KYIV – Five years on, Ukraine’s 2013-2014 Revolution of Dignity still symbolizes a definitive choice for democracy and integration with the European Union. It also was a rejection of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s kleptocratic and autocratic regime, according to findings from a comparative poll of political, economic and civil society experts over the last five years by the Kyiv-based Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives (DIF) think tank.
Released on the eve of the popular uprising’s fifth anniversary on November 20, the survey of 80 respondents found that the revolution was victorious in that sense.
Among its positive outcomes: civil society grew stronger and a new class of civically-minded politicians partially entered the chambers of power. Kyiv subsequently signed a far-reaching and landmark political and trade pact with the 28-member European Union that included visa-free travel “that I thought would never happen in my lifetime,” said DIF director Iryna Bekeshkina during a panel discussion with four of the poll’s experts in Kyiv’s Ukrainian House.
Moreover, a series of reforms aimed at transforming society has been launched, she added. Electronic governance, like a successful online public procurement system, has won worldwide praise. Members of Parliament and high-level government officials now file asset declarations online. Registries on real estate and business ownership are accessible with a few computer mouse clicks.
The process of decentralization – giving more power to local governments to form tax bases and make on-the-ground decisions – has begun, Ms. Bekeshkina said. Three anti-graft agencies have been created and a separate judicial body on corruption is being formed, the panel experts noted.
Successful improvements in health and education, the creation of a new countrywide police force and making the state-run oil and gas monopoly Naftohaz profitable were also mentioned.
However, most of the momentum for change came in the first two years following the Euro-Maidan Revolution, lamented Ms. Bekeshkina. The last three years have been marked by “stagnation,” she said, adding that pressure from civil society pushed the reform agenda.
“Sure, Ukraine has done more reforms than the previous 23 years of [post-Soviet] independence… but there was no real ‘reset’ of government in the spirit of the Maidan’s ideals… I can’t say many new faces [are in leadership roles],” she said.
The “Maidan: Landscapes of Memory” exhibit on Kyiv’s Independence Square, seen here on November 20, offers a pictorial timeline of events of the Euro-Maidan Revolution, also known as the Revolution of Dignity.
Economically, Ukraine succeeded in “stabilizing macro-economically” after inheriting a system of top-down corrupt government that left the country in shambles, including a drained treasury, said Oksana Kuzyakiv, executive director of the Institute for Economic Research and Policy Consulting.
The abuse of related-party lending in the banking system has been eliminated with more than 80 institutions losing their licenses for essentially handing out money to companies associated with owners of the financial institutions. Inflation is approaching single digits, and economic growth has resumed, she said.
Meanwhile, pitfalls remain in “not finishing reforms” that affect business, like “de-regulation,” though “loopholes like illicit money conversion centers have been closed and [export] value-added tax refunds are now done electronically,” she said.
Most promising, Ms. Kuzyakiv said, is that she sees a “growing appetite for investors” to park their money in the country. However, since presidential and parliamentary elections take place next year, many will take a “wait and see” attitude during that period.
Three tablets that comprise a prayer for the Heavenly Hundred, the protesters killed during the 2013-2014 Euro-Maidan Revolution, stand along Instytutska Street, where the vast majority were shot on the morning of February 20, 2014, in downtown Kyiv.
Politically, Yevhen Bystrytsky, the longtime head (until 2017) of the George Soros-funded International Renaissance Foundation in Ukraine, concurred that the post-Maidan leaders started reforms “under public pressure,” but lacked a “clear vision to do this.”
Yet, around spring 2016, he observed, the government started to “divorce itself” from civil society and the public advisory councils to which they were attached when “the actual implementation of the reforms began.”
He described the about face as self-imposed “solitude.”
Mr. Bystrytsky noted that the government “never created a system to communicate directly with civil society” and said the reason was “corruption,” which has led to an abysmal level of “public distrust.”
Ironically, combined with the revolution’s achievements so far, “Ukraine has created the most openly corrupt society in the world,” said Oleksandr Kalitenko, senior analyst for the corruption watchdog Transparency International-Ukraine.
“Impunity and the absence of a properly run judicial system” are at the core of the problem, he explained.
As the experts’ poll findings noted, corruption is the nexus of the country’s failure to make progress as quickly as desired. Mr. Kalitenko observed that since reforms in this area “are the slowest,” the newly created anti-corruption agencies are not doing enough in their capacity.
Richard Gorda
Protester Roman Savelyev, then 12 years old, carries two tires amid rubble during the Euro-Maidan Revolution of 2013-2014 in downtown Kyiv.
For example, the National Agency on Corruption Prevention “isn’t doing a good job of reviewing the e-declarations of government officials,” the graft analyst said. A solid law on political whistleblowers is needed to protect them, he added. In addition, the National Anti-Corruption Bureau “needs more powers like to independently obtain wiretap permissions” without prosecutorial oversight and directly through judges.
Consequently, corruption costs Ukraine 2 percent, or $2.5 billion, of its yearly economic output based on this year’s projections, Gosta Ljungman, International Monetary Fund resident representative in Ukraine, said on November 13.
A separate 46-page report on graft in Ukraine released this month by the London-based international think tank Chatham House stated that the country has achieved “greater success in restricting the opportunities for corruption than in bringing corrupt officials to justice.”
The report concluded that “a decisive breakthrough will require opening the political system to more actors, creating greater competition and developing credible institutions to support the rule of law.”
It also identified “vested interests over the judiciary” for anti-graft bodies that fail “to achieve high-level prosecution.” Chatham House also noted the contradiction of citizens who “condemn” high-level corruption, yet “regard petty corruption as a justifiable evil.”
Unsolved killings of Maidan protesters
Symptomatic of the dysfunctional law enforcement and judiciary is that, after five years, nobody at the decision-making level has been brought to justice for the killing of some 100 protesters during the Euro-Maidan revolution.
A single case exists that combines all the killings committed during the uprising starting from November 21, 2013, to February 20, 2014. Investigations involve the deaths of 91 people, 78 of whom were protesters and 13 law enforcement officers.
Maidan activists at nebesnasotnya.com, a loose coalition of civil society groups from that time, say that 107 protesters were killed.
Fifty-six people have been served with notices of suspicion for the killing of 73 individuals, Serhiy Horbatiuk, head of the General Prosecutor’s department of special investigations, said at a news conference on November 21.
Richard Gorda
A protester holds a Ukrainian flag atop a burned vehicle before a phalanx of Berkut riot police (whose unit has since been disbanded) near Independence Square during the Euro-Maidan revolution.
The latest person detained was an unidentified sniper of the National Guard’s elite Omega subunit. He was remanded for two months starting on November 3. Four former Berkut riot police officers who were being prosecuted for the Maidan killings fled to Russia last year. They had been released from custody under various conditions and they were still working on the police force when arrested in June 2016.
Main risks
The DIF expert panelists said that populism ahead of next year’s presidential and parliamentary elections is the main risk for the country’s future.
Another panelist, Oleksiy Haran, political science professor at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy, and DIF director Ms. Bekeshkina, both said unorthodox policies could bring someone else into power next year.
The latter said that with each election cycle – aside from 1999 when President Leonid Kuchma was re-elected – that the “opposition always came to power.”
The main reason is that elections are “an auction of promises… and, each time, the public grows more anxious and more disappointed when those promises aren’t delivered, so that’s why the opposition wins the next one,” she said.
Economically, Ms. Kuzyakiv fears that the government “won’t finish what it started” in terms of eliminating red tape for businesses, and Mr. Kalitenko said that graft must be met head on, including the prevalence of “kickbacks” in areas where the opportunity for bribery still exists.