What was initially billed as a donor conference for Ukraine ended up being rebranded as an International Support for Ukraine Conference on April 28. The conference came a day after a Ukraine-European Union Summit.
Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, summed up the EU attitude towards Ukraine succinctly: Do more and we will give more.
“Reform must continue. It must be credible. It must be swift. It must be sustained,” Juncker said. “You keep reforming, and we will keep supporting. That is the contract we are making with you.”
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden also hammered home the Western point of view in a video message played at the conference. If Ukraine continues on the path to reform, the U.S. is prepared to give another $2 billion in loan guarantees this year.
“You’re fighting to build a democracy that respects the will of the people, instead of catering to the whims of the powerful; an economy where what you know matters more than who you know; a society under the rule of law, where the cancer of corruption is removed from the body politic and a measure of dignity is restored to the people’s lives of Ukraine,” Biden said.
Ukraine’s political leaders sounded upbeat despite the continuing multibillion-dollar gap between what Ukraine needs to fight the war and fix the economy versus what Western donors are pledging.
At least $2 billion alone, by the latest estimate, is needed to repair the war-torn eastern Donbas – assuming Russia stops its war today, which is highly unlikely.
Nonetheless, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk encouraged hundreds of conference participants in Kyiv’s Olympic Stadium. “This is the right time to invest in Ukraine,” Yatsenyuk said, while also managing to take a jab at the West for not helping Ukraine more financially and militarily.
“Not meaning to make comparisons, Greece has received $300 billion but they have neither war nor Russian tanks (on their territory) and they are not fighting against a nuclear power. In turn, Ukraine has received $30 billion in total support from the IMF and G-7 (most industrialized countries),” Yatsenyuk said.
European Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Commissioner Johannes Hahn, however, said that the EU “is doing more than it has ever done for a country that is not a member.”
President Petro Poroshenko, who opened the conference at 9 a.m. on April 28 with a brief speech, also called for more Western assistance to Ukraine. “Today Ukraine is one of the most promising places in the world to invest and we need your investment,” he said.
He went on to quote Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the 32nd American president, who said during his 1933 inauguration speech amid the Great Depression: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Remarked Poroshenko: “I strongly feel these words are very relevant to my country. The Ukrainian people have proven they have no fear – on our front in the east and on our front in providing reforms.”
Poroshenko, himself an oligarch, listed his three pillars of reform as “de-oligarchization, deregulation and decentralization.” He said that “like no one else, we are interested in seeing the results of this reform as soon as possible. Combatting corruption remains our absolute top priority.”
Western officials praised recent reform efforts by Kyiv’s government, describing them as the most impressive since national independence in 1991, but urged officials to pick up the pace.
U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt said that “the Ukrainian people would like the process to move faster than this. We would also like to see the process move faster, because the faster it moves the more quickly we will be able to help, the more likely that we are going to be successful in our effort to encourage American companies to look at all the opportunities, to take another look at Ukraine.”
But some at the conference said there is a good reason why Western aid is coming in modest amounts and then only with stringent conditions.
After talking to several delegates, Ukrainian blogger Vasyl Arbuzov summarized the atmosphere by citing ex-Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko’s post on his Facebook page that the West was disappointed with the slow pace.
“In fact they aren’t tired, they’re stunned and bewildered,” Arbuzov said. “For the first time the donors frankly told the government representatives up in their faces that the whole world is perfectly aware that not only haven’t the president and the prime minister done anything to battle corruption, but that they even are presiding over a corrupt system. The perception is that the new leadership, who were lifted into their positions by blood, have become the leading thieves in the country.”
Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko rejected Arbuzov’s argument. “I think we’ve made substantial progress and I think we have a very ambitious program going forward. We have to act now,” Jaresko said.
The conference featured one speech after another by mainly EU officials and ministers from several nations. By mid-day, the talks grew repetitious and monotonous. The afternoon schedule featured four simultaneous sessions on investment, agriculture, energy and the reconstruction of Donbas in overcrowded rooms.
The lack of heads of state from Western states was noticeable and explains why the original plan for a donor conference had to be scrapped. The only foreign prime minister on the agenda was Lativan Prime Minister Laimdota Straujuma.
While Poroshenko said that Ukraine would be ready to meet the requirements for EU membership in five years, Tim Ash, the analyst for Standard Bank in London, observed that Ukraine must have been disappointed by no agreement on visa-free travel and “no offer of any real and clear EU membership perspective.”
This article was written by Kyiv Post chief editor Brian Bonner based on reporting by Roman Olearchyk, Johannes Wamberg Andersen, Ilya Timtchenko and Olena Gordiienko.
