Dateline Kiev, September 28, 2011: The crowds outside the main courthouse yesterday were orderly, though it was divided into two groups, clearly distinguishable by the different flags they were carrying and the fact that they were kept apart by Kiev’s police. There appeared to be a few more flags of Ukraine’s “Party of Regions”, the party of Ukraine’s president, Victor Yanukovych, whose prosecutors are calling for a verdict of “guilty” for the 51-year old former prime minister; these demonstrators were likely party goons, coal, iron and steel workers ordered and transported there by their union bosses from the eastern Donbass region. The remainder of the flags were held by those more likely to be there voluntarily and out of sincere support, those of Yulia Tymoshenko’s All-Ukraine Union “Fatherland” Party.
Tymoshenko has been accused of signing (or authorizing the signing of) an agreement with Russia in 2009, when she was Ukraine’s prime minister whereby Russia would provide another year of gas to Ukraine at an agreed-upon price; the problem was the price. Some argued that it was too high and that she had overextended her authority by signing the agreement and endangering Ukraine’s economy. Ten years in prison for doing her job as prime minister and ensuring that homes and factories would have enough energy for the next year? (Tymoshenko left a trail of worse allegations, but the prosecutors chose to pursue this purely politically-motivated charge).
Maybe the price was a bit higher than it had to be, but since when has it been a crime to enter into a bad deal? Since 1962, to be precise. At that time, Ukraine, then a Soviet puppet, made it a crime to exceed one’s authority in government, something done every day by government executives, both good and bad, in every nation in the world.
Ukraine’s antiquated law is perfectly logical …. to everyone except members of the modern human race. Tymoshenko has been accused by her detractors, who are many, for trying to curry favor with Russia’s soon-to-be-president again, Vladimir Putin, advocate of a “controlled democracy” for Russia; by giving Russia a higher price for its gas, they say Putin would help her beat Yanukovych in the next election (she lost in the 2010 presidential election to Yanukovych, 48% to 43%, with Ukraine’s former president, Victor Yushchenko, receiving a dismal 5%).
Oddly, the outcome of this case affects Ukraine’s chances of developing closer ties to the west through the EU. If Tymoshenko goes to prison, the EU has put Yanukovych on notice that it will suspend discussions with Ukraine on closer economic association ties with the EU until the matter can be taken up again three years from now in accordance with the EU's bureaucratic rules. Yanukovych may be chummier with Russia than Yulia, but it will still hurt him politically if the EU pulls away (not to mention the fact that the EU deal would be good for Ukraine’s economy and its citizens …. matters that really don’t matter in the former Soviet sphere unless there is a political price).
Tymoshenko is also no westward, EU-leaning politico. I met with her in 1999 when she was 39 years old, a member of parliament and head of the State Tax Committee … a rising star in both looks and power. I was seeking her support for a law to protect a pending OPIC-supported (the US’s Overseas Private Investment Corporation) investment fund from the most egregious forms of corruption, a Ukrainian staple. With her hair down around her shoulders that did not hide the $100,000 tear-drop diamond that glittered from each ear, she blasted me with a Marxist refrain, “Ukraine does not need your western capital and its greedy business leaders eager to take advantage of our poor Ukrainian workers” (by the way, I could have gotten my law … for a specified payment).
One year later, after she had been named Deputy Prime Minister for Energy and Fuel, our company, based in western Ukraine, sponsored her as a speaker to the American Chamber of Commerce. With a McKinsey-like powerpoint presentation, she laid out the status and staggering capital needs of Ukraine’s decrepit, obsolete energy sector. At the end of her oration, she held out her hands to the foreigners present, palms up, beseeching them, “We need your help … tell us what to do”.
This time her hair was done up in what has become her trademark braids of a Ukrainian peasant and was wearing a simple black dress with not a piece of jewelry. She had undergone a complete transformation, inwardly and outwardly, and had become one of Ukraine’s most powerful and controversial populist political icons.
Before holding an official position in government, she had been head of Ukraine’s monopoly gas importer, United Energy Systems, a position which she allegedly parlayed into an off-shore fortune in the hundreds of millions of dollars … something that is easily done in Ukraine if you’re of a mind to do so, have your own army, and know the right people. Tymoshenko had been a close ally of Ukraine’s Victor Lazarenko who had held the position of prime minister for just one short year after which he rode off into the California sunset onto his multi-million dollar estate where he continues to live comfortably under US house arrest, successfully forestalling extradition order after extradition order to Greece, Switzerland, Ukraine or any other country with a warrant for his arrest. He had siphoned off a mere billion dollars in his year as prime minister, probably not even close to a record by Ukrainian or Russian standards.
That Tymoshenko’s arrest and trial are politically motivated is without doubt. Yanukovych could dismiss the case in a second, save face, and get on with his crony thugocracy that is systematically gobbling up every major industrial plant in the country.
The trouble is, she might come back….
… and beat him in the next election. Today’s leaders from the former Soviet Union do not yield power easily through their phony democratic processes. They play for keeps, but Tymoshenko knows where the bodies are buried (let’s call this a metaphor). Corruption in Ukraine is enough to make one’s hair curl (just look at Yulia’s) and is so endemic it is hard to run away from; the next head of state might wish to press charges against his/her predecessor, especially someone as rich, smart, popular, powerful …. and now bitter …. as Tymoshenko.
