Mr. Chair, thank you for the invitation to give testimony to the committee.
My testimony is I think available to everybody, and what I've tried to focus on is a slightly different approach, because I think one of the main problems that western policy-makers have in dealing with the Yanukovych administration is to try to understand how they reach their decisions and their policies. How do we get inside their heads to try to act more decisively and correctly vis-à-vis them?
What I've done is divide up a ten-point step to try to understand the political culture and the mindsets of the current elites. Here we go.
Firstly, taking this term from the recent riots in Britain, Ukraine's elites are “feral elites”, to a tenth degree. These are elites--and I'm sure there are some people here from Ukraine who would agree with me--who have little connection to Ukrainian society and don't really give much of a damn about Ukrainian society.
So when we have this factor raised in the west about why Ukraine's elites are putting such an important document as the association agreement with the EU potentially under threat, it's because what's more important to them is what is of importance to them individually, not to societies at all. They believe that the world is a Machiavellian place where the end justifies the means. There was only one occasion in the last 20 years of Ukrainian independence when Ukraine's elites were afraid of Ukrainian citizens, and that was during the Orange Revolution, when they fled abroad—some committed suicide—and others even fled to Moscow.
Why is all of this important? Well, it's reflected in very low public levels of trust in state institutions in Ukraine. The Ukrainian parliament has a level of trust of something like 5%, for example. It's the same with political parties. Most Ukrainians do not believe they live in a democracy. Eighty per cent of Ukrainians believe that the country is not heading in the right direction, while only 10% do.
Second is national interest. Personal and business interests are of far greater importance to Ukraine's feral elites than the national interests of the country. So revenge against Yulia Tymoshenko for removing the gas intermediary RosUkrEnergo in the 2009 gas contract is far more important than signing an association agreement with the European Union.
This plays out in many different areas. So it's not a question...I think sometimes it's very simplistically put forward that Yanukovych is pro-Russian or Yushchenko is pro-western. They are neither pro-Russian nor pro-western. They are “pro-me”. That's very important to understand: “what do I get out of it?” Yanukovych has actually said that on a number of occasions: what do I get from this agreement?
Thirdly, Ukraine is a milk cow for a place where you can steal raw materials, finances.... Ukraine's level of corruption has already been discussed here. Sadly, there's a negative side to this from our point of view, in that much of this money goes into the west. For Britain, it's not a coincidence that journalists have described London as Londongrad or Moscow on the Thames. A lot of this money goes into Britain. It goes into western Europe. Two Ukrainian oligarchs in the last three years bought two of the most expensive properties in British history for a total of over $400 million.
Cyprus, an EU member, is the largest foreign investor in Ukraine. Why? Because it's an offshore zone, where much of this corrupt money goes. I'll talk about this in the final conclusions about policy-making, but one needs to follow the money and, unfortunately, western Europe has been very bad in terms of not being stringent on the issues of money laundering.
Fourth is a banal question. I don't know whether the photographs of Viktor Yanukovych's mansion are on the brief that was translated, but his mansion near Kyiv was privatized when he was prime minister in 2006, illegally; this was a Soviet-era residence that was used to host foreign dignitaries in Soviet Ukraine.
This is his personal home—stolen—and it's something that's very dear to him. He believes that if Tymoshenko is released from prison and becomes president in 2015, she will nationalize it, take it back to the state--and she probably will. So that's already a personal reason for him not to want Tymoshenko to stand in elections.
The residence has become a scandal in the Ukraine just by the fact of how much money is being put in there. For example, recent reports talked of €300,000 spent on a bathroom and €80,000 spent on chandeliers. Obviously Yanukovych cannot afford to pay for this with his presidential salary. It undermines his claim that he's battling corruption with the sentencing of Tymoshenko
Next is “ostentatious”. Yanukovych comes from a different elite background than the previous Ukrainian presidents. Presidents Kravchuk and Kuchma both came from the Soviet nomenklatura elite. They therefore had a far higher level of education and far greater access to resources and advisers.
Yanukovych was twice convicted as a teenager and imprisoned. He comes from a very humble background. That's reflected in how he approaches things, reflected in many ways. Particularly, he has very narrow horizons, is not prone to compromise, and he has, I would say, a very uneducated response to western criticism.
Sixth is “machismo”. Again, don't underestimate these kinds of things. The Donetsk clan's Party of Regions shows heavy male machismo in terms of how it undertakes foreign policy decisions and domestic policy matters and how it reacts to foreign criticism.
This is especially important in the Tymoshenko case. Tymoshenko is unique in that part of the world as a woman who has reached the pinnacle of Ukrainian politics. There's simply nobody else like her in the former U.S.S.R., maybe not even in eastern Europe. Women who, for example, became leaders in the Baltic States were from the emigration, from the diaspora, including from Canada. She is even unique in western democracies. Very few women have reached the pinnacles of political power in western democracies.
When you have a culture as you have in the Ukraine, that relates to women in the sense of where our relationship to women was prior to the 1960s, very chauvinistic and very critical, then you can understand that Tymoshenko is seen as a personal threat to this very male-dominated society. For example, Yanukovych was supposed to have debated on state television, in the second round of the 2010 elections, with Tymoshenko. He refused. When he was asked why he refused, he replied that a woman's place was in the kitchen, not in politics.
The current government, which is of course pro-presidential, is the first of 14 Ukrainian governments without a single woman in the government. That culture very much has a problem, then, with Tymoshenko--as did Yushchenko, by the way, on that gender point.
Number seven is “power”. Power, in the minds of the current Donetsk clan's Party of Regions, should be maximized to the fullest extent in both politics and economics, and, once you have obtained power, you do not give it up. Threats to remaining in power indefinitely are very important, and therefore you need to remove those threats.
Tymoshenko was the main threat. Let's recall that she lost only by 3% in the 2010 elections, even though she was the sitting prime minister just after a global financial crisis. This shocked Yanukovych. He expected to win by more than 10% and yet he barely scraped through. He knows damn well that in 2015, if he were to face her, he would probably lose in a free election, because he would be five years in power and she would be then the opposition leader.
There have been many criticisms...and I'll go on to this question about next year's elections. The Venice Commission of the Council of Europe and the International Foundation for Electoral Systems both, in September-October of this year, condemned the new draft election law that's being put forward. The aim of the draft election law is to ensure that the Party of Regions receives a whopping constitutional majority, or a 50% majority, in next year's parliament.
As well, the sentencing of Tymoshenko is geared towards this. She's been sentenced deliberately for seven years' imprisonment and three years' banning from government. Why this configuration? Because it bans her from the next four elections, two parliamentary and two presidential. It means that Yanukovych has no threats from her for the next nine years, up until 2020.
Another factor is that it's bad for one's health to be out of power. That's the way they feel. They've opened a Pandora's box by laying charges against Tymoshenko and other leaders. If an ex-president or ex-prime minister can be put on trial now, then it could be the same, when they are out of power, against them, especially as they've corrupted the constitution and infringed numerous laws since they've been in power. So it's not a good idea to be no longer in power, especially in the mindset of these individuals.
The inferiority complex is very neo-Soviet. Just look at the kinds of counter-reactions we've had regarding criticism about this Tymoshenko sentence, such as, “How dare you interfere in our internal affairs?” and “This is all double standards”, etc. We heard this when the Soviet Union still existed.
The EU ambassador to Ukraine this week said that what they seem to fail to understand is that integration into the European Union is not a case of an à la carte menu from which you just choose things you like and ignore other things. It's a fixed menu; you have to take what the EU is offering.
Finally, let me address the question of their possibly believing that the imprisonment of Tymoshenko might lead to a better gas contract. I have three policy recommendations that I would add to this.
First, going on from what I have said, I don't think Tymoshenko will be released. The key factor the west should be looking at is next year's parliamentary elections. The EU ambassador to Ukraine said that the door is practically closed, but the window is still open. I think the window will be open only until next year's elections.
So I would offer three policy recommendations.
Coordination is a key factor here. The Yanukovych administration has been saying repeatedly that the EU and the west—the U.S., Canada, and the EU—are divided in their approaches toward what's going on in Ukraine. It's very important that the EU, the U.S., and Canada have a coordinated position—even, I would say, a joint statement—to make it perfectly clear that they're all on the same page.
This is also true regarding the free trade agreement. The deep and comprehensive free trade agreement between the EU and Ukraine is now practically suspended; it's frozen. There was a belief that the Polish presidency of the European Council would lead to its negotiations being completed by December, but then ratification would not take place. It's very unlikely that even the final step of negotiations will be completed. If the EU is not likely to sign a deep free trade agreement with the Ukraine, then I don't think Canada should either. There should be a coordination of the same position on this. It would look rather odd if Canada went ahead and the EU didn't.
Finally, let's come back to my question of money. If you really want to hurt the Yanukovych administration, you can do so far more than you can hurt Belarus. Belarus doesn't have oligarchs; the Ukraine has. Those oligarchs from Ukraine have homes and businesses in London, in Monaco, and elsewhere. They have children in private schools. They travel to western Europe.
You need to, first, start thinking about a visa blacklist. That will really hurt them. The oligarchs in Ukraine, we are being told, are pro-European. They're afraid of Russia and Russian economic imperialism. Yet the oligarchs have been very silent and passive until now. If the oligarchs start to feel that their own personal interests are threatened, they will then impact upon the Yanukovych administration.
Thank you.
