Ambassador to Canada now represents the new Ukraine (03/13/05)

Ambassador to Canada now represents the new Ukraine

by Christopher Guly
Special to The Ukrainian Weekly

OTTAWA - On Parliament Hill it's understood that a week in politics can sometimes feel like a lifetime for a government. Just ask Prime Minister Paul Martin and his Liberal caucus, which holds fewer seats than the three opposition parties in the House of Commons. In the capital's diplomatic circles, time is not usually a sensitive issue - unless you happen to be the ambassador from a country that's undergone an enormous transformation and entered what many now hail as a new era. Just ask Mykola Maimeskul, who was appointed Ukraine's ambassador to Canada on March 20, 2004.

Within a year, his longtime colleague Viktor Yushchenko went from being an opposition leader - largely unknown in the rest of the world - to joining a stellar league of presidents, including the Czech Republic's Vaclav Havel and Poland's Lech Walesa, of other former Soviet-bloc countries who have become global symbols of democracy and freedom.

Not long ago, Mr. Maimeskul reported to President Leonid Kuchma, the man who appointed him Ukraine's ambassador to Canada and who could now face a criminal investigation on charges of corruption as well as on the still unsolved murder of journalist Heorhii Gongadze nearly five years ago.

Now, Mr. Maimeskul reports to President Yushchenko.

When asked whether he ever thought that the man he has known for over a decade would become Ukraine's president, the 56-year-old, Odesa-born ambassador paused. "That's a very interesting question - a very interesting question," said Mr. Maimeskul, as he sat back in a red velvet chair in a main-floor sitting room at the Embassy in downtown Ottawa.

"A few years ago, possibly not. But in the last two years, yes," he replied.

The ambassador explained that he changed his opinion as he watched Ukraine's opposition parties, including Mr. Yushchenko's Our Ukraine, gain momentum and because of Mr. Yushchenko's passion.

"What I love very much about Viktor Yushchenko is his very heartfelt sincerity and patriotism toward Ukraine," said Mr. Maimeskul, who holds a Ph.D. in international relations from Taras Shevchenko State University in Kyiv.

Though the two men haven't seen each other since a chance meeting at Kyiv's Boryspil Airport almost two years ago, their paths have crossed many times.

Indeed, they made their first visit to Canada at a special G-7 economic conference on Ukraine held in Winnipeg during the autumn of 1994. Mr. Maimeskul attended as head of the international economic cooperation department at Ukraine's Foreign Affairs Ministry; Mr. Yushchenko, as head of the National Bank of Ukraine.

A few years later, Mr. Maimeskul, as Ukraine's ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, was involved in behind-the-scenes organizing for the annual World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, which Mr. Yushchenko attended, as he did last month.

Now, Mr. Maimeskul is working with Canadian government officials to make Mr. Yushchenko's first official visit to Canada as Ukraine's newly elected President a reality. (Mr. Yushchenko last visited Canada in March 2003.)

Judging by the attention Ukraine has received in Canada, the ambassador knows that much attention will be devoted to President Yushchenko the moment he steps onto Canadian soil.

Consider the past few months.

The Canadian government organized a mission headed by former Prime Minister John Turner that sent nearly 500 official observers - not to mention the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, which dispatched hundreds - to monitor the repeat second round of voting in the presidential election on December 26.

Then, last month Governor General Adrienne Clarkson, who represents Queen Elizabeth II as head of state in Canada, was present at President Yushchenko's January 23 inauguration in Kyiv, sitting next to his wife, Katya, at his swearing-in ceremony and sitting next to him at his inaugural lunch, and standing next to Mr. Havel on Maidan Nezalezhnosty (Independence Square) when Mr. Yushchenko spoke to Ukrainians for the first time as their president.

In an op-ed article recently published in The Ottawa Citizen, the governor general wrote that Mr. Yushchenko told her "you probably underestimate how important it is that Canada be represented here." Said Madame Clarkson: "It was very moving to me to understand how they felt that our country, which has the largest Ukrainian diaspora in the world, could make such a difference, morally and emotionally."

Mr. Maimeskul certainly appreciates how important it is for him to represent Ukraine here.

Throughout an over hour-long conversation, he repeatedly heaped praise on Canada and recalled with pride his appearance on December 21, 2004, at the Ottawa Congress Center where the Canadian election observers - about one-third of them of Ukrainian descent, he noted - had gathered prior to leaving for Ukraine.

Speaking in English, French and Ukrainian, he told them they would witness "the birth of a new Ukraine" and that the December 26, 2004, vote was "a crucial moment in the history of my nation."

CanWest News Service, which covered the ambassador's address, reported that his remarks earned him a loud standing ovation.

But it was one line that resonates still. "Friends, I envy you," he said.

Certainly, for a few tense weeks between the second round of voting in the presidential election on November 21 and the Supreme Court-ordered repeat second-round vote on December 26, Ambassador Maimeskul was in an unenviable position - a "difficult situation," as he puts it.

As the Orange Revolution exploded onto Kyiv's Independence Square, more than 500 Ukrainian diplomats stationed around the world signed an "open declaration" to "protest against what has become the transformation of the presidential elections of 2004 into a disgraceful war against the people of Ukraine ... an expression of protest against the violation of our citizens' right to elect a president by democratic means.

"We are convinced that our silence today, in the long term, would continue to undermine and erode the authority of our state."

At least four diplomats from the Embassy of Ukraine in Washington signed the statement, as did three from the Ukrainian Consulate General in Toronto and four from the Embassy in Ottawa. Mr. Maimeskul was not among them.

But while his signature does not appear on the declaration, the ambassador points out that he was far from silent when accusations of fraudulent election activity were first reported from Ukraine following the November 21 vote.

He made himself available to the Canadian media to deliver a straightforward message: "I said these elections are vital for Ukrainian democracy and [that the] choice of the majority should be accepted - but only if this choice was made in a fair and open manner, and the votes were counted fairly. If it's not the case, there is a right to appeal to the Supreme Court of Ukraine for its final judgment."

About 275 Ukrainian nationals voted at a poll set up at the Ukrainian embassy in Ottawa on November 21. The Consulate in Toronto attracted an estimated 3,000 voters. Between 90 and 95 percent of the votes were cast for Mr. Yushchenko, said Ambassador Maimeskul, who added that the Canadian polling process went smoothly.

"We thought the same would be true in Ukraine, but it was not the case - what happened was not honest. For me as a citizen, it was absolutely unacceptable," he stated.

He explained that he publicly called on Ukraine's Central Election Commission to investigate "each case of irregularity" cited by international election observers.

On December 1 - the 14th anniversary of the historic Ukrainian referendum - Mr. Maimeskul also appeared before the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs to answer questions about what the chairman, Sen. Peter Stollery, described as the "crisis in Ukraine."

Speaking in French, the ambassador called it a "dramatic situation," but was quite candid in his opening remarks.

"I must admit that I do not feel very comfortable sitting in this room at a time when hundreds of thousand of Ukrainians are marching in the cold streets of Kyiv and other cities in Ukraine," he said.

"They are not indifferent to what is happening in their country, their principles do not allow them to accept the very thought that their choice might have been misrepresented, and they want a better future for their children," noted Mr. Maimeskul.

Would he have joined the massive crowd that gathered on the maidan to protest the tainted results from the November 21 election, had he been in Ukraine?

"Absolutely - every day, because I lived not very far, and many of my friends were there," said the diminutive ambassador, whose 5-foot-4-inch frame becomes animated with enthusiasm - the same kind displayed on the smile that creeps on Citizen Maimeskul's face at the mere thought.

But when asked what impact an uncontested November 21 victory for former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych would have had on his career as Ukraine's chief representative in Canada, Ambassador Maimeskul returned to the conversation as the consummate diplomat.

"That's a virtual question," he said. "We have the reality and I am happy with this reality."

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