It’s unclear what exactly Kissinger was doing here and whether he was paid to meet Yanukovych as Western leaders are shunning meetings citing anti-democratic policies, such as locking up political rival Yulia Tymoshenko. Instead of fixing the problem by releasing her, Yanukovych and his team are trying to show that everything’s fine, hoping the U.S. and the European Union will somehow forget about it. They won’t.
Itâs unclear what exactly Kissinger was doing here and whether he was paid to meet Yanukovych as Western leaders are shunning meetings citing anti-democratic policies, such as locking up political rival Yulia Tymoshenko.
Yanukovych’s administration seems to think that Western politics works the same as here – through personal deals. They appear to believe they just have to get their message across to the correct people that Tymoshenko is a criminal. They do the same in trying to persuade the International Monetary Fund to resume lending despite lacklustre reforms, flying ministers and officials to Washington frequently to meet IMF top brass.
The latest example is the hiring of U.S. law firm Skadden to prepare a report on the prosecution of Tymoshenko for Ukraine’s government. No one can doubt this will be a whitewash. It is also interesting that one of the law firm’s partners in its Washington D.C. office is Gregory Craig, former White House counsel to President Barack Obama. No doubt the Yanukovych administration believes it can access the top guy via Craig.
These ruses will fail. In the West, politics and policies are built more upon institutions, not individual personalities. If Obama came to Ukraine tomorrow (and he won’t), he would repeat what U.S. Ambassador John Tefft says on a weekly basis about the need to release Tymoshenko.
Meetings with people like Kissinger and the positively-spun press releases that come out afterwards are wishful thinking. It doesn’t matter how many times they tell themselves everything is fine. It doesn’t make it true.
It could be that Yanukovych’s aides are desperately trying to prove to the chief that everything is fine and that “powerful” people still want to meet him. If this is the case, the blind are leading the blind.
