Teixeira’s forthright ways earned him rebukes from the government, including a Feb. 28 statement from the Foreign Ministry accusing him of overstepping his diplomatic role in criticizing the internal political situation.
We don’t see it that way. Teixeira is to be commended for his exemplary service. During his tenure, the nation degraded from the messy chaos of the 2004 Orange Revolution team of Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko to the nascent authoritarianism of Viktor Yanukovych.
The departing envoy, who is moving on to a much easier assignment in Cape Verde, challenged the administration’s “all-is-well” spin to the public. In an Aug. 29 interview with the Kyiv Post, Teixeira rightly saw his obligation as telling Ukrainians the truth about what the West thinks of Yanukovych’s rule since 2010. To do anything less, he said, would make him complicit in the administration’s relentless assault on democracy. We hope his successor, Poland’s Jan Tombinski, is at least as able.
But as Teixeira departs, it’s a good time to assess the dismal state of relations between the EU and Ukraine.
It’s clear that the EU is running out of options. As long as Ukraine’s leadership expresses aspirations for closer ties to the 27-nation democratic bloc, Western politicians will still have some leverage over the nation’s rulers. They can criticize and withhold financial assistance and, importantly, withhold approval. They can shun meetings with Ukraine’s top leaders, as EU politicians are doing now. But these are limited tools of leverage.
The EU should go further at this point in helping put Ukraine back on a path towards a democratic future.
The people of Ukraine and EU’s leaders have much in common. Among them are disgust with the nation’s ruling elite, the rich who – as Teixeira points out – in many cases illegitimately acquired their fortunes after the Soviet Union’s breakup and now enjoy living large abroad, with fat bank accounts and expensive mansions. The nation’s rulers, moreover, have always had it backwards. In democracies, the politicians serve the people. Here, it’s the other way around.
The EU can do its part by carefully applying limited visa bans and financial sanctions to suspicious assets held in EU banks by Ukrainians. Tough, but measured steps if seen as fair will be applauded by most Ukrainians, who rightly think they are being fleeced by their rulers.
Sanctions and solidarity from the EU may even embolden more Ukrainians to expect higher democratic standards and greater accountability from their leaders, including demanding an end to the offshore, tax-avoiding shelters enjoyed by the wealthy that control an inordinate amount of the nation’s wealth.
