The objective of the Regions Party governance is permanent detention – if not physical destruction – of Ukraine’s prominent opposition leaders, while ensuring the chokehold of the oligarchic clique on the country’s primary economic resources, which they see as their private property. Their main obstacle is the Ukrainian people’s self respect and the national consciousness.
The devastating impact of this outrage, perpetrated by President Viktor Yanukovych, cannot be glossed over or masked by fantasies of trade association with the European Union.
Remarkably, these fantasies have been embraced by well-meaning activists and some commentators.
But they also have been fostered by deliberate misleading from Ukraine’s government into believing that such a deal with Europe is possible, despite the flagrant abuse of jurisprudence in the persecution of opposition leaders and routine rehashing and bending of constitutional and electoral law.
Not touched by persecution are failed leaders like former President Viktor Yushchenko, or some minor or larger fry who cut a comical figure or are ineffective and, therefore, are not a political threat to the regime. “New emerging leaders” – a favorite choice for doing nothing — won’t fly. They would be locked up if they amount to much.
That leaves Yulia Tymoshenko as the only known, credible threat to the regime. Escapism by opposition activists is embraced when they think they are managing the problem as they designate new leaders in place of the arrested — rather than appoint explicitly pro tempore personnel. Symbolism matters.
Some say the “Ukrainian people must not be punished” by denial of access to a trade association with Europe because of the sins of Ukraine’s elite. This is a moot point. The whole idea that a European connection would become Ukraine’s path to salvation from its decadent reality is a delusion.
Jailing of opposition leaders, especially Tymoshenko, is essential to Yanukovych’s hold on power. Yes, some are convinced that such an attitude from the former Donetsk hustler is absurd and irrational.
Unfortunately, the president’s mentality is what it is. It is consistent with the kind of governance that he and his Party understand as normal. One might say, the Eurasian way of governance. It is also true that the European Union leaders are not naïve, and know perfectly well how to play games with someone whom they have calibrated time ago as an unwelcome party that orchestrates a public relations parody.. Europe’s response has very little to do with punishing the Ukrainian people. It is related to a common sense and recognizing what can or cannot work.
There is also the specter of a major collateral damage that would be caused by any European move that looks like pandering to the Regions Party regime, such as an aura of some link with the EU. Willy-nilly, it would be a step toward enhancing the standing of a corrupt, oppressive regime.
Circling around to catch some European trickle-down diverts attention from the serious matter, such as the ongoing trashing of the human rights in Ukraine — which some in the diaspora glibly dismiss as a temporary abuse of presidential power.
Those who see a trade association with the EU as more important – because it is imagined as a shortcut to delivering Ukraine from evil — should pose and ask what tangible benefits were ever achieved from foreign connections while own house is in a mess? .
Also, there are some who gladly engage in papering over the ongoing political and social disaster in Ukraine.The Atlantic Council’s whitewashing of the present Ukraine regime’s hokum may look as a nice try, but by now it is beyond the farcical.
Part of the Council’s conservative agenda may be the smoothing out of global commercial links between democratic countries and authoritarian regimes, which is always well greased.
Significant for Ukraine are recent manifestations of opposition and discontent against the ruling regime in Russia in the wake of falsified election results this December. They may or may not snowball into something larger. If they do, the Muscovites have a way changing the scene fairly rapidly — as had been proven by the events in August 1991, when Boris Yeltsin stood on top of army tank and was about to have his finest hour.
Yes, the army’s Moscow garrison in 1991 switched sides and turned the turrets against the hardliners. Sergey Yevdokimov, commander of a squadron of tanks was wrestling with a moral dilemma — whether to obey his orders or go against them and do what he believed to be right. He struck a conversation with one of the demonstrators, Sergey Bratchikov.
“He scrambled on top of my tank and asked me this question: Are you going to shoot at us? Or maybe you would rather come over to our side?”
Yevdokimov then ordered his men to turn their tanks round so that their guns pointed out away and towards any potential attack. The hardliners coup took two days to peter out. This event changed history.
No doubt, a scenario such as the one near Moscow’s parliament building in 1991 is the Regions Party’s worst nightmare. They may speak the same tongue as Russia’s protesters,
and have nothing elese in common. This reminds one that the Orange Revolution may have been only Phase 1 of a more substantive change in Ukraine.
For such an expectation to come true, the Ukrainians would have to show concern for what kind of country they want to live in.
Boris Danik is a retired Ukrainian-American living in North Caldwell, New Jersey.
