Sunday’s Presidential Election in Ukraine provides another of those salutary reminders that history so rarely progresses in an irreversible, linear fashion.
Amongst the chaos, the disappointment, and the humour of Ukraine’s cathartic Presidential election, in which Victor Yanukovych has all but triumphed, three things stand out. Firstly, Ukraine’s government has become a victim of both the financial crisis and its own unmanageable bureaucracy and will limp back to the clan-based politics that pre-dated the Orange Revolution and survived the collapse of the Soviet Empire. Second, the country will return to being a vassal state of Russia, with all the advantages and disadvantages that will bring. Thirdly, the political career of one of Europe’s most gifted politicians is nearing a tragic end.
‘Absolutely Ungovernable’
In 2004, thousands of people took to the streets of Kiev to protest against corruption, vote-rigging and economic underdevelopment, launching the Yuschenko-Tymoshenko coalition. As so often, the combination of sacrifice and optimism proved contagious – observers talked of a wave of freedom that had spread from Georgia the previous year.
Today, the best that could be said of Ukraine is that the votes are no longer rigged. No one seems better off for it, however. The Orange Revolution brought down a government, but it did not provide a new one. Constitutional reforms increased the role of the regions and power of Parliament (and by extension, the Prime Minister), as well as delivering the current electoral fraud protections that have led international observers to describe this election as ‘impressive.’
The fall-out between the ultimately victorious President Victor Yuschenko and Yulia Tymoshenko (who after being dismissed as Prime Minister led her own coalition to electoral success) has dominated politics in recent years. Last November, when Mr Yuschenko vetoed her anti-flu appropriations, Mrs. Tymoshenko fumed that Ukraine had become ‘absolutely ungovernable’ and challenged her opponents to try governing;
“If someone else comes along who can deal with country’s financial and flu crises simultaneously. I don’t think either Yushchenko or Yanukovych want the job,”
Mr Yuschenko has been criticised for wiping the slate clean of former-president Leonid Kuchma’s cronyism (he refused to call for a re-run of the 2004 election to protect his former-PM, Mr Yanukovych) and failing to replace the system with effective institutions.
Ukraine’s regions also present a political headache. The South and East are staunchly Russian in outlook, as in language and culture. Political polarisation reinforces the provinces as centrifugal forces.
Nonetheless, the real crisis in Ukraine is financial. The country is bankrupt, dependent on an unusually large loan of $16bn from the IMF. Last October, the latest $3.8bn draw-down was rejected as a result of Ukraine’s failure to enact a tough budget (cutting the deficit from 10 to 3-4% of GDP).
Closing down another Cold War front
The second great failure of Mr Yuschenko’s tenure as President was in relations with Russia. There have been three gas crises in the past five years, with supply having been cut twice, and invariably in the harsh winters.
Part of the problem has been Vladimir Putin’s outright hostility to the Orange Revolution, and Gazprom’s tendency to summarily increase prices. But the fact of Ukraine’s dependency and its strategic importance for a quarter of Russian supplies to the EU makes it a desirable target for Russia. Last year, Mrs. Tymoshenko was forced to go begging to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to renegotiate the terms of their contract. From a position of disastrous weakness, the cost to Ukraine continues to rise, and can sometimes exceed $1bn per month.
The election of Mr Yanukovych, who will pursue a far less antagonistic foreign policy (the Orange leaders’ enthusiasm for NATO infuriated Russia), is likely to mean a better deal for Ukrainians. If the Russians do seriously favour Mr Yanukovych, they will have to indulge him. Improving Ukraine’s finances will be imperative to the effectiveness of his government.
Mercurial Tymoshenko
Despite the gap being only 3% between the two presidential candidates, Mrs Tymoshenko’s defeat has been comprehensive. Although she commanded considerable influence, her enemies are equally strong and in a state in which patronage plays as big a role as it does in Ukraine, she is well and truly cast into the wilderness. Moreover, she is caught between the reality of the situation and the principles she espoused four years ago. To protest when the results of the election have been lauded as fair would be unthinkable. Finally, the many compromises made necessary by her role as Prime Minister may make her unpalatable to either Russia or the West when it comes to other political stages, No longer, for her, a role in international politics.
All of which I regard as a considerable tragedy. Mrs Tymoshenko is no angel, and has few lasting achievements to her name, but she was a politician of considerable ability, who dominated Ukrainian politics from a not overly strong position.
She began her career holding the energy portfolio under President Kuchma and Prime Minister (at the time) Yuschenko, where she was regarded as a fighter of corruption (though accusations of personal enrichment and corruption, which led to a short jail-sentence have followed her personally). Adroitly building up a support base, she provided the crucial bulwark to leverage Mr Yuschenko into the Presidency in 2004, rallying protestors in Kiev’s Independence Square. Her alliance was short-lived, however, and the fluidity and dissonance of Ukrainian politics saw her ousted as Prime Minister after eight months.
During this period Mrs Tymoshenko endeavoured to be strikingly anti-Russian, refusing to visit her neighbour for most of her premiership, and culminating in early 2007 in an article for Foreign Affairs in which she called for the containment of a revived and expansionist Russia.
Later that year elections strengthened her parliamentary bloc, allowing her to return to the premiership by the slimmest of margins. She began to soften her criticism of Russia, keeping silent during the Georgian war, and compromising in the gas disputes, when the implication was clear, that Ukraine might be next. Her concern about the Russian Question did not cease, however, and in late-2008 she penned an article for The Economist’s The World in 2009 in which she called for an institutional arrangement to maintain dialogue between Russia and the West;
In 2009 the European Union must acknowledge the task of ensuring that the ongoing changes taking place in the lands between the EU and Russia proceed in an orderly, peaceful—and, most important—mutually beneficial fashion. The aim is clear: Russia and Ukraine on the road to becoming two prosperous and friendly neighbours in the manner of today’s France and Germany.
Ironically, 2009 was an annus horribilis for Mrs Tymoshenko, a perfect storm that might have brought down any other government. Ukraine was dashed against the rocks of economic crises, a President vainly electioneering for his political life blocked reform, and the possibility of EU accession in the near future died a death as enlargement fatigue gave way to desperate introspection in light of the Lisbon Treaty.
Of course, Mrs Tymoshenko was not innocent of politics. A quote in the New York Times today gives a good indication of the negative picture she painted of herself;
“She is that psychological type of person who wants to fight and not do anything else,” said Ms. Chetvertnova, 45. “A government should work and not just seek out enemies.”
But the fact remains that from an unpopular government Mrs Tymoshenko ran Mr Yanukovych close. As a battler, she puts Gordon Brown to shame. The hope remains that she exits politics for the time being with dignity and far-sighted patriotism, not recalcitrance. The dawn of 2010 marks dark days, with freedom’s unstoppable march slipping backwards, with Russia ascendant and with government embattled.
It is almost enough to make one balk at liberal values, but on the contrary, it is also the perfect time to bear them in mind. If Mrs Tymoshenko ensures that democracy is not dragged into question, she will do her country a service and perhaps that there is a day when the West will, as the Gideon Rachman says splendidly, right a historical wrong and enclose struggling democracies within its protective embrace.


