east european politics and societies 2011 kuzio 88 113

88

East European Politics and Societies

Volume 25 Number 1February 2011 88-113

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Political Culture and DemocracyUkraine as an Immobile StateTaras KuzioJohns Hopkins University

The 2004 Orange Revolution and election of opposition candidate Viktor Yushchenko, who had a stellar reputation in previous positions as National Bank Chairman and Prime Minister, was viewed as a new era in Ukrainian politics, ushering in deep seated reforms and a battle against corruption. Five years on, his opponent, Viktor Yanukovych, whose election in 2004 was annulled over election fraud, replaced him as President. The failure of the Yushchenko presidency to implement the majority of the hopes placed in it by millions of voters and protestors, specifically to decisively change the manner in which politics and economics are undertaken, is a good opportunity to anal-yse why Ukraine is a difficult country, an immobile state, in which to undertake change of any type. Yanukovych’s first year in office points to Ukraine undergoing a regres-sion from the only tangible benefit to have emerged from “orange” rule; namely, democratization, media freedom, and free elections.

Keywords: Viktor Yushchenko; immobility; reforms; corruption

The Viktor Yushchenko era (2005–2010) began with high hopes following the Orange Revolution but ended with great disappointments and widespread dis-

illusionment. The 2010 election of Viktor Yanukovych was less a victory for him than a defeat for “orange” forces. In the second round of the 2010 elections, Yulia Tymoshenko received three and a half million fewer votes than Viktor Yushchenko on 26 December 2004. Meanwhile, Viktor Yanukovych received nearly half a million fewer votes in 2010 than he received in December 2004 and won by only a 3.5 percent margin compared to the 8 percent victory by Leonid Kuchma in 1994 and Yushchenko in 2004. Yanukovych is the first Ukrainian president to be elected with less than 50 percent of the vote and by a minority of ten (out of twenty-seven) administrative districts, the same number he won in 2004. Tymoshenko and Yushchenko both won seventeen administrative districts, although Tymoshenko received fewer votes. Tymoshenko lost the elections because of five years of misrule by “orange” forces that led to more than three million “orange” voters abandoning her political constituency.

This article is an attempt to diagnose why the Yushchenko era failed to meet the high expectations it came into power with and whether there are consistent trends

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in Ukrainian politics that explain the weakness of the country’s constituency for imple-menting reform and change.1 Ukraine had adopted evolutionary reform policies in the Kuchma era, which Motyl and arel had described as “muddling along,”2 but it was assumed that the “revolutionary” energy unleashed by the 2004 democratic breakthrough would lead to faster reforms. This proved not to be the case,3 leading to Wilson describing Ukraine as a ‘slow moving,” “immobile state” that “never quite adapts enough.”4 “Ukraine’s biggest failing is not that it is selling out to Russia but that it has repeatedly missed the chance to reform itself,” The Economist pointed out on 29 april 2010. The Yushchenko era failed to lead to major breakthroughs in reforms and reductions in corruption, which has led to scholars’ questioning whether the November-December 2004 protests should be described as a “revolution.”5 Writing in an open letter to President Viktor Yanukovych, former President Leonid Kravchuk said that although the authorities change, “the philosophy of state building, methods and paths to resolve political and socio-economic problems remain unchanged.”6

The article investigates two areas important to the health of a democracy, political corruption and the rule of law, and is divided into three sections. The first discusses the outlines of an “immobile state” and then applies this framework to Ukraine with a specific focus on political corruption and the rule of law. The second analyzes political corruption and the rule of law in Ukraine. The third section integrates these two sectors into a comparative context with Italy and georgia, which have outperformed Ukraine in reducing corruption and reestablishing the rule of law.

The Immobile State

Yushchenko’s five-year presidency is a good opportunity to gauge the obstacles to reforms in Ukraine that make it an “immobile state.” D’anieri has pointed out that based on Ukraine’s past lack of performance, the country could be very similar in 2020 with the same unresolved issues of an unstable constitution, poor relations with Russia, and energy corruption.7 The immobility of the Ukrainian state has generated a consensus among some Ukrainians and external analysts of Ukrainian politics that there exist few differences between Ukrainian politicians, breeding cynicism in Ukraine’s democracy. an immobile state means that the outcome of elections have little meaning as Ukraine returns to a broad-based equilibrium and status quo follow-ing the instability generated by election campaigns.

Immobility is a product of the many domestic constraints arising from Ukraine’s path dependency following centuries of Russian and decades of Soviet rule that produced the post-Soviet political culture that exists in independent Ukraine. Path dependent legacies are not unique to Ukraine, and they have been overcome by other countries in the third and fourth waves of democratization in Latin america, Southern and eastern europe, and eastern asia. Three factors could shift a country



90 east european Politics and Societies

from immobility to mobility. First, evolution of oligarchs in support of change. Fukuyama points out that elites first need to accept that the rule of law is to their advantage, and then this view will lead to the spread of the rule of law to the remainder of society.8 For some scholars, this process of transition from “robber baron” oligarch to entrepreneur businessman was taking place. Following Yanukovych’s 2010 election, Karatnycky wrote, “First, the oligarchs around Mr Yanukovych became economically transparent. They hired first-rate managers, rigorously paid their taxes, promoted sophisticated philanthropy, and became globalized in their tastes and manners. Just as importantly, they now see their future prosperity integrally linked to a reduction in corruption, the expansion of free market policies, lower taxes, fewer regulations, and Ukraine’s eventual integration into the rich eU market.”9 The first hundred days of the Yanukovych administration have shown it to be disinterested in reforms or in maintaining political stability. There is no evidence of Karatnycky’s and aslund’s optimistic claims about big businesses’ seeking to change their operating methods.10 This would suggest that the optimistic view that oligarchs have a self-interest in reforming themselves is not the case, at least in the short run.11 Rinat akhmetov, Ukraine’s wealthiest oligarch, first entered parliament in the Party of Regions in the 2006 elections. after the 2006 and 2007 elections, akhmetov took the same steps: he took the oath together with newly elected depu-ties and then never attended another parliamentary session. His voting card contin-ues to be used in his absence.

Second, Stewart12 looks to growing pressure from domestic actors, such as civil society, the middle class, and youth activists. Participation by one in five Ukrainians in the Orange Revolution shows the potential for civil society in Ukraine. The majority of Orange Revolution protestors were from Western-Central Ukraine, showing to what degree civil society in Ukraine is heavily regionalized and lacking a pan-national pres-ence. The Orange Revolution was less a sign of a robust civil society in Ukraine than an unusual, out-of-character mass protest that was a product of many factors, not just protest at election fraud and democratic regression. Two other factors included social and antielite populism and national identity. Indeed, the assaults on democracy, the constitution, and media pluralism in the first hundred days of the Yanukovych era have not sparked mass protests. Scholars should therefore ask why Ukrainians partici-pated in their millions in 2004 but only in their thousands in 2010?

Third, the european Union (eU) was a key actor in assisting slow reformers in Central-eastern europe, such as Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Croatia, providing the inducement of membership for these countries to undertake painful reforms.13 The eU has never offered Ukraine membership prospects, and although a deep Free Trade agreement and association agreement may be signed in 2011 or 2012, these will never have the same disciplining effect upon Ukraine’s elites as the offer of full membership. Ukraine’s progress towards integration into the eU is threatened by democratic regression under Yanukovych’s administration.




The 2004 Orange Revolution, the largest in terms of public participation of any of the democratic revolutions, and Yushchenko’s election did not lead to a burst of reformist zeal and no concerted battle against corruption. as aslund has pointed out,14 such bursts of reformist zeal did take place after Kuchma was elected in 1994 and after he was was reelected in 1999, which brought the 2000-2001 Yushchenko government into power. On both occasions reformist zeal was then replaced by stagna-tion and retrenchment. The Yushchenko government adopted energy reforms and undertook measures to reduce corruption, such as reducing barter and enhancing transparency, in addition to deep economic reforms. Total annual energy rents of $4 billion, amounting to 13 percent of gDP, were eliminated. anticorruption measures in the energy sector were supported by Yushchenko as prime minister but not when he was president. In January 2006, Yushchenko and Our Ukraine leader and Prime Minister Yuriy Yekhanurov agreed to maintain the opaque gas intermediary RosUkrenergy (RUe), whose annual rents were similar in size to those eliminated by the Yushchenko government five or six years earlier.

Yushchenko was never a revolutionary, and in this he was similar to Vojislav Kostunica, who was elected Yugoslav president following the 2000 Serbian bulldozer revolution. Yushchenko and Kostunica, the former a banker and the latter an aca-demic, have moderate nationalist views, and neither supported radical transforma-tions, unlike Mikheil Saakashvili, who was also a nationalist and a radical reformer. Yushchenko and Kostunica soon came into conflict with their more radical revolution-ary allies, Yulia Tymoshenko and Zoran Djindjic, respectively, while Saakashvili fell out with his moderate ally Nina Burjanadze. Yushchenko had been a faithful loyalist of the Kuchma regime throughout the corrupt transition to a market economy in the 1990s and had never shown an inclination to go into opposition, refusing calls from national democrats to stand as a candidate in the 1999 presidential elections. The Yushchenko government and Deputy Prime Minister Tymoshenko’s policies to reduce corruption in the energy sector had brought forth opposition from big business inter-ests who received support from Kuchma to organize the april 2001 vote of no confi-dence in Yushchenko. The vote pushed Yushchenko into the role of opposition leader, where he never felt comfortable, and following the 2002 elections he sought to nego-tiate his return as prime minister under a pro-Kuchma coalition but lost the position to Yanukovych.15

gordy classifies Kostunica as supporting a “soft transition” while Djindjic backed a “hard transition.”16 The difference between a “soft” and “hard” transition rests upon attitudes towards dealing with—and breaking from—the former regime. Kostunica and Djindjic could be compared and contrasted to Yushchenko17 and Tymoshenko/Saakashvili, respectively. Supporters of a “hard” transition desire a more radical break with the former regime that would include punishment for their crimes (i.e., war crimes, murder of journalists, abuse of office, corruption, election fraud). Yushchenko, like Kostunica, lacked political will to institute criminal charges against senior mem-bers of the ancien regime. The Democratic Party of Serbia that Kostunica led and Our




Ukraine that Yushchenko was honorary chairman of both lost popularity to political forces supporting “hard transitions” as well as to political forces defending the ancien regime. The lack of political will exhibited by Presidents Kostunica and Yushchenko permitted political forces representing the ancien regime to reemerge, whether nation-alists in Serbia or the Party of Regions and Yanukovych in Ukraine. The Yulia Tymoshenko bloc (BYuT) became the most popular national-democratic force in the 2006 and 2007 elections, winning double the number of votes of Our Ukraine and reversing the 2002 elections where Our Ukraine had won three times more votes than BYuT. In 2010, Tymoshenko proved unable to win all of the Yushchenko votes that he received in the rerun second round in December 2004.

Yushchenko did not bring change and move the Ukrainian state from immobile to mobile because he was misread as a liberal reformer. In reality he was a conserva-tive. aslund writes that Yushchenko campaigned in 2004 on a platform of good governance, private property, and european integration with a focus on “universal values, notably freedom and legal justice, directed against oligarchs, repression, and corruption.”18 In reality, Yushchenko’s 2004 election program was more social popu-list than conservative, and was as much anticorruption, antioligarch, and antielite as it was pro–market reform. His 2004 and 2010 election programs did not mention support for joining the eU or NaTO.19 To argue, as does aslund,20 that Tymoshenko’s 2005 government “was almost exactly the opposite of the liberal Yushchenko” therefore ignores the fact that the Orange Revolution was fuelled as much by social populism against corruption, abuse of office, and ruling oligarchs than by proreform sentiments triggered by widespread election fraud. The 2005 Tymoshenko govern-ment’s policies, including seeking to “arrest culprits of the old guard,” were there-fore policies that had received widespread support by Yushchenko in the 2004 elections and Orange Revolution through slogans such as “Bandits to Prison!”21 These slogans were highly popular among orange voters, and Yushchenko’s failure to pursue justice was the major factor that led to a decline in his popularity. In 2005 Tymoshenko was therefore not at cross-purposes with Yushchenko but was seek-ing to implement the policies that he had backed during the 2004 elections.22

Political Corruption and the Rule of Law

Political corruption, in the view of Ukraine’s leading think tank, the Ukrainian Centre for economic and Political Studies (the Razumkov Centre), “is the main obstacle for the further development of Ukraine as a full blown democratic state.”23 This factor is not reflected in scholarly studies, which have largely ignored the two areas analyzed in this article: political corruption and the rule of law. The Razumkov Centre pointed to the fact that political corruption has increased in the past decade and become an inalienable component of Ukraine’s political system. The lack of revolutionary change that accompanied Yushchenko’s 2004 election has entrenched the immobility




of the political system and deepened political corruption. The head of the Council of europe’s group of States against Corruption (gReCO) believes “Ukraine shows the least evidence of a struggle against corruption of all countries known to myself.”24

Ukraine has adopted seven laws, two criminal codes, sixteen presidential decrees, ten government resolutions, two instructions, two Supreme Court resolutions, and two orders from the finance ministry and civil service to ostensibly combat corrup-tion. Yet despite one of the largest and most rapid transfers from state to private control of any economy, the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and prosecutor-general’s office has never investigated or convicted respectfully a single member of the Ukrainian elites for abuse of office or corruption. Criticism of political corruption translates into rhetoric that is especially pronounced during election campaigns but is never translated into criminal prosecutions or sanctions. Prosecutor-general Medvedko pointed out, “evidence of corruption appears when we have a change of government. a government goes into retirement and immediately all of its members become corrupt but when they are in power this is not the case.”25 an October 2010 audit for corruption in the 2007-2010 Tymoshenko government was criticised for being politically motivated, as it is impossible that only one out of fourteen govern-ments in Ukraine was “corrupt.” Politicians are unwilling to show the greatest com-mitment to opposing corruption, namely, agreeing to institute criminal charges against members of their own political force. Politicians defend their colleagues from accusations of corruption and election fraud by claiming that the charges are a product of “political repression.” “The political elites of Ukraine are not ready to adopt a non-corrupt style of political activity and also not ready to fully counter political corrup-tion,” the Razumkov Centre concluded.26 In 2005, Yanukovych claimed that charges threatened against himself and his political force for election fraud was “political repression.” Five years later, Tymoshenko used the same defense when the azarov government claimed its predecessor had misappropriated large amounts of financial reserves.

The lack of separation of elites from the state leads to ruling elites’ seeing the state and budget as sources of funds and largesse that they can draw upon. “Budget costs are stolen by all who have access to them,” Interior Minister Lutsenko said.27 Political forces in power have an advantage during election campaigns because they have access to budgetary resources, “which can be used to not only make money for the election campaign but to buy the loyalty of opponents.”28 The Yanukovych gov-ernment claimed that its predecessor, the Tymoshenko government, had “stolen” 100 billion hryvni for corrupt purposes and to use during the 2010 elections (interestingly, no criminal charges have been threatened against former President Yushchenko, sug-gesting that there is a political motive behind them).29 The rapid establishment of a “power vertical” by President Yanukovych, pressuring the Constitutional Court to issue a ruling in support of coalitions composed of factions and individual defectors, has sparked concerns of a return to the competitive authoritarianism of the Kuchma




era and of preparing administrative resources for upcoming local and parliamentary elections.30 The Constitutional Court’s 2010 ruling contradicted its own 2008 ruling that only factions could establish coalitions, leading to a firestorm of criticism at the Court’s susceptibility to political corruption. On 1 October the Constitutional Court ruled that the 2004 constitutional reforms had been undertaken “unconstitu-tionally” and returned Ukraine to its 1996 semipresidential constitution. Two years earlier the Court had refused to rule on the constitutionality of the 2004 reforms. In april 2010, the Court had similarly reversed its 2008 ruling on how parliamen-tary coalitions could be formed, only by factions (2008) or factions and individu-als (2010). Ukraine’s proportional system elects parties and blocs—not individuals. The 2010 rulings promote political corruption as they encourage the authorities to bribe,31 coerce, or blackmail opposition deputies to join the Stability and Reforms coalition.32 This, in and of itself, overturns earlier election results and could lead to wholesale political instability if the coalition induces enough deputies to defect to achieve a constitutional majority of three hundred.

Political corruption in Ukraine’s elites breeds broader public cynicism about the value of voting and towards their political representatives, as seen in the low voter turnout during the 31 October 2010 local elections. During the 2010 elections, enter-prising Ukrainians sold their votes on the internet.33 It is illusory to believe that young people who enter such a corrupt political system will begin to respect the rule of law because they are from a different, less “soviet,” generation.34 Fairbanks points out that this works two ways. elites hold contempt for, and are cynical towards, their support-ers, while the public in post-Soviet countries have among the highest levels of con-tempt and mistrust towards governments anywhere in the world.35 On the same day President Yanukovych signed into law a decree outlining celebrations for the twentieth anniversary of the June 1990 Declaration of Sovereignty, he reduced the country’s sovereignty by signing into law the treaty extending Russia’s Black Sea Fleet base in Sevastopol in exchange for discounted gas. a Ukrainian newspaper pointed out, “Of course he does not understand the irony of this.”36

an unwillingness to tackle corruption can be seen in the persistence over two decades of a permanent shadow economy roughly equal to half the economy. In 2003, towards the end of his two terms in office, Kuchma described the shadow econ-omy, which had by then reached half of Ukraine’s gDP, as the “scale of a national epidemic.”37 The size of the shadow economy did not decline in the Yushchenko era. Ukrainian official estimates claim the shadow economy represents 40 percent of gDP, while the World Bank estimates it to still represent half of gDP. The share of the shadow economy in Ukraine’s gDP has remained constant during the transition to a market economy in the 1990s and following the return to economic growth in 2000. a country with half of its economy in the underground inevitably experiences a large influence of political corruption over the political system and high levels of influ-ence of organized crime over business. The shadow economy acts as a large, nontrans-parent source of funding for political parties during election campaigns.




Ukrainians have a very low trust in political institutions and therefore in Ukraine’s democracy because they see the elites as existing above the law and because of their perception of high levels of corruption within these institutions. This view of entrenched institutional corruption holds throughout the country; when asked if normal and political corruption exists in Ukraine, the response is “yes,” averaging 87 to 91 percent over Ukraine’s four regions and giving a national average of 85 percent.38 When Ukrainians were asked if parliamentary deputies were interested in combating corrup-tion, 82 percent said “no.”39

an opinion poll asked which parliamentary political forces are most prone to cor-ruption and which most seek to combat it. The Party of Regions was considered to be the political party most prone to corruption (14.3 percent), followed by the BYuT (13.6 percent); the Party of Regions received the lowest level of trust as a political force that actively combats corruption. BYuT scored 13 percent and 14.9 percent, respectively, the only political force where more Ukrainians believed they were both prone to corruption and seeking to combat it. Low public trust in the Party of Regions’ combating corruption did not prevent them from winning first place in the 2006 and 2007 parliamentary elections or Yanukovych’s ability to win the 2010 presidential elections. This public view of the Party of Regions concurs with a 2007 study by Neutze and Karatnycky that found the Party of Regions to be ignoring cor-ruption as an issue in its election program. Following criticism of this absence, the Party of Regions outlined a vague program that Neutze and Karatnycky found lacked “new or more specific ideas for fighting corruption” and showed “evidence that anti-corruption efforts simply are not a priority for the Party of Regions.”40 Yanukovych’s 2010 election slogan was “Ukraine for the people!” which, as the opposition pointed out, contrasted with his own insider privatization (during his 2002-2004 government) of a former central committee of the Soviet Communist Party residency Mizhirya outside Kyiv with 140 hectares of land.41

Why is political corruption a major problem in Ukraine? Below, I discuss four factors that contribute to the Ukrainian state’s immobility and corruption: political culture; weak political will and civil society; institutions; and business, parties, and ideology.

Political culture. Ukraine inherited a path dependent political culture from eurasia, Russia, and the USSR. This was compounded by a deformed political culture that emerged during the country’s transition to a market economy in the 1990s, where “institutionalized oligarchic capital and clannish power” took hold and society became divided into the super wealthy and the poor. “Ukraine is led today by an oligarchic-immoral elite,” former President Kravchuk believes.42 The Razumkov Centre found there to be a “low level of political culture and morals of state and political elites.”43 This leads to tolerance of corruption and not seeing this phenomenon as “abnormal,” the acceptance of double standards, and a disrespect towards one’s political oppo-nents and citizens.44 Progress in democratization, as evidenced by the holding of




free elections and the existence of media pluralism, is a product of regional diver-sity that produces “pluralism by default,” rather than tolerance towards those hold-ing different political views. Tolerance of opponents and a desire to compromise are rare commodities in Ukrainian politics. Commenting about the Yanukovych admin-istration, Leshchenko wrote, “Democratic traditions are not very developed in the new presidential team.”45 Opposition groups are not seen as legitimate in post-Soviet societies, and authoritarian parties of power seek to weaken, divide, and control them so that they cannot become a threat to their power base. a loyal, dependent “pocket” opposition is far preferable.

The question of whether Ukrainian parties support democratic values has not been tested, as parliamentary deputies and voters will not admit to being antidemocratic during opinion polls. Nevertheless, a third of Ukrainians do readily admit to being ready to give up democratic freedoms for stability and order. autocratic tendencies are visible in all of Ukraine’s political forces and leaders but are sometimes clouded, as, for example, Yanukovych’s image during the 2010 elections, when Yanukovych successfully portrayed himself as a reborn democrat who had learned the lessons of 2004. During the 2010 elections, the Yanukovych campaign successfully used their U.S. political consultants to provide them with a democratic image that portrayed them as a viable democratic alternative to Tymoshenko, who was usually depicted as a “populist” and “autocrat.” The steps of the Yanukovych team since his election have shown up the fallacy of the Party of Regions’ internal democratization. Umland believes they have an “ambivalent relationship to democratic norms” and their behavior “still largely follows the pattern of its 2004 dealings that caused the Orange Revolution.” The key for such a mindset, Umland argues, is not what is lawful or constitutional but what the Yanukovych administration can get away with, as there is no fear of criminal prosecution and the opposition remains weak.46 Politics becomes a zero-sum game where the opposition and authorities seek to destroy one another. The failure to institute criminal proceedings for massive election fraud in 2004, which the Supreme Court overturned and parliament denounced, has led to the return to power six years later of the organizers of the fraud who do not fear criminal prosecutions (which in 2005 they did fear).

Ukraine’s elites at the business, political, and national levels, as with the new elites that have emerged in Russia and other post-Soviet states, do not plan beyond the short term. as the transition to a market economy was being launched in the mid-1990s by then newly elected President Kuchma, he complained, “everyone here views himself as a transitional figure. They want to grab something and run off with it. I’m taking about people at the very top.”47 Fifteen years later, the short-term mentality of Ukraine’s elites (which Yushchenko once defined as a “momentocracy”) has not changed, pointing to how this culture is deep-seated and difficult to change. In the short term elites expro-priate as much as they can because of an unstable tomorrow and because they can do so with unrestrained impunity.48 greed in Ukraine’s elites would seem to be insatiable.




Weak political will and civil society. Holmes believes political will to be a “neces-sary but insufficient condition” in the fight against corruption. a country also needs state capacity, a loyal apparatus, and a population interested in reducing corruption.49 a lack of political will among all Ukrainian leaders is compounded by the deep disillusionment of Ukrainians arising from the Yushchenko era. Yushchenko left office with a high negative level of trust of –83 percent, higher than Kuchma after two terms when he left office in 2004. Interior Minister Lutsenko complained that Yushchenko’s anticorruption program lacked “concrete responsibilities and political will.” “In the absence of political will we will continue to hold meetings, write plans, concepts and other activities which will not bring us anything.”50 Yushchenko’s lack of political will is especially pronounced when he is compared to President Saakashvili.

Weak societal pressure enables Ukraine’s elites to live above the law. When asked who is interested in fighting corruption, 69 percent of Ukrainians answered “society” was, the only answer with a high proportion answering “yes.”51 Ukrainians gave a high proportion of “no” answers to whether they believed that state institutions were inter-ested in combating corruption. The newly established National anticorruption Committee met once in Yanyukovych’s first year in office and issued no new initia-tives. Media pluralism exposes corruption, but the immobile society prevents any further investigation and prosecution. Low trust in state institutions and high negative levels of trust in all Ukrainian politicians, including “new faces” arseniy Yatseniuk and Sergei Tigipko,52 are a reflection of the lack of efficacy that Ukrainian citizens feel they have over their political leaders, who are unaccountable for their actions. Soroka points out that the Yushchenko era did not witness an increase in the influence of voters over politicians.53

Institutions. Ukraine lacks a single coordinating center to combat corruption; the National Security and Defense Council (NRBO) could not act in such a role as it was misused in the Yushchenko era as an opposition Cabinet of Ministers, rather than as a vehicle to coordinate law enforcement structures. Ukrainians perceive and feel there to be high levels of corruption in the very institutions, the judiciary and prosecutor-general’s office, that are tasked to deal with abuse of office and political corruption. Corruption in the legal sector is propounded by an “instrumental” attitude to the law. Criminal cases against members of the elites are opened, go nowhere, investigations are purposefully slowed, eventually closed, and the individuals return to public office.54 The prosecutor-general’s office is where criminal cases die. Prosecutor-general Medvedeko admits that “we have no achievements, not a single person has been brought to criminal responsibility.”55 No progress was made in the Yushchenko era on any of the high-profile abuse of office criminal cases, with politi-cians, the prosecutor-general’s office, Interior Ministry, and courts accusing each other of stalling investigations.56 Little wonder that Yushchenko was forced to admit that there was merely “an illusion of a struggle against corruption”;57 in other words, the




“struggle against corruption” continued to be virtual in the Yushchenko era, as it had been in the Kuchma era.58 This is compounded by misuse of the rule of law and political interference in the judicial process under President Yushchenko. Yushchenko told prosecutors and the SBU that “you are not a threat to those committing corrup-tion.”59 Intervention by chief of staff Viktor Baloga into Ukraine’s domestic affairs in 2008 and 2009, when he acted as a de facto vice president, infringed the constitu-tional prerogatives of the presidential secretariat but were permitted and encouraged by President Yushchenko.60

a 2000 opinion poll found 72 percent of Ukrainians agreeing that the removal of parliamentary immunity would assist in reducing corruption.61 “Orange” parties included this goal in election platforms, with Our Ukraine-Peoples Self Defence mak-ing it a central component of their 2007 election campaign, but it was never adopted by parliament. Immunity from prosecution would be an important step in reducing the number of businessmen in parliament, but it could only be undertaken in conjunction with other steps that included an amnesty on illegally earned capital. Businessmen enter parliament to receive immunity because of their fear of potential criminal prosecution for past deeds. although no elites have ever been prosecuted, they view this “contract” in the same manner as an insurance policy that they hope they will never have to access.

Business, parties, and ideology. The weakness of ideology in Ukrainian political parties contributes to patronage and corruption as ways to maintain political loyalties.62 Parties and blocs are often “political projects” with the aim of achieving power and the largesse that accompanies this rather than vehicles designed to represent socio-economic groups and promote ideological programs. New “projects” are established during elections with no other purpose than to enter parliament, rather than to build a multiparty system. Loyalties to ideologies are rare except to strongly held national identities that exist in regionally diverse states such as Ukraine. Party programs are weak and not developed in opposition in preparation for assuming office following elections. at the same time, the opposition castigates the program of those in power and demand they step aside. The georgian opposition has been criticized for only having one program, that of removing Saakashvili. The opposition Party of Regions claimed they had a reform program and team of professionals ready to implement and take over after Yanukovych came to power. Both claims proved to be illusory—the azarov government is not a reformist one and its Cabinet Ministers are anything but professionals. The majority of the Cabinet are from the Kuchma era, conservative in viewpoint and driven as much by a desire for revenge for the humiliation of losing the 2004 elections as they are by economic and fiscal reforms.

The weakness of ideology leads citizens to believe that there is little difference between political forces or candidates, with voters therefore falling back on loyalties to regional and national identities. In the 2010 elections, President Yushchenko called on Ukrainians to vote against both candidates in the second round as they were both




allegedly “Moscow projects.” Yushchenko’s interference reduced orange votes for Tymoshenko, not votes for Yanukovych, and could have contributed to her defeat. Tymoshenko received 3.5 million fewer votes in the second round of the 2010 elec-tions than Yushchenko received in the rerun second round in 2004.

The presence of large numbers of businessmen in factions, who provide funding for election campaigns in exchange for parliamentary immunity and the possibility of further enrichment, encourages disloyalty to political groups. Defections are therefore common from the democratic opposition,63 and bribery of deputies is commonplace. Scholars have not analyzed why these defections are one-way in the Ukrainian parlia-ment, from the democratic opposition to the pro-Kuchma coalition in 2002 to 2004 and to the Party of Regions in 2006 and 2007 and since 2010. Do Party of Regions busi-nessmen not defect to the democratic opposition because the opposition lacks the financial resources to bribe them and the kompromat to blackmail them? The neo-Soviet paternalism and political culture found in eastern Ukraine generates greater party and voter discipline.

Political parties are not financed from membership dues but by the business sector, a factor compounded by the lack of separation of business and politics and the pres-ence of oligarchs in all political forces, including in the Communist Party. The cost of receiving a place on the party list that is likely to enter parliament requires donations in the millions (of dollars). Half of Ukraine’s fourteen wealthiest oligarchs are parlia-mentary deputies. a major source of political corruption is through the financing of political parties by funds controlled by big business in the shadow economy. Businessmen can be easily intimidated to toe the line promoted by the authorities, and businessmen are often willing to realign with the newly elected authorities. Davyd Zhvannia, a businessman who provided funding for the Pora (Its Time) youth NgO, which played an important role in mobilizing young Ukrainians in the Orange Revolution in the 2004 elections, defected to the pro-Yanukovych Stability and Reforms coalition in 2010 and voted for the Black Sea Fleet treaty extending the lease of the Sevastopol naval base. Pora party leader Vladyslav Kaskiv joined the azarov government.

Ukraine’s Immobile State in Comparative Context

Italy and Ukraine

Italy was a founding member of the eU in 1957, long before the Copenhagen Criteria for membership were adopted. Where Italy differs from Ukraine is the degree to which political will eventually emerged to combat corruption and orga-nized crime. The Yushchenko era showed the degree to which there was little political will and an inability within the elites to police themselves. a second simi-larity is the prevailing longevity of regionalism and different regional political




cultures. Italy united as a state in the 1860s but shows few signs of overcoming its deep regional diversity between the north and south, even after half a century of eU membership.64 as Italy moves towards celebrating 150 years of unification, polls show that more than half think Italians are not a “single people,” and 15 percent of Italians would support the division of their country.65 Inherited political cultures embedded in Ukraine’s regional diversity are also unlikely to completely disappear. Putnam contrasts the political cultures of Northern and Southern Italy with Northern and Southern america, respectively. although studies of Ukraine have tended to focus on Ukraine’s east-West regional split, the Yushchenko era points to there being similar types of behaviors and political cultures that cross linguistic and regional lines that make the orange and blue-white political camps not so dissimilar. Nevertheless, a more neo-Soviet political culture does exist among eastern Ukrainian voters and their political representatives, the Party of Regions and President Yanukovych.

The Democrazia Christiana (DC) party dominated Italian politics during the Cold War and became synonymous with corruption. The DC abused the Office of Public Works, especially in Southern Italy, making it “Italy’s most shameless and lucrative patronage engine.”66 The DC’s dominance of Southern Italian politics in the postwar era through a nexus that linked the state, business, organized crime, and politics is similar to the political machine and nexus upon which the Party of Regions is based in Donetsk.

Italy’s judiciary, media, and political parties only began to tackle the problems of corruption and organized crime in the 1980s and 1990s following a decade when the Italian state was under siege from left and right-wing extremists and terrorists as well as subversion from within by the P2 Masonic Lodge. Following the 1967 military coup d’etat in greece, the Communist Party of Italy (PCI) became alarmed at the possibility of a right-wing coup d’etat as there had been two attempted coups in Italy in 1964 and in 1970 by neo-fascist groups with links to the security forces. after the PCI embraced euro-communism under its leader enrico Berlinguer, a “historic compromise” between the PCI and DC sought to forestall a right-wing coup d’etat.67 The “historic com-promise” collapsed after DC leader aldo Moro’s assassination in 1978 by the Red Brigades, an extreme left terrorist group.

It was not the Italian state that took on organized crime but rather “heroic ministers, magistrates and police, supported by a minority of politicians, administrators, journal-ists and members of the public.”68 These patriotic and brave individuals faced danger: “no matter how prominent, any public figure who stood in the way of Sicily’s state within a state was going to be killed.”69 The Catholic Church also came out for the first time in the 1980s and 1990s against organized crime. Many of these brave indi-viduals lost their lives in the war against organized crime and corruption.

Following the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, the DC collapsed after a third of DC and Socialist Party parliamentarians were place under investigation for corruption. The DC was replaced in 1993 on the center-right by Forza Italia, launched by oligarch and media magnate Silvio Berlusconi, who himself has been dogged by




corruption scandals and accusations of links to organized crime. In March 2009, the People of Freedom Party was launched by Prime Minister Berlusconi through a merger of Forza Italia and the post-fascist National alliance (formerly the Italian Social Movement), “the spiritual heirs of Mussolini’s fascist blackshirts.”70 The populist Northern League, which had joined coalitions with Forza Italia and the National alliance, refused to merge into the People of Freedom Party.

This brief sojourn into Italian history leads to four conclusions for Ukraine. First, diverse regional identities and political cultures will never completely disappear. Italy has been “nation-building” since the 1860s but retains a profound north-south divide. Ukraine’s regional diversity will remain a permanent feature of its political system and inhibit the manner in which political parties can operate nationally and thereby influence the outcome of elections. It also gives party leaders and political consultants an incentive to deepen the regional divisions and thereby solidify their electoral bases. This would be one way to explain the return of antinationalist ideology to the Yanukovych administration that is used to depicting the opposition as “anti-Russian” and “extremist nationalists,” which facilitates mobilization of their core electorate in eastern Ukraine and the Crimea. Second, political will is not always apparent in long-established states and takes time to manifest itself. as Dickie points out, it took the Italian state 130 years to become serious about combating organized crime and corruption.71 Seven times Italian Prime Minister guilio andreotti was only placed on trial in 1995 for his connections to organized crime in Southern Italy where the DC had a compact with the mafia in exchange for votes and patronage. andreotti was also accused of asking the mafia to assassinate a journalist in 1979 who was blackmailing him.72

Third, the DC, Forza Italia, and People of Freedom parties developed regional nexuses of business, politics, crime, and state institutions similar to that undertaken by the Party of Regions political machine in Donetsk.73 Headed by oligarch Berlusconi, the different permutations on Italy’s center-right have retained popular support and, with the emergence of the Liga Nord, expanded into Northern Italy, where the DC was weakly represented in the Cold War. The Party of Regions was one of the last “centrist” political parties to be established in Ukraine in 2001. It united big business and regional interests and was the only centrist party that managed to established unbridled dominance in two regions, the Donbas (Donetsk-Luhansk oblasts) and the Crimea. Other centrist political parties established in the 1990s either had no regional base (i.e., People’s Democratic Party, agrarian Party), a weak regional base (i.e., Social Democratic United Party) or faced competition in their regional base (i.e., Labour Ukraine Party in Dnipropetrovsk was supported by oligarchs Viktor Pinchuk and Tigipko but opposed by Igor Kolomoysky and Tymoshenko). The Party of Regions and Yanukovych came first in all three elections in 2006 to 2010.

Fourth, institutions need to be established backed by political will. Direzione Investigatiwa antimafia, an Italian version of the FBI, was not established until the early 1990s and received support from the paramilitary Carabinieri and military. Ukraine has discussed the need to establish a National Investigation Bureau (NIB),




modeled on the FBI, since the second half of the 1990s to combat organized crime and corruption, but the political will to move in this direction has always been absent. In 1997 Vasyl Durdynets, head of the presidential Coordinating Committee to Combat Organised Crime and Corruption, became the first brief head of the NIB, but parliament never gave its approval for the new institution. Ukraine has a prolif-eration of agencies in the NRBO, Interior Ministry, Security Service, and Prosecutor-general’s Office that have responsibility for combating organized crime and corruption, but either individually or combined they produce few results, and as a conse-quence Ukraine’s elites continue to remain above the law. With the exception of the NRBO, Ukraine’s institutions are inherited from the Soviet era. a National guard, established in 1991 from special forces units in the Interior Ministry, emerged as an elite paramilitary unit similar to Italy’s Carabinieri, but it was abolished by President Kuchma in 2000, and its units were transferred back to the unreformed Interior Ministry. Yushchenko mishandled plans to revive the National guard by seeking to have the force placed directly under parliamentary control and therefore parliament rejected his draft law on the National guard; in the 1990s it had been under joint parliamentary-presidential control.74

Georgia and Ukraine

No systematic program against corruption took place during President Yushchenko’s presidency, and Ukraine’s struggle against corruption has therefore been consistently lacking throughout two decades of independence.75 although Yushchenko had prom-ised to put “Bandits in Jail!” during the 2004 elections and Orange Revolution, he never sought to follow through on this election promise, and Ukraine’s elites continue to remain above the law. Members of the ancien regime fled abroad in December 2004. Some, such as Volodymyr Shcherban in 2005, have returned to Ukraine, fearing real prosecution abroad—as in the case of Pavlo Lazarenko in the USa—greater than virtual prosecution at home. In contrast, in georgia, “arresting officials of the old regime and their cronies has been a hallmark of Saakashvili’s tenure.”76 Members of the ancien regime began to return to Ukraine following Yanukovych’s election in 2010.

The biggest source of corruption in Ukraine has always been from energy rents. The 2006 gas contract continued to include the opaque RosUkrenergo (RUe) gas interme-diary, first established by Presidents Vladimir Putin and Kuchma in 2004 to replace eural Trans gas, which injected billions of corrupt finances into Ukraine’s political system. In 2006 the government was led by Our Ukraine leader Yekhanurov, a close ally of President Yushchenko, who continued to defend RUe against Tymoshenko’s plans to remove the gas intermediary, which she succeeded in undertaking with the January 2009 gas contract with Russia. The gas lobby took control of the Party of Regions and sections of Our Ukraine and infiltrated state institutions, such as parliament and the presidential secretariat, and the media, such as Inter, Ukraine’s most watched




television channel. The Yanukovych administration and government has a large RUe gas lobby representation.77

The german think-tank on worldwide corruption, Transparency International, found that Ukraine improved its battle against corruption only in 2005 and 2006 but then regressed after 2007 to the low levels found in the Kuchma era. In 2009, Yushchenko’s last year in office, Ukraine’s Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) ranking was worse than in 2004, Kuchma’s last year in office. The return to high levels of corruption in 2007 to 2009 is a product of the country’s lack of leadership, weak political will to combat corruption, political crises, and interelite conflict.

georgia represents a different trajectory to Ukraine. Since the Rose Revolution, President Mikheil Saakashvili has shown the political will that was absent under Yushchenko to combat corruption and provide a better business environment. The World Bank’s ease of Doing Business ranked georgia 16th and 11th in 2009 and 2010, placing it alongside european and North american economies. Ukraine was ranked during the same two-year period as 146th and 142nd. The World Bank’s rankings on Starting a Business and Protecting Investors showed a similar gulf between the coun-tries, with georgia ranked 5th for Starting a Business in both 2009 and 2010, while Ukraine was ranked 126th and 134th. georgia was ranked 38th and 41st in 2009 and 2010 under the Protection for Investors, while Ukraine again received a poor ranking of 143rd and 109th.78

a similar gulf between georgia and Ukraine exists in their rankings by Transparency International. georgia entered the post-revolutionary era in a worse position than Ukraine with the country a de facto failed state. Between 2005 and 2009, georgia’s CPI ranking dramatically improved from 130th to 66th. During the same period, Ukraine’s CPI ranking improved from 107th to 99th in 2005 and 2006, during the first of two Tymoshenko governments, but then regressed over the next three years to 146th, lower than in the last year of Kuchma’s rule (122nd). In the last years of Yushchenko’s presidency, 78 percent of Ukrainians did not feel there was a struggle against corruption, with 22 percent seeing efforts to combat corruption.79 Political instability (in addition to weak political will) influenced the deterioration in Ukraine’s CPI ranking during the last three years of Yushchenko’s presidency. Similar contrasts between Ukraine and georgia in corruption scores are given by Freedom House’s Nations in Transit. These show, in comparison to Transparency International, a smaller level of improvement in georgia and a stable high level of corruption in Ukraine throughout the 2004 to 2009 period, at 5.75 (with 7 the worst ranking).80 Transparency International found that georgia progressed in its battle against corruption each year since 2004. In 2009, only five countries in the european Union and the european Free Trade agreement had better rankings in dealing with corruption than did georgia.81 The 2009 global Corruption Barometer ranked Ukraine 4.3 (with 5 the worst and 1 the best), while georgia received a ranking of 3.1, a level better than the USa (3.7) or Canada (3.2).82

georgia and Ukraine took different paths following the Rose and Orange Revolutions83 that may account for some of their discrepancies in levels of corruption.




In 2004, georgia moved towards a superpresidential system, and two years later Ukraine moved in the opposite direction towards a semiparliamentary system. georgia’s and Ukraine’s ability to fight corruption is unlikely to be fully a product of strong presiden-tial systems. Ukraine improved its CPI ranking during Yushchenko’s first year in office under the 1996 presidential constitution, but this was more a product of “revolutionary” fervor and the Tymoshenko government’s closure of high-level corruption, such as customs contraband and free economic zones. Regime type and constitution does not tell the full story, as the political will to break with the past was greater at the presi-dential level in georgia than in Ukraine. Yushchenko, after all, was president under two constitutions—presidential and parliamentary—and showed the same low level of political will throughout his presidency. In other words, Ukraine proved to be more of an immobile state than did georgia. Ukraine’s return to a presidential system in October 2001 is unlikely to lead to stronger political will to combat corruption.

a month after Saakashvili’s January 2004 landslide 96 percent victory, georgia changed its constitution to a superpresidential system.84 Such constitutions have invariably led to autocratic regimes in Russia and other former Soviet republics. georgia’s democratic progress was stymied by the adoption of a presidential con-stitution with parliament and opposition parties marginalized, the executive monop-olizing power and autocratic tendencies emerging in the presidency. Freedom House ranked Ukraine and georgia “free” and “partly free,” respectively, throughout the 2005 to 2009 period. Democratic breakthrough in Ukraine was stronger because of the country’s accompanying constitutional reforms towards parliamentarism, the political system adopted by successful democratic Central-east european and Baltic post-communist states.85

The Orange Revolution was both a mass popular uprising and an elite compro-mise. One component of Ukraine’s pact was the inclusion of constitutional reforms during roundtables between regime and opposition soft-liners86 in November and December 2004 brokered by the eU.87 On 8 December 2004, parliament voted for a compromise package that included nearly identical constitutional reforms voted down in the spring of that year. Tymoshenko, head of BYuT, the radical wing of the opposition, was not invited to the roundtables, and her political force voted against the compromise package. Ukraine’s parliament increased its powers, with the govern-ment moving from control by the president to a parliamentary majority. Ukraine’s move to a parliamentary system contributed to the country’s democratization while the “semi” nature of the poorly crafted reforms contributed to institutional conflict and instability.

georgia and Ukraine differed in other ways. Saakashvili’s popularity declined dur-ing his first term from 96 percent in the 2004 elections to 53 percent in the preterm January 2008 elections, but he nevertheless maintained a strong base of support. Yushchenko’s popularity plummeted from autumn 2005 after the disintegration of the orange coalition and only recovered partially in 2007 when he dissolved parliament, but it again rapidly declined in 2008 and 2009 to less than 10 percent.88 after winning




52 percent in the rerun second round of the elections on 26 December 2004, Yushchenko received an embarrassing fifth place with 5.45 percent in the first round of the 2010 elections. Kravchuk entered the second round of the 1994 elections after economic collapse and hyperinflation where he, although eventually defeated, received 44 percent of the vote. The orange candidate in round two of the 2010 elections (Tymoshenko) received the same 44 percent vote as Kravchuk received in July 1994.

The United National Movement–Democrats coalition that brought Saakashvili to power remained united until april 2008, whereas Yushchenko removed the Tymoshenko government only eight months into its tenure, dividing the orange coali-tion for eighteen months between September 2005 and February 2007. In georgia, the two wings of the Rose Revolution (Burjanadze-Democrats and United National Movement [UNM]) had merged into the UNM. In Ukraine, the three wings of the Orange Revolution (Our Ukraine, BYuT, Socialists) were divided during the majority of the Yushchenko era, and the nine parties in the Our Ukraine–Peoples Self Defense bloc failed to merge into a single presidential party. Yushchenko and businessmen in Our Ukraine had always favored a grand coalition with the Party of Regions over a coalition with BYuT. President Saakashvili’s UNM has remained a largely mono-lithic party of power, while Yushchenko contributed to the stagnation and disintegra-tion of Our Ukraine as a political force. The UNM’s support did not decline precipitously, and it received 67 and 59 percent, respectively, in the March 2004 and May 2008 georgian parliamentary elections. Our Ukraine received 24 percent in the 2002 elections and only 14 percent in the 2006 and 2007 elections, winning in the latter case only one administrative district, Baloga’s home region of Trans-Carpathia.89

georgia’s revolutionary leaders and reforms were not threatened by the ancien regime returning to power or “pro-Russian” political forces, unlike in Ukraine and Serbia, as such forces are unpopular in georgia.90 Kostunica won 50.24 percent in the first round of Yugoslavia’s 2000 elections to become the last president of Yugoslavia, 2 percent less than Yushchenko. Slobodan Milosevic came second in the 2000 Yugoslav elections with 37.15 percent, while the combined nationalist vote of the candidates who took second, third, and fourth places was 45.98 percent.91 Kostunica was therefore elected by just over 50 percent of the vote, compared to the combined nationalist vote of 46 percent, a similar voter range of Yushchenko’s 52 percent to Yanukovych’s 44 percent. Yugoslavia’s 2000 and Ukraine’s 2004 election results show that the ancien regimes were still respectfully supported by a sizeable propor-tion of the Yugloslav/Serbian and Ukrainian populations. The defeated candidates in the Yugoslav and Ukrainian revolutions, who led the Socialist and Radical parties, on the one hand, and the Party of Regions, on the other, remained formidable obstacles to democratic and economic reforms, reducing corruption, and integration with europe.92

In September 2004, Yushchenko was poisoned, and two months later an attempt was made to blow up his election campaign headquarters.93 In Belgrade, protestors set the




parliament ablaze, and in March 2003 Prime Minister Zoran Djindic was assassinated. Reforms in both Serbia and Ukraine were stymied by the national question, but in the case of the former these related to external issues in the former Yugoslavia (Serbia, outside Kosovo and Vojvodina, is mono-ethnic), while in the latter they related to competing visions of national identity. The Rose Revolution destroyed the eduard Shevardnadze regime and his parties of power, Citizens Union of georgia and For a New georgia94 and ajaria’s Revival. In the 2004 elections, Teimuraz Shashiashvili came second with only 1.9 percent to Saakshvili’s 96 percent. The Orange Revolution and Yushchenko’s slim 8 percent victory failed to marginalize the most powerful political force from the Kuchma era, the Party of Regions,95 which came first in the 2006 and 2007 elections while its leader, Yanukovych, won power in the 2010 elections.

Victorious candidates in Ukraine’s presidential elections have received between 52 (Kuchma 1994, Yushchenko 2004) and 62 percent (Kravchuk 1991), with a victory in the first round only occurring on one occasion when Kravchuk was elected in December 1991. In georgia, every presidential election since 1991 has produced landslides for Zviad gamsakurdia, Shevardnadze, and Saakashvili of between 74 and 96 percent and Saakashvili won a second term in 2008 in the first round (with, on this occasion, his nearest rival Levan gachechiladze winning 27 percent of the vote compared to Saakashvili’s 52).96 Ukraine’s regional diversity has traditionally been treated as a source of its internal weakness, but it also prevents monopolization of power by any political force. Our Ukraine, BYuT, and the Party of Regions have each received between 24 and 34 percent in the 2002, 2006, and 2007 parliamentary elec-tions, and it would be nearly impossible for any Ukrainian political force to receive more than 50 percent, unlike the UNM (or the Unified Russia party led by Prime Minister Putin).

Ukraine’s regional divisions have provided the opposition with a strong base of support either in Western Ukraine (“orange” forces) or in the Donbas and the Crimea (Party of Regions). aslan abashidze controlled the adjarian region of georgia under Shevardnadze in a quid pro quo whereby abashidze nominally recognized georgian sovereignty in exchange for no interference by the central authorities in adjarian affairs. abashidze’s Democratic Revival Union won 95 percent of the vote in adjaria in the fraudulent 2003 elections. In the 2002, elections the pro-regime For a United Ukraine (ZYU) bloc won its best result in Donetsk oblast (37 percent), facilitated by then–Donetsk governor Yanukovych. Kuchma repaid Yanukovych by appointing him prime minister in November 2002, which made it certain that he would become the author-ities’ presidential candidate in the 2004 elections. The Party of Regions, reliant on the Donetsk political machine, was formed in 2001, joined the ZYU bloc in the 2002 elections, and established two factions in the Ukrainian parliament, european Choice, led by azarov, and Regions of Ukraine, loyal to Yanukovych. Following Yushchenko’s election in 2004, the Party of Regions became an independent political force, coming first in the 2006 and 2007 elections with 31 and 34 percent of




the vote, respectively, and Yanukovych winning the presidency in 2010 with 48 percent of the vote. azarov was the first Party of Regions leader in 2001 to 2003 and again from 2010. In 2003 and 2004, abashidze was removed by popular local protests, central intervention, and Russian intermediaries. Regional parliamentary elections were held in June 2004, in which Victorious adjara, a new party backed by Saakashvili, won twenty-eight out of thirty seats in the adjarian Supreme Council. “Orange” forces were never able to remove the Party of Regions from their Donbas and Crimean strongholds and never sought to launch criminal proceedings against Kuchma, Yanukovych, or other senior officials.

Yanukovych and the Party of Regions won between 44–48 (2004 and 2010) and 31–34 percent (2006 and 2007) of the vote, respectively, in presidential and parliamentary elections between 2004, when they first participated independently, and 2010. georgia reduced its 7 percent threshold to enter parliament to 5 percent, higher than Ukraine’s 3 percent, and this reform permitted three political forces (other than the UDM) to enter the georgian parliament in 2008. Both Ukrainian par-liaments elected in 2006 and 2007 had five political forces, with the orange coalition winning slim majorities in both elections. The UNM dominated the georgian parlia-ment to an extent that Our Ukraine (even with BYuT) never could, and “orange” forces could never monopolize power in the manner of the UNM in georgia.

a comparative analysis of georgia and Ukraine also needs to bring in two further differences. Saakashvili inherited a failed state and successfully prioritized state-building, while Yushchenko inherited a strong state and prioritized nation-building. Interelite infighting, the stagnation of Our Ukraine and fragmentation of the national democrats, as well as a lack of further improvements to the 2006 constitutional reforms to reduce interinstitutional conflicts, led to the Ukrainian state being weaker at the end of Yushchenko’s presidency. The georgian state, in contrast, was stronger, although it was decapitated with the “independence” of South Ossetia and abkhazia after the august 2008 Russian invasion.

a second difference between georgia and Ukraine rests on personalities, with Saakashvili far closer in spirit and rhetoric to Tymoshenko. Saakashvili and Tymoshenko are both “charismatic,” unlike Yushchenko or Burjanadze, and both have been accused of being “populists.”97 Jones describes Saakashvili as “emotional, angry, confrontational, patriotic, tough” and states that he “understood what georgian voters wanted—a virile, excitable and uncompromising hero with the promise of economic and politi-cal salvation.”98 Tymoshenko has similar traits but has two drawbacks in relation to Saakashvili. First, she is a woman in a highly masculine and sexist post-Soviet cultural environment. Second, her mixed armenian-Ukrainian ethnic heritage undermines her nationalist credentials in the eyes of some Western Ukrainian voters.99 These two factors, coupled with Ukraine’s greater regional diversity, mean that Tymoshenko could never become a “Ukrainian Saakashvili,” and therefore it was wrong to per-ceive her as a threat to Ukraine’s democracy if she had won the 2010 elections.




Conclusion

Prospects for change and reform are poor in Ukraine because four major constraints limit the ability of any leader to undertake radical reforms, particularly in areas that impact upon the interests of the elites. First, Ukraine’s political culture has been shaped by its path dependency (inherited historical legacies) from foreign imperial rule, much of it non-european, the devastation of Soviet totalitarianism, and a corrupt and rapid transition to a market economy. In the past half century, Ukrainians have experienced Leonid Brezhnev’s three decade “era of stagnation” and Kuchma’s rapid transition in less than a decade to a market economy. Second, pressure from within society for change is weak; the one exception where this was not the case—the Orange Revolution—was an aberration to the normal passivity of Ukrainians. This is com-pounded by weak political will from Ukraine’s elites for change and a short term interest in politics for the purpose of personal enrichment that is at odds with the country’s medium-long term national interests. The failure of the Yushchenko presi-dency to undertake expected reforms in a wide variety of areas showed the fallacy of assuming that “orange” forces are de facto reformist.

The Yushchenko era continued to show Ukraine is an immobile state. Italy and georgia have shown the importance of political will from political leaders, state offi-cials, journalists, and civil society activists to effect profound changes. While change and reforms remain popular among Ukrainian citizens, they lack efficacy and the ability to implement their demands. Meanwhile, the country’s elites prefer the stable status quo and an immobile state. Third, there is an absence of pressure from outside. NaTO and eU membership were two major catalysts of domestic change in post-communist europe, but neither institution has played a similar role in Ukraine. although NaTO operated an open-door policy on membership, Ukraine never saw itself as a serious candidate for NaTO membership after its attempts to obtain a Membership action Plan was turned down by NaTO on four separate occa-sions between 2002 and 2008. The Yanukovych administration has closed the door on NaTO membership and therefore undermined the ability of NaTO to play a role in reducing the country’s immobility. The eU, a more important catalyst of change in slow post-communist reformers such as Romania and Bulgaria, has never oper-ated an open-door policy on membership towards Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) countries such as Ukraine. The absence of an eU membership offer to Ukraine contributes to the country’s immobility by not providing an external source of pressure for change. The importance of external pressure could be seen in the 2010 IMF agreement negotiated by the Yanukovych administration, which agreed to under-take unpopular energy reforms in exchange for financial support to alleviate its budget crisis.

Inherited political culture, weak domestic pressure for reform, and an absence of external pressure from the eU for deep-seated reforms all point to Ukraine remaining an immobile state for the foreseeable future.




Notes

1. With the exception of surveys conducted in Ukraine, few scholarly studies have probed this question. For an early analysis, see Paul Kubicek, “Post-Soviet Ukraine: In Search of a Constituency for Reform,” Journal of Communist Studies & Transition Politics 13:3(1997): 103–26.

2. alexander Motyl, “Making Sense of Ukraine,” Harriman Review 10:3(1997): 1–7; Dominique arel, “The Muddle Way,” Current History 97:621(1998): 342–46; Marta Dyczok, Ukraine: Movement without Change, Change without Movement (amsterdam: Harwood academic, 2000); andrew Lushnycky and Mykola Riabchuk, eds., Ukraine on Its Meandering Path between East and West (Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang, 2009); and T. Kuzio, “Virtual Reform in a Virtual State,” Kyiv Post, 8 May 2003.

3. askold Krushelnycky wrote that Yushchenko promised a lot “while delivering little or nothing.” He “was a petty person of little vision, full of hot air and unwilling to take any hard decisions.” See a. Krushelnycky, “Yanukovych Lives Up to Low expectations,” Kyiv Post, 16 apr. 2010.

4. andrew Wilson, “Ukraine—From Orange Revolution to Failed State?” (Talk given at briefing in Washington, DC, 29 May 2009), http://ecfr.eu/content/profile/C33.

5. See M. Riabchuk, “What’s Left of Orange Ukraine?” www.opendemocracy.net, 22 apr. 2010. 6. Leonid Kravchuk, www.pravda.com.ua, blog, 6 apr. 2010. 7. Remarks made by Paul D’anieri at the “Ukraine 2010—2020: Politics, geopolitics and Future

Trajectories” (Symposium, Kyiv, 18 Dec. 2009). 8. Francis Fukuyama, “Transitions to the Rule of Law,” Journal of Democracy 21:1(2010): 138. 9. adrian Karatnycky, “Reintroducing Viktor Yanukovych,” Wall Street Journal, 8 Feb. 2010.10. See ibid.; and anders aslund, How Ukraine Became a Market Economy and Democracy

(Washington, DC: Petersen Institute of International economics, March 2009). Ukrainian oligarchs can act like “arab Sheikhs” buying French castles and Dutch yachts, sending their children to British schools, and wearing Italian suits “but remain the same feudalists.” See Ostap Kryvdyk, “Chy ye zhyttia pislia Yanukovycha?” Ukrayinska Pravda, 10 Feb. 2010.

11. T. Kuzio, “Ukraine’s Oligarchs and Democratic Regression: Why are They Silent?”, Eurasia Daily Monitor, 22 Sept. 2010.

12. Susan Stewart, “Ukraine’s greatest Challenge,” www.europeanvoice.com, 13 Jan. 2010.13. Steven Levitsky and Lucan a. Way, “International Linkage and Democratization,” Journal of

Democracy 16:3(2005): 20–34.14. The first four months of 2000 “saw the greatest reform drive that Ukraine had seen since the fall

of 1994. It was broader and more comprehensive, and it would put the market economy right.” Quoted from aslund, How Ukraine Became a Market Economy and Democracy, 133.

15. Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko said that Yushchenko was never an ardent supporter of undertaking protests in the 2004 elections and preferred “back room negotiations.” Y. Lutsenko cited in Ukrayinska Pravda, 21 Nov. 2008. at roundtable negotiations the authorities, although in a weak position, dictated terms to Yushchenko, who at that stage controlled the security forces and the streets of Kyiv.

16. eric gordy, “Serbia after Djindjic. War Crimes, Organized Crime, and Trust in Public Institutions,” Problems of Post-Communism 51:3(2004): 10–17.

17. The September 2004 poisoning and November 2004 attempted bombing of Yushchenko’s election headquarters point to the authorities and Russia perceiving Yushchenko as likely to implement the radical election slogans that he and Tymoshenko campaigned upon. This was also evidenced by suicides and officials fleeing abroad after he was elected. In a similar manner, Djindjic’s reforms were seen as a threat, and he was assassinated. The authorities were not to know that Yushchenko never intended to implement his election slogan of “Bandits to Prison!” and that he would do everything in his power to thwart Tymoshenko’s ability to implement them.

18. aslund, How Ukraine Became a Market Economy and Democracy, 179.19. See http://www.cvk.gov.ua/pls/vp2004/wp0011.20. aslund, How Ukraine Became a Market Economy and Democracy, 202, 205, 207.




21. Yushchenko, presenting his candidacy for the 2004 elections, said, “The authorities will work for the people, corruption will be ended, all will be equal before the law, and bandits will go to jail” (UNIAN, 1 July 2004).

22. See T. Kuzio, “Populism in Ukraine in Comparative european Context,” Problems of Post-Communism, 45:6(2010), IN PReSS.

23. Introduction to special issue on political corruption of Natsionalna Bezpeka i Oborona 7 (2009), http://www.uceps.org/ukr/journal.php and http://www.uceps.org/eng/journal.php?

24. Interview with gReCO head Drago Kos in Zerkalo Nedeli, 16-22 October 2010.25. Interview with Oleksandr Medvedko in Zerkalo Nedeli, 24–30 Jan. 2009.26. Natsionalna Bezpeka i Oborona 7(2009).27. Lutsenko cited by Ukrayinska Pravda, 15 apr. 2009.28. Serhiy Leshchenko, “Yulia Tymoshenko povtoruye ‘kadrov’ karuseli Viktora Yanukovycha,”

Ukrayinska Pravda, 15 apr. 2009.29. Deputy Prime Minister Volodymyr Sivkovych cited by Ukrayinska Pravda, 11 May 2010.30. Valeriy Honcharuk and Yaroslav Pavlovsky, “Yanukovych hotuye adminresurs pid vybory,”

Ukrayinska Pravda, 5 May 2010; and P. Byrne and S. Tuchynska, “Police Move to Dampen Protest Turnout,” Kyiv Post, 11 May 2010.

31. Tymoshenko claimed that bribes of up to $5 million were being offered to opposition deputies to defect to the Stability and Reforms coalition. Tymoshenko cited in Ukrayinska Pravda, 16 apr. 2010.

32. The biggest example was Tymoshenko’s legal adviser andriy Portnov, who defected after agreeing to become deputy head of the presidential administration (Ukrayinska Pravda, 12 apr. 2010). See Viktor Chyvokin, “Yanukovych doukomplektovuye svoyu administratsiu,” Ukrayinska Pravda, 5 May 2010.

33. a Dnipropetrovsk-based company organized the sale of votes and also offered to rent “protestors” to political parties. See Ukrayinska Pravda, Zhyttia, 4 apr. 2010. See T. Kuzio, “‘Political Tourism’ and Managed Civil Society in Ukraine,” Eurasian Daily Monitor 4:100(22 May 2007).

34. M. Riabchuk, “Kompleks Lioventalia,” www.zgroup.com.ua, 7 apr. 2010.35. Charles H. Fairbanks, “georgia’s Soviet Legacy,” Journal of Democracy 21:1(2010): 144.36. Yuriy Butusov, Inna Bedernykov, and others, “My sami otkryly vorota, my sami,” Zerkalo Nedeli,

24–29 apr. 2010.37. Leonid Kuchma’s independence day speech published in Uriadovyi Kurier, 27 aug. 2003.38. Natsionalna Bezpeka i Oborona 7(2009), 6.39. Natsionalna Bezpeka i Oborona 7(2009), 53.40. Jan Neutze and adrian Karatnycky, Corruption, Democracy and Investment in Ukraine (Washington,

DC: atlantic Council of the United States, 2007), 28.41. Tymoshenko’s comments are cited in Ukrayinska Pravda, 8 apr. 2010. See Svitlana Tuchynska,

“Ukrayinska Pravda exposes president’s Mezhygirya deal,” Kyiv Post, 6 May 2010.42. L. Kravchuk, Ukrayinska Pravda, blog, 6 apr. 2010.43. Natsionalna Bezpeka i Oborona 7(2009), 39.44. Yushchenko issued a decree on his last day in office appointing Kyiv Mayor Leonid

Chernovetsky, who is unpopular and widely believed to be corrupt, to the Higher Judicial Council. The decree was defined as “secret” and not published on www.president.gov.ua. The decree was rescinded by Yanukovych. In an interview in Den (31 Mar. 2010), Yushchenko clamed he was in opposition to the authorities. Ukrayinska Pravda on the same day published photographs and analysis of a government dacha that Yushchenko is seeking to receive in perpetuity from the authorities. See S. Leshchenko, “Blysk ta ubohist ‘opozytsionera’ Yushchenka,” Ukrayinska Pravda, 31 Mar. 2010. Yushchenko and Our Ukraine–Peoples Self Defence have been at the centre of protests against the appointment of Dmytro Tabachnyk as education and science minister in the azarov cabinet, proposing a no-confidence reso-lution in parliament on 30 March 2010 for his dismissal. at the same time, Our Ukraine party leader and former chief of staff Vera Uliancheko’s husband agreed to become deputy education and science minister.




45. S. Leshchenko, “Faktor Herman’ yak vstup do klanoznavtsva ukrayinskoii polityka,” Ukrayinska Pravda, 24 Mar. 2010.

46. andreas Umland, “Is europe Losing Ukraine?” Foreign Policy Journal, 12 apr. 2010, http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2010/04/12/is-europe-losing-ukraine/.

47. Kuchma cited by Reuters, 12 Dec. 1994.48. See the comments by the spouse of a wealthy Russian oligarch in Mark Hollingsworth and Stewart

Lansley, Londongrad. From Russia with Cash. The Inside Story of the Oligarchs (London: Fourth estate, 2009), 183.

49. Leslie Holmes, “Crime, Organized Crime and Corruption in Post-Communist europe and the CIS,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 42:2(2009): 285.

50. Lutsenko cited by Ukrayinska Pravda, 21 apr. 2008.51. Natsionalna Bezpeka i Oborona 7(2009), 53.52. “New face” candidates in the 2010 presidential elections included Sergei Tigipko (with 50 negative:

32 positive ratings), Yatseniuk (56:32), and grytsenko (54:22). Tymoshenko and Yanukovych received 67:30 and 55:42 negative-to-positive ratings, respectfully. Incumbent Yushchenko had 83 percent negative trust levels and only 14 percent positive. Clearly Ukrainian voters were disillusioned with the entire Ukrainian political spectrum on the eve of the 2010 elections. even the extreme right during a period of deep economic crisis did not receive high support with Svoboda (Freedom) Party leader Oleh Tyahnybok receiving 65 negative : 11 positive levels of trust. See “Positive and Negative Impressions of Ukrainian Politicians,” in Public Opinion in Ukraine 2009. Findings from an IFES Survey (Washington, DC: International Foundation for electoral Systems, December 2009), http://www.ifes.org/pubsearch_results .html?type_group_0=&region_name_0=Ukraine&keyword=ukraine&t=sp.

53. Serhiy Soroka, “ZaT ‘Ukrayina,’ kerovane uriadom oligarkhiv,” Ukrayinska Pravda, 13 apr. 2010.54. a case in point is Vasyl Tsushko, interior minister in the 2006–2007 Yanukovych government, who

was criminally charged with abuse of office after sending Berkut riot police to storm the prosecutor-general’s office in May 2007. The case was dropped after Yanukovych’s election, and he returned as minister of economics in the azarov government. Tsushko is a member of the Socialist Party that defected from the orange coalition to the Party of Regions and Communist Party in July 2006, which together established the anti-Crisis coalition.

55. Interview with Medvedko in Zerkalo Nedeli, 24–30 Jan. 2009.56. See interview with Prosecutor-general O. Medvedko in Komsomolskaya Pravda v Ukrayini, 20 apr.

2010. See also Peter Byrne, “Once Criminal Suspects, VIP exiles Now Return Home as Cases Dropped,” Kyiv Post, 24 apr. 2010.

57. Yushchenko cited by Ukrayinska Pravda, 21 Jan. 2009.58. See T. Kuzio, “Ukraine’s Virtual Struggle against Corruption and Organised Crime,” RFERL

Crime, Corruption and Terrorism Watch, 6 Sept. 2002.59. Ibid.60. T. Kuzio, “Inferiority Complexes of Baloha, Yushchenko Led Them to each Other,” Kyiv Post,

5 Feb. 2009.61. Opinion poll cited from Den, 25 Jan. 2000.62. For background see T. Kuzio, “Comparative Perspectives on Communist Successor Parties in

Central-eastern europe and eurasia,” Communist and Post-Communist Studies 41:4(2008): 1–23.63. See “Running Man,” which lists the top ten defectors in parliament, with the prize going to

Mykhailo Zubets who has changed factions a record seven times. Ukrayinsky Tyzhden, 19–25 Feb. 2010, pp. 20–21.

64. adrian Lyttelton, “The National Question in Italy,” in Mikulas Teich and Roy Porter, eds., The National Question in Europe in Historical Context (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 63–105.

65. “Italian Politics. Centrifugal Forces,” The Economist, 13 May 2010.66. John Dickie, Cosa Nostra. A History of the Sicilian Mafia (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2004), 281.




67. Dickie writes that this saved Italy from Chile’s fate. Ibid., 350.68. Ibid., 386.69. Ibid., 385.70. The Guardian, 28 Mar. 2009.71. Dickie, Cosa Nostra.72. Il Divo, a 2008 film, tells the story of Italian Prime Minister giulio andreotti, who was elected to

parliament seven times after 1946, and his relationship to the mafia and to DC leader aldo Moro, who was assassinated in 1978 by the Red Brigades terrorist group.

73. Kersten Zimmer, “The Comparative Failure of Machine Politics, administrative Resources and Fraud,” Canadian Slavonic Papers 47:1–2(2005): 361–84.

74. grytsenko, former defense minister and head of parliament’s committee on national security and defense, opposed Yushchenko’s plans for a National guard. grytsenko was elected in 2007 as a deputy in the Our Ukraine–Peoples Self Defence bloc but broke with Yushchenko in 2008.

75. T. Kuzio, “Ukraine’s Virtual Struggle.”76. Whit Mason, “Trouble in Tbilisi,” The National Interest (Spring 2005): 140.77. See T. Kuzio, “gas Lobby Takes Control of Ukraine’s Security Service,” Jamestown Foundation,

Eurasia Daily Monitor 7:53(18 Mar. 2010).78. See http://www.doingbusiness.org/economyRankings/.79. Natsionalna Bezpeka i Oborona 7(2009), 45.80. http://www.freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=1781. See http://www.transparency.org/news_room/in_focus/2008/cpi2008/cpi_2008_table.82. See http://www.transparency.org/policy_research/surveys_indices/gcb/2009.83. C. H. Fairbanks, “georgia’s Rose Revolution,” Journal of Democracy 15:2(2004): 110–24.84. Fairbanks calls the georgian reforms a “hyper-presidential” constitution. Ibid., 118.85. Michael McFaul, “Conclusion: The Orange Revolution in a Comparative Perspective,” in a. aslund

and M.McFaul, eds., Revolution in Orange (Washington, DC: Carnegie endowment, 2006), 193. Henry Hale reaches similar conclusions in “Democracy and Revolution in the Post-Communist World: From Chasing events to Building Theory,” World Politics 58 (October 2005): 133–65.

86. Soft-liners at the three round tables included Kuchma, former Parliamentary Speaker Ivan Pliushch, Parliamentary Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn, and Yushchenko. See interview with Yevhen Chervonenko in Ukrayinska Pravda, 8 aug. 2008. Kuchma, who was then leaving office, was opposed to taking respon-sibility for bloodshed. See Heorhiy Kasianov, Ukrayina 1991-2007. Narysy novitnoii istorii (Kyiv: Nash Chas, 2008), 337. The 27 November 2004 parliamentary resolution denouncing election fraud in the second round was not supported by two hard-line factions: the Party of Regions and Social Democratic united Party. See “The Mariinsky Palace Negotiations: Maintaining Peace throughout Ukraine’s Orange Revolution” (Cambridge, Ma: Program on Negotiations, Harvard University Law School, 2006), http://www.pon.harvard.edu/.

87. Steven Pifer, “european Mediators and Ukraine’s Orange Revolution,” Problems of Post-Communism 54:6(2007): 28–42.

88. See http://www.uceps.org/ukr/poll.php?poll_id=89.89. The Our Ukraine party, the Fatherland Party (founded in 1999 and led by Tymoshenko), and UNM

are observers in the european Peoples Party, the european Parliament’s center-right political group. Parties from non-eU member states cannot become full members of political groups.

90. georgia has no pro-Russian Communist Party, a party that dominated Ukrainian politics until the 2002 elections. Two of its three pro-Russian regions, South Ossetia and abkhazia, were frozen conflicts and beyond the central government’s control until they became quasi-“independent” states following Russia’s august 2008 invasion. a third, adjaria, was brought back under central government control in 2004 to 2005. Pro-Russian Donetsk and the Crimea, which also have decidedly pro-Soviet leanings, are two strongholds of the Party of Regions and Yanukovych’s administration.




91. The 2000 nationalist vote includes Milosevic (37.15 percent), Serbian Radical Party candidate Tomislav Nikolic (5.88 percent), and Serbia Renewal Movement candidate Vojislav Mihailovic (2.95 percent).

92. alexander J. Motyl, “Ukraine’s Democracy in Danger,” Wall Street Journal Europe, 30 Mar. 2010.93. T. Kuzio, “Russia and State-Sponsored Terrorism in Ukraine. Parts 1 and 2,” Eurasian Daily Monitor

1:90–91(22–23 Sept. 2004), and “Yushchenko Poisoning Investigation Nearing Climax,” Eurasian Daily Monitor 2:35(18 Feb. 2005). On the attempt to blow up the headquarters, see the interview with Yushchenko’s bodyguard Y. Chervonenko in Ukrayinska Pravda, 8 aug. 2008.

94. These resemble similar parties of power in Ukraine (e.g., For a United Ukraine [2002 elections]) and azerbaijan (New azerbaijan).

95. Other centrist parties that had supported President Kuchma, such as the Social Democratic united Party, People’s Democratic Party (NDP), and Labour Ukraine Party, were marginalized in the post-Kuchma era. The agrarians were renamed the Peoples Party of Ukraine after Lytvyn was elected leader and they became the basis of his eponymous bloc that entered parliament in 2007.

96. Fairbanks believes that the result was falsified to prevent a second round as post-Soviet leaders prefer not to risk competition. Putin and alyaksandr Lukashenka, both popular presidents, would also have won second rounds but always engineered first round victories. Fairbanks, “georgia’s Soviet Legacy.”

97. although Tymoshenko is usually defined as a “populist” in Ukrainian politics, all Ukrainian politi-cians are “populist” to varying degrees, especially during election campaigns. During the 2010 elections, Yanukovych and Yushchenko outdid Tymoshenko in their populist election promises (personal observation during fieldwork in Ukraine in august 2009 to February 2010). See T. Kuzio, “Who’s Populist in Ukrainian Politics,” Kyiv Post, 4 July 2007; and for a more extensive treatment, Kuzio, “Populism in Ukraine in Comparative european Context,” Problems of Post-Communism.

98. Stephen F. Jones, “The Rose Revolution: a Revolution Without Revolutionaries?” Cambridge Review of International Affairs 19:1(2006): 43.

99. See alexandra Hrycak, “gender Biases are a Factor in Yulia’s Defeat,” Kyiv Post, 16 Mar. 2010; and T. Kuzio, “gender Bias, anti-Semitism Contributed to Yanukovych’s Victory,” Kyiv Post, 19 Mar. 2010.

Taras Kuzio is an austrian Marshall Plan Foundation visiting fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations, School of advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington, DC. He has been a Visiting Professor at the Institute for european, Russian and eurasian Studies, george Washington University, and a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Russian and east european Studies, University of Birmingham. He is the author and editor of 14 books, 5 think-tank monographs, 25 book chapters and 60 scholarly articles on post-communist politics and has guest edited 6 special issues of academic journals. He is the editor of the bimonthly Ukraine Analyst. Taras Kuzio received a Ba in economics (University of Sussex), Ma in Soviet Studies (University of London) and a PhD in Political Science (University of Birmingham).



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