But facts on the ground paint a different picture – one where civil liberties are trampled and society is increasingly irate that its voice falls dumb in the corridors of power.
During Yanukovych’s official visit to Lithuania, he thanked the former Soviet republic and current EU member for its “stable support of Ukraine’s European integration aspirations.”
But Human Rights Watch came out about the same time saying that Ukraine’s human rights record remained poor in 2012, while Reporters without Borders further demoted Ukraine on its yearly press freedom index to its worse place since 2004, before the democratic Orange Revolution that defeated Yanukovych that year.
One week prior to Yanukovych’s trip, Ukraine’s Helsinki Union announced in a study that the authorities succeeded in 90 percent of cases to ban peaceful assemblies in 2012.
And when Yanukovych returned to Ukraine on Feb. 7, activists blocked all the entrances to the Kyiv City Council with their habitual demand that council sessions and the city’s budget be open to the public as prescribed by law.
Western leaders are clear in their criticism. At a recent roundtable at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, D.C. former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer said that in order to improve relations with the West, “Ukraine must foremost improve its democratic ratings because the U.S. government won’t close its eyes to human rights abuses and rollback in democratic practices…” Pifer was upbeat though, stating Ukraine can make a quick turnaround “and once again become of interest to the West.”
These words were echoed by EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fuele, who told Ukraine’s leadership on Feb. 7 that “the nation needs to implement all of its reform programs quicker, that Europe wants to see real steps made,” lamenting that “nothing has changed in the past five months.”
Yanukovych told the Lithuanian president he would take her concerns into consideration, but only action will save him from an entire loss of credibility.
