VINNYTSIA, Ukraine — Only a year ago, Arseniy Yatseniuk was seen as a breath of fresh air in Ukraine’s smelly political world. Voters were clearly expressing (and still do) weariness with the same old faces and broken promises that have dominated the scene for years. Enter Yatensiuk, who has the most impressive resume of any 35-year-old in Ukraine: lawyer, foreign minister, Verkhovna Rada speaker, fluent speaker of English.
But with less than a month to go before the Jan. 17 vote, Yatseniuk’s image looks more battered than fresh. Even the candidate knows something is amiss. Once known for his cockiness, he is less so lately. But he is not giving up. “Never. If I do this, it will be a real defeat,” he told the Kyiv Post in a Dec. 14 interview.
He blames Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, in particular, for smears that have his campaign stalling.
“She started this mudslinging race, mudslinging accusations with the Jewish scandal…they spent a huge amount of cash to undermine my approval rating,” Yatseniuk said in an interview with the Kyiv Post, between campaign stops in the central Ukrainian oblast of Vinnytsia. “In Ukraine, we have this so-called latent anti-Semitism.”
The anti-Semitism card was played last summer, when Uzhgorod Mayor Serhiy Ratushnyak allegedly roughed up a young woman who was campaigning for Yatseniuk. Afterwards, Ratushnyak called Yatseniuk an “impudent Jew.” Yatseniuk says he is not Jewish, but Ratushnyak’s anti-Semitic rant might find a welcome audience among some voters.
Yatseniuk also claims that Tymoshenko has been hampering his campaign by financially punishing his major financial backers, including billionaire Leonid Yurushev. The government owes Yurushev Hr 400 million in unreturned value added tax, Yatseniuk claims. The candidate also claims that other top businessmen have dropped support for his campaign after being pressured by Tymoshenko. He was not more specific in his accusations.
Tymoshenko’s spokespeople had no comment by Dec. 17.
Whether Yatseniuk’s political wounds are Tymoshenko-inflicted or self-inflicted, the damage has clearly been done to his chances of becoming independent Ukraine’s fourth president.
The candidate started the year with political support that steadily rose, with polls showing that he had 15 percent support or better as recently as June. But recent polls have put him in the single digits, as low as 5 percent.
Some think his color-and-message coded billboards, with him appearing as a military-like figure promising to reinvigorate industry, military, education and agriculture, started his downfall. He is depicted as calling for a “war against corruption.” and wanting to rid the nation politically from Tymoshenko and Victor Yanukovych, the two front-runners in the race.
“His ads don’t quite match his personality. Many of my close friends say they aren’t appealing,” said Iryna Pron, a 23-year old medical student in Vinnytsia.
Others think Yatseniuk did himself in by being less than candid about his financial backing and his Russian advisers. But Yatseniuk still defends his forthrightness, his campaign themes – and his billboards. “It’s really strange when one [says] whether it suits you or doesn’t suit you,” he said. “No one knows what’s inside me, right?”
Despite what he says are Tymoshenko’s successful attempts to blunt his campaign, Yatseniuk said he takes full responsibility for the election outcome: “If I fail, it’s my fault.”
Until the day of reckoning, Yatseniuk plans to campaign enthusiastically across the nation, hoping voters will give him another look and his popularity will rebound enough to put him into a second-round runoff. Among the lessons he’s learned is that there is no substitute for personal meetings with voters in their hometowns.
Win or lose, Yatseniuk seems destined to be a political player for years or even decades to come. He has a commanding knowledge of issues and seems to be in tune with the voters’ top concerns: economic and anti-corruption issues which, according to a recent International Foundation for Electoral System poll, are the two priorities that people want the next president to tackle in 2010.
However, Victor Chumak, program director of policy analysis at the International Centre for Policy Studies in Kyiv, said Yatseniuk’s messages of modernization are not getting through. “Issues of modernization aren’t in line with society’s issues,” Chumak said. “There is a difference in meaning here.”
His pledges are being made by all the 18 candidates in the race, in one form or another, and voters are skeptical about promises. Moreover, Yatseniuk’s remedies are vague and voters don’t see yet a strong team coalescing around him.
Yatseniuk needs to erase these doubts in less than a month. He’s clear in his mind about where he wants to take Ukraine. “My national idea is to deliver the state [to the people],” Yatseniuk said. “It’s not about vyshyvanka, borsch or vodka. It’s about having a strong state.”
Ukraine, as it is now, is in danger of being a failed – or at least a non-sovereign – state. “Do you think [Dmitry] Medvedev would have addressed the same letter to Washington or [U.S. President Barack] Obama to [French President Nicolas] Sarkozy?” Yatseniuk asked, referring to the Russian president’s tirade against Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko last summer.
Yatseniuk believes that the existing European initiatives are designed to placate Ukraine, rather than treat the nation as a partner. “Forget it. You know, I hate this one-way policy,” Yatseniuk said.
“We are partners, so we are to elaborate on it together. That’s not the way – for the European Union to dictate to Ukraine the way of the Eastern Partnership [an effort to liberalize trade and travel rules between the EU and Ukraine]. The same goes for Russia.”
On foreign policy, Yatseniuk envisions a “Grand Europe” with strong economic and security links between the EU and the rest of Eurasia, with Ukraine at the helm of integration processes.
But Olga Shumylo, director of the International Centre for Policy Studies, said Yatseniuk’s concept of a Ukraine-led European integration “shows that he doesn’t understand the processes that have been taking shape in Europe since the 1950s.”
Whatever happens in the next month, whether he rises or falls, or gets roughed up more by Tymoshenko or the other front-runner, Yatseniuk said he will not quit the race.
If he has to “lose the battle in order to win the war,” so be it, Yatseniuk said.
Kyiv Post staff writer Mark Rachkevych can be reached at [email protected].
Key excerpts of the Kyiv Post’s Dec. 14 interview with presidential candidate Arseniy Yatseniuk in Vinnytsia
On the demographic disaster and low productivity of workers in Ukraine:
“We lost about six million people in 18 years. This is not a phenomenon. This is a disaster. Ukrainians have lost their willingness and ability to educate or to study, to think and to move things forward, and this is the challenge for the new president. He’s to energize the people. He’s to be an example for Ukrainians that we could do it.”
On his “Grand Europe” plan:
Do you remember the 1815 Vienna Congress, when a European security system was secured for 100 years? The idea is to not eliminate borders. That’s nonsense. The idea is to have strong links. Between the European Union countries, between non-European Union countries, between Russia and Ukraine, between Ukraine and the European Union countries starting on a multilateral level, with mutual economic projects and ending with security…even security agreements on the bilateral level.”
On foreign relations:
“Russia and the European Union – now they’ve started integration but they eliminated Ukraine. When Russians started the “single economic space,” the idea was perfect if we had implemented it as an economic one. But Russians are obsessed with this new so-called ‘new empire.’ A new Soviet Union won’t emerge. Never.”
On what Russia can offer Ukraine:
“Russia won’t offer anything. Russia’s idea is to absorb, to swallow.”
On Ukraine’s diverse cultures and the nation’s identity:
“We are a diverse country. Much will depend on the future leader of this country, whether he is capable of not just uniting this country but also delivering this so-called national idea. My national idea is to deliver the state [to the people]. It’s about having a strong state. It’s about strong institutions.”
On his sinking popularity:
“My 13 percent rating in May was not an approval rating. It was a rating of a ‘new face.’ So let’s be frank, even more. I was the only warrior to have defeated this grand coalition between Yulia Tymoshenko and Victor Yanukovych and to have rejected this constitutional conspiracy. I had access to Inter TV channel. As of today, I’m switched off Inter. Full stop!”
On whether he’ll hire Russian political advisers again:
“If I fail, that’s my fault. And frankly speaking, we [will] have a huge shortage of cash soon. Again, that’s my fault. It was easily predictable, but it is Yulia [Tymoshenko] together with Yanukovych who are doing everything to eliminate all my sponsors. They did it.”
On how he would uproot the oligarchic economy:
“I would start with the political system. This isn’t a parliament. This is a closed-stock company. This is the joint-stock venture. There are no professional members of parliament, just secretaries, secret service guys, the so-called closed-list system, which was enacted in 2004 as part of a constitutional conspiracy among Yushchenko, Yanukovych, Tymoshenko, Kuchma, and approved by [the] Europeans and Russians, so first I have to start with a new electoral law, and snap elections for the parliament otherwise it won’t work.”
On whether he will withdraw his candidacy by Dec. 21:
“Never. If I lose, I will not re-enter the private sector. If I do this, this will be a real defeat. You have to fight. You have to fight for your ideas. You have to fight with your party. You can actually lose the battle in order to win the war. God knows who’s going to be president.”
On the question of his alleged Jewish ancestry:
“I said if someone in my family is Jewish, then I’ll tell the country that I’m part Jewish. But I’m telling you that I’m Ukrainian. But nevertheless, I want to protect everyone in this country. Starting with the Jews, ending with the Poles, Germans, Russians, whatever.”
On his biggest campaign trail lesson:
“The only way to win, the only way to gain victory is to convince the majority of Ukrainians, eye-to-eye in person. Second, you have to handle everything yourself, you have to control everything.”
