Continuing Ukrainian politicians’ preference for skipping over independent journalists in the nation in favor of talking to foreign reporters more removed from events in Ukraine, ex-Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk went on the latest episode of BBC-TV’s “Hard Talk” to be interviewed by host Stephen Sackur.
While Sackur is an English journalist, he is known in Ukraine — and knows a lot about Ukraine — because for several years he has moderated panel discussions at billionaire oligarch Victor Pinchuk’s annual Yalta European Strategy conferences, held in Kyiv since Russia stole the Crimean peninsula in 2014. Yatsenyuk has given other interviews to the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, an English-language translation of which was published on Feb. 26, 2016, by the Kyiv Post.
Yatsenyuk came off well when talking about Russia’s war against Ukraine. He looked defensive and weak when talking about Ukraine’s corruption. (And for good reason: Member of parliament Sergii Leshchenko sizes up him and President Petro Poroshenko pretty well in this Kyiv Post op-ed from March 4, 2016, a month before Yatsenyuk lost his job as prime minister.)
He sounded torn when talking about the ongoing blockade by Ukrainian activists trying to stop trade between the Russian-controlled parts of the eastern Donbas and the rest of Ukraine.
“People want to show their strong will to get Ukrainian territory back on the one hand and on the other hand, to attract attention to the Ukrainian case,” Yatsenyuk said. He said that the Ukrainian government this month passed a resolution to ban trade except for critical imports, medicines and humanitarian aid between the two sides. He said the Ukrainian businesses operating in Russian-controlled territories were registered with the Ukrainian government and “never paid any penny” to the separatist authorities.
Then he slammed populist politicians after Sackur talked about ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s and ex-Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s support of the blockade. Without calling them out by name, he said: “I will say we have a lot of lunatics in our politics too. They don’t care about the country. They don’t care about the future. They don’t care about the people; They care about their polls…I am calling those who are against my country lunatics and even worse…I am concerned that populists and demigods take the stage in the entire world, not just Ukraine.”
Yatsenyuk effectively parried Sackur’s insistence that the war was a lost cause for Ukraine, that Western support for Ukraine is slipping because of “fatigue” over corruption and that Ukraine has no hope of joining the NATO political-military alliance.
“I do understand we cannot get in (NATO in) the short term. But in the long term, if we modernize our military and pass reforms needed in the Ukrainian military, if we approximate Ukrainian military with NATO standards, it is in your interests to have Ukraine as a NATO member. We are defending your borders,” Yatsenyuk responded. “I see the Ukrainian military is the only military that deterred Russian troops and this is the fact. The Ukrainian military is quite strong. The country survived We still have country and a nation and I don’t care what President (Vladimir) Putin wants.”
Yatsenyuk also correctly laid the blame for the failure of the Minsk peace agreement on Russia’s unwillingness to live up to the terms, first of all a cease-fire.
“Every single day they kill Ukrainians..every single day coffins,” he said. “The only solution is for Russia get out of Ukraine. We are prepare to fight like hell for our country. We’re prepared to implement the Minsk deal the way it is written.” Ukrainian fighters “are heroes who are defending their land and our nation,” but Putin “wants to run the world or parts of the world. He wants to establish spheres of influence and grab Ukraine. This is the truth.”
Ex-Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk on the BBC “Hard Talk” program hosted by Stephen Sackur.
About growing fatigue over Ukraine’s problems, Yatsenyuk said: “People get tired of unresolved issues. We cannot get tired of fighting for our principles and values.”
On the issues of Ukraine’s corruption, Yatsenyuk sounded boxed in by the criminal investigations against him and associates such as ex-member of parliament Mykola Martynenko, who was part of the ex-prime minister’s People’s Front before quitting amid accusations that he took a $30 million bribe in exchange for offering Czech-based Skoda firm a contract to supply equipment to Energoatom, Ukraine’s nuclear power plant operator, according to Swiss documents.
Yatsenyuk gave a wobbly response: “He voluntarily was stripped of his mandate as a member of (parliament). There is an investigation and no indictment in 15 months.”
Then he conceded: “The U.S. still has very strong democratic institutions. We need some time to build up strong and able democratic institutions too.”
He regained his mojo a bit before ultimately faltering on the corruption issue.
“If I may to present you with the facts, the biggest corruption was in the energy sector in Ukraine,” he said, correctly citing “a number of corrupted deals” between Ukrainian state-owne Naftogaz and Russian state-controlled Gazprom. He said he had “eliminated under the table deals,” driven exiled oligarch Dmytro Firtash, “who is under FBI investigation,” from the gas trade in Ukraine. “He was eradicated and eliminated from the gas sector,” he said.
Then he went overboard. He said that “my government took over assets from Ukrainian tycoons,” presumably state-owned Ukranafta oil producer from billionaire oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky. I can’t think of any else. He then ran off the rails entirely when he said the had wiped out oligarchs’ political influence, raised their taxes and “hurt their position.”
The claims proved too much for Sackur to take.
“Do you really believe that?” he asked incredulously, noting that by the time Yatsenyuk got fired as prime minister in April, he and his party had only 2 percent support in opinion polls.
Sackur baited Yatsenyuk with the assessment, of Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko, Poroshenko’s appointee with support from most members of Yatsenyuk’s faction in parliament, that Yatsenyuk lost his popularity because he was seen as being too close to the oligarchs who dominate Ukraine.
“We are frenemies with our president,” Yatsenyuk, using the word for enemies disguised as friends.
He engaged in “what-aboutism” when Sackur pointed out that Ukraine still ranks as among the most corrupt countries in the world. He tried to deflect the blame by saying all countries have corruption and, anyway, Ukraine is fighting it with new anti-corruption institutions and greater transparency, such as the requirement for public officials to disclose assets.
During that exchange, Yatsenyuk admitted he’s a millionaire — worth more or less $1 million — because of the decade he spent in banking and in the private sector.
All in all, I would not count Yatsenyuk out of politics in Ukraine in the future.
He’s simply got too many friends, he’s agile and he’s experienced despite his relative youth of age 42 — having served as prime minister, foreign minister, economy minister, Verkhovna Rada speaker, among other positions.
He also assembled a great Cabinet of Ministers, better than the current one, if one considers Natalie Jaresko as finance minister, Aivaras Abromavacius as economy minister, Andriy Pyvovarsky as infrastructure minister and Oleksiy Pavlenko as agricultural minister. I am hard-pressed to say that Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman is doing a better job.
But for Yatsenyuk to get back into power again, he’s got to answer a lot of questions about his past — and from independent journalists in Ukraine, not abroad, or he has no chance whatsoever of a comeback. The public sees right through slippery politicians and with Yatsenyuk, this is a quality he exudes in abundance.
