Before the bubble had burst with the “suspension” of talks for signing the association agreement by Ukraine’s government, eight days before the scheduled signing for Nov. 28, the play-acting and obfuscating was helping the Yanukovych regime deflect attention of democratic agenda strategists and the public from the number one need  — an expeditious ending of that regime.

After the world was “shocked” by Yanukovych’s decision to torpedo the scheduled signing the deal, a second shock was delivered by Ukraine’s president, on Nov. 26, by publicly explaining that the proceedings were suspended because the EU had “humiliated” his country by not putting some real money on the table. According to Yanukovych, $20 billion a year is needed for several years. This is a kind of language meant to scuttle any substantive dialogue with the European Union.

It is no secret that Ukraine is facing a financial default and economic collapse under the weight of its debts in the very near future. The debt to Russia alone is close to $20 billion. Ukraine’s debt restructuring is held up by the IMF mainly because of the government’s foot-dragging on unpopular issues such as reducing residential gas subsidies. Gas politics in Ukraine are fraught with rampant corruption in oligarchic circles, carried over from the 1990s days of gangster capitalism.

Ukraine needs a bailout, having dug a financial hole bigger than exist in some of the EU’s underbelly states that are still struggling to satisfy the bailout conditions from Brussels. In a letter in the Financial Times (Nov. 27), Bohdan Skrobach is asking a key question:  “Why not ask what Ukrainians can do?”  —  besides making demands on the European Union or looking for “freebees” from Moscow (to be paid later in own hide).  His comment was in response to letter from Viktor Yushchenko in the Financial Times on Nov. 25, in which Ukraine’s former president, somewhat like Yanukovych, puts the onus on the EU, for not offering a bundle of green lettuce and outbidding Russia.

The parallel between the two Viktors is obvious. They both failed to move substantially in the direction of restructuring the country’s economy that is mired in corruption and inherited Soviet style inefficiency. The record of Ukraine’s 20 years of independence begs this question: If the present government is removed from power, will the next president be able and willing to move in the direction of real change in economic sphere? The kind of change demanded by the crowds at Maidan in 2004, and to which Yuriy Lutsenko (former interior minister) referred, in November, in his apology for failure to deliver?

The catch is that the changes are strongly opposed in Ukraine’s key industries in the east, where they are most needed to improve efficiency, while that region’s hallmark is its orientation away from Europe and towards Russia.  This in itself has been a strong reason for the democratic opposition not to rock the boat, and hang its hat on some seemingly easy solution, like a long oxydone (addictive prescription drug) hour of EU delusions, with Yanukovych, still in power, expected to turn it into real bacon. 

Boris Danik is a retired Ukrainian-American living in North Caldwell, New Jersey.