Editor’s Note: This op-ed was originally published in the June 16 edition of Novoye Vremya and is republished with the author’s permission.

The visa-free regime with the European Union has become a life belt for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and his future presidential campaign. It fits perfectly around the new political form that he will have to assume to gain a second term. It will include attacking the anti-corruption bodies, discrediting critics of the government, and making a complete change in the daily agenda – from tackling corruption to promoting patriotism.

On the day when the European Parliament voted for visa-free travel, Poroshenko called it “the final divorce from Russia after a 300-year union.” And last week, speaking on European Square in Kyiv, he quoted a poem by the Russian poet Mikhail Lermontov “Farewell, Unwashed Russia.”

However, the acquisition of the visa-free regime with the EU is not a sign of Ukraine belonging to Europe – lots of countries in Latin America also have such regimes. Neither does it release the country from Moscow’s embrace – as can be clearly seen from the example of visa-free Moldova, where after many years of stagnation in the fight against corruption, the pro-Russian President Igor Dodon came to power.

In fact, the promise of visa-free travel was a way to force the ruling Ukrainian elite to adopt much-needed laws. The main achievement on the path to the visa-free regime was the creation of anti-corruption bodies. Moreover, the introduction of the regime was postponed by the authorities’ constant attempts to block unprofitable (for them) anti-corruption innovations. There was an epic battle over electronic declarations, during which officials tried to postpone the start of the system for a year, and then make sure there were no criminal penalties for submitting false declarations.

As a result, the introduction of visa-free travel for Ukraine was delayed for a whole year. Through my experiences as a deputy, I know what kind of efforts had to be made to pass the laws in the package of legislation needed to obtain the visa-free regime. I was the sponsor of one of them – “The Law On the Prevention of Political Corruption” – and I saw from the inside how, under pressure from Bankova (the Presidential Administration), they tried to bend this law in favor of the ruling clans, for example, by withholding state funding to several opposition parties.

Now that the visa-free regime has been adopted, it will be more difficult to carry out reforms under such conditions of resistance from the authorities. In the foreseeable future there are no new real goals, which, being achieved, would push the country forward.

Ukraine faces a long road to becoming a candidate for European Union membership, and there is not even consensus in Ukraine regarding joining the EU. Membership of NATO is unlikely because of the unwillingness of the Ukrainian leadership: A year ago I personally spoke with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, who was surprised that Ukraine, unlike Georgia, had not even mentioned joining NATO’s Membership Action Plan.

In addition, the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump is not focused on Ukraine. That means there is an opportunity for the ruling clans to batten down the hatches inside the country, sabotage the National Anti-corruption Bureau of Ukraine, and attack anti-corruption activists.

The situation is being exacerbated by the growing influence of the SBU. Over the last six months, news of the extension of the agency’s repressive powers has come practically weekly. In November of last year, at the request of the SBU, the operations of about a dozen independent traders of liquefied gas were blocked. In March, having acknowledged as unsubstantiated its suspicions that these companies were financing terrorism, the SBU withdrew its allegations. But in June, it began to attack them again, with a wave of searches and blocking of accounts. The result of this has been an increase in the market share of business structures associated with the oligarch and politician Viktor Medvedchuk – the company Glusko and its satellite businesses.

Another oligarch has benefited from the rule of Poroshenko: Rinat Akhmetov now earns more from his thermal power business than in the days of (former President Viktor) Yanukovych. In a year, the tariff for thermal energy produced by DTEK (Akhmetov’s power company) has doubled, and the Rotterdam+ coal price formula allows the company to make super-profits.

Apart from intervening in the liquefied gas market, the SBU has also blocked the importing of spirits for the largest producers of Ukrainian cognac. And an example of use of the special services for “settling accounts” was seen in the recent raid on investment company Dragon Capital. Along with that, the SBU has been torturing the Ukrainian IT sector.

But in the long term, the visa-free regime will work to cleanse Ukrainian politics of these parasites. The more Ukrainians see the standard of living in Germany, the Netherlands or Sweden, the more they will ask: “What’s up with our leaders? Why, after 25 years, do we still have a road network, a health sector and a justice system like those of a banana republic?”

You could say the nation has been traumatized by the Soviet experience, a rotten system that resists change, but leadership is important if any country is to be reformed. If the president devotes his energies to dividing the two most profitable money streams between himself and Akhmetov, then he will have neither the strength nor the desire remaining to carry out any reforms.
In a democratic country, such leadership is doomed to an inglorious end.