Ukraine has entered the New Year with a new government approved in
the parliament by the Party of Regions, their Communist satellites, and a
dozen “independents” engaged by both hook and crook. There are few
changes in the content of the new-old government, either in
personalities, or (even less) in its spirit, i.e. the expected policies.
Some ministers, like Borys Kolesnikov, moved into the parliament to
serve as MPs; others, like Valery Khoroshkovsky, resigned citing policy
disagreements; and still others were moved to honorable positions as
presidential advisers, like SBU chief Ihor Kalinin and Minister of
Defense Dmytro Salamatin, or were promoted to seemingly prestigious but
less influential positions of deputy prime ministers, like former
Minister of Foreign Affairs Kostiantyn Hryshchenko and former Minister
of Energy and Coal Industry Yury Boyko.

There are no signs, however, that all these moves were connected to the
incumbents’ policy failures or corruption scandals, and no signs that
the new nominations are merit-based and policy-driven. Again, more than
half of the ministers were either born in the Donbas region or made some
crucial part of their careers there. It seems the president and his
team feel no need to hide or justify this peculiar regional
cronyism—staffing police, judiciary, and tax services all over Ukraine
with Donbas people [http://expres.ua/main/2012/01/31/59312],
giving various preferences to regional business, or endorsing over 46%
of the budget subventions for social and economic development to two
privileged oblasts, Donetsk and Luhansk, – 618 million UAH ($76.2
million)  [http://www.epravda.com.ua/columns/2012/12/24/352306/].

The only shamelessness overshadowing this regional cronyism is the
nepotism of the president and his son. The latter is particularly
notorious for the promotion of his close friends and business associates
to top governmental positions. Now, his clients have taken an even
firmer grip over Ukraine’s economy and law-enforcement agencies. Besides
the General Prosecutor’s office, which fully staffed with Yanukovych’s
loyalists from Donbas, and the Security Service and Ministry of Defense
subordinated directly to the president, the Family controls the Interior
Ministry, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Agrarian Policy, National
Bank, and a newly created Klondike—the Ministry of Revenues and Duties,
which has replaced the Customs Service (loaned out until recently to the
Communist allies) and National Tax Administration. The most conspicuous
event is the rise of the 36-year-old Serhiy Arbuzov, within a few
years, from the manager of a minor bank in Donetsk to the head of the
National Bank and, now, to first deputy prime minister. Rumors are afoot
that it is only a matter of time until he replaces incumbent Prime
Minister Mykola Azarov.

Serhiy Leshchenko, a leading Ukrainian investigative journalist,
aptly characterizes the new government as representing the “undisguised
advance of the ‘Family’ into the main power cabinets and onto the major
budget flows… Whereas filling and distribution of the budget was already
under the ‘Family’s’ control, the really new acquisition by
Sasha-the-dentist [Yanukovych junior] is the Ministry of Energy and Coal
Industry given to Eduard Stavytsky” [http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2012/12/25/6980434/].

According to Leshchenko, Stavytsky facilitated a number of business
schemes for the Family, including the murky privatization of the
Mezhyhirya estate for Viktor Yanukovych [http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2009/11/5/4293541/].

These six persons—Arbuzov, Stavytsky, the Interior Minister Vitaly
Zakharchenko, the Minister of Finance Yury Kolobov, the Minister of
Revenues and Duties Oleksandr Klymenko, and the Minister of Agrarian
Policy Mykola Prysiazhniuk are nicknamed the “Big Six”—the core of the
inner circle of the extended Yanukovych “Family.” Consolidation of their
positions in the government, Leshchenko argues, reflects Yanukovych’s
increasing distrust of outsiders. “He agrees to entrust his future
exclusively to the people with whom he has profited within the past
years in power.”

Whether these people will be able and willing to carry out the
much-needed reforms, which would inevitably undermine the Family’s
profits, is a rhetorical question. No one has ever heard of any
reformist plans, or even serious activities among them. They have very
“limited competence to rule the country”, the Polish analyst Slawomir
Matuszak implied delicately in his report last year on the “Oligarchic
Democracy. The Influence of Business Groups on Ukrainian Politics.”
Therefore, he concludes, “While future reshuffles among the groups of
influence are possible (and will certainly take place), there is still
little chance that the model of relations between the ruling class and
big business will change, at least in the medium term” [http://www.osw.waw.pl/sites/default/files/Prace_42_EN.pdf].

Dmytro Mendeleyev defines these types of managers as “typical
schemers” (схемотехніки) – people whose major goal and main skill is to
“extract more money [for the Family] by means of newer, faster, and more
efficient schemes” [http://politikan.com.ua/8/11/0/51147.htm].

Such a deeply dysfunctional regime, Alexander Motyl argues, is a
“leading candidate for stagnation and decay. And, sooner or later, the
sultanistic Yanukovych system will collapse under its own dead weight.”
Motyl tends to believe that this will happen rather sooner than later
because the regime has already attained the “highest stage” of sultanism
and can experience little institutional development in the next three
to eight years: “Yanukovych and his family cannot acquire more power,
the other institutions of government cannot become more meaningless, and
the Regionnaires cannot become more rapacious” [http://www.worldaffairsjournal.org/blog/alexander-j-motyl/yanukovych-ruin-and-its-aftermath-part-1].

He is wrong. The Family has acquired a lot of power but can take
still more by destroying alternative centers of power and wealth and
eliminating the remnants of relative pluralism in Ukraine. At least one
institution, the parliament (not to mention some city and regional
councils), is not yet meaningless, and the Family might be tempted to
emasculate it completely. And the rapaciousness of the ruling “elite”
still has some space for development (privatization of land, takeover of
citizens’ bank savings, sale of the national sovereignty, and the
like): intestinal worms basically do not care much about the organism
they exhaust.

We, the experts, may be perfectly aware that such a system has no
prospects for the future and sooner or later “will collapse under its
own weight.” But this does not mean that the rapacious “elites”
understand this as well, and that even they do, they believe in a
“sooner” rather than “later.” As Alexander Motyl himself acknowledges:
“Because sultanistic regimes are invariably corrupt and conservative,
there is no reason to think that the avaricious mediocrities who man the
Yanukovych system will be able or willing to sacrifice their well-being
to vague notions of reform, especially if reform undermines their power
and privilege.”

Rather, logically, they would try to tighten the screws and
accelerate the looting of resources, while keeping the population, as it
always has been in this country, at the minimal subsistence level.

A few years ago, an influential member of the Party of Regions and of
the parliament, former “red director” and current oligarch Volodymyr
Landyk made a revealing statement at the end of a lengthy interview. It
reflects the mentality of his class and the political force that runs
the country but is seldom expressed so candidly:

“What is the difference between Ukraine’s East and West?” – the journalists asked.

“Well, just take a look how a steel worker or machinist works in the
East. There are terrible conditions. He earns $200-300. In the meantime,
vuyko [a derogatory name for Westerners] says: ‘Why should I work for
such money? I’d rather go to a Pole, and do some house work for him,
he’ll give me a 100 bucks, and then I’ll come again [to Poland].’ They
have such a mentality. We planned to open our factory in
Ivano-Frankivsk. But failed. We had to bring our people there by train
because vuykies did not want work. Even though we offered the same
salary as in Donetsk.”

And what is Mr. Landyk’s conclusion? Should he increase the salary at
least to the Polish level? Or, maybe, ameliorate the “terrible
conditions”? Definitely not!

“Everyone must work. We should close the borders and produce our own
products. We’ll try to do this within the next ten years: or longer, if
necessary” [http://obkom.net.ua/articles/2010-11/05.1739.shtml].

Unfortunately, this tells more about Ukraine’s probable future than
all the government’s programs, president’s statements, and the shrewd
analytical deliberations of political pundits.

Mykola Riabchuk is a Ukrainian author and journalist.