Oleksandr Motsyk, Ukraine's ambassador to the United States, went from defending President Viktor Yanukovych to attacking him the next day.
Such was the life of a Ukrainian diplomat serving abroad after the EuroMaidan Revolution drove Yanukovych from power on Feb. 22, 2014. Oleksandr Turchynov took over as interim president until June 7, when Petro Poroshenko was inaugurated as president.
Motsyk, who is leaving on April 25 after nearly five years in Washington, D.C., said he and others in the diplomatic corps were forced to set aside their personal feelings about Yanukovych to do their jobs.
“Diplomats and ambassadors were working for their country and the Ukrainian people,” Motsyk said.
As for his personal feelings, Motsyk said he lost faith in Yanukovych almost “from the very beginning” of the fugitive ex-leader’s term in office, which started on Feb. 25, 2010. Motsyk was appointed to the American post four months later. He said he knew his nation was heading down the wrong path once Yanukovych started persecuting his defeated rival, ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who spent more than two years in prison on trumped-up political charges before being freed once Yanukovych fled.
Valeriy Chaly
Motsyk remained in power under Yanukovych, he said, because “I am a career diplomat, not a political appointee. I wasn’t close to him.” But Yanukovych made his job harder. “It was quite difficult. The task of the ambassador is to develop relations. When there are such problems in our own country, then it’s really not good.”
As for his assessment of Yanukovych, Motsyk has spelled that out in op-eds, speeches and testimony before Congress. He believes that Yanukovych is guilty of ordering the murders of EuroMaidan Revolution demonstrators in the winter of 2014. More than 100 people were killed then.
He also noted that many in Ukraine’s diplomatic corps started criticizing events before Yanukovych fled, starting after the Nov. 30, 2014, police beatings of student demonstrators and after the Feb. 20 murders of scores of demonstrators, two days before Yanukovych escaped to Russia.
“He made a crime against the Ukrainian people,” Motsyk said. “Someday he will be brought to justice. At least people in Ukraine hope for that.”
Valeriy Chaly, the deputy head of President Petro Poroshenko’s administration, is expected to become Motsyk’s replacement.
“Mr. Chaly is a very good choice.” Motsyk said. “I wish him the best every success in his very important mission. The United States is very important for us, and the most important country in the world, if you talk about the security and the future of Ukraine.”
Perhaps the highest priority for the next ambassador to Ukraine is to persuade U.S. President Barack Obama to provide Ukraine with lethal defensive weapons and more aid to help prevail against Russia’s war in the eastern Donbas.
“We need lethal weapons in order to defend our land,” Motsyk said.
He said that the United States and Great Britain, as signatories of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum along with Russia, have special responsibilities “to bring peace to Ukraine and secure its territorial integrity.” Under the memorandum, Ukraine surrendered its nuclear weapons arsenal – then the world’s third largest – in exchange for security guarantees. “Our contribution to European and world security was a huge one,” he said.
Motsyk’s performance has been getting mixed reviews. But some of his critics have not had the courage to be quoted by name. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty recently quoted an unnamed senior U.S. Senate aide as saying that Motsyk and his staff were not active enough.
“Well, I think it’s not fair, we are very active in Washington, D.C., in the embassy. We are in permanent contact on a daily basis with Congress, the State Department, the White House, thinks tanks,” Motsyk said.
Vasyl Filipchuk, a political analyst who spent more than 15 years in Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry, said the problem is not so much Motsyk, but the highly politicized nature of Ukraine’s foreign service coupled with pressure on diplomats not to make waves during the revolution.
After the Yanukovych-controlled parliament passed the so-called dictator laws on Jan. 16 that curtailed free speech and assembly, “no diplomat could continue to be loyal” to the president, Filipchuk said. Yet few broke openly because it would be detrimental to their careers. “If you are too active and strong, you will most likely be thrown out of the system, even if the government changes and you prove to be right,” Filipchuk said. During the three months between the start of the revolution and Yanukovych’s exit, he said that many in the diplomatic corps chose to “wait and see who will be the winner.”
Filipchuk said that Motsyk “has always been considered as one of the best Ukrainian diplomats. He’s worked in Turkey, in Poland and in other places … To say he was strong and achieved something, it would also be an exaggeration.”
As for Chaly, Filipchuk said: “He’s active. He is a good public speaker. He has legitimacy. He has a political position which he never changed. He has access to the president. He understands his role and, after being so long with Poroshenko, he has freedom of action.”
Kyiv Post chief editor Brian Bonner can be reached at [email protected].
