Ukraine--Andrew Wilson latest

Andrew Wilson is the best Ukraine-watcher I know. Here is his new paper, which argues that Yanukovych could be Ukraine's Nixon.

New Ukrainian column

I have started a regular column for the excellent Ukrainian weekly Tyzhden. Here is the first one (with a link here to the Ukrainian version)

“Dokumenty pazhaluista”

(What can Europe do to help Ukraine? And what can Ukraine do to help itself?)

Given the amount of time and money European Union countries have spent advising Ukraine on the reform of public administration, it is shocking and shameful that their own consulates in Kyiv and elsewhere epitomise the problem, rather than advertising the solution. It may not be possible to convince voters in the EU that Ukrainians should have visa-free access immediately. But it should certainly be possible to provide the visas in an efficient, polite, honest and open way. The current system offers no real obstacle to people-smugglers and crooks, while imposing huge and humiliating burdens on the ordinary decent people wanting to visit for work, pleasure or study. It is a scandal that it is far easier for a citizen of Turkey to get a visa for the Schengen zone than it is for a citizen of Ukraine.

I would like to see the Ukrainian media and NGOs attack this problem head-on, providing a detailed ranking of the consulates in terms of convenience of opening hours, politeness of staff, speed of service and use of modern technology. Those that make people queue on the streets in sub-zero temperatures will come bottom. Those that use the internet intelligently, and treat applicants as honoured guests, rather than lying nuisances, will come top. Imagine the shock if it turns out that the best service comes from China, say, or Egypt, rather than the arbiters of good government in the EU and North America.

The next stage should be to present the findings to those in charge of the consular services with the question (asked politely of course) what they intend to do to improve their ranking and when. Then follow-up the exercise at six-monthly intervals and see which promises are matched with action and which prove to be just empty words. Transparency and accountability are fine things and the EU and America are right to preach them. But they are even more effective when those who preach them also practise them.

An important feature of this exercise is that Ukrainians would no longer be the supplicants, patiently waiting for outsiders to give them things. Instead, Ukrainians would be saying: “we are the people of one of the largest countries in Europe. We may be poor and badly led, but we also choices about how we spend our time and money, about where we work and study, or buy and sell. If you want our attention, show us some respect”. That is not a message that the rest of Europe has heard before. It would be good to deliver it.

At the same time, of course, Ukraine needs to improve its own image.

I am rather sceptical of the portentous discussion about “foreign policy orientation”. In the end, image follows reality, and so long as the reality of Ukraine is of a country run by the provincial Soviet nomenklatura and their business chums, the bad image will be hard to shift. The more Ukraine imitates the corruption and incompetence of the Russian system, the closer it will become to Russia. And the more it adopts western-style public administration, the closer it will come to the world’s richest and happiest countries.

The election result may mean that big changes are off the agenda. But small steps can be effective too. Too take one example, familiar to foreigners but probably not to Ukrainians themselves, examine the “landing card” issued to foreigners on inbound flights. This is, in effect, Ukraine’s visiting card: it may be the first official document that outsiders encounter.

It is a strikingly shoddy affair. I could almost believe that it was designed by Modest Kolerov, or some other sinister Kremlin spin-doctor, aiming to damage Ukraine in the eyes of the world. For a start, it is not a card. It is printed on the cheapest possible paper—so grey, rough, flimsy and absorbent that it almost has curiosity value. The instructions are incomprehensible. The print is tiny. The applicant must fill in details, letter by letter, in tiny boxes seemingly designed to produce illegibility. If you get it wrong, you are shouted at by a man in uniform.

What is so odd is that this ghastly effort is not some bureaucratic fossil from the Soviet days, but something fairly new. A committee of officials must have debated its design, wording and production, and solemnly decided that this was the best possible option. Given the way that Ukraine works, their decision was probably signed off at quite a high level. I don’t exclude the possibility of corruption—perhaps the contract was given to a design bureau and printing house that skimmed off the contract, and then did the cheapest possible job. But it would be nice to know. I would suggest a public competition for Ukraine’s best designers to produce a rival version, which would have typography, clarity and quality to lift spirits rather than sink them.

The existing dismal document is worth contrasting with the similar form used by foreigners entering the United States. This is printed on high-quality white card. The instructions are exemplary. And a small line of print at the bottom, citing the “Paperwork reduction act” passed by Congress, even tells you how many minutes it should take to fill the form in. That sends a powerful message about America: it is a country where lawmakers bestir themselves to save their constituents time, and where public agencies pride themselves (at least sometimes) on doing a good professional job.

These two ideas won’t change Ukraine overnight. But they will foster two important kinds of confidence. One is the confidence to complain when badly treated. The other is confidence innovate when something is not working well. Both are the hallmarks of a society where the state is a partner, not a parasite. That change is long overdue in Ukraine.

Europe View nr 171: Ashton to Ukraine

Europe.view

Turn east, Lady Ashton
Feb 11th 2010
From Economist.com


The EU could make a real difference in Ukraine

PIGEONHOLING and false analogies are not part of formal international relations studies. But from the way that diplomats, policymakers and analysts talk about Ukraine, you would think they were compulsory courses.

Take the optimistic point that Ukraine’s elections are now unlike Russia’s. True, Ukrainian voters had a real choice in that country’s recent presidential poll. The incumbent, Viktor Yushchenko, gave up power peacefully. (In Russia, he might have handed power over to an ex-spook, amid bogus terrorist attacks to panic the public into accepting authoritarian rule). The vote count was fair. Ukraine’s media is far more pluralist than Russia’s. And so on. All this is fine. But Ukraine’s election was also unlike Kazakhstan’s. It is easy to make something look good by choosing a dismal comparator.

It is also tempting but wrong to compare Ukraine now with Russia in the 1990s. True, oligarchs rule the roost in both countries, with politicians as their puppets. True, Western money keeps Ukraine afloat, as it did in 1990s Russia. There, the West hoped to avert nuclear anarchy or a Communist revanche. In Ukraine the money is intended to stave off take-over by Russia.

But there is no sign of, or appetite for, a Ukrainian version of Vladimir Putin, not least because the West has not (yet) incinerated its credibility in Ukraine the way it did in Russia in the 1990s. Ukrainian politicians of all stripes, and the public, continue to want European values and European integration.

Brussels has yet to respond to that desire. European leaders missed the chance presented by the orange revolution (though to be fair, Mr Yushchenko and other Ukrainian politicians botched their opportunities even more badly). The European Union’s leaders also failed to make much of the recent election. Ukraine is a long way from Spain, which holds the rotating EU presidency. Catherine Ashton, the EU’s nominal foreign-policy chief, seems distracted, to put it mildly. The EU is treating Ukraine like Turkey—too big, too poor, and destined to wait indefinitely for membership. (That’s a false comparison too, but never mind).

Yet Ukraine is perhaps the one place where Lady Ashton and her new External Action Service could make a real difference. Ukraine badly needs attention, and unlike America or China it is not a place over which other EU leaders will be jostling for influence. Done properly, the gains from renewed EU involvement could be huge.

The European policy so far has been engagement with Ukraine’s political class. This has proved expensive, and mostly fruitless. Attention should now move to the citizenry. Imagine the effect if the EU opened 50 “Europe Houses” in the main towns and cities of Ukraine. The excellent new House of Europe in Tbilisi should be the model. That project aims to be the Georgian centre for all sorts of Europe-related cultural events, as well as debates and lectures, with a library and internet café as added attractions (readers with spare cash please note: it needs donors). It will have far more impact than the piecemeal efforts of individual European countries’ cultural institutes.

In the tense Ukrainian region of Crimea, a big EU presence would make it harder for Russia to hide its mischief-making (that should be a lesson from Georgia, where the EU’s absence was a lethal element in the run up to the 2008 war). More generally, the new policy will focus the EU’s biggest asset: its soft power. The EU’s military capability is meagre; its ability to stand up to Russian divide-and-rule tactics in energy security is feeble. But the EU does have something that the Kremlin doesn’t: attractiveness. Projecting that into Ukraine will give Lady Ashton and her staff something worthwhile to do. It could even work.

Europe View nr 168 -- Europe's borderlands

Europe.view 

The centre cannot hold
Jan 21st 2010
From Economist.com


The borderlands of Europe should not be left behind

PLENTY of places have a claim to be Europe’s geographical centre. French geographers calculated in 1989 that it lies on a hill near Purnuškės in Lithuania. Belarusian cartographers think it is near the town that Russians call Vitebsk (Vitsyebsk in Belarusian). In 1887 in the then Austro-Hungarian empire, geographers erected a monument at Dilove, in what is now the Ukrainian province of Transcarpathia, marking what they reckoned was Europe’s real mid-point.

None of these claims can be definitive; finding Europe’s middle depends on what you count as its edge—the Azores? Iceland? The Ural mountains? The methodology of some claims is unclear. The more exotic ones bear as little relation to geography as the Loch Ness Monster does to aquatic biology. In other words, their purpose is to attract tourists. But at least for the Ukrainians visiting Dilove to be photographed by the monument, this is as far west as they can get.


“Where Europe Ends”, a powerful new film by Alina Mungiu Pippidi, a Romanian scholar and activist, shows the effect of the European Union’s expansion in dividing Europe. The combination of physical decay and human dislocation is poignant. The footage of disintegrating churches, ruined public buildings, shabby homes and bumpy roads leaves the viewer in no doubt of both the region’s rich heritage and its dirt-poor present.

Many of the people interviewed in the film have first-hand experience of the atrocities of the past century. Their grasp of the geopolitics is sometimes hazy, but their memories of shootings and deportations are sharp. Lines on the map drawn by outsiders have divided families and farms, bumping them around like shuttlecocks between different countries and political systems. The creation of a solid eastern frontier to the EU hardly matches the horrific consequences of the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, but the victims are the same people.

People left behind by history are often those who find coping with the present day most difficult. Humble farmworkers in rural areas find it hard enough getting Ukrainian or Moldovan officials even to issue a travel document. Getting a visa to cross the border is even harder. The film shows the humiliating crowded queues outside EU member states’ consulates and the dismal life of illegal labour and squalid living that awaits those who make it across.

The film is partly paid for by the EU. It should be compulsory viewing for anyone who works in a consulate or visa office dealing with people from what one might call “left-behind” Europe. Some of the local staff there seem to have been hand-picked for their rudeness. Corruption is still troublingly prevalent. The system for visa applicants often appears to have been designed to deter, rather than enable, travel to the west. It may be unrealistic to expect a big liberalisation of visas in the short term. But it is hard to see any arguments against being polite, honest and efficient.

Enlargement has brought huge benefits for those on the inside, while putting the harshest costs on outsiders, particularly those least able to bear it, such as the citizens of Moldova, Europe’s poorest and most neglected country.

The mantra of EU and NATO expansion has been “Europe whole and free”. That may have now outstripped the willingness of voters in the luckier and richer parts of Europe to pay the taxes and accept the dislocation of further expansion.

But opportunities are opening up in Belarus (wriggling away from Russia), Moldova (with its reformist, pro-European, pro-American government) and even post-election Ukraine, assuming that the political paralysis of recent years ends. Treating the centre of Europe as a hopeless and irrelevant borderland cannot be right.

praising Poland and Ukraine

Europe.view

Wreath by wreath

Sep 10th 2009
From Economist.com

How east Europe can step over history's long shadow

TWO of the five most-commented-on articles on The Economist’s website last week were about east European history. One concerned the icy relations between Slovakia and Hungary. The other was about Russia’s failure (in some eyes) to apologise properly for the Soviet past.

In each case the tone of the comments was often strikingly unpleasant, with sweeping accusations of anti-Semitism, genocide, imperialism, treachery and mendacity. It would be easy for outsiders to conclude that the ex-communist countries are prisoners of their past, tediously fighting the same old battles with the same old stereotypes.

All the more reason, therefore, to highlight the happy state of Polish-Ukrainian relations, which is especially remarkable given the two countries’ miserable common history.

AP

Make grins, not war

Take just a few events from (nearly) living memory. In interwar Poland, Ukrainians suffered savage repression; seen from another viewpoint, they behaved disloyally and ungratefully towards their country. During the war, the Ukrainian Insurrectionary Army murdered some 60,000 Poles in Volhynia. Were they vicious Nazi stooges or fighters for their country’s stolen independence?

In 1945 Polish anti-communist soldiers shot hundreds of Ukrainians in the village of Pawlokoma. That was either an understandable retaliatory action for previous anti-Polish atrocities in the region, or a brutal and unprovoked massacre. In 1947 the country’s new Communist rulers deported 200,000 Ukrainian-speakers from south-eastern Poland. That could be seen as Bolshevik barbarity, or evidence of Polish ethnic nationalism. The town known as Lwow in interwar Poland is now in Ukraine. Some think that is where it should be, others think it tragically stranded. And so on.

These are true controversies, about which even the best historians disagree. Evidence for what exactly happened and why is scanty and needs careful weighing. Just as it would be lazy and wrong simply to apportion equal blame to both sides, it would also be wrong to paint the history as a one-dimensional story of vicious Ukrainian attacks on Poles (or vice versa). The Wikipedia discussion pages for these events give a good flavour of the passions aroused and the scope of the disagreements.

What is commendable, though, is the way in which politicians have behaved. For 20 years Polish and Ukrainian leaders have worked hard to accentuate their countries’ shared history and common tragedy, rather than stoke disagreements for political ends. In 2006, for example, presidents Lech Kaczynski and Viktor Yushchenko (pictured above) jointly unveiled a memorial in Pawlokoma. Previously, the Ukrainian authorities had supported the restoration of a war memorial in what is now Lviv, for Polish soldiers who died in the 1918-1920 war. This week Mr Yushchenko visited Poland, laying yet more wreaths jointly with his host.

That is not just good business for florists. It could be a template for other countries seeking to step over the shadow of history. Neither Poland nor Ukraine tries to rub each other’s nose in its wrongdoing, nor does either insist on seeing their own soldiers as untainted heroes. Neither side expects the other to see history exactly its own way. Much more important is to focus on the common factors: the conflicts between Poles and Ukrainians were made immeasurably worse by the activities of outside powers, Nazis and communists alike. Disagreements remain, but are eased by practical cooperation. The planned Polish-Ukrainian-Baltic military brigade is a good example of this. Only 65 years ago, Ukrainians, Lithuanians and Poles were killing each other.

A joint Polish-Belarusian-Russian peacekeeping force serving in some troubled and faraway corner of the world may seem unimaginable now. But it is not impossible. Poland and Ukraine have shown readiness to overcome some of their most painful historical traumas. Can Russia do the same?

Bailout latest from economist.com today

The IMF and eastern Europe

Into the breach
Oct 27th 2008
From Economist.com


The IMF helps eastern Europe’s two most vulnerable economies. Will it stop the rot?

Get article background

SIX months ago it all looked so different. The countries of eastern Europe were the poster-children of economic reform: having privatised, deregulated and stabilised after the collapse of communism, they seemed on a clear path leading to convergence with the richer half of the continent.

That picture was always a bit optimistic. Now it looks wildly out of date. A noxious cocktail of public foreign debt, heavy private borrowing in foreign currencies, big current-account deficits, lax public-spending controls and wobbly governments (different in each country but all potentially lethal in conditions of collapsing investor confidence) has sent policymakers scurrying to talk to the ultimate financial backstop: the International Monetary Fund.

This weekend, the IMF reached broad agreement on big bail-out packages for both Hungary and Ukraine. On October 22nd Hungary had raised its interest rate to an economy-crunching 11.5% (up from 8.5%) in the hope of halting steep falls in its currency, the forint. Fortuitously, the Hungarian markets then closed for a two-day break, followed by the weekend.

Over the weekend, as the hours ticked closer to the moment of the Hungarian markets’ reopening, the IMF was scrambling to gain agreement from the European Union, countries such as Germany, Austria and Italy, and other international lenders such as the World Bank, to support the bail-out. That task was hindered by Europe’s leaders' absence at an international EU-China summit in Beijing.



The rule in such panicky conditions is “the more the better”. The bail-out needs to be big enough to reassure lenders that they can roll over existing Hungarian debt. If not, the economy faces meltdown. Late on Sunday, time ran out to present the plan in full. Instead, the IMF issued a statement endorsing the Hungarian authorities’ planned stabilisation measures. “The policies Hungary envisages justify an exceptional level of access to Fund resources,” said the IMF’s managing director, Dominique Strauss-Kahn. On Monday, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development issued a statement supporting the IMF plan. It could play an important role in recapitalising Hungary’s banks. Earlier this month the European Central Bank took the extraordinary step of issuing a €5 billion ($6.7 billion) credit line to Hungary’s central bank (Hungary is not in the euro zone). More may be in store.

The central feature of the plan is reform of public finances. But the room for manoeuvre is limited. Hungary’s growth is already feeble—likely to be only 2% this year. The government had already reined in spending and lifted taxes, and became highly unpopular as a result. More of the same risks plunging the country into recession. But without tough measures, international lenders may just walk away.

The early verdict from the market was sceptical: shares plunged by a further 10% when the market opened on Monday. That adds urgency to the need to finalise the deal. Those involved hope to have it ready by Wednesday. Politics is playing a big role. America sees Hungary as a strictly European problem, but has been pushing the IMF to provide more generous and immediate help for the other stricken economy, Ukraine.

Riven by political disputes, Ukraine is vulnerable in a crisis to its cash-rich neighbour, Russia. The Fund said on Sunday that it had agreed a $16.5 billion two-year loan to Ukraine, although it is unclear how the country, which lacks a government and is facing its third parliamentary election in three years, is in any position to adopt the tough economic policies needed to restore confidence.

A statement by the Fund said that it was moving “expeditiously” and that the programme would focus on “essential upfront measures”. It did not stipulate what these might be. A joint central bank and finance ministry statement mentioned a balanced budget and legislative moves to support the banking system. Parliament, normally fractious and deadlocked, is due to meet on Tuesday. Outsiders will be watching closely.

Russia and its neighbours

Bang, crash

Sep 18th 2008
From The Economist print edition


What Russia’s stockmarket collapse means for Russia and for its neighbours

EVER since Vladimir Putin and his ex-KGB friends came to power in Russia, they have had one big advantage: a booming economy, rising prices for oil and gas exports, and strong capital inflows from abroad. All of a sudden, that has changed.

Partly as a result of the storm hitting all emerging markets (see article) and partly because of jumpy nerves following the war with Georgia, the markets in Moscow have been crashing. On September 17th and 18th the authorities halted trading in shares and bonds after the benchmark RTS share index fell 21% earlier in the week. It is down nearly 60% since its peak in May. The finance ministry pledged $60 billion to prop up the banking system; much of it seems to have gone offshore.

As regulators and politicians in Moscow struggle to contain the damage, and firms worry about bonds due later this year, a big question is how the economic turmoil will affect Russian politics at home and its policies abroad. Optimists hope the market wobbles will mean a less abrasive anti-Western foreign policy and the restarting of reforms. Others fear that the Kremlin will respond with tighter controls at home and a still tougher stance abroad.

Modernising reforms largely stopped in the final years of Mr Putin’s presidency, as the Kremlin sought to control the country’s oil and gas industry, and to silence critics. His successor, Dmitry Medvedev, made promising speeches on corruption and legal reform, but has not acted on them. Andrei Piontkovsky, a sharp-tongued Russian commentator, says the struggle among Kremlin clans is between “global kleptocrats” who want to be part of the world economy and “national kleptocrats” with cruder domestic interests.

For now, Russia shows no sign of softening on Georgia. It has said international monitors cannot operate in South Ossetia (whose independence is recognised only by Russia and Nicaragua) without permission of authorities there. It insists that South Ossetia, and the other breakaway region, Abkhazia, must participate in upcoming talks in Geneva on settling the conflict. Georgia says it will not attend if the separatists are there.

Russia has also accused NATO of showing “cold war reflexes” after a visit to Georgia by the alliance’s secretary-general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer. He said that Georgia’s “road to NATO remained wide open”, without giving specifics.

Ukraine, meanwhile, faces not only a financial crisis but also a political one exacerbated by the war in Georgia. The governing coalition has collapsed after a row between Viktor Yushchenko, the president, and his former ally, Yulia Tymoshenko, the prime minister. Her party is moving towards an alliance with the grouping led by Viktor Yanukovich, once the Kremlin-backed candidate who was blocked from the presidency by the pro-democracy “orange revolution” of 2004.

Mr Yushchenko says Mrs Tymoshenko is selling out to Moscow; she says he has dangerously inflamed relations with Russia. Some fear that the Kremlin is exploiting Ukraine’s political weaknesses. But the country’s politicians seem to be doing enough damage without outside help.