The failure of the United States to effectively counter Russian bullying of Ukraine last summer dominated a two-hour U.S. Senate foreign relations committee hearing in Washington, D.C., on Ukraine’s political crisis.
Senators at the Jan. 15 also expressed growing impatience with
the State Department over not moving faster on the threat of possible U.S. visa
and economic sanctions against President Viktor Yanukovych and other top officials
to punish human rights abuses.
But none of the senators called for immediate sanctions.
Even statements from the committee chair, Democrat Robert Menendez of New
Jersey, seemed to make it clear that tough action remains far from certain and
is not likely to happen soon.
Menendez said that if Yanukovych again violently cracks down
on EuroMaidan demonstrators, who are protesting the president’s Nov. 21 U-turn
in foreign policy towards Russia and away from the European Union, then: “I am not
sure we will wait for the State Department to issue visa and other sanctions.
We will introduce legislation.”
The tone of the two hours was one of frustration over
Ukraine’s abandonment of a EU trade deal and acceptance of a
multibillion-dollar Russian bailout instead and an almost futile search for
effective U.S. policy options.
At the hearing, Republican senators forcefully criticized
Democratic President Barack Obama’s inability or unwillingness last summer to
strongly counter Russian economic and political pressure on Ukraine, tactics
that led to Yanukovych’s halt to Western integration for the former Soviet
republic.
Senators expressed outrage at the corruption among Ukraine’s
elites, with U.S. Sen. John McCain singling out the rise of Yanukovych’s eldest
son, Oleksandr, from dentist to billionaire with a $100 million home.
And senators also called on State Department officials to
craft a bolder, tougher policy to help the democratic, Western ambitions of
Ukrainians.
But, in the end, the senators and the State Department
officials who testified – Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for European
Affairs Victoria Nuland and Deputy Assistant U.S. Secretary of State for Human Rights
Tom Melia – offered little more than moral and possibly a little more financial
support for Ukrainian civil society and independent news media.
Nuland talked about how Ukrainian opposition leaders have
united because of the crisis and are devising common strategies, even though
the evidence suggests a split in the ranks of the three major opposition
candidates. It was left to Zbigniew Brezinzski, the former national security
adviser who spoke at the end, to chide Ukraine’s opposition leaders for all
trying to run for president. He said they must unite behind one candidate to
succeed in unseating Yanukovych’s re-election bid in 2015.
Mostly senators aired their regrets.
Menendez bemoaned the Dec. 17 deal between Yanukovych and
Russian President Vladimir Putin as putting Ukraine “once again in Russia’s
political and economic orbit.”
Republican Robert Corker of Tennessee said the Russian deal
giving Ukraine a $15 billion in loans and a 33 percent discount on gas imports
put “the interests of Ukraine’s political elite above the wellbeing of the
nation and has been rejected by the majority of Ukrainians.” Corker also called
Obama’s policy weak in response to Russia’s threats against Ukraine, including
a summer embargo on Ukrainian exports, designed to get Ukraine’s leaders to
abandon their EU integration plans.
“President Yanukovych saw we did not come out clearly and
forcefully when Russia boycotted Ukrainian goods,” Corker said, and concluded
the United States is “not the partner they can count on in tough times.”
“The administration has a big megaphone and it did not use
it this time,” Corker said. “We continue
to turn our heads and do not do things that are in the law… I do not think our
country has stood up the way it should, at a moment in time that could have
been beneficial to Ukraine, our nation and Western nation.”
Melia was ridiculed by Menendez and McCain for saying that
“we don’t want this to be a tug of war over Ukraine with Russia. The Ukrainian
government can choose to be bullied or can take the open door to the West.”
Noting “the coercion and intimidation that Russia pursues,”
Menendez said the issue is not a “tug of war” but rather adopting a U.S. policy
to push back against the Kremlin and create “the space that Ukrainians need to
decide their future.”
McCain was caustic in his dismissal of Melia’s views as
“either incredibly naïve or misleading the committee, one or the two.” He said
that “this is not a high school student body election. Ukrainians want to be
European, not Russian. This is what it’s all about.”
“We want to be assisting morally the Ukrainian people,”
McCain said. “They cry out for out assistance and our moral support in a
struggle that is totally unfair.” He talked about the “brutal crackdown” on
demonstrators and referred to the Jan. 10 beating of ex-Interior Minister and
current opposition leader Yuriy Lutsenko.
He said Obama’s policy is, instead, rewarding Putin’s
bullying of his neighbors, including Ukraine, in trying to recreate a new
version of the Soviet Union.
“This is all about Mr. Putin’s desire to restore the old
Russian empire in the near abroad. He’s done that all around the periphery of
Russia. It’s part of the very aggressive behavior Vladimir Putin display and we
reward his foreign minister (Sergei) Lavrov with funny little gag gifts. I don’t get it,” McCain said, referring to
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry’s gift of two potatoes to Lavrov in a recent
meeting.
Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat of Connecticut who traveled to
Ukraine in December with McCain and met with Yanukovych, said “I don’t think
Yanukovych can win a free and fair election.” He said the United States,
therefore, must be ready to respond forcefully in the event of further human
rights violations, including unfair elections and violent crackdowns by
authorities.
The second hour of the hearing was dominated by Polish-born Brzezinski,
President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser from 1977-1981.
He remained optimistic about Ukraine’s eventual ability to
break free from Russia’s smothering influence.
“My gut feeling is that Putin’s nostalgia for the
past;,which drives aspiration for supra-national union, is divorced from
political and economic realities,” Brzezinski said. “A democratic, sovereign
European Ukraine is what the Ukrainian people want and deserve.”
The longtime student of Ukraine called Yanukovych’s
imprisonment of his rival, ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, “stupid and
rigid,” and referred to Prime Minister Mykola Azarov as “dogmatic.”
He suggested that the U.S. engage in dialogue with oligarchs
who might be able to influence Yanukovych and who don’t want to be dominated by
Russia. He also said America should work to pressure Russia through
international institutions such as the World Trade Organization to punish
violations.
More information can be found on the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s website here.
Kyiv Post chief editor Brian Bonner can be reached at [email protected] and deputy chief editor Katya Gorchinskaya can be reached at [email protected].
