What a difference a year makes. Last year, President Petro Poroshenko was mocking and deriding the idea that Ukraine needs to create an anti-corruption court. For that, he earned the scorn of ex-U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry.
On Sept. 14, a year later, at the same venue — the Yalta European Strategy conference in Kyiv — Poroshenko took credit for the legislation passed earlier this year to create the anti-corruption court, which is not up and running yet. He said the selection process under way will bring in “fresh blood” and “that this court should be independent from the president, independent from the government and independent from the parliament.”
But he glossed over the fact there’s been no convictions of anyone for large-scale corruption — something that comes up again and again as the top impediment to attracting investors to Ukraine.
“I want to have corruptionists in prison, not ‘blah blah blah’ on TV shows asking: Why they are not in prison? Stop talking about that,” Poroshenko said. “People should be clear that punishment for corruption is absolutely unavoidable.”
Today, such punishment is entirely avoidable.
To make the change, Poroshenko said, “I do my best to create an anti-corruption infrastructure,” ignoring past obstruction of the anti-corruption court and his ongoing failure to appoint an effective prosecutor.
With bravado, he said: “I am absolutely confident” that the anti-corruption measures “will bring results very soon.”
Poroshenko stood on firmer ground in foreign policy, attacking the Kremlin with gusto, identifying Ukraine’s struggle with the West and calling on strength through unity with other democratic nations to block Russia’s warmongering and interference in free elections.
Poroshenko, with an eye to his electorate, spoke mostly in Ukrainian except during a brief question-and-answer session.
He outlined Ukraine’s struggle to break free from its centuries of colonial past under the Soviet Union and Russian Empire.
Part of the struggle to break free includes especially democratic governance, which guarantees free elections, and the establishment of an independent Ukrainian Orthodox Church free from the Moscow Patriarchate.
Taken together, Poroshenko’s re-election strategy seems clear: Bash the Kremlin, identify himself with the democratic West and promise results on corruption. How this plays with voters will be known when the election takes place in March 2019. He implied — but did not name her — that the Kremlin wants to see Yulia Tymoshenko, the ex-prime minister he defeated in the May 2014 election, as his opponent in the second round of the presidential election.
What’s unknown, however, is whether Poroshenko will apply repression and abuse of his powers to ensure this re-election.
He says no. He says he will guarantee “free, fair democratic elections” and “will defend the free will of citizens.”
With respect to Russia, Poroshenko called on the West to unite to fight the Kremlin’s meddling. He called for United Nations peacekeepers to oversee the withdrawal from eastern Ukraine of estimated 45,000 Russian troops and mercenaries, the end to the Kremlin’s support of separatists and the return of the eastern Donbas borders to Ukraine.
Only then, Poroshenko said, will Ukraine start a political process that leads to free and fair elections throughout the Donbas so that Ukrainians there can have a measure of local autonomy.
But he emphasized that “Ukraine is a unitary state” and that its borders, sovereignty and choices will be determined only by Ukrainians, not Brussels, Moscow or Washington, D.C.
“We will never accept foreign pressure to change the structure,” Poroshenko said. “This is the sovereign right of the Ukrainian people.”
