Foreign Affairs Committee on March 3rd, 2014

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Good afternoon.

Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2) we will begin our study on the situation in the Ukraine.

I want to welcome a couple of our guests we have as witnesses today. From the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies we have Taras Kuzio, who is a research associate from the University of Alberta.

Taras, welcome. I'm glad to have you here today.

From the Chair of Ukrainian Studies, we have Dominique Arel, who is the chairholder and an associate professor at the School of Political Studies from the University of Ottawa.

Welcome to you too, sir.

I would just mention that we do have a note available, and it's also available wirelessly through your iPads as well. I'll just keep mentioning that as we move more and more to wireless if that's possible. We'll always provide paper for all those who don't like that technology stuff.

Gary, we'll take good care of you.

I will now turn it over to our witnesses. Both of them have opening statements.

Taras, we'll get you to go first. You have up to 10 minutes for an opening statement. The floor is yours, sir.

[Dr. Taras Kuzio, Research Associate, University of Alberta, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies]

I'll give you some background to the crisis, explain why it happened, and then go into the Crimean question.

Firstly, it's important to know what kind of people were in power in Ukraine. Typically for that region, for the post-Soviet region, the leaders who came to power were usually mainly either nationalists or national democrats, or from the senior levels of the Soviet Communist Party, the nomenklatura. There are many.... For example, in Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma was a typical example of that, and so was the first president, Leonid Kravchuk, who was from the nomenklatura, the uppermost elites of the Soviet Communist Party.

Where Viktor Yanukovych is very different is that, to my knowledge, he was the only leader from that region who came to power from a criminal background. He was twice in prison, and in the 1990s, Donetsk was second to the Crimea in the large numbers of murders and crimes that took place. What developed in the 1990s—in the late 1990s, he became Donetsk's governor—was a kind of growing nexus among corrupted security forces, the prosecutor's office, crime, and business. That, as I'll explain, is very much his mentality and his background, and why it led to the tragedies we saw.

This means that the culture that a kind of person like Viktor Yanukovych came from was very machismo, very anti-gender. His governments were the first governments with no women in them. He is on the record as saying that women's place is in the kitchen, not in politics. This could explain some of his antipathy toward Yulia Tymoshenko, but certainly, “compromise” was a dirty word for this machismo culture, and round tables.... Yanukovych could have compromised, for example, in early December by changing his prime minister, but didn't. He dragged it out.

Also, to this kind of culture, it's “all economic and political power to me as the victor, all things come to me”. He acted as though he was going to be in power indefinitely, as though he would never be leaving power. How else can you explain the fact of putting your opponents in prison? Because if you're going to leave power down the road, then those opponents could come out of jail. As for his own family that he developed or promoted, which was led by his eldest son, who is a dentist by profession but mysteriously became one of the top wealthy people in Ukraine, they were demanding 50% of your business to be transferred over.

Finally, what this culture also promoted was a very thuggish and violent culture. This is the first president to hire mercenary vigilantes—and we saw many of them in action during the crisis—which led to abductions, murders, and of course, the imprisonment of opposition leaders.

With Viktor Yanukovych, we also have, similar to Vladimir Putin, a very Soviet mindset, which means that we are lost in translation when speaking with them. They simply think in a different manner to us. In December, I met the U.S. ambassador in Kiev. He told me that already then Viktor Yanukovych was convinced that everybody in the Maidan in central Kiev was an extremist and a fascist financed by the U.S., which is the Putin line as well, of course. So there's that inability to comprehend what was actually happening and why so many people were there from across a variety of circles. The world they create, as to what they believe in, is a different world to what we see, and that I think creates a tremendous problem for policy-makers, for being lost in translation, as I say.

Why was there a crisis? There were three big events that led to protests and to horrible violence on a scale that we haven't seen in Ukraine really since the 1960s or 1950s. First, there was the decision to annul the movement toward signing the association agreement with the European Union. This was a shock, because both sides of the political divide had been negotiating for seven years. Second, there was Black Thursday, the destruction of Ukrainian democracy in the shape of 21 minutes by a show of hands, which led to the first round of violence. Then, the continuing refusal to compromise over the constitution and the preterm elections led to the second and more brutal high levels of murders and deaths.

But there were deeper problems at stake, which exploded. In effect, the people in power had destroyed the three main pillars, I would say, upon which the Ukrainian state was being built over the last two decades: some kind of movement toward democracy, some kind of Ukraine national identity, and Ukraine's future in Europe. All those had come under threat. There was nothing else to steal, in effect.

The population felt as though they were treated with contempt, as though they were like a conquered population. The level of corruption had grown so great even as compared with the 1990s. The judiciary and the police no longer were places you could go for protection. Somebody actually said that the safest place in Ukraine during the crisis was on the Maidan, nowhere else.

Then there's the Russian factor. Why has the Russian factor become important? I think there are three issues with regard to why it's come into play.

First, Putin feels personally humiliated. It's two-nil for the Ukrainian people. Ten years ago, during the Orange Revolution, Putin backed the wrong horse, Viktor Yanukovych, and he backed the wrong horse again. I feel that in Putin's case, his heart is ruling his head, and that's why we see what we think of as irrational and lost in translation. There were plans, backed by the Russians, for a full crackdown. It wouldn't have been 100 dead, it would have been thousands. That was the plan that was supposed to have been implemented with full Russian backing. Thankfully that didn't happen.

Second, I think the questions around the Crimea and Sevastopol are very difficult for Russians to accept. It's been the problem for two decades. It's not something new. Russia has been supporting separatism in the Crimea, in Sevastopol, ever since the U.S.S.R. disintegrated. In 2009 two Russian diplomats were expelled from Odessa and from Crimea for providing covert assistance to Russian separatists.

The third factor, which may be one of the most important but hasn't really been dwelt upon, is that this is an attempt to suck Kiev into a military conflict and to institute counter-revolution regime change in Kiev. The new Ukrainian authorities are in a desperate situation; the cupboard is bare. Something like $70 billion was stolen out of the country in the last four years. There is an economic financial tsunami waiting for the country, and I think the last thing this government wants is a war or a conflict. But that's the hope, I think, for Vladimir Putin—to try to suck the new authorities in and prevent the presidential elections from taking place in May, prevent the signing of an association agreement.

I think those are the three main factors. I'll leave it at that.

Thank you very much for your attention.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Arel, we'll now turn it over to you, sir, for 10 minutes.

[Dr. Dominique Arel, Chairholder, Associate Professor, University of Ottawa, Chair of Ukrainian Studies]

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

The unimaginable is now before us. The higher chamber of the Russian parliament has authorized Russia to send troops “on the territory of Ukraine” leaving open the possibility that the Russian army currently occupying Crimea may be dispatched elsewhere on Ukrainian territory. In seeking to legitimize its military operation, Russian invokes political, ethnic, and security arguments. None stand up to analysis.

The political argument is that Ukraine is in the throes of an illegitimate political regime that came to power a week ago as a result of a “fascist” coup. Fascism means something very specific in Russian discourse. Since World War II the invasion by Germany has always been presented as an invasion of fascists, not of Germans. The fascists are the Nazis and their collaborators. In western Ukraine, a violent Ukrainian insurgency against the Soviet Union tactically allied with Germany during the war. Russian discourse labels these insurgents fascists or Banderites, after their leader Stepan Bandera, a term that acquired equivalent meaning.

Since key groups on the Maidan, namely the parliamentary party Svoboda and the popular movement Pravy Sektor, claim lineage from the wartime insurgency, the collapse of the Yanukovych regime is portrayed in Russia as an internal fascist invasion.

This narrative omits three basic points. The first is that the Yanukovych regime collapsed because all police forces withdrew on Friday, February 21, 2014, leaving government buildings unprotected. They withdrew not because they were overcome by armed militants but because they were demoralized either because they had previously used live ammunition against civilians or because they were unwilling to defend a regime perceived as widely corrupt.

The second thing is that it was not the insurgents who attacked civilians, unlike the case with the wartime insurgents, but rather the state. In the end the state security forces gave up.

The third is that the political pillars of the previous regime, the Party of Regions and the Communist Party of Ukraine, have both recognized the legitimacy of the new government. The Communists, who depict wartime insurgents as fascists, have in fact voted en bloc for all constitutional changes in the past week.

The ethnic argument is that the life of Russia's compatriots—and I'm putting “compatriots” in brackets here—is in danger. The resolution of the Russian parliament refers both to citizens, who outside of Sevastopol are in principle not too numerous since dual citizenship is illegal in Ukraine, and to this vague category of compatriots, which has no standing in international law. Compatriots is a code word for ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in the context where most residents of eastern Ukraine prefer to speak Russian. It is this undifferentiated Russian mass that the Russian state now sees as being under threat by the so-called nationalists who have taken power in Kiev. I should add that “nationalists” since Soviet days has been used as a synonym for “fascists”.

This narrative assumes that in the defining moment that Ukraine is now experiencing, eastern Ukrainians will choose Russian protection over Ukrainian “nationalist” rule. Russia's power play could actually have the opposite effect of further crystallizing Ukrainian identity in the east. There is no organized Russian community in eastern Ukraine, unlike in Crimea, because many, if not most, Russians are partly of Ukrainian background and many Ukrainians are partly Russian.

This ethnic mixité likely explains the ambivalence expressed by eastern Ukrainians towards Russia. Under quasi-war conditions, the ambivalence could lead way to a greater assertion of Ukrainian identity.

The fact that mass demonstrations are now occurring in eastern Ukraine, a traditionally passive society, could be seen as a barometer of a rising attachment to the nation defined in civic terms. Although we have demonstrations going both ways right now, yesterday there were 10,000 people singing the Ukrainian national anthem in Dnipropetrovsk.

The security argument is that the events that have “destabilized” Ukraine are the result of western meddling in a territory that has historically belonged to the Russian sphere of interest. The Russian historical narrative actually places Kiev as the so-called mother of all Russian cities.

Russian President Putin appears to firmly believe that Maidan was instigated by western powers—that includes Canada, by the way—a claim obliquely repeated by former Ukrainian President Yanukovych in his Rostov press conference. The meddling, however, was declarative, with western powers expressing support for the right of Maidan demonstrators to peacefully air their grievances and repeatedly inviting the Ukrainian authorities to find a political solution and avoid the use of violence.

Up until the protests turned into mass killing, the EU and the United States were in fact criticized in the west for how little concrete help they provided to Maidan—the EU resisting, for instance, the imposition of personal sanctions until the very end, after the police began shooting at demonstrators.

The argument of western intervention, however, operates on a higher plane than immediate support on the ground, taking the form of the claim, also often made in western liberal and leftist circles, that the west's ulterior motive is to secure military bases in Russia's backyard and to make the Ukrainian market available for cheap labour to benefit advanced western economies.

While these points merit a rigorous hearing, primarily or exclusively focusing on them evacuates the profoundly civic dimension of the Ukrainian rebellion. Maidan, initially a protest for Europe, became a protest against police brutality, large-scale corruption, and the lack of political accountability. Since all these features are also associated with the current Russian state, opposing them became a symbolic reaffirmation of European values, even if the free trade agreement was no longer talked about. It is easy to be dismissive of the weight of values, but the fact is that insurgents were willing to risk and pay with their lives. It is their stance that ultimately broke the will of the Yanukovych regime.

The meddling, in the end, was of so-called European ideas. They in themselves are seen as an infringement on the security not of Russia but of the Russian political system developed under President Putin. The logical fallacy is that since western powers could benefit from the bottom-up Ukrainian civic uprising, then they must have caused it. They did not.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

We'll start our first round of seven minutes of questions and answers with Madame Laverdière.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank both of our witnesses for their presentations.

I'll begin by apologizing for getting here late. It was certainly not for lack of interest in the issue. We're all very preoccupied by what is happening in Ukraine right now. I was detained by some journalists.

My first question is for Mr. Kuzio.

In 2011, you wrote a book entitled The Crimea: Europe's Next Flashpoint?. Can you tell us a little more about the central argument of your book?

[Dr. Taras Kuzio]

I remember that when it was published there was a lot of skepticism that I was being too pessimistic. I guess it was one of those very typical Washington think-tank publications where you think about scenarios, but you never expect these scenarios to happen.

There are many talking about how this problem of Russian unwillingness to accept Ukrainian sovereignty in the Crimea and Sevastopol has been long-standing. The majority of Russian public opinion does not accept Ukrainian sovereignty over the Crimea and Sevastopol. I detailed a lot of the covert actions that the Russian intelligence services were undertaking against Ukraine's sovereignty in places like that, in supporting separatists and in supporting extremists, really, in both Odessa and the Crimea. It's really detailing what was taking place under the then president, Viktor Yushchenko, who had just left power.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Thank you very much.

We are talking about acceptance of Ukrainian sovereignty in the Crimea. Professor Arel, I would like you to tell us a little more about the Budapest agreement and the obligations on Russia, the United States and Great Britain under that agreement.

[Dr. Dominique Arel]

Very well. Thank you, madam.

After the Soviet Union collapse, Ukraine inherited a nuclear arsenal that was probably the third or fourth largest in the world. Of course, that became an extremely worrisome situation. After several years of negotiations, Ukraine agreed to become a non-nuclear state, which led to the famous Budapest Memorandum in 1994. That agreement was signed by the nuclear powers, that is, the United States, Great Britain, Russia and Ukraine. Article 2 talks very specifically about the recognition of Ukraine's territorial integrity, in other words, respect for its borders.

There is the fact that the Crimea became part of Ukraine somewhat accidentally. We know the story of how Mr. Khruchtchev famously gave it away in 1954, and so on. Nonetheless, when it comes to the Soviet Union and also Yugoslavia, this is now international law. The implosion took into account internal boundaries. The Crimea was part of Soviet Ukraine and therefore became part of independent Ukraine.

International law experts may question to what extent that article has the force of law, but the Ukrainian authorities have certainly interpreted and understood it that way.

I am speaking a little bit outside my area of expertise here, but it is abundantly clear that if this violation of international law, that is, state borders, is accepted de facto, there will be considerable repercussions for nuclearization or nuclear proliferation in states that are being asked to actually abandon their arsenals.

[Hélène Laverdière, NDP, Laurier—Sainte-Marie, QC]

Thank you.

You said that dual citizenship was not allowed by Ukraine. In the past few days, we have been hearing about official Russian representatives distributing passports in the Crimea.

Do you know how many people have accepted a passport and if that means that those people are prepared to renounce their citizenship? If you could give us more information on that, it would be appreciated.

[Dr. Dominique Arel]

That strategy was first used at the time of the 2008 war in Georgia, if not before, when it became clear that Russia had widely distributed passports to residents in Abkhazia and Ossetia. Those two territories, which subsequently became officially independent, were de facto reannexed by Russia. There were rumours circulating at that time that passports were also being distributed in the Crimea. Taras can certainly speak to that.

In the Crimea, there were obviously Russian personnel present. In Sebastopol, all this was legal. Russia has a sort of extraterritorial base there. With respect to dual citizenship, Ukraine stated its refusal very clearly at the time of independence, which means that our Canadian-Ukrainian colleagues cannot obtain Ukrainian nationality without losing their Canadian nationality. It is important we do not start making distinctions, precisely to prevent the Russian government from someday using the argument that it is using today. As I have already said, this is a two-sided argument, that is, it wants to protect its citizens, who are, in principle, relatively few, and also its compatriots, but who are those compatriots? We get into a legal limbo there. There are no clear numbers on that because it is illegal.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

Mr. Goldring, sir, you have seven minutes.

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Thank you very much for appearing here today in troubling times for Ukraine, and indeed I believe for the entire world, as we wrestle with the fundamental element of international understanding of territorial integrity and the expectation of not being invaded by foreign troops, and how to countenance that, short of all-out war. How do we do it?

One of the issues, when I was at Euromaidan in December, was heartening. It might be a minor issue, given the seriousness of the circumstances in Crimea, but I think it's an important one. It's linguistic inclusivity, and how.... Yes, it was in the Constitution but it was removed from the Constitution, to my understanding. That may have been a harsher way of looking at linguistic inclusivity.

But in terms of Euromaidan, there was representation there from Russian-speaking Ukrainians, Tatars, as well as Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians. I would think, having been to the eastern parts of Ukraine, that some form of inclusivity should be developed. Would that be something the government of Ukraine should be looking at as a way of at least somewhat appeasing those who are concerned about their linguistic rights as we move forward? Perhaps it might be somewhat of a form of appeasing some people, some factions anyway, if they were to make some pronouncement of setting up a committee to travel to parts of Ukraine to develop, from the people there, what the various people would like to see for linguistic inclusivity for the future, at least to show that they're addressing that concern.

As I said, it may not be the most urgent concern at this moment, but I think it's a concern that should be addressed at some time.

Taras, perhaps...?

[Dr. Taras Kuzio]

Specifically on the language issues, my Quebecker friend is going to be a bigger expert.

But certainly I agree with you. When I was there in December, as well, I met Lebanese restauranteurs from east Ukraine who were on the Maidan. This was very different from 2004, where it was east versus west. This was far more the people against the regime, in this particular case. There were non-Ukrainians on the Maidan.

On the specific question of inclusivity, of the last three presidents of Ukraine, I think Leonid Kuchma was the best in terms of this question. He was an east Ukrainian and he promoted what I would call a “soft” Ukrainian national identity, which was acceptable to both east Ukrainians and west Ukrainians.

As for the two more recent presidents, Viktor Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovych, Viktor Yushchenko was seen in east Ukraine as too hard-nosed on Ukrainian identity, whereas Viktor Yanukovych was too hard-nosed on Russophile-Sovietophile identity so he rubbed up the west Ukrainians. Hence, the national identity question became an issue in the Maidan here.

You need to go back to the more inclusive Kuchma era, which was the decade from 1994 to 2004, where it combined support for Ukrainian identity and language at the same time as having respect for the Russian language. That centrist balance is often the more difficult one, but that's what you need to go back to—

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

But there are also other minorities, the Romanian and Hungarian minorities. There's a complexity there that—

[Dr. Taras Kuzio]

They're very small compared with Russian....

[Peter Goldring, Conservative, Edmonton East, AB]

Would you comment on that, Dominique?

[Dr. Dominique Arel]

Well, I happen to be from Quebec, but I have also studied language politics in Ukraine for a long time, for 20 to 25 years, perhaps because I'm from Quebec.

[A voice]

Maybe....

[Dr. Dominique Arel]

But inasmuch as the Russian state has been using that argument in the context of actually sending troops, it is not a footnote. It is something that needs to be addressed.

I wouldn't say “chaotic”, but in the high-pressure, extremely fast adoption of all these constitutional changes a weekend ago in parliament, the language law was terminated without debate, and that didn't go well, because symbolically...and it was presented as discrimination against Russian speakers. What I can say, having actually studied that language law that was passed two years ago, is that it was very controversial. We know how sensitive and controversial language laws and language politics can be. We have been living it in Quebec and in Canada for many decades, and it's never going away.

But there is one core principle. It's that you have to be respectful of the linguistic rights of the minority, but you have to create incentives for that minority to speak the majority language. In other words, it's not just about protecting the rights of Russian speakers. It's about Russian speakers in certain conditions, such as making a career, and certainly a career in politics or in business, having incentives and going to school to speak Ukrainian in a certain context, so that you have a truly bilingual situation. The last law did not provide that.

I can't go into the details, but basically it was all declarative. Russian speakers would never have to use Ukrainian, which is why it didn't go well, but of course abolishing it without debate in the context of some kind of revolution or rebellion was not the way to go. Actually, Acting President Turchynov vetoed the termination of the law and said, “We need a new law, but we need to do it right.” Of course, it doesn't matter to Russian discourse, but this is what's happening on the ground.

On the issue of inclusivity—and I would submit that perhaps this is something that Canada can contribute in closed-door negotiations, informally—it would seem to me to be imperative that the government in Ukraine be a government of national unity, with representatives of eastern Ukraine. The current government, with the exception of the minister of the interior, is exclusively from central or western Ukraine. But in the last few days, very important what I will call “businessmen”—I will not use the word “oligarch”, because the connotation is not good. Very important businessmen in eastern Ukraine, Russian speakers, have come out publicly in favour of the unity—

[Dr. Taras Kuzio]

And Jewish as well.

[Dr. Dominique Arel]

And Jewish—I didn't even know about the Jewish part. That adds to the inclusivity.

They have accepted to take over the governorship of Donetsk, for Mr. Taruta, and of Dnipropetrovsk, for Mr. Kolomoisky. In addition, if a few ministers, particularly on economic matters, could be integrated into the government, that would certainly go a long way towards inclusivity.

[The Chair, Conservative, Dean Allison]

Thank you very much.

That's all the time we have. We're going to finish off the first round with Ms. Duncan.

Welcome to the committee. You have seven minutes.

[Kirsty Duncan, Liberal, Etobicoke North, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to both of you for the historical perspectives. We're grateful for your expertise.

In your opinion, what recommendations do you have for the Canadian government here? What do you suggest we do, aside from what's already been done?

[Dr. Taras Kuzio]

Certainly if the hostilities get worse in the next day or two, as the news reports today do indicate, that obviously means that Vladimir Putin is not listening to western condemnations, and you at the very least need to throw Russia out of the G-8; at the very least.

But I think the best way to kind of help Ukraine at this moment, if that's the right way of putting it, is to try to ensure that the new government, the new leadership in the country, is a success story, because that sends a signal that there isn't just the Putin model of autocracy with its lack of the rule of law for the state. There is another model for the population.

I think this particular government is in very dire straits. They inherited a country where everything has been totally stolen from the cupboard. I mean, Canada is not a member of the European Union, but certainly it would be tremendously important to get the association agreement signed, and Canada can give moral, diplomatic support on that.

Certainly Canada I think can help on questions that Dominique has talked about, the post-crisis rebuilding of the country. You have tremendous expertise on the nationality question, for example, and on language questions.

The Soviet-inherited culture unfortunately is not very good at compromise. That culture of compromise is one that Canada can help to promote. To give one concrete example, one of the problems of the Ukrainian presidential election was always that in the second round, it was a candidate from the west and a candidate from the east. When one candidate won, it was winner-takes-all, which created resentment in the other parts of the country. Let's have a system where if the president is elected by western central Ukraine, he or she appoints the prime minister from east Ukraine, and vice versa.

The questions of national integration, which are very closely linked to democracy in Ukraine, are crucial questions, as are those of the rule of law. There are so many other areas that need helping out in Ukraine. I think one area where Canada as a NATO member can help out is in the area of security reform. The military on this occasion, as in the Orange Revolution, refused to come out and shoot protesters. The reason that was the case was thanks to NATO's partnership for peace program.

The Ukrainian military has changed. It's no longer a Soviet institution. It refused to shoot people 10 years ago and it refuses to shoot people today. The other institutions—the police, the security service, and the prosecutor's office—are still Soviet, and they need heavy-duty reform.