Following is an abridged version of a speech by U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt on the future of U.S.-Ukraine relations. He spoke on March 11 at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy. The text of his remarks was released by the U.S. Embassy Kyiv.
… It is a special privilege any time I am able to sit down and speak with Ukrainian young people, because you really are the foundation on which America’s hopes for building a modern, democratic, European state here rest – especially because of the special relationship that the [university] president alluded to between the Ukrainian diaspora in the United States and Americans who have been so supportive of Kyiv-Mohyla and the renaissance that this institution has gone through since Ukrainian independence. So it really is my honor to be here with you today.
… I really, truly want to have a conversation. … So I would encourage people not only to put questions to me, but really let me know what I’m missing. The foundation of American policy toward Ukraine is support to the people of Ukraine. You are the ones who will make the decisions about your own future, so I’m eager to use this afternoon as an opportunity to continue that conversation…
It’s been three years almost now since the first time I came to speak at Kyiv-Mohyla, and what a three years it’s been – an extraordinarily historic period in this country’s evolution. Certainly, from where I sit, a period that has created the best possibility that Ukraine has ever had to anchor itself in Europe, in European institutions, in European values, and those are goals that the United States emphatically shares. …
You’ve had three good elections – the freest elections that Ukraine has ever had. You’ve selected a new Rada, which includes … a number of Kyiv-Mohyla graduates, which has a critical mass of young people who are new to politics and are committed to building democratic institutions that are answerable to the Ukrainian people, so that government serves the citizens and not the other way around. You’ve implemented your Association Agreement – the big question mark that hung over Ukrainian politics in those days three years ago has now been answered. Ukraine is anchored in European institutions through your signature of the Association Agreement, your DCFTA [Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement], and the clear commitment to move toward European values and European standards of rule of law.
You’ve stabilized your economy, you’ve rebuilt your reserves, you’ve stuck to your IMF agreements. As painful as that’s been, it’s incredibly important as a demonstration of the Ukrainian leadership’s commitment to root out the habits of corruption that have done so much in the past to hold this country back. And you’ve begun to build new institutions – none more important, I would argue, than the new patrol police, which the United States has helped to establish, and which plays such an important role in my mind in helping to rebuild the faith that the Ukrainian people have in their government institutions, which is, I think, one of the most valuable assets that the patrol police has managed to establish – that confidence, and that trust. You can’t put a price tag on it, but it is key to building democratic governance and helping to build a sustainable future for this country.
… I honestly believe that 2016 should be the year in which Ukraine – Ukraine’s leaders, Ukraine’s politicians, the government, the president, and all of you – can build the institutions and the practices which guarantee that there is no going back, that Ukraine won’t need another revolution, that there won’t be further cause to doubt Ukraine’s place in Europe and among the European family of nations, to make the changes that have occurred in this country irreversible, and to guarantee that Ukraine never again will have to suffer under the kind of authoritarian, post-Soviet regime that characterized the Yanukovych period when I first arrived here.
You know, one of the great privileges of my job is that I get to travel around Ukraine a lot. … And one of the most powerful impressions that you take away from those travels is the Ukrainian people. The greatest strength of this country is its human capital – its civil society organizations, your culture, your pride, the deep sense of patriotism that the bitter experience of the past two years has helped to reinforce. That can’t be taken away from you. And it’s what makes me so optimistic about Ukraine’s long-term future. … Ukraine should be a very wealthy country. You have all the ingredients in terms of human capital, technological expertise, natural resources – some of the most bountiful agricultural lands that God has placed anywhere on the globe. What you have lacked is governance, and for me, that is the key of the Revolution of Dignity – the promise of better governance that unlocks the potential of this country.
… I suspect many of you will say that reform hasn’t moved fast enough. I hear that from Ukrainians every day. What is most striking to me though, and what’s important to me, is not to lose track of the progress that has been made – to recognize the improvements that have occurred, and we’ve talked about some of them. You can also look at things like the energy sector, the fact that this is the first winter in the history of independent Ukraine when you’ve bought no gas from Gazprom. You have truly achieved energy independence. And I think that the challenge is not to lose your optimism, your confidence that you can prevail in this effort.
I spoke to one member of the Rada – one of these young members of the Rada – and they said to me, “You know, Ambassador, this is like running a marathon, but the problem is every time you think you’re running the last lap, somebody rings the bell and says, ‘no, you’ve got one more lap that you have to run.’” And my message to you is to be confident that if you do that, if you stick to the path of reform, the United States, your other international partners in the G-7 will stand with you, because we want to see Ukraine succeed. We, the United States, have a powerful interest in Ukraine’s long-term success. As Vice-President [Joe] Biden has said, you can’t have a Europe whole, free and at peace unless Ukraine is whole, and free, and at peace. So we are committed to assisting you in this effort, but the hard work has to be done by Ukrainians. More than anybody else, it needs to be done by the people in this room – by the new generation who are coming into politics, people who have no experience with Ukraine’s terrible Soviet history, who come out of a European tradition, and who are committed to building in this society the same kind of democratic, rule-of-law institutions that have brought prosperity to so much of the rest of Europe.
… In this process of consolidating reform in 2016, I think one of the key benchmarks will be the work that’s being done on constitutional reform and decentralization, which has become very political and very controversial in the Rada. But as a practical matter, when I talk to Ukrainians and especially when I travel to cities – whether it’s Lviv, or Vinnytsia, or Dnipropetrovsk, or Kharkiv – you talk to local people and they have an instinctive interest in decentralization. They say yes, we should be able to make our own choices, whether it’s on police, or education, or road maintenance, or all the other things that are part of running a city or a community. So I think one of the tasks for this year is to consolidate this process of decentralization, to build capacity.
I don’t worry about the ability of the administrations in Kyiv or Lviv or Vinnytsia to manage the responsibilities and the resources that come with decentralization, but what about Sloviansk? What about small cities in Zakarpatska [Oblast]? That’s where the real challenge is going to be faced. In that regard, the United States has been a strong partner. Our USAID is committed to working with municipalities to help them execute these responsibilities. But these are all important parts of delivering governance, and it comes back to that fundamental principle that I started with. To build a Ukrainian government that exists not to enrich one family, that exists not to protect particular oligarchic clans, but that exists to serve the interests and desires and hopes of 45 million Ukrainians. I think that goal is more within reach today than it has ever been before. It’s also a goal that the Ukrainian people deeply deserve, because you’ve worked very, very hard for it.
The other issue that I want to say a brief word on – and I’m sure it will come up – relates to the war in the east and Russia. The United States is very clear that there is a victim and an aggressor in this conflict. One of the things that will stick with me from my time in Ukraine is an impression of the extraordinary courage that Ukrainian soldiers, that Ukrainian civil society, Ukrainian volunteers have demonstrated in fending off this war of aggression that the Kremlin brought to your country. I think the challenge now is to consolidate peace through the Minsk agreement, to deliver good governance for all of Ukraine, to include the occupied territories.
I met this morning with a Ukrainian journalist – a woman from Luhansk – who was held hostage for more than a year, and we were talking about her experience while she was in captivity and the terrible suffering that she went through. But she also described to me her experience as a prisoner, and how her captors were trying to convince her that she needed to understand that Russian speakers were in danger in Ukraine, that NATO battalions were threatening Ukraine. And she said to me at one point, “I almost started to doubt myself, because they were so insistent.” And I think what that gets at is the point that ultimately the greatest weapon in Ukraine’s confrontation with the Kremlin is right here in this room. It’s the success that you all are going to achieve in building a democratic, rule-of-law society, which puts to a lie all of the propaganda that has come out of the Kremlin and out of its agents in DNR and LNR to mischaracterize what you stand for and what you are trying to achieve.
I am very confident that that goal is within reach. I’m also confident that the United States, our European allies – France and Germany as leaders of the Normandy group – will stand with Ukraine also. As long as you continue to implement your side of the Minsk bargain, we will make sure that Russia is held to account for what it has done, its violation of your territorial integrity, first in Crimea with the invasion, and thereafter with this terrible, terrible war which has produced more than 9,000 casualties in Donbas. …