December 21, 2010

Ukraine's Current Status Quo: Prosperity, Freedom, and Geopolitical Location

    A new wave of political prosecutions, including investigation of the Orange Revolutionary and former Prime  Minister Yulia Tymoshenko (BYuT), provides a clear-cut evidence that the Yanukovych administration curb a political freedom by prosecuting Ukraine's political opposition. The Yanukovych administration steps on a very slippery slope of their policy. If they slip, Ukraine will become a country with curbed civil liberties and human rights like Russia. While the current policy costs Ukrainains their political freedom, it does not come for free to President Yanukovych (POR). He is loosing public support. Kuzio (2010) writes that Yanukovych can increase his public support if he can increase social welfare, reduce inflation and unemployment. I agree that President Yanukovych can play a card of a policy trade-off between freedom and prosperity. In other words, President Yanukovych can get away with his policy by gaining public support if his policy leads to economic prosperity. The Yanukovych administration does not have to go too far in a search for a policy template. They can use their previous experience from the Kuchma administration. Anyways, majority of the Yanukovych administration are the Kuchmists. Or they can follow the Putin’s policy. Either way Ukraine’s economic prosperity will come at the price of political freedom as it happened in Russia.



    In 2009 Ukraine was free as it had never been before. The Polity Score that measures the level of political freedom (e.g. 0 denotes absolute autocracy and 20 denotes consolidated democracy) was 16.36 for Ukraine and 9.22 for the rest of the FSU countries (Polity IV, 2009). Ordinary Ukrainians enjoyed a higher level of political and economic freedom than Belarusians and Russians. Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine were moving in different directions. Belarus and Russia slipped into autocracy. Ukraine became one of the freest countries in the FSU region (Freedom House, 2009). Also, the annual research report “Nations in Transit” released by Freedom House in June 2009 demonstrated that Ukraine’s quality of political institutions was above that of the FSU and Russia. Ukraine had a more independent judiciary than Russia and the rest of the FSU. The independence of mass media and the development of the civil society were very close to the levels in developed nations. The democratic institutions at both state and province were also of better quality. The electoral process was very transparent and up to democratic standards. The rule of law, the civil and the political rights were much stronger in Ukraine than anywhere else in the FSU. Overall, the report showed Ukraine as a free state with a consolidating democracy as compared to non-free and authoritarian Russia and the rest of the FSU, except the Baltic States. Unfortunately, the situation has changed drastically since the Party of Regions came to power.  


    Now the Yanukovych administration is changing a political status quo for the worse. They are prosecuting the political opposition and curb individual political freedom. Eventually, President Yanykovych will have to offer a compensation for his current misbehavior if he wants to retain his public support. Will President Yanukovych try to trade economic stability with Ukrainians for their liberties? Kuzio (2010) writes that Ukrainians cannot be bought off. He writes that “Ukraine is not Russia, where abundant deposits of raw materials are exported and provide a large amount of support for the state budget. Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has been fortunate in being able to buy off Russians by trading (economic) stability for democracy through record-high oil and gas prices throughout most of this decade”. Even if it is true, it does not mean that President Yanukovych will not attempt to use the policy trade-off.


    Will it be a wrong policy? Yes. Will it stop the Yanukovych administration? No. His administration that consists of the Kuchmists knows how wrong policy can pay off. The Kuchma administration gravitated towards Putin’s standards of media and political freedom during the 2004 presidential campaign. Unlike Russia, the authoritarian glitch in the Kuchma administration triggered the Kuchmagate and the Orange Revolution. As a result, Mr. Kuchma and his protégé, Mr. Yanukovych, were ousted from the government by the Orange Revolution. While the Yanukovych administration knows how wrong policy can pay off, the long-term iron grip on the political power demonstrated by Belarus’ Lukashenka, Russia’s Putin, Turkmenistan’s Niyazov, Kazakhstan’s Nazarbaev, and Azerbaijan’s Aliev tell them that it can be done. It is a rare case when Ukraine’s geopolitical position is its curse. If Ukraine were located somewhere in the Western Europe, the Ukrainian government and public would be less exposed to the past and modern period of the totalitarianism of the former Soviet Union region.

December 16, 2010

The Yanukovych Administration Unleashes a Full-Blown Political Terror

Ukraine's Office of General Prosecutor launched investigation against Mrs. Yulia Tymoshenko, former Prime Minister (BYuT), on embezzlement charges. Kyivpost writes that "Tymoshenko said after questioning Wednesday that the probe centres around her alleged misspending of $280 million (€200 million) received for the sale of carbon credits under the Kyoto protocol". Since the prosecution considers her flight risk, she cannot travel overseas.
Her political party, BYuT, has already reacted to a new twist in the series of political prosecutions by blocking the Parliament and fighting with the Regionals (Party of Regions) there. Mrs. Tymoshenko says that President Yanykovych controls her investigation. It seems to be true that the Office of General Prosecutor receives orders from the Yanukovych administration. Many allies of Mrs. Tymoshenko are arrested or under investigation. Her former deputy and closest political ally, Oleksandr Turchinov, is under investigation. The General Prosecutor issued the arrest warrant for Bohdan Danylyshyn who was Minister of Economy in the Tymoshenko government. Mr. Lutsenko, the former Minister of Interior, is under the investigation on embezzlementt charges too. Mr. Lutshenko allegedly raised a salary of his personal driver by rigging the payroll system.
 Mrs. Tymoshenko's allies find themselves in a circle of fire. The political terror becomes a mundane part of Ukraine's reality with a full-blown prosecution of anyone affiliated with the political opposition. The Yanukovych administration does not spare anyone. It does not matter whether it is a president of the Donetsk university opposing a real estate development on the public property of his school or it is a group of Kharkiv residents opposing a real estate development of the public park. The Yanukovych administration is drunk with the power. The recent political prosecutions have already topped the "achievements" of the Kuchma administration. Shall we witness a revival of the seemingly forgotten year of 1937 from the Soviet history? It is simply unacceptable. I do not understand why the rest of the world does not react to the political terror in Ukraine. 
The Yanukovych administration, however, gambles with the Tymoshenko case. It is not the first time that Mrs. Tymoshenko is under investigation. The Kuchma administration went even further by throwing her in the jail. But the political prosecution made Mrs. Tymoshenko the victim of the political terror in the eyes of Ukrainian voters. As a result, she lead the Orange Revolution and rose to the power. If the charges do not stick again, the Yanukovych administration can step in the same river twice.   

December 15, 2010

Chernobyl as Tourist Hot Spot

The Wall Street Journal writes that Ukraine's government will turn Chernobyl into the official tourist spot for the upcoming EURO 2012. "Ukraine's Emergency Situations Ministry said Monday it is working on a plan to open the area around the defunct plant—where a reactor exploded on April 26, 1986, spreading radiation across the then-Soviet states of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia—to visitors starting next month.The ministry said radiation levels in certain parts of the so-called exclusion zone, which stretches 30 kilometers (19 miles) around the exploded reactor, were now returning to normal levels."
I am not sure whether it is a really cool place to go on a tour. It is a deserted city. Though it could be a hot spot for the extreme tourism. You can play paintball there or do a base-jumping from the roof of the nuclear power plant. It will be interesting to see what revenues the Chernobyl will generate in 2012. By the way, several tourist companies have already been running the unofficial Chernobyl tours. So the government will just make it de jure.


December 6, 2010

Sex Slaves and Human Trafficking... From Ukraine to USA

MSNBC's Meredith Vieira goes inside the human trafficking and underground prostitution scene in the United States in “MSNBC Undercover: Sex Slaves in America,” which premiered Monday, Dec. 3 on MSNBC. One episode is about two Ukrainian "Work & Travel" students who looked forward to working in a restaraunt in Virginia Beach, VA but they were forced to work in the strip club in Detroit, MI.  Here is a link to the video.
Unfortunately, the human trafficking is rampant in Ukraine and other Eastern European countries. It does not look like the government does anything to fight it.

December 3, 2010

Russia Will Host the Soccer World Cup 2018

Russia won the right to host the 2018 Soccer FIFA World Cup. Russia's Prime Minister Putin promised the FIFA that Russia would invest billions of dollars in stadiums, roads, hotels, and other infrastructure. Right now Mr. Putin says that Russia will spend about $10 billion. The KyivPost writes that Mr. Putin expects major companies to foot some of the bill.
Russia will have to build 13 stadiums and renovate three major stadiums, including Luzhniki. Mr. Putin project the cost of stadium construction to be about $4 billion. Russia proposed to host the World Cup in 13 major cities: Kaliningrad, Kazan, Krasnodar, Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Rostov-on-Don, St Petersburg, Samara, Saransk, Sochi, Volgograd, Yaroslavl, and Yekaterinburg.