If President Viktor Yanukovych is to be believed, saboteurs in the nation are illegally buying up massive amounts of firearms in preparation for a coup. The public has yet to hear any sort of proof to back up these claims, however, because most likely nothing of the kind is happening.
“They want to disrupt the financial stability in Ukraine, to disrupt the political stability and go to the streets with pitchforks,” the president said earlier this month. “I learned from law enforcement agencies that arms are being bought [in Ukraine] and armed attacks on government agencies are being prepared.”
The groundwork for the irresponsible presidential pronouncements was laid by the helpful Security Service of Ukraine, the nation’s elite law enforcement agency, which asserted that 120 handguns, two Kalashnikovs and a machine gun were missing from the Interior Ministry training university in Lviv, the largest town in western Ukraine. But illegal sales of firearms from impoverished state military institutions are old news in Ukraine.
What’s new and revealing here is presidential paranoia, which appears to be deepening. Since taking over as president in 2010, Yanukovych has built a five-meter high fence around his vast multimillion-dollar Mezhyhirya estate north of Kyiv.
His traveling entourage includes tractors and trucks to block side roads when he is traveling from home downtown to his office, aside from the normal presidential security detail. He insulates himself more frequently from contact with the people he represents, undoubtedly sensing his current unpopularity.
In this game, the Security Service appears to play the role of feeding the president’s fears with stories of terrorists and planned attempts on his life. It seems as if someone close to the president is capitalizing on his fears, either by winning over loyalty points or pinning the nation’s leader against his people.
Many presidents receive threats. Most nations investigate these threats quietly and professionally. If crimes are solved, suspects are arrested, supporting evidence becomes public and the cases move to trial swiftly. This almost never happens the right way in Ukraine.
What could be the purpose of making such unfounded claims public? To scare people? To justify harsh crackdowns on peaceful protests, or to lay the groundwork for a return to a police state that curtails civil liberties?
Only the president, and perhaps his inner circle, knows for sure. But until the threats are accompanied by credible evidence or a logical call to some concrete action by the public, these pronouncements are unpresidential, irresponsible and possibly signal the dangers ahead – not from saboteurs, but from the administration.
The seven-year imprisonment of ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko on what Yanukovych recognizes to be a ridiculous Soviet-era “abuse of office” crime shows the irrational extent to which this administration is prepared to go in crushing its enemies.
Yanukovych keeps talking about Ukraine as a democratic European nation while behaving like a Soviet-era apparatchik. He has a thing or two to learn about modern-day security, as well as responsible ways of talking about safety.
