanukovych won decisively. This time, the balloting was largely free of outright fraud. Yet international observers noted that the playing field had not been level, given the president’s control of the media and the fact that the key opposition leaders were in jail. This led the head of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) observer mission to say that the “democratic process appears to have reversed in Ukraine.”