Former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko had characterized it as not a regular party, but as an assembly of shadowy business enterprises. WikiLeaks had noted that the Regions Party consists, in part, of criminal clans.
Very importantly, despite internal friction, the party is noted for its organizational cohesion under the joined hands of oligarch Rinat Akhmetov and the nominal leader Viktor Yanukovych. In effect, this party has hijacked the Ukrainian state.
Remarkably, during the collapsing attempts to sign an agreement for economic alignment between Ukraine and the European Union last December, it was Akhmetov who royally received a visit from prime ministers of Poland and Sweden in their last-ditch failed bid to secure the release of Tymoshenko from prison.
Inexorably, the existing conundrum has evolved from a profound change of the ownership of Ukraine’s economy from the Soviet state into the hands of an oligarch-dominated moneyed elite with criminally tainted roots.
In the Soviet Union itself, while political repression and extermination of “the enemies of the people” for many years was the hallmark of the system, a close second on the list of the KGB mission was battling the indigenous criminal gangs of various degrees of sophistication.
Some of them, nested in the south-east Ukraine, as in the Odessa region known for its international contraband, were legendary in arrogance and corruptive power. They actually created a poetic page in the Russian folklore in Ukraine that flourished and resonated among dispirited population. Who did not remember the tune “V temnom pereulke vstretilis dva urki” (Two hoods met in a dark alley)?
With the collapse of the Soviet Union, organized crime moved to confront the ex-communist nomenclatura in ugly privatization battles for ownership of the key industries.
As in Russia, this confrontation — in which the nomenclatura was mostly the loser – was marked by fire-bombings, assassinations, and a period of shootouts in public places in Ukraine’s south-east.
The money part was mostly a formality, because it was easily available for the key players – with phony bank loans devalued by inflation, pilfering, intimidation and bribery of officials.
When the winning oligarchs had surfaced — some of them backed by real money from the West to make acquisitions at bargain-basement prices — they effectively owned most of the country’s assets. It was only a matter of short time to gain the overall political control in the 1990s. Money captures political power.
The Orange Revolution, sparked by the increasing wind of democracy, was a fly in the ointment for the oligarchs. They made adjustments, and some chose sides, but their natural home base is the Party of Regions. They saw ex-President Viktor Yushchenko’s national consciousness as a fetish.
In any event, Yushchenko (“private property is sacred”) was not the one to round up “the bandits” on charges of looting public property. Instead, Yushchenko rushed to reassure the Western stalwarts of market ideology that “the Orange Revolution is over and we need stability,” despite the fact that the crowds at Maidan Nezalezhnosti had demanded change, not stability – as a New York Times editorial commented wryly.
In retrospect, there was a missed opportunity and the right time to break up the oligarchic stranglehold on the country, strip the Regions Party of its money advantage and save democracy from losing at the polls in 2010 against the stronger money machine.
Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in 2005 was on record as advocating action to settle at least some of the strategic property issues – initially with a long list. She was sacked with her Cabinet of Ministers the same year, as the president was losing his direction.
The notion of a Ukrainian state with Ukrainian content is totally foreign for the oligarchs and is incompatible with their culturally Soviet-Russian nest. The latter is also the source of an indelible authoritarian mentality, consistent with the pro-Russian outlook of the Regions Party’s politicians.
That culture is the bedrock of the constituency of the Party of Regions. If dissatisfied with the performance of Yanukovych, this constituency will rally for another standard-bearer designated by the party. This is a winning paradigm against splintered democratic camp. Natural losers can blame it on election law chicanery .
The oligarchs love the chateaus they own in Europe, Cayman Islands and Cyprus (where their loot is checked in). They love to do business in the West, and Western universities for their family members. But the yoke they made for Ukraine they love best.
Amazingly, the pressure of the existing breathtaking socio-economic disparities in Ukraine is not causing much visible rancor against the ruling elite. Such rancor would have to catch fire and redefine the national debate if the devastation of economic inequality is to make an impact in any upcoming elections, honest or rigged.
This should be a 99 percent movement, beyond the protests of this or that group of small businessmen, students, pensioners, and the like. This is a tall order for Ukrainians unaccustomed to subordinating private and party egotism to a common cause. There is also a crippling legacy of disappointment with the results of the Orange Revolution (“We have been fooled”) that needs to be shaken off. Yes, the leaders for a real change must come from jail, not ride in a Mercedes.
And finally, the most natural impulse of outrage against the present regime – the patriotic resentment at the indignities being inflicted on Ukraine as a nation by the Tabachnyks of this regime and by the shame of political repression aided and abetted by corrupted courts – needs to become part of the moral compass of Ukrainian citizens.
Boris Danik is a retired Ukrainian-American living in North Caldwell, New Jersey.
