ANALYSIS: Hard lessons for Our Ukraine in Donetsk (11/16/03)

ANALYSIS

Hard lessons for Our Ukraine in Donetsk

by Jan Maksymiuk
RFE/RL Newsline

The Our Ukraine bloc led by Viktor Yushchenko failed to hold a congress of democratic forces in Donetsk as planned on October 31. After arriving in Donetsk that day, Mr. Yushchenko and his supporters were confronted by hostile crowds at the airport and in downtown Donetsk in what looked like a highly coordinated effort to prevent the Our Ukraine gathering and to fan anti-Yushchenko sentiment in the city.

The entire city was adorned with billboards showing Mr. Yushchenko in a Nazi uniform extending his hand in a Nazi salute and calling for the "purity of the nation." Some 1,500 mainly young and drunk people filled the planned venue and effectively prevented Our Ukraine from holding the congress. Neither the police nor officers of the Security Service of Ukraine did anything to stop them.

Mr. Yushchenko accused the presidential administration in Kyiv of organizing this obstruction but, judging by many press reports on what happened in Donetsk on October 31, the truth might be more complex.

Mr. Yushchenko, 49, is Ukraine's most popular politician and a sure contender in the presidential election that is expected to be held on October 31, 2004. He has very strong support in western Ukraine and quite good backing in the center of the country, but only scant support in the eastern regions such as Dnipropetrovsk, Donetsk and Luhanske. These are overwhelmingly Russian-speaking regions, where people treat "Ukrainian-speaking nationalists" from western Ukraine with distrust, to say the least.

Though he was born in Sumy Oblast in northeastern Ukraine and avoids any radicalism on the sensitive language issue, Mr. Yushchenko is nevertheless perceived in the traditionally pro-Russian eastern Ukraine as a "nationalist." The congress in Donetsk was intended to change this image and allow Mr. Yushchenko to gain a foothold in the region, which is controlled both economically and politically by a group of oligarchs known as the Donetsk clan.

Neither President Leonid Kuchma nor Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, a member of the Donetsk clan, are interested in allowing Mr. Yushchenko to become president in 2004. Mr. Kuchma, who is forbidden by the Constitution of Ukraine from running for a third consecutive term, is now confronted with the difficult task of finding a successor who could guarantee him a quiet retirement. Obviously, Mr. Yushchenko is not his choice.

According to many observers, Mr. Yanukovych himself might be harboring presidential ambitions. Therefore, it is no wonder that both the presidential administration headed by Social Democratic Party-United leader Viktor Medvedchuk and Mr. Yanukovych might be vitally interested in preventing Mr. Yushchenko from reaching the electorate in Ukraine. A confidential instruction by the presidential administration to the heads of oblast administrations - which was published by some Ukrainian newspapers and presented personally by Mr. Yushchenko on RFE/RL on October 31 - obliges oblast chairmen to take countermeasures to "minimize the public and political resonance" of democratic forums organized by Our Ukraine in their regions. The events in Donetsk on October 31, according to many observers, developed in accordance with this instruction.

According to many Ukrainian publications, including the Ukrainska Pravda website and the Grani weekly, the plan of "countermeasures" against Mr. Yushchenko in Donetsk was coordinated by Donetsk Oblast Council Chairman Borys Kolesnykov, Donetsk Oblast Chairman Anatolii Blizniuk and Donetsk Oblast Vice-Chairman Vasyl Dzharta.

The entire "anti-Yushchenko operation" was also allegedly supported by Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine's richest oligarch, whom many call the "real boss" of Donetsk and the backbone of the Donetsk clan.

The anti-Yushchenko groups in Donetsk consisted mainly of students from colleges and vocational-training schools, and outdoor-market vendors. Some of the students were reportedly paid 20-40 hrv ($3.75-$7.50) for participating in the anti-Yushchenko action. Most of them were treated to free beer and, to a lesser extent, free vodka. Vendors were reportedly released from paying market fees for three days. Additionally, they were threatened with losing their market stalls if they failed to appear at the rally.

Every group of 10 to 15 anti-Yushchenko demonstrators had a "leader" - usually a young man with a shaved head - who told them what anti-Yushchenko slogans to shout and when. Grani called these young men "Akhmetovjugend," but did not provide more details about their organizational affiliation.

"All who are today involved in politics and want to feel spicy sensations, while not anticipating the reaction of the Ukrainian people to this, should most likely secure themselves with pampers instead of engaging themselves in politics," Prime Minister Mr. Yanukovych commented on the Donetsk events, adding that Our Ukraine forgot to "measure the temperature" in the city before it went to hold a congress there.

Ukrainian commentators perceive this comment as Mr. Yanukovych's unambiguous approval for how the Donetsk authorities welcomed Mr. Yushchenko in the city. Moreover, according to some reports later corroborated by Mr. Yushchenko, the firm that placed billboards with the Our Ukraine leader in a Nazi uniform belongs to Mr. Yanukovych's son. At first glance, it might appear that Mr. Yanukovych emerged as the winner of this clash with Mr. Yushchenko in Donetsk, which has been seen by many as an unofficial inauguration of the 2004 presidential election campaign in Ukraine.

However, some aspects of the anti-Yushchenko hullabaloo in Donetsk might be extremely uncomfortable with Mr. Yanukovych as a potential rival of Mr. Yushchenko in the presidential election. For example, many anti-Yushchenko demonstrators waved Russian flags and shouted insulting remarks about the Ukrainian language. These two things alone, even apart from the heavy-handed orchestration of "popular protest" in Donetsk against Mr. Yushchenko, hardly present Mr. Yanukovych in a positive light, as a potential leader to be accepted by most Ukrainians. After all, a national leader should not be associated with any denigration of the indigenous language or culture of the country he runs or seeks to run.

Thus, it seems that someone, either in the Donetsk clan or in the presidential administration, intentionally "overstretched" the anti-Yushchenko protest in Donetsk "in the eastern direction" in order to harm Mr. Yanukovych's chances of being chosen by President Kuchma as a successor.

Mr. Yushchenko's lesson from Donetsk is bitter. Some even speculated that he might be able to strike a deal with the Donetsk oligarchs ahead of the presidential election. For example, they could support the our Ukraine leader's presidential bid, while he, after being elected president, would appoint a prime minister proposed by them. Now it is clear that Mr. Yushchenko and the Donetsk oligarchs are at war, and he cannot count on tapping their financial resources or using their political clout in eastern Ukraine.

Our Ukraine's alliance with a political force that is not seen in eastern Ukraine as a "nationalist" and/or "anti-Russian" now seems to be a must if Mr. Yushchenko wants to be a serious presidential rival to the candidate fielded by the "party of power" and the oligarchs.

Since Our Ukraine's election alliance with the Communist Party of Petro Symonenko seems to be one of the least-probable political developments in Ukraine, one should now expect a warming of relations between Mr. Yushchenko and Oleksander Moroz, leader of the Socialist Party of Ukraine.

Jan Maksymiuk is the Belarus, Ukraine and Poland specialist on the staff of RFE/RL Newsline.

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