You're reading: Expats To Watch: Germany’s Lange immerses himself in future of Ukraine

Editor’s Note: This Kyiv Post feature introduces readers to interesting expatriates who have chosen to make Ukraine their home. We welcome readers’ suggestions about expats to profile. Please send ideas to [email protected].

Nico Lange

Nationality: German

Age: 36

Position: Head of the Ukraine office of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation

Length of time in Ukraine:
5 years

Tips for succeeding in Ukraine: “It is very important to speak the language from the very first moment and […] to be involved [in everyday life] directly, to talk to politicians directly over coffee without translators. What you need for that is self discipline. You can only learn a language if you are very self-disciplined.”

Despite being held for 10 hours at Boryspil international airport a year and half ago and being generally disappointed that Ukraine has veered away from democracy under President Viktor Yanukovych’s rule, German citizen Nico Lange has not lost his positive view on a country that he clearly holds dear to his heart.

Lange has been working in Ukraine for the last five years as director of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung foundation. Influential by virtue of being backed by Germany’s ruling party, the non-governmental organization supports democracy and development in about 120 countries across the globe. It has been active in Ukraine since 1994.

Lange was already fluent in Russian when he arrived in Ukraine to head the organization in December 2006, having earlier worked in Russia for the Robert Bosch Foundation. But upon arriving in Ukraine, he went out of his way to learn the national language, Ukrainian. He did so on his own, mostly by listening to radio.

The more he learned about the country, the more he claims to have discovered that Ukraine is a fantastic country with fantastic people, who deserve to be a part of the European Union and live according to European standards.

He arrived in Ukraine soon after the 2004 Orange Revolution – which overturned a vote rigged for Yanukovych, leading to Viktor Yushchenko’s election — with high hopes. But he soon found out that political infighting, cronyism and kleptocracy were weighing down heavily upon the country.

Lange is very critical about recent developments in the country, which is widely seen to be sliding away from democracy and Europe.

“After a very positive outlook for Ukraine, [when], despite all the problems, everybody thought, the tendency of development would be in the right direction, now many people have doubts whether this is the right direction Ukraine [is moving in],” Lange said sitting in his office in Kyiv’s Pechersk district.

Lange is quick to point out that both the political and business environment are deteriorating. It is, he added, a big contradiction that, on the one hand, Yanukovych repeatedly declares that Ukraine has made a strategic choice to integrate with the European Union, but simultaneously the nation’s state security institutions “are acting towards foreigners like they are dangerous for the country.”

This is something Lange knows about firsthand. He was banned from entering the country upon arrival to Kyiv’s Boryspil airport on June 26, 2010. He was kept for 10 hours with illegal migrants and without official explanation.

The incident followed a report he published a month before which was critical about the situation in the country. Lange was only let into Ukraine again after senior German officials intervened. The incident was perceived by German authorities as a misunderstanding.

It is such so-called misunderstandings, including the Aug. 5 arrest of opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko and her subsequent conviction and seven-year prison sentence, that keep Ukraine at a distance from the European Union.

Referring to the recent Dec. 19 Ukraine-EU summit held in Kyiv, Lange said Ukraine missed a big chance to sign a landmark association agreement with the EU. Last autumn’s jailing of opposition leader Tymoshenko made this impossible he said.

“The summit was a setback but we all know why,” Lange says. “The political criteria were laid out clearly. It all depends on the decision of the Ukrainian president and on the ability of Ukrainian society to demonstrate its resolve, demanding a positive decision from the Ukrainian president.”

Under such political conditions, it’s difficult for Lange “to imagine Chancellor [Angela] Merkel sitting next to President Yanukovych, watching the German team [play during the upcoming Euro 2012 soccer championship being co-hosted by Ukraine,] if Yulia Tymoshenko remains in jail as the judiciary continues hunting down the opposition.”

While signing a free trade and association agreement will remain an important issue in 2012, Lange says there is one principle difference between the European and local styles of politics.

“In the European Union politicians write mobile messages to each other. They call each other. They are informally talking about things. That’s the way how political decisions are made,” Lange says. “If Ukraine wants to be successful in the European arena, they basically have to learn to get in contact with the right people, to send them messages, call them and be in contact with them directly – not to have these kind of officially, very stiff [Soviet-style] meetings.”

Throughout Ukraine’s 20 years of independence, Germany has cumulatively invested some $7.3 billion into the nation’s economy, finishing second, after Cyprus, in the list of the country’s top investors. But from a German perspective, it is not an astronomical figure.

Germany’s investments into neighboring Hungary and Poland exceed Ukraine’s many times over. Moreover, nearly $5 billion of German foreign direct investment comes from one privatization sale, the purchase of Ukraine’s largest steel company by London-headquartered Mittal Steel using a German subsidiary.

Lange points out that many investors cannot compete in Ukraine’s murky business environment with influential groups that are connected with the party of power. This, he explains, is one of the main reasons why much larger levels of investment from Europe’s economic powerhouse, Germany, have not poured into the country.

Another major interest of the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung in Ukraine is observing the parliamentary elections on Oct. 28. These elections are Ukraine’s next litmus test in conducting fair and free elections.

Experts of the foundation will train members of the election commissions and explain norms of the new election law. The foundation will also set its own mission of observers as it did during previous elections in Ukraine.

Talking about his possible transfer out of Ukraine, Lange says that no decision has been made yet. But even if he is rotated out, he will stay connected, devoted and, most likely, critical of the situation in Ukraine.

“Sometimes real friends are the friends who offer constructive criticism, helping to push you towards development,” he said, denying a common assumption among Ukrainians that Germany doesn’t really want to see Ukraine in the European family.

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