Of all the compliments that U.S. senators lavished on U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey R. Pyatt during the June 22 confirmation hearing on his pending reassignment to Greece, one of his favorite came from U.S. Senator Robert Menendez.
Besides doing “an extraordinary job” in Ukraine, “you were honest and forthright in all of your answers, and you didn’t use the diplomatic speak that sometimes I hear,” Menendez, a Democrat representing New Jersey, told Pyatt at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing in Washington, D.C. Also questioned was Marie L. Yovanovitch, who is tapped by U.S. President Barack Obama to become Pyatt’s successor in Kyiv.
“I come from a school or generation of diplomats who views that as a compliment,” Pyatt said of being called undiplomatic at times. “America is at its best when we speak frankly and when we stand by our values.”
Pyatt, whose nomination to Greece awaits likely U.S. Senate confirmation by September, spoke with the Kyiv Post for a traditional Fourth of July interview on the eve of his annual Independence Day backyard reception and barbeque on July 1.
Pyatt is part a big turnover that is coming in the Western diplomatic corps, as ambassadors who served during the EuroMaidan Revolution and the start of Russia’s war against Ukraine are being reassigned — including Jan Tombinski of the European Union, Andreas von Beckerath of Sweden, Jon Elvedal Fredriksen of Norway and Christof Weil of Germany, among others.
The incoming new ambassadors will coordinate the Western response to Russia’s war against Ukraine, in its third year, as well as try to make inroads against the stubborn persistence of high-level corruption in Ukraine.
Removing Shokin
It was in support of Ukrainians’ fight against their corrupt authorities that Pyatt took one of his stronger and more memorable stands.
The U.S. viewed Viktor Shokin, President Petro Poroshenko’s choice for general prosecutor in February 2015, as a prime obstacle to the war on corruption and creation of rule of law.
Getting rid of Shokin became one of the few conditions known publicly for the U.S. government to continue assisting Ukraine financially. That assistance package now includes $3 billion in loan guarantees, security aid of $600 million and economic aid of $500 million since the revolution that ousted Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 22, 2014, days after the murders of 100 demonstrators.
Shokin’s malfeasance in leading the nation’s 18,000 prosecutors, his refusal to prosecute any high-level crimes and his obstruction of investigations prompted Pyatt to call him out publicly (and Poroshenko, by implication) on Sept. 24 in Odesa.
It took, however, another six months to persuade Poroshenko to fire his loyalist Shokin and replace him with another loyalist, Yuriy Lutsenko, the former interior minister and Yanukovych-era political prisoner who headed Poroshenko’s faction in parliament. Lutsenko took over on May 12.
Pyatt has no regrets about the tough stance on Shokin.
“It wasn’t me taking on Shokin. It was the United States government,” Pyatt said. “The conditionality of getting rid of Shokin was an important step to at least opening the door to reform the prosecutor’s office.”
For the U.S., Shokin was only the latest in a string of obstructionist prosecutors since the revolution — including Oleh Makhnitsky and Vitaly Yarema — who were so uninterested in justice that U.S. law enforcement agents assigned to help “were basically locked out of the prosecutor’s office,” Pyatt said. “An inner corps in the prosecutor’s office was a) not interested in pursuing justice and b) not going to do anything that was going to compromise relationships with key political personalities.”
The U.S. actively assisted attempts by ex-prosecutors Davit Sakvarelidze and Vitaly Kasko “to cleanse the system and build a new team,” but both were driven out earlier this year “by the corrupt cabal around Shokin,” Pyatt said. “There are no illusions about what’s happened there, because we saw it from the inside.”
By contrast, with Lutsenko, “we have excellent cooperation” and also the same with the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine, where a U.S. FBI agent was embedded to share expertise.
‘Ukraine needs a lot’
Rebuilding trust in Ukraine’s discredited government institutions and delivering justice and rule of law remain long-term projects, Pyatt said.
“I think Ukraine needs a lot of things. It needs a functional judiciary. It needs an effective prosecutorial service. It needs trusted police. It needs institutions that enjoy the confidence of the Ukrainian people.”
He supports the idea of deeper U.S. involvement in righting Ukraine’s criminal justice system as well as the creation of a special anti-corruption court to take on cases that the regular judiciary, made up of 9,000 discredited judges, cannot be entrusted to adjudicate. He views such a special court as an interim step until judicial reforms take hold and new, clean, professional judges are appointed to the bench.
Pyatt also thinks the U.S. can play an active role in helping Ukraine recover the billions of dollars in assets that have been illicitly spirited offshore. With support from the United Kingdom, America is hosting an asset recovery conference next year designed specifically to help four corruption-plagued nations: Ukraine, Sri Lanka, Nigeria and Tunisia.
But to do that, credible investigations and evidence will have to come from Ukraine’s broken criminal justice system. “The more successful Ukraine is in building new and effective institutions, the more effective we can be in supporting and helping Ukrainian courts find assets,” Pyatt said.
‘Tragedy for all’
Only results matter.
“There is only one yardstick of success in this area and that’s bringing people to trial and getting them convicted,” Pyatt said. “It’s a tragedy for all Ukrainians that two-and-a-half years after the revolution, not one Yanukovych-era crook has been convicted and nobody has been brought to account for the murders on Maidan. That needs to change, and Lutsenko knows that needs to change.”
Ukrainian politicians “don’t have to worry about me” or other foreigners, Pyatt said. “They have to worry about the expectations of the Ukrainian people for rule of law.”
U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt watches as Vitalina Musienko sings the Ukrainian national anthem during the July 1 Independence Day reception in Kyiv ahead of Fourth of July celebrations for America’s 240th birthday. (U.S. Embassy in Ukraine)
Assessing U.S. policy
Despite the solid U.S-Ukraine alliance, Ukrainians still note with displeasure several aspects of the relationship.
One is that Obama is set to become the first sitting U.S. president not to visit Ukraine since Ronald Reagan was in office.
Another complaint is that the U.S. should be doing more to support the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, when Ukraine surrendered its Soviet-era nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees from the United States, Britain and Russia – which is now the enemy to most Ukrainians.
Yet other complaints range from America’s slow response to Russia’s Crimean invasion in 2014 and, while far from universal, growing criticism that the structure of Western aid programs only serves to prop up the corrupt status quo.
Pyatt batted down the criticisms.
On the question of U.S. aid, Pyatt said that “our assistance has played an important catalytic role that has strengthened the hands of reformers.”
The fact that Obama is not going to visit Ukraine, and even described Ukraine as not one of America’s core interests, doesn’t mean that U.S. support for Ukraine is weak, Pyatt said.
“If you look at what this administration has done, obviously led by Vice President Joseph Biden, nobody has done more than the United States to stand by Ukraine and the people of Ukraine in this crisis,” Pyatt said. “The fact is that President Obama has invested a great deal of time in Ukraine. He knows the issues inside and out. I can say that having been part of his conversations with Poroshenko and (ex-Prime Minister Arseniy) Yatsenyuk.”
With Biden as point person on U.S. policy, Pyatt said nobody can “doubt both his commitment to seeing Ukraine succeed but also his willingness to be very, very tough on anti-corruption, rule of law, governance — issues that are clearly still in need of a great deal of work.”
U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt and Nadiya Savchenko, the member of parliament and former soldier who was imprisoned by Russia, meet American troops on July 1. (U.S. Embassy in Ukraine)
Drive to keep sanctions
Pyatt said Obama has also invested time into keeping economic sanctions against Russia, a drive led in the European Union by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
And Ukraine, Pyatt said, can count on the U.S. to maintain existing or seek to impose tougher sanctions until Russia returns Crimea and upholds its end of the Minsk peace agreement, including a cease-fire, an end to support for separatists and the return of the eastern border to Ukraine’s control.
The push by some Russian sympathizers in the West to ease sanctions because the measures haven’t succeeded yet is a “morally bankrupt argument,” Pyatt said. His assessment is that “the Kremlin is trying to play the clock now, hoping that the longer it drags out, the harder it will be for the West to retain unity on sanctions, which is one of the Obama administration’s most important accomplishments.”
He said it’s important to remember that sanctions were imposed on Russia as “a response to the illegal invasion and annexation of Crimea, followed by the brutal violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity, which as so far produced 10,000 deaths and untold injuries, and people who have been driven from their homes.”
The situation in the Kremlin-controlled areas of eastern Ukraine shows that the war may, indeed, go on for a long time. The separatists have “more tanks and more artillery and more armored vehicles than most NATO countries,” Pyatt said. “It’s not going anywhere aside from continuing to attack Ukrainian positions on the contact line.”
“We have to answer that,” he said. “We are not going to negotiate away Ukraine. There will be no Yalta II. We will be clear on the principles that it’s not alright to invade a sovereign country in the 21st century. If you do that you will pay the price.”
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland has been involved in shuttle diplomacy with Vladislav Surkov, a top aide of Russian President Vladimir Putin. The outcome of several meetings, most recently in June, has yet to produce a breakthrough.
Peace depends on Putin.
In 2014, “I said Vladimir Putin could end it this with one phone call. It’s tragic how little has changed. He could still end it with one phone call. He hasn’t. This is a war created and fueled by the Kremlin now for two years. The implementation of Minsk depends 100 percent on Moscow to change its strategic direction and it’s that simple.”
US Secretary of State John Kerry points on March 4, 2014, as he stands with U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland (R) and U.S Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt at a memorial honoring demonstrators killed during the EuroMaidan Revolution that ousted President Viktor Yanukovych on Feb. 22, 2014. (AFP)
Areas of regret
But Pyatt also leaves with some regrets.
“I generally don’t do regrets, but my greatest regret in this job is that I haven’t been able to do more to stop all of the killing and human suffering that Ukraine has gone on through over the past three years,” Pyatt said. “First on the Maidan and, clearly for me, the darkest day was on the 20th of February, watching livestream of the shooting on the Maidan, saying ‘Dammit. something has to be done. Can’t somebody do something about this?’’’
That was followed in quick succession by Russia’s Crimean invasion and war in the eastern Donbas. When “every time you thought it couldn’t get worse, it did,” Pyatt said.
As for Russia’s invasion of Crimea less than a week after Yanukovych fled, Pyatt said that Ukraine simply didn’t have the military forces to fight back. “It wasn’t an option,” he said.
“In retrospect, I wish we would have responded more strongly with our sanctions, more quickly,” Pyatt said. “We were in that regard bamboozled by the ‘little green men’ and the debate we had to have about ‘Is this the Russian government?’ and ‘What’s going on here?’”
Overall, looking at the U.S. response to Ukraine’s crises in the last three years, Pyatt assessed: “Could we have done more? Perhaps. Do I wish we moved more quickly? Certainly.”
Poroshenko legacy
Pyatt said Ukraine is a much stronger nation today than when he came three years ago.
The nation is better off without Yanukovych as president, although Poroshenko’s legacy remains uncertain.
“I think he clearly wants to be remembered as the leader who took Ukraine into Europe and led the process of transition,” Pyatt said. “He certainly doesn’t want to be latest in a long string of unsuccessful Ukrainian presidents. He has three years left.”
He believes that at least some oligarchs are playing a less destructive role, which is a positive sign. “Most of them understand that the old business models have exhausted themselves,” he said. “The environment is changing. It’s certainly not complete.”
He has confidence in the “vigilance of civil society” and believes that the journalism profession in Ukraine has improved as well. “I think that it’s one of the real success stories,” he said, but “obviously this is an area where there’s lot of work that has to be done.”
Ukraine’s military forces are much more capable today, a turnaround that started showing results in July 2014, when its troops liberated Sloviansk, “the first city retaken as Ukrainians finally began to turn the tide,” Pyatt said.
Many selfless reformers are pushing for positive changes in many sectors of government and society, he said.
The National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine has been formed.
Energy sector reforms — including market pricing and Naftogaz corporate governance changes — will eliminate opportunities for corruption, although vested interests fought hard to keep the corrupt system in place, he said.
Public officials will also be required to disclose their finances on forms that go publicly online in August.
And on and on.
Some of the more recent arrivals in the diplomatic community “get frustrated very quickly” by the slow progress, Pyatt said. “Ukraine can break your heart.” But he said that a more optimistic outlook can be gained by simply comparing the situation today with where Ukraine stood in the summer of 2013.
Truly irreversible?
Even in July 2014, “it was an open question whether Ukraine would crack wide open,” Pyatt said. “Odesa has happened (in which 42 people were killed in May 2, 2014 clashes between pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian demonstrators). The economy was still teetering. The Rada was the Yanukovych-era Rada that wasn’t passing much of anything. The whole question of Ukraine’s survival as a unified democratic state was very much up for grabs. It’s not the case anymore.”
A psychological change that has taken hold among Ukrainians is as important as the structural changes, he said, describing it as “this amazing transformation that has taken place with Ukrainians’ view of themselves.”
Despite the progress, however, “the question that I will leave unanswered when I depart here, assuming it’s sometime later this summer, is whether it’s reached the point where it’s truly irreversible,” Pyatt said. “I think it’s pretty close.”
