You're reading: Ukraine scrambles to change sides on Libya

The problem with cozying up to dictators is that once in awhile they get deposed, requiring an embarrassing diplomatic about-face. And so the recent change of power in Libya has created a headache for Ukraine.

The problem with cozying up to dictators is that once in awhile they get deposed, requiring an embarrassing diplomatic about-face. And so the recent change of power in Libya has created a headache for Ukraine.

After years of courting Moammar Gadhafi, who ruled the Northern African nation for 42 years, leaders in Kyiv will have to establish ties from scratch. They can start with the ruling National Transitional Council, which the Ukrainian government recognized on Sept. 1.

The Libyan Embassy in Kyiv on Aug. 22 changed its flag from Gadhafi’s green to the tricolor of the opposition forces, which now controls most of Libya.

The Libyan ambassador performed a swift political switch by transferring support from Gadhafi to the new authorities, according to a source at the Libyan Embassy. The ambassador, Faisal Elshaari, couldn’t be reached for comment.

Ukraine’s officials were trapped in the same awkward position and the Kyiv government was one of the last to recognize the new authorities in Libya on Sept. 1.

“We expect friendly relations with this country,” said Oleksandr Dikusarov, a spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. However, experts say the long hesitation of diplomats on Libya may hurt Ukraine’s ability to make deals with its new leaders.

The oil-rich African state has always been interesting for Ukrainian governments as a way to decrease energy dependence on Russia. Libya, in turn, saw Ukraine as a promising supplier of grain, arms, airplanes and civil infrastructure.

But the bilateral relations of two states were based almost uniquely on the personal relations between Ukraine’s leadership and the extravagant Libyan ex-leader.

Gadhafi was awarded with the Order of Bohdan Khmelnitsky by then-President Viktor Yushchenko in 2008. Former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko visited the eccentric leader in his bedouin tent in Kyiv in 2009 and presented him with a sword. Ex-President Leonid Kuchma handed him the Order of Yaroslav the Wise in 2003.

Igor Semyvolos, head of the Center for Middle East Studies in Kyiv, called those presents Gadhafi “refined bribes,” saying Ukraine’s authorities tried to treat the Libyan ex-leader in the same way that Soviet authorities tried to flatter dictators they wanted to court.

But the fall of Gadhafi’s regime led to the nullifying of all the signed or planned agreements.

“Ukraine has lost all its influence in Libya as all the arrangements Ukraine had there were based on personal ties with Gadhafi,” said Anatoliy Lazarenko, an expert as the Research Center for Civil Society Problems.

Semyvolos, however, argues Ukraine had never been a serious player in Libya and all the promising agreements existed only on the paper. “Libya and Egypt are two countries with which cooperation was always discussed in future tense,” he said.

In 2004, Ukraine’s state-run energy company Naftogaz signed an agreement with Libyan firm NOC to develop four oil and gas fields in the country. But, after Naftogaz didn’t start oil extraction, the fields were handed to other companies.

In 2009, Tymoshenko agreed with Gadhafi to launch an oil refinery in Odesa Oblast that would have processed Libyan oil, but that agreement wasn’t even signed.

Libya in turn was lobbying a deal for joint cultivation of 100 hectares of Ukrainian farmland to supply its population with wheat. Later, however, this ambitious project was forgotten.

The countries in 2005 signed a contract to deliver to Libya three AN-74 airplanes, but only one was ever delivered.

After the United Nations lifted a ban on delivering weapons to Libya in 2004, the country became the third-largest importer of Ukrainian small and light weapons, such as Kalashnikovs, from 2004 to 2007, selling 101,500 weapons to the North African country, according to a report by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), a Swedish research center.

Ukrainian civilians were more successful than their state in taking advantage of opportunities in Libya, emigrating there to work as doctors and nurses in the 1990s and later. Hundreds of doctors, nurses and civil and military engineers working in Libya made this country the top destination for Ukrainian labor migration in Africa.

Some of those people later became hostages of the civil war that started in February 2011, and could become a thorn in the side of attempts to smooth relations with the new authorities amid claims that some were fighting as mercenaries for Gadhafi.

The new authorities detained 23 Ukrainians in Tripoli in late August on suspicion of being paid to fight for the former leader. Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs denied the allegations, claiming those people were civil engineers who worked in the oil and gas industry.

“I am 100 percent sure that the Ukrainian state didn’t send to Libya any militant or any civilian that could maintain military equipment,” lawmaker Anatoliy Grytsenko, head of the defense committee in parliament, told the Kyiv Post.

Grytsenko added that he doubted that some Ukrainians had been privately recruited for military service in Libya.

Whatever the role of Ukrainian workers in Libya, experts said that by failing to back the rebels earlier, officials in Kyiv had lost the chance to defend Ukrainian interests in this country.

“The oil production companies, mainly French, British and German in summer sent 20 representatives to the so-called opposition leaders in Libya to negotiate and divide up in advance the Libyan oil,” said Lazarenko, adding that Ukraine will not receive any part of this lucrative pie.

Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected].