Hopes for a quick solution of the political crisis dimmed in parliament on Feb. 4 as the opposition and the pro-presidential majority traded insults and bickered. The Party of Regions apparently played for time while President Viktor Yanukovych prepared for his next moves expected after a series of high-key talks planned for the rest of this week.
Yanukovych will talk to U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden over the phone, and will have discussions with EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton, who arrived in Kyiv on Feb. 4 and U.S. Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland, who is due on Feb. 6.
But the week will end with a bilateral meeting with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin at opening of the Olympic Games in Sochi on Feb. 7, which might bring some version of solution.
Hanna Herman, a senior adviser to the president, said it would “get clear” where the nation is going after that date.
After all, it was a series of bilateral meetings between the Ukrainian and Russian presidents last year that halted the nation’s preparations for signing a trade-and-political deal with the European Union. That, and the president’s acceptance of Russia’s bailout package, which included conditional financial assistance of $15 billion and cheap gas, that threw Ukraine into the longest political crisis in recent history and mass demonstrations in the streets.
Russia paid out $3 billion of that money, and halted the second $2 billion tranche, which was due last month. Russian officials said they would first need to understand where the country is going.
Observers said that the West might still outbid Russia. But although US and European leaders have indicated they are trying to get together a financial aid package for Ukraine, EU Commission president José Manuel Barroso said there will be no “bidding competition” for Ukraine.
In Ukraine, indications are that the nation needs the money badly. The latest sign of it was depreciation of the hryvnia to 8.9 to the dollar at interbank currency exchange, forcing the National Bank to step in to prop up the currency. On top of that, Ukraine has amassed $3.3 billion arrears for Russian gas, according to Gazprom’s complaint on Feb. 3.
Serhiy Rakhmanin, an editor of Zerkalo Nedeli influential weekly, said that the president no longer feels the supporting shoulder of Russia. He said a Sunday night show on Russia’s government-controlled TV channel portrayed Yanukovych as a weak president, and suggested that federalization and even disintegration of Ukraine is inevitable.
The show also promoted regional leaders, particularly Kharkiv’s Mykhailo Dobkin and Gennadiy Kernes, as Ukraine’s hope. The duo started a new, anti-protest movement over the weekend, called the Ukrainian Front.
Its declared aim is to create “a people’s guard that can, without the use of illegal means, protect buildings and properties, and start freeing those that had been previously taken over.”
Rakhmanin said it scared Yanukovych and put him off the idea of offering further compromises with the opposition, on top of dismissing Prime Minister Mykola Azarov last week and offering the job to Batkivshchyna leader Arseniy Yatseniuk.
Instead Yanukovych has sharpened his anti-protest rhetoric. At a meeting with a pro-Russian group on Feb. 3, Yanukovych referred to the protesters as those who “incite extremist manifestations.” He also said the root cause of it was a political struggle for power.
Continuing the same line, the Party of Regions accused the opposition of being hungry for power. “If somebody wants czar-style powers, they have to reign in (their ambitions) and have powers within legal limits,” said Vitaliy Lukianov, a high-ranking Party of Regions member.
He did admit that a certain degree of redistribution of power is needed to create a more balanced power structure. But, at the same time, he said it would be unwise to return to the 2004 constitution, as the opposition suggests.
The move would curb presidential powers and allow the parliament to approve the cabinet, which would have extensive decision-making powers. But Lukianov said it would also introduce a number of disbalances.
“There is a conflict ingrained into the 2004 constitution. The government can take decisions, but the president can override them,” he said.
Lukianov said new solutions need to be designed, but it would take at least half a year to do it properly and in accordance with legal procedures for changing the Constitution. But the opposition said the nation, where mass protests have been going for over three months, and where several regional administrations in the western part of the country have been seized by the opposition, cannot wait this long.
“The country has a political crisis, we have no half a year to wait,” Klitschko said. “We have a clear idea how to do it, we have designed a political and legal solution.”
The solution is what they called a Constitutional Act, a piece of legislation that would return the 2004 constitution though a single vote. But the law was not even registered in parliament by the end of Tuesday.
