Poroshenko’s self-assessment
Assessing his first year in office, President Poroshenko offered an uncharacteristically sober view in which he acknowledged disappointments with the government. He also stressed achievements, such as thwarting Russia’s attempts to split Ukraine. The evaluations and political plans came in a June 4 address to the Verkhovna Rada and a June 5 press conference. “I am often asked whether I’m satisfied with the work of the government. No. Am I satisfied with the work of the Verkhovna Rada? Also no, obviously. I’ll say more – I am dissatisfied with my own work,” Mr. Poroshenko said. Mr. Poroshenko confirmed that his government wouldn’t be able to return Crimea to Ukrainian control for at least a year, while insisting, “Crimea remains our top priority.” At the same time, he acknowledged the government had yet to prepare a strategy for returning Crimea – a document that was being preparing by the National Security and Defense Council.
He underscored that Ukraine’s armed forces must remain on guard for a possible full-scale Russian invasion of Ukrainian territory. A “colossal threat” also remains of wide-scale fighting conducted by Russian-backed forces, which currently include 14 battalion-tactical groups with more than 9,000 soldiers on Ukrainian territory, he said.As his biggest success, the president cited the government’s success in undermining the Russian government’s attempts to create a separatist Novorossiya state, encompassing the eight oblasts of southeastern Ukraine. “The Kremlin was counting on the bacilli planted by Russian intelligence services to provoke an epidemic of separatism in the eastern and southern oblasts, but that idea didn’t find support anywhere, including the Donbas,” he told the Verkhovna Rada. “Even in the temporarily occupied districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, the separatists are being kept in power only thanks to Russian bayonets.”
Celebrating, remembering
The Ukrainian government commemorated the start of its 25th year of independence from Moscow on August 24 by hosting a march of the nation’s top soldiers along the Khreshchatyk and awarding Anti-Terrorist Operation commanders honorary battle flags. Though it dropped the display of armaments and hardware as was the case in the previous year’s parade, the Ukrainian government emphasized the military theme, which remains relevant as Russian-backed terrorists continue to engage in daily attacks on Ukrainian military and civilian targets.
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President Bronislaw Komorowski of Poland addresses the Verkhovna Rada on April 9.
“It was you who made an attack deep into Ukraine impossible for the enemy, who – besides the Anschluss of Crimea and Sevastopol – tried, attempted and planned to annex at a minimum eight other Ukrainian regions in the framework of the so-called Novorossiya project,” Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said in a pre-Independence Day speech on August 22 to soldiers at the Chuhuyiv Airfield in the Kharkiv region. “It was you who freed from the occupants a large part of Ukrainian Donbas and contained the fighters in the southeastern districts of these two regions [Donetsk and Luhansk]. It’s you who, in tightly closing off the fighting lines, are holding the defense against the aggressor with an impenetrable fortress. Thanks to you, the price of a likely Russian attack became so high that even the most intoxicated Russian minds sobered up. But that doesn’t insure us against a large-scale escalation of military activity in the east, the likelihood of which grows with Independence Day.”
Speaking on August 24 during the March of Independence in central Kyiv, the president said: “Russian aggression has become a catalyst of our unity. We have been completely formed as a single Ukrainian political nation.” He emphasized that “today, we are stronger than yesterday. …We cannot be enslaved or broken. We were born free on our land. And we are ready to defend it until the end at any cost.” He added these words of caution: “We have to walk through the 25th year of independence as if we are on a thin ice. We should understand: the slightest misstep can be fatal. The war for independence still continues. And one can win it by combining defensive efforts, diplomatic skills, political responsibility and iron self-control.”
On November 28, Holodomor Remembrance Day, Mr. Poroshenko spoke of those he called “people of the truth,” who “broke through the tight blockage of deception and disinformation in which Moscow held Ukraine and the whole world for decades.” Among these people he cited Robert Conquest, James Mace, Lydia Kovalenko and Volodymyr Maniak. He continued: “The truth pierced its way to the people. See how Ukraine has changed over the last two, three, four years. According to today’s sociological research, 80 percent of Ukrainians consider the Holodomor an act of genocide. Such an assessment prevails throughout Ukraine without any exception – in the east and in the west.”
The president also pointed to a historic continuity: Russia’s “hatred of Ukraine and the uncontrollable desire to destroy us, Ukrainians, as a separate nation.” He added, “In this historical continuity, the Holodomor is nothing but a manifestation of a centuries-old hybrid war against Ukraine waged by Russia. Whether they take our grain or fire Grad rockets at our land, their goal remains the same and it is clear.”
Moving Westward
As Ukraine tried to move Westward during 2015, the Eastern Partnership summit in Riga on May 21-22 revealed the European Union had lost the boldness it demonstrated in Vilnius in November 2013, when its participants ostracized President Yanukovych for declining to sign the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement. After the military aggression demonstrated by the Russian government since then, EU leaders haddemonstrated heightened caution, refraining from any direct condemnations of Russia and mutedly encouraging the six post-Soviet member states on their Euro-integration efforts. In the summit’s joint declaration, the EU refrained from making clearer Ukraine’s prospects for membership, let alone offering visa-free travel regimes. For the first time, the declaration referred to “trilateral consultations” on the Ukraine-EU Free Trade Area, calling the January 1, 2016, launch date “provisional.”
The declaration “reads like a successful sting operation by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB),” Anders Aslund, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, wrote on May 26, describing the summit as a “disaster” for Ukraine. The consensus among numerous political observers was that Ukraine remains on track for Euro-integration, but both the Russians and the Ukrainians themselves had succeeded in dampening the enthusiasm. “The EU is tired of Ukraine’s desire to gain political results without real work,” said Bohdan Yaremenko, a Ukrainian diplomat and head of the Maidan Foreign Affairs Fund.
Andrey Kravchenko/UNIAN
Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko carries her files at the early morning session of the Verkhovna Rada on December 25, 2015, when the 2016 central budget was approved. Afterwards, she said she’s not sure if the International Monetary Fund will approve of the changes made.
However, the EU and Ukraine did sign a 1.8 billion-euro ($2 billion) loan deal to help revive Ukraine’s ailing economy. The Associated Press reported the agreement, part of the EU’s Macro-Financial Assistance (MFA) program, would require Ukraine to adopt a series of reforms, including anti-corruption measures, to remedy structural problems in its economy. The agreement brought the total amount of EU assistance to Ukraine in the past two years to about 6 billion euros. Ukraine’s Finance Minister Natalie Jaresko told journalists that the EU support was “critical” to her country. “This third macro-financial assistance package is the largest to date… and a testament to the EU’s belief that Ukraine can and will steer through this challenging period and progress along our path of reform and transformation,” she said.
Poland continued to be a strong supporter of Ukraine during 2015. On April 9, President Bronislaw Komorowski addressed the Verkhovna Rada, stating that Poland has “stretched out its hand to Ukraine and is doing everything – and will do everything – so that other states and peoples of the free Western world stretch their hands out to Ukraine as well.” According to RFE/RL, he also underscored that “Poland’s outstretched hand is not just an indication of the current political trend but our understanding of the historic processes turning Ukraine into an equal and extremely important partner and neighbor.” Without mentioning Russia by name, the Polish president pointed clearly at Moscow and stressed that the West must understand the importance of Ukraine’s security. “One cannot tolerate that the aggressor’s soldiers, tanks, armored personnel carriers and anti-aircraft installations are present in Ukraine’s east,” he said, adding that “only the blind cannot see their lies today.”
President Komorowski also said that European Union nations recognize Ukraine’s territory in borders established by 1991, reiterating the EU’s refusal to accept the annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea by Russia. “The changes of borders against the will of the Ukrainian nation will never be accepted by us and will always be condemned by us.”
Mr. Komorowski’s successor as president of Poland, Andrzej Duda, visited Kyiv on December 14-15. Mr. Duda went to great lengths to demonstrate Poland’s commitment to Ukraine. He announced that he will advocate for Mr. Poroshenko and his delegation to “have a seat at the table” at the next NATO summit, which will occur in Warsaw in early July 2016. In the context of their plans to relaunch a presidential consultation committee to discuss projects and initiatives, the two leaders agreed on settling remaining conflicts over culture in order to ensure regional cooperation on crucial issues of security and defense. “In giving deep honor to the victims of the tragic pages of history, the common responsibility of Ukraine and Poland is to ensure their descendants a peaceful present day. We reached full agreement on this issue,” the Ukrainian president noted.
Among the other key agreements to emerge from the talks was a 1 billion euro currency swap – exchanging that equivalent in Polish zloty and Ukrainian hryvni – in what was described by Mr. Poroshenko as an effort to enhance Polish and Ukrainian trade upon the January 1 launch of the Ukraine-EU Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area. The Polish leadership also agreed to offer consultations to the Ukrainian government and business for the free trade area’s launch, and even offered the Polish market as a springboard from which to promote Ukrainian products on the European market.
As for cultural issues, Mr. Poroshenko lauded the cooperation that had begun between Polish and Ukrainian Institutes of National Memory. In the past, Russia has manipulated tragic chapters of history, such as the Volyn massacres of 1943, to ignite enmity between Poles and Ukrainians. “The Ukrainian side is ready for a frank and constructive dialogue on the pages of our common history, and we agreed for this to occur in the framework of our consultation committee,” the Ukrainian president said. “History has taught us well that when Ukrainians and Poles argue, a third party benefits. I am sure we won’t allow that. And our approach will be very responsible.”
Ukraine at the United Nations
On September 17, Ukraine’s Ambassador to the U.N. Yuriy Sergeyev tweeted that thus far 70 countries of the U.N. General Assembly’s 193 members are in favor of stripping Russia of its veto power on the U.N. Security Council.
On September 17, Ukraine’s Ambassador to the U.N. Yuriy Sergeyev tweeted that thus far 70 countries of the U.N. General Assembly’s 193 members were in favor of stripping Russia of its veto power on the U.N. Security Council. In a resolution unanimously adopted on September 16, the Ukrainian Parliament called for urgent reform of the Security Council, in which Russia holds veto powers as one of the five permanent members. It said the veto has too often been used to “cover up the crime of aggression by a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council.”
On September 4, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko told Voice of America that Russia should be stripped of its veto power on the Security Council. In his address to the U.N. General Assembly on September 29, Mr. Poroshenko stated: “Abuse of the veto right – its usage as a ‘license to kill’ – is unacceptable. … Ukraine stands for the gradual limitation of the veto right with its further cancellation. Veto power should not become an act of grace and pardon for the crime, which could be used anytime and ‘pulled off from the sleeve’ in order to avoid fair punishment.” He noted that since the beginning of Russia’s aggression against Ukraine, Russia had used its veto on the Security Council twice when that body was considering questions related to Ukraine.
It was highly significant that Ukraine on October 15 won a non-permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council for the 2016-2017 term as the representative of Eastern Europe. Foreign Affairs Minister Pavlo Klimkin, who traveled to New York to campaign for his country’s election, said Ukraine has a broader global agenda but that its tone with Russia will “definitely not be conciliatory.” He added, “For the first time, we have an absolutely unique, unimaginable situation… that a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council is an aggressor in Ukraine, waging a hybrid war against Ukraine.”