The pragmatist's hope for Ukraine 2012

Salvaging Ukraine's ailing parliament is the top priority

Currently watching events from Warsaw, Ukraine’s parliamentary elections look potentially messy. On the one hand, the election law is clearly designed to wrap things up for the incumbent powers that be, and this is being reinforced by various political technologies such as well-funded decoy parties and the invented ‘language issue’ most likely designed and timed to get Eastern and Southern Ukrainians’ eyes off the ball. On the other hand, the political capital built up by the previous three major elections (two parliamentary and one presidential) are the last remaining pillar of integrity that Ukraine has comparing to its peers Belarus and Russia. If election day is marred by ballot-stuffing, bussed-in voters and other tomfoolery that last remaining pillar will dissolve and two and a half years of deterioration of democracy and freedom in Ukraine will be utterly rubber-stamped. I’m personally sceptical about whether violations can be avoided given the disposition of the rank and file of those now in power, for whom the art of the possible trumps constitutionalism every time.

And even if the election is free (it already cannot be fair) it is not clear exactly what people are voting for. Voters will (presumably) have no idea who is on the lists and half the deputies will be elected under constituency mandates. That has seen plenty of ‘bread and circuses’ manoeuvres from those in the current power structures to get them home safely. Once the elections have taken place, now that the constitutional court has contradicted its own ruling by endorsing the tushki, we will in all likelihood see a clearing house which will, it is assumed, be able to iron out the election result and knock it into the kind of shape the authorities would like to see. In Ukraine’s unconstitutionalised (my word) society it’s all but forgotten that the legitimate ‘owners’ of the parliamentary mandate from the previous parliamentary elections are in fact STILL the so-called orange parties of Tymoshenko and the Our Ukraine-People’s Self Defence bloc. Therefore the ‘result’ this time too stands to be forgotten once things have sorted themselves out.

So, the problem for Ukrainians is that they don’t really know what they are voting for, and the relationship between the ‘result’ and the ‘outcome’ could be abstract to say the least. Therefore, if participating as a pragmatist, what are the options for Ukraine’s voters?

Voting for the Party of Regions is certainly an option if one is satisfied that life has improved in the past two and a half years. Anecdotally one or two things have improved such as, in my experience, snow clearing in Kiev. One also has to wonder if Euro 2012 would indeed have been a shambles under the previous government, but we will never know, and that was already nearly four months ago, and life moves on. However, voting for the Party of Regions is not the only way to, in effect, vote for the presidential party. Various decoy parties will look to feed discontent back in to the pot. It is pleasing however that, despite well-funded campaigns (including Natalia Korelevska irking us all during every advert break during Euro 2012) and gimmicks such as hiring in former footballers, the polls suggest the electorate isn’t going to go for them. As has been said many times, Svoboda also feeds indirectly back into the Party of Regions, if nothing else as the justifier of Yanukovych’s culturally pro-Russian policies. The Regions Party itself may not be the bastion of stability they’d have us believe. As a coalition of interests it is extremely vulnerable as even within that group the number really benefiting is small, and there are suggestions that divisions exist not too far below the surface on issues such as the DCFTA/Customs Union and Tymoshenko.

Yatseniuk (who his former English teacher called ‘the only intelligent person I met in Ukraine’) could finally step into an important role. The accusation that his party is the Spravedlivaya Rossiya of Ukraine doesn’t seem to have stuck, but the the tie up with Batkivshchyna looks risky to me. The image of Tymoshenko in the western media (just this week a writer in The Guardian compared her, quite absurdly, to Aung San Suu Kyi) and in Brussels does not play so well at home. Tymoshenko shouldn’t be in prison for what she’s in prison for, and the authorities have foolishly created a martyr, but there’s little evidence from her time as PM that she is the answer to any of the country’s problems.  

Most interestingly, Klitschko’s UDAR seem to finally be bridging the credibility gap at the best possible time. If you’re looking to vote pragmatically this might be the place to look. Klitschko is almost unique in Ukrainian politics, having made his way to fame and prosperity by the relatively honest means of sporting success rather than in the murky and corrupt world of Ukrainian business. He speaks at least three languages and having spent much of his life in Germany his broader world view and understanding of both the European and post-Soviet ways of doing things has to be an advantage.

Once the dust has settled, I suspect the President will basically still be in control of parliament. Even though his oligarchic backers have complained for quite some time that he has not been putting his energies into representing their interests, the fact remains that his appointees are in all the organs of state power. Such people are however fickle and if there was a real change in the way the wind was blowing some of those people might change their minds very quickly indeed.

Personally what I would most like to see from these elections is the resuscitation of the Verkhovna Rada and an end to the rubber stamp parliament and the piano player voting which has been one of the most depressing aspects of Ukraine’s politics over the past two years. Ukraine badly needs a functioning parliament which would necessitate consensus-based decisions across a range of stakeholders (accepting that for the foreseeable future, deputies of the Rada will still be in it largely for their own ends). I would like to see the vindictive edge taken off the government’s current policies and the firing of the education minister with immediate effect. I also hope that Kiev and Kiev region does not go down the path of adopting Russian as a second language. I would also like to see a halt to the general ‘Donbasisation’ of the business environment. It is frightening investors and will turn out to be massively counterproductive. So the question of who wins is really not even the half of it. I also hope Femen might stay at home this time.

Cat fight waking the neighbours?

Rock group case could put the cat amongst the pigeons in attitudes towards Russia's authorities

It’s not new for people to sound alarm bells about Russia. Commentators and activists have tried to raise awareness, about security threats to neighbouring states, espionage, human rights abuses etc. for a very long time. What is new is to hear the likes of Sting and Red Hot Chilli Peppers speaking out about rule of law in Russia.

The case of Pussy Riot, the rock group arrested for a lewd impromptu performance in a Moscow cathedral is very helpfully waking people up to how repressive things are getting in the former Soviet space, and how rule of law works as a tool of the regime rather than as a keeper of the peace. This, against a background of Russian support for Syria’s President Assad, must surely be finally helping to win over some of the more naive to the argument that we should be genuinely worried about the path the EU’s eastern neighbour is taking.

I hesitate to throw myself 100% behind Pussy Riot’s cause because I do think that what they did was offensive. The sanction of 7 years in prison being suggested is clearly obscenely disproportionate. It should all have been dealt with by now. A fine or a week in jail would have sufficed. However, from a christian position of conscience, I can’t quite bring myself to outright support them if it implies that they did nothing wrong, whereas for a good majority of those supporting them, I would suspect that they think that behaving that way in a church is just fine.

Coming back to Ukraine, what are the implications of a severe sentence for Pussy Riot on Ukraine’s own Femen, whose protests have so far been dealt with more sensibly by the Ukrainian authorities. Femen sprang up during the more liberal 2005-10 Orange era and for a while had the sympathy of many liberals, highlighting some very serious issues. And as for the tactics of baring their breasts, just how do you get the attention of people in such a male chauvinist society?

More recently Femen have discredited themselves with some ill-chosen targets (such as the Vatican) and some tenuous causes. One of their most recent protests in Kiev’s Euro 2012 fan zone was greeted more with glee by beered up foreign football fans than anything else. If they do wish to continue though, they should bear in mind that the current government’s instruction manual just says COPY RUSSIA in big letters on the first page, so 7 years for Pussy Riot could well send out a message to them too.

Russia could calm a lot of people down by letting Pussy Riot go free, but in the wider context, dare I suggest that a rock band in prison might be the symbolism that’s needed to redefine people’s attitudes towards what’s really going on in Russia? The authorities there have quite a propensity to shoot themselves in the foot, so it would be no surprise if they did so again.

More games

Just 3 days on from the epic final game, Ukraine’s Euro 2012 grace period appears to be over

President Yanukovych had been due to give a speech today extolling the virtues of Ukraine’s successful (broadly speaking) co-hosting of Euro 2012. The strategy was always to cash in on the feel good factor towards October’s parliamentary elections. On today’s evidence, that feel good factor will have long evaporated before then (don’t forget how quickly euphoria over the Orange Revolution died). The Party of Regions’ case for using Euro 2012 as a prop is not airtight. For a start, one can be pretty certain that the tournament would never have come this way were it not for the Orange Revolution and its pseudo-democrats. As a quick thought experiment, could one have imagined Poland offering to co-host the tournament with Belarus? Clearly not. The President has hinted at a snap election. Snap might very well be the word.

The President’s speech was pulled as the final reading of the bill on Russianal..., ahem, ‘regional’ languages got rather messy. Accusations of creative parliamentarianism in the timing of the vote sound plausible. Then Lytvyn, the Speaker, has chosen to resign (does he think his career will be over if he signs it?). Things got messy on the streets too. Tear gas was used and Klitschko is finding that the physical risks of being a politician in Ukraine are not so different from his old job. He’s spoken out against the new law, and that’s interesting when one considers that he is Russian-speaking and has been broadly pragmatic on some pro-Russian issues, such the Black Sea Fleet. There are calls on the President to veto the law and I’m not so sure he won’t. The law’s legitimacy is weak, but then all the laws passed since the advent of the ‘tushki’ are dubious and open to challenge. It is forgotten that the Orange parties are still the rightful owners of the list mandates until the next elections. It was the EU’s costly mistake not to haul up Yanukovych early on on that point.

If the law does finally get passed, the implications are uncertain. It’s possible that not much will change. The Russian language issue really only exists for two groups of people. For one group, it is those who were Russian language-educated during the Soviet period, and the older you get, the harder it is to learn new tricks. I’m all for some sensible pragmatism here. If someone is over the age of, say, 40, and genuinely struggles with Ukrainian, then cut them a little slack. Young people simply don’t have the same problems with Ukrainian, as they have grown up with both, so changing the law at this stage is like putting the limitations of the old on the young. When you look at the average age of Ukraine’s leading politicians, you can see why the limitations of the old might prevail here. The other group is that which feels that on principle, they should advocate Russian and oppose Ukrainian, because of identity, or just prejudice. From meeting a broad section of Ukrainian society, I have met such attitudes surprisingly rarely. One friend who lived in Donetsk for some time said that, whilst some had a negative attitude towards Ukrainian, many others said ‘it’s great that we have a national language, I just wish I could speak it’.

One other issue that’s been sidelined in the more serious mêlée is whether we really will see the other regional languages given full status. From living in Hungary for 3 years, I know that people there will be watching eagerly to see whether this raises the status of Hungarian in Zakarpattya. Will people in Uzhgorod really be able to have medical treatment, write university essays or even speak in the Verkhovna Rada in Hungarian? If they could, the situation would compare favourably with the treatment of the Hungarian minorities in other neighbouring countries, but it sounds implausible to me. And if they could, can Ukraine afford this?

I would favour a solution where perhaps Donetsk and Lugansk oblasts, and possibly one or two others, could have Russian as official regional languages, with the requirement that Ukrainian language and literature be taught. Then there is Crimea, where I would advocate the promotion of two languages, but these being Russian and Tatar. I would like to see Tatar place names written on road signs and the like. If the graffiti cans then come out, so be it. Intolerance would be there for all to see and, hopefully, over time, questions asked. Another option would be to raise the minority threshold to 20%, that referred to in the European Charter on Minority Languages. The 10% threshold is what threatens to make Russian a de facto second state language.   

Whatever happens, it’s worth remembering that, even if we conservatively say that Ukrainian has maybe 25 million speakers, that’s not small beer, and more speakers than that of many other languages in Europe. Ukrainian will always suffer from being linguistically close to a dominant language, like Scots to English or Catalan to Spanish. Ireland has an official language that only a tiny minority actually speak. Ukrainian has its work cut out, but it’s never best to rely on the government for such things. It’s up to people themselves to keep speaking it (speak it more in public!) and keep it alive. Use it or lose it!

Ukraine’s options continue to narrow

Euro 2012 may be keeping Ukraine out of international isolation for a month, but were it not for the championship, Ukraine would be right on the fast track to obscurity. Almost every supra-national body is becoming wary of its dealings with Ukraine, and Ukraine’s threat of turning to Russia may be increasingly tolerated in those circles, whilst in such a situation Moscow will drive the hardest bargain it can with Kiev.

The European Parliament’s most recent resolution on Ukraine (although the EP does not have competence, in the technical sense, on foreign policy) gives the general flavour of the way things are going: “Ukraine’s human rights record, its respect for civil liberties and fundamental freedoms and for the rule of law, with the incorporation of fair, impartial and independent legal processes, and its focus on internal reform are prerequisites for the further development of relations between the EU and Ukraine.” Or read another way, Ukraine’s ever-increasing lack of it more or less puts a hold on further European integration, whether the President declares a ‘pause’ or not. Ukraine’s conduct has actually forced the EU to redefine the whole Association Agreement dialogue. From being a largely technical process the proceedings have, almost by necessity, now taken on an implicitly political character.

There is still some tinkering going on to try to save face. The phrase ‘political detainees’ was softened to ‘prisoners sentenced on politically motivated grounds’, owing to Ukraine's request to the Council of Europe to define ‘political detainee’, which it declined to do. However, for all the technicalities, Tymoshenko is clearly the deal breaker (not necessarily rightly), and on its chief demand it looks as if there will be no joy for the west. The ‘anachronistic’ laws that put her there have not been repealed and the queue of new charges may be a bid to prevent even the European Court of Human Rights giving her a clean slate. Personally I’m not so sure that her staying in prison is simply the personal vendetta of other politicians, but rather a pragmatic move, seeing as her time in office allegedly lost certain individuals large sums of money. A freed Tymoshenko back in office might block revenue streams to certain individuals, and that’s money, after all.  

With the EU relationship bringing only bad cheer, Ukraine hoped the NATO Summit in Chicago would be an avenue for more positive developments but, in the end, most of the delegations refused to have meetings with Yanukovych. Of those that did, Poland and Romania chastised Ukraine over the political prisoners issue, leaving only Afghanistan, where the focus was simply on reconstruction projects that Ukraine could gain there. NATO also joins the EU’s chorus, in the summit declaration, over ‘selective applications of justice’. Meanwhile, there were signs that Georgia, for example, is slowly inching towards membership, even despite its territorial issues. NATO will still co-operate with Ukraine where it needs to, for example with the use of Ukraine’s helicopters, but from the ill-deserved positive publicity given Yanukovych for Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament (a free gift from Obama), Ukraine’s role this time is more as an extra than as a star.

So with the EU relationship crumbling, the IMF out of the picture, and NATO getting lukewarm, we are left with the opaque and baffling dealings between Ukraine and Russia. Following the Russian ban on Ukrainian cheese and the tit-for-tat (sort of) ban on Belarusian dairy products (vive la Customs Union!) things seem to be settling down there. Of course, the main discussion is one of gas.

Firstly, there are the contracts that Tymoshenko supposedly ‘illegally’ signed, but which Ukraine doesn’t seem to be able to get itself out of, with not even initial signs of a Russian shift in position. The Black Sea Fleet deal of 2010 was seemingly for nothing. Yet, with the lack of other options, Ukraine is still trying to cut a deal with Russia.

The old chestnut of the tri-partite ownership of Ukraine’s gas pipelines is being trotted out once again. This, in the end, would also most likely yield nothing in return. The whole concept of the ‘EU share’ is nonsense to start with. Pipelines are not operated in the EU as geopolitical concerns. Countries do not own pipelines and there is certainly no precedent for supra-national ownership of gas pipelines, so what we are talking about is two thirds ownership by the Russian and Ukrainian state, and one third ownership from a company or consortium from the EU, and that invites most likely a deal with Gazprom.

That leads onto the second drawback, which is that even if Ukraine’s drive for shale gas extraction is successful (and awarding concessions in a relatively straightforward way to Shell and Chevron was a good start), Ukraine may find itself unable to realise the potential of shale gas if there are restrictions on its distribution because of unhelpful pipeline operators owing to an ill-conceived, short-termist pipeline deal. To add to this, experts say Russia is unlikely to even pay the proper market price for the GTS. Ukraine fears the loss of transit traffic, but because of a European Commission stipulation that no more than 50% of the gas through Nord Stream can be Gazprom’s, Gazprom will still need Ukraine’s gas transit for the time being.

There are also various permutations that are largely unforeseeable, and here is mere speculation. If Russia can in future put most of its gas through Nord Stream and South Stream, and if Ukraine is by then pumping out shale gas, won’t it then be just a hindrance to have Russian involvement in Ukraine’s GTS. As an aside, what will be the effect of shale gas extraction being successful. One fear is that it might in fact all be exported, and the profits used in exactly the same way as Gazprom’s are, to support a ‘Putin-lite’ in Ukraine. After all, the lack of imagination of Ukraine’s rulers invariably leads them to look to Russia for inspiration.

As one commentator wrote recently, Ukraine perhaps overestimates its geopolitical importance. When push comes to shove, the west already has plenty of friends on the Black Sea. Russia’s interest is as chauvinistic as it is strategic (surely, in theory, a new modern naval port on Russia’s own Black Sea coast would be far more efficient and pertinent to Russian national security than maintaining their ‘museum’ in Sevastopol, but when a feeble pretension to a naval port in Syria is enough to sanction the deaths of thousands of people, we know that common sense is not at work here).

Ukraine’s problem will be that, if the elections this October fail the democratic litmus test, it matters less and less what foreign policy direction Ukraine proclaims. If the standards of democracy, rule of law, and management of the economy converge ever more closely with those of the member states of the Customs Union, then that may be the country’s default destination.

Kiev or Kyiv: What name is 'in'?

For those championing the spelling 'Kyiv', Euro 2012 will have a mixed outcome. --- For some time there has been a big campaign amongst Ukrainian patriots and certain members of the diaspora to adopt the spelling 'Kyiv' as the English language name of Ukraine's capital. Now that Euro 2012 is finally upon us, this is perhaps the acid test of their efforts. Looking at the BBC venue guide for Euro 2012 above, it looks as if not everybody has been convinced. Doubtless there has been a flood of letters pointing this out, but no change has been made. To me, the map is correct. The names of both capital cities are spelled as they have been in English for a very long time. For the provincial cities however, the local names have been used. Nobody is trotting out 'Danzig' for Gdańsk or 'Breslau' for Wrocław. None of the many names that Lviv has previously been known by appear(Lvov, Lwów, Lemberg or even Leopolis) and Kharkiv takes its Ukrainian spelling rather than the Russian one Kharkov. Many publications have adopted the Kyiv spelling, most likely after activists' persistence, but some have resisted. The Financial Times, the New York Times and The Economist, for example, have retained the Kiev spelling. For Euro 2012, UEFA is going with the Kyiv spelling, whilst the BBC coverage is using Kiev. --- Spelling Kiev as 'Kyiv' is confusing 2 things-the correct transliteration of Ukrainian into the Roman alphabet, and what the correct name of the city should be in English. The Ukrainian name Київ (Kyiv) contains two sounds that don't even exist in the English language, and I can testify that correct pronunciation of Ky-iv takes quite a bit of practice for native speakers. Visiting fans to Euro 2012 are unlikely to get the hang of it during their short visit. It is common for English to use its own names for many of Europe's major cities. Kiev is a much more natural pronunciation for English speakers. If we followed the same logic elsewhere, Athens should be Afina, Moscow should be Moskva (or maybe even 'Maskva'), Belgrade Beograd etc., not to mention saying 'Paree' instead of Paris, and adopting München instead of Munich and Firenze instead of Florence. The demand for the Kyiv spelling is therefore not a consistent one. Why only Kyiv? Why not all these other places too? It has been Kiev in English for a very long time. Indeed, Chicken Kiev (to which this blog takes a bow) is a world-renowned dish and proof of how well-established the Kiev name is. The fact that a city is well-established and well-known abroad is surely no source of shame. --- The other inconsistency is that this effort seems to target only English. A quick google search for 'Kyiw' (the logical German variant) yielded no results, and French seems to have several versions, of which Kiev is the most prevalent. Ukrainian itself also doesn't have its own house in order here. Beijing is still Пекін (Pekin) in Ukrainian. Париж (Paryzh) would need to be ditched in favour of Пари. Most Ukrainian people make little effort to pronounce London as native speakers do (more 'on' than 'un'), and nor should they. If they are speaking their own language who am I to dictate? English speakers will always pronounce it 'Ki-ev' even if it's spelt Kyiv, and the exceptions will be those such as diplomatic staff who are coached on getting it right. --- My aim here is not to bash the Ukrainian language. In fact I very much support it, speak it here in Kiev (although not particularly well), and think that it should remain the only national language of Ukraine. Even if, at a very conservative estimate, only 20 million or so people speak Ukrainian as their first language, in European terms that's not small beer. That's more than speak, for example, Hungarian, Romanian, Bulgarian, or many of the official languages of the European Union. It's also a beautiful and poetic language that I have come to love. The push for 'Kyiv' in English though is a curious fetish. With the Ukrainian language under attack at home under various government policies and proposals, the leader of the opposition in prison, numerous police, human rights abuses and cases of corruption to highlight, aren't there more productive ways of helping Ukraine than writing ill-reasoned letters to the Sunday Times or whatever because a journalist dared write 'Kiev'. Talk about fiddling while Rome burns! --- The crux of the matter for some is the similarity between the English 'Kiev' and the Russian 'Киев'. However, that is rather a suspect motive for trying to change it. Calling the city Kiev in English is not pro-Russian and it's not anti-Ukrainian, it's just correct English. For comparison, calling Dublin by its English name rather than the Gaelic Baile Átha Cliath is not considered anti-Irish. People should not be labeled anti-Ukrainian just because they want to use English correctly. It has been cited that the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs has asked for it to be spelled Kyiv, so that should be that, but I don't accept that. The Ukrainian government's call to adopt the spelling 'Kyiv' in English was misguided. In my experience most Ukrainian politicians and civil servants don't even speak English, and are therefore ill-placed to make a judgement on English language usage. The MFA also insists on clumsy translations, so that every official Ukrainian state body has to be the xyz 'of Ukraine', so the Ukrainian MFA is, for example, 'The Ministry of Foreign Affairs OF Ukraine', and similar translations appear everywhere. The constant 'OF of OF' is incongruous in the English language. Ukraine has 'asked for' Kyiv, but in my view it's a somewhat curious thing to ask for. --- In the end if you argue that to protect your own language you need to dictate to native speakers of another language how they should use theirs, I think you're on pretty shaky ground. English is international, but its native speakers are still entitled to use the language as they so wish. One more cheeky point I could make is that, when one learns Ukrainian, there is an interesting twist to this tale in the Ukrainian case endings. Kiev is Kyiv in Ukrainian but 'in Kiev' is in fact 'в Києві' ('v Kievi') and 'in Lviv' becomes 'у Львові' (u Lvovi), so having gone to all this trouble to tell speakers of another language how to change their spelling, Ukrainian grammar, after all that, then changes it back! It looks for now as if the two variations will persist, as with Basel and Basle. But still, Ukraine has not yet perished and neither, for the time being, has Kiev. :)

Cameron’s Dangerous Game Could Have Dire Consequences in the East

The ‘continuous delay’ of a European Court of Human Rights ruling will not go unnoticed by Eastern Europe’s authoritarian governments

On the face of it, David Cameron’s stance on the European Court of Human Rights’ ruling which would have allowed prisoners in the UK to vote seems the right one. He has upheld the will of the democratically-elected House of Commons against the whim of an intrusive ‘foreign court’.

It is not just that the UK is opting out of ECHR decisions, but it is how it is doing it. First London pursued the avenue of trying to make the court’s rulings ‘advisory’ to those of national courts, but failed to make the inroads it would have liked to have done in the Brighton Declaration. Now the UK is taking a different tack. The ECHR has given the UK 6 months to fall into line, but UK ministers have suggested they will just indefinitely put off the court’s ruling and leave it hanging in the air. They would simply submit annual 'progress reports',so kicking its implementation into the long grass for the foreseeable future. Such ingenuity is the kind the Kremlin would be proud of.

Now, on the specific issue in question many would sympathise with the UK government’s position. One could reasonably argue, in a moral sense, that the individual who has taken the rights of others should lose rights of their own, and many clearly think so, including the Shadow Chancellor. I happen to think that excluding these people further from society probably does little to help rehabilitate them, but if people who’ve done nasty things can’t vote I wouldn’t lose much sleep over it.

What bothers me, from a Europe wide perspective, is how this mechanism might be used elsewhere. Certain members of the Council of Europe already drag their feet when it comes to Strasbourg’s rulings, and consistently fail to bring their national standards into line with those of the Council of Europe. But at the moment, at least we can say with some justification that these countries are failing to achieve European standards, and to satisfy the conditions that they entered into when they joined the Council of Europe. Now however, they might just ‘indefinitely postpone’ judgements against them, arguing quite reasonably that there should not be one rule for them and different rules for others.

The UK on the other hand needs to look carefully at the path it has taken. It seems reasonable to lobby about what cases and issues might be excluded from Strasbourg’s reach. The backlog of cases at the ECHR is well documented, and perhaps, as some have suggested, there are issues of conscience which might reasonably be put firmly in the remit of national governments. What I would take issue with is the Prime Minister’s emotive language about the ECHR being a ‘foreign court’.

Nobody forces the UK to be a member of the Council of Europe. Belarus after all shows how you can manage without such foreign meddling. The metro bombers who were sentenced to death, and their families informed the following day, didn’t have to hang around for Strasbourg’s dithering. I’m not suggesting the UK wants to follow Belarus, but listening to some people you have to wonder. On the back of various cases, such as the infamous ‘pet cat’ case, human rights has become a dirty word in Britain. Sections of the press have become remarkably successful in pinning the blame for these things on these so-called ‘foreign’ organisations. However, I am reminded of Radek Sikorski’s succinct take on UK-EU relations in his famous speech of last November: “...please start explaining to your people that European decisions are not Brussels's diktats but results of agreements in which you freely participate.” Perhaps the UK needs to rethink that participation, if it’s such an issue for them. With UKIP still noisy, and even calls to pull Britain out of the Eurovision Song Contest, perhaps this is a discussion Britons urgently need to be having.

However, staying within but undermining an institution such as the ECHR, the last chance saloon for many in Europe’s east, seems irresponsible. The consequences of bending the rules will be seen far beyond Britain’s prisons.

UK press show that racism works both ways

British press reports about Ukraine are well wide of the mark, and in some cases just plain offensive --- Before even getting onto Euro 2012, the British press is letting itself down badly over Ukraine. For many years that country was ignored by most of the British papers (with the notable exception of the FT) and tended to spew out occasional clichéd pieces on the failure of the Orange Revolution. The Daily Mail has bought into the Tymoshenko story as one of their 'human interest' stories, to the extent even of reporting lovingly on the white tiger from her presidential election campaign. Back in the winter of early 2010 I distinctly remember most people being unimpressed by the ads as we slid around on ice and snow that had not been cleared (with some suggesting that funds for snow clearing might have been diverted into her election campaign). By all means highlight accusations of mistreatment in prison, but please don't start doting. --- I must say at this point that the last thing I want to do here is just indulge in straightforward 'whataboutism' of the kind peddled by Russia Today or the absurdly-named 'Pravda'. I have no truck with people who say that just because British MPs stole cat food, or even duck islands on their expenses that we're 'just as bad' as ministers in CIS countries stealing companies and mansions, or that the inadequacies of western democracies are no different to rigged elections and constitutional vandalism in the CIS. I think we could be a little more humble at times (Freedom House should not rate western democracies as a perfect '1'-the people living in those countries certainly don't feel that way) but we have a right to criticise abuses where they take place. --- It was the aforesaid (nye)Pravda that ran a story on the Luis Suárez racism row claiming that English football was 'riddled with racism', in a clear effort to deflect from the story that Roberto Carlos had again had a banana hoyed at him in a Russian league match. The fact that Suárez was banned for ten matches, and that John Terry is being hauled in front of the courts, while nothing has been done (to my knowledge) about the Carlos situation in Russia tells its own story. We know that the British media too is 'not perfect', hence the Leveson Inquiry, although some of the UK papers' most recent abuses are unlikely to arouse much concern in the isles, directed as they are towards the distant poorer half of the continent. --- Interesting though the politics is, for the tabloids it's coverage of Euro 2012 that's going to shift newspapers. Enter The Sun (and on the topical subject of boycotts, The Sun has form here), who started spewing out various negative articles on the host nations, as soon as England had managed to qualify of course. They have picked up on three apparently salient issues, those of racism, hooliganism and sex tourism. I won't say that these problems don't exist (as Ukrainian government representatives have tried to) but the reporting of them is not even sensationalist, just plain absurd. Theatrical-looking photos accompany stories about nationalist training camps for hooligans. Nobody I know here in Ukraine knows anything about it and it looks like far-fetched nonsense. I think what is more likely is that there could be isolated flare-ups due to a combination of alcohol, the language barrier, and cultural misunderstanding. Some of the shoving on the metro or aggressively bad customer service (some people here have a way of saying 'zakrita'-we're closed-which might as well be f*** off). That's the kind of thing which Ukrainians routinely live with but can flick the switch of the average Brit pretty easily. Ukrainian police can also not be relied upon. These are genuine things to be concerned about. Semi-fictional militarised hooligan firms are not. The visit of 6000 Scotland fans to Kiev in 2006 gives an idea of what to expect. There was a nasty incident in the city centre which affected some supporters. For the vast majority however, the experience of coming to Kiev was a positive one, and the locals took to their kilted visitors.

--- On another issue The Sun also offers up an equally staged-looking photo of sex workers lined up in front of Shakhtar's Donbas Arena. Now in one sense there is a very serious issue here. Ukraine does indeed have high levels of HIV and AIDS, particularly in the east and south of the country, but I don't see that the issue is any different from elsewhere. People who use sex workers anywhere are playing with fire, not only in Ukraine. Should we portray British men with revolting habits as the victims in this?

--- Then there are the Walcotts, brother and father of Theo, who have decided not to come, and a broad consensus amongst various people in the UK that this is probably sensible. Again, it doesn't make much sense to people on the ground here in Kiev. Do they think that they'll be racially-abused in the hotels and restaurants? Are Arsenal paying their players so little these days that the Walcotts can't afford taxis and will need to take the metro late at night? It's true that Ukraine doesn't have a history of multi-culturalism, but there are plenty of countries that don't. Moscow is famous for its racism problems and neo-Nazism which includes celebrating the birthday of Hitler (the very man who ransacked their country and regarded them as 'untermenschen'), but I would still bet on a racist attack being just as likely in London, probably more likely. Kiev is a pretty safe city. --- On the issue of racism there is one more thing that needs to be said, that the very treatment of Ukraine and its stereotypes in the British press illustrates a widespread racism against Eastern Europeans in Britain which is only just beginning to be tackled. Would the racist rant lady on a Croydon tram have been arrested if her rant had only been against Polish people? The Polish are given a horrendous time in the British press and on message boards and phone-ins, although they are net contributors to UK coffers, staying typically for short spells before returning to Poland with what they've saved. The 'Borat' stereotype is all over the place. I remember a contributor once on a football message board referring to Eastern European countries collectively as 'Eastbumistan'. Would he have written something like that about Africa or Asia without being censured? --- There are plenty of legitimate areas in which to go after Ukraine, whether it be the rip-off hotel prices, lack of readiness for the tournament, alleged corruption in improving the facilities or the worsening political climate in which the tournament is being held, but cheap racist shots from the British press are shameful. Theo Walcott's brother is probably right about one thing though-“some things aren’t worth risking”-judging by the performance of the England team in major tournaments, people are probably best off staying home.

And now the news - 67 years ago there was a war

Ukrainian tv viewers take the blue pill --- A few months ago it was still noticeable that Ukrainian news programmes on major networks were continuing to cover all the major news stories, in contrast to Russia where major events such as mass protests and terrorist attacks are completely absent from the country's tv screens. There was perhaps pro-government bias in evidence, but not the complete absence of these events from the news. That has now all changed. More recently the main news programme on Ukraine's most popular television channel, Russian language channel INTER, seems totally devoid of serious news. --- In the most absurd example, the Easter Day broadcast contained a feature lasting a good 15 minutes or so about Easter Island, solely for the fact that it's named after Easter. It was very nice, interesting even, but by no remote stretch of the imagination could it be considered news. --- It was of course the 9th May last Wednesday, Victory Day, and as expected, commemorations have continued to be higher profile, and distinctly re-Sovietised from the more low key commemorations of previous times. It seems to be having the 'desired effect', with plenty of people this year sporting the Dundee United coloured ribbons on bags and cars. On the 9th May itself it's perhaps understandable, but 'Great Patriotic War' related items have fronted the news every day for the past week. It can hardly be called news. --- One worries that the powers in control of the media would like Ukrainians to take the blue pill, to disengage their minds from the serious issues facing the country. After all, many of these news items are interesting, and seem harmless enough, and bad news can be very fatiguing in a country that has plenty of it. To me, however, this is very saddening. People here are already isolated enough. --- Today the issues relating to Tymoshenko's hospital treatment eventually made it on around 16 minutes into the broadcast, and there was even a statement from the opposition. Protests against Putin in Russia were also featured. Perhaps there is still hope.

Merkel boycotts Ukraine? Business as usual.

Germany has been boycotting Ukraine's interests for some time. --- I realise this assertion might grate with some poeple, particularly as I know and work with Germans here in Kiev who are working hard on the various civil society initiatives that Germany generously funds, but I can't get excited about Chancellor Merkel's threat to boycott the European Championships. It seems somewhat pious when one considers that Germany has not made Ukraine or Ukrainians' lives very easy in the past couple of years. Germany sees itself in all things as a benign actor, but the reality is rather different. --- Go back to 2008, when Germany made it absolutely clear that its relations with Russia were more important than the security of those countries sandwiched between them. For Ukraine and Georgia, that meant an effective veto of Russia, a non-member, over their bid for NATO MAPs. Go back further, and it was her predecessor Schröder who signed up to Nord Stream, a game-changer in the energy security geopolitics of the region which greatly undermines the position of Ukraine. German EU commissioner Günter Verheugen quipped that the idea of Ukraine joining the EU was as absurd as that of Mexico joining the United States. More recently, German police arrested and jailed a group of Ukrainian tourists on a two day visit to Germany on their one year Polish Schengen visas. They were released without apology. Apparently, quite absurdly, they should have gone and cancelled their one year visas and got two day tourist visas. The Schengen system isn't working, but it is Germany's job to work that out, rather than to label all Ukrainians as undesirables. What kind of message does that send? --- The boycott threat is of course not made in such a wide context, but is part of the current political game. Some kind of a statement does need to be made. It also recognises that there is indeed something deeply unpalatable about Holland v Germany being played, and beers being guzzled on Kharkiv's Ploshcha Svobody, just a stone's throw from Europe's most high profile political prisoner (the authorities have already moved her once, and may conceivably do so again in a feeble attempt to minimise such embarrassment). Perhaps Merkel is doing the right thing, but against the wrong things which preceded it it looks less impressive. Germany should in fact, albeit indirectly, accept some responsibility for what has happened here since 2010. --- As one leading commentator said a couple of years back, it would have meant an awful lot if Chancellor Merkel had come to Kiev and made a speech in support of Ukraine's European ambitions. Don't forget how narrowly Tymoshenko lost the Presidential election. German endorsement of a European and Euro-Atlantic choice for Ukraine might well have been enough to swing the election for her, but instead it was held against a background of resignation, that Europe didn't want Ukraine and rapprochement with Russia was paramount. Merkel was not there for her then.

Ukraine’s faltering role model?

Could the true face of Putinisation in Ukraine be yet to appear, just when the concept appears to be on borrowed time?

Putinizatsiya is a popular label for what has happened to Ukraine over the last two years. Some call the system a modern feudalist system, but it is perhaps more accurate to describe it as clan-based. What most people can readily observe could be called rather Donbasisation, an enlargement in the scope of what took place in Donbas in the 1990’s, in terms of who from various friends and close relatives controls various businesses (and by what methods). Ukraine could as a result be lumbered with a cronyist economic environment that, without the element of meritocracy, will be doomed to lurch on inefficiently for years to come whilst the world outside continues to surge forward. It will be almost impossible to sensibly unravel should anyone in the future propose to do so.

Ukraine may not be a neo-Tsarist system as such, but the country continues to tiresomely follow Russia’s lead, for example the retrogressive education ‘reforms’, gleefully unwinding progress towards the Bologna process it entered a few years back, or the absurd commitment to follow Russia’s lead in abolishing daylight savings on the advice of ‘scientists’ (Muscovites now start work or school in the dark, a full two hours ahead of Kiev). Such backward measures can only pull Ukraine further away from the European sphere (the decision to delay the time change until after Euro 2012 is tacit acknowledgement of this).

But if the ‘new order’ really wants to go the whole hog and bring about true Putinisation, they have to take seriously that Yanukovych lacks Putin’s personal popularity. Nobody can seriously believe that the Party of Regions can stand on a United Russia-style ticket of ‘support President Yanukovych’ and attempts to plaster the President’s mug on billboards around the country have had a somewhat mixed reception. Can you really build a personality cult around Yanukovych? Stories of the President doing handstands and the like impress some people in this politically unsophisticated country, but the action man image may be difficult to cultivate.

Putin’s rise to power was never really about elections. He was appointed. So is Yanukovych less of a Putin and in fact more a Yeltsin, who will facilitate the rise of an appointed successor? As with Putin, the man himself may not be well-known currently and may not be of political stock at all. Look past Yatseniuk, Tigipko and Brezhnev-era fossils that currently occupy high office. The recent maneuverings in defence and security posts may yield the answers. Could it conceivably be, as it was in Russia, someone with security service connections? Will he also need to have real popularity? In any case Putin’s famed 'popularity' might not be as real as many assume.

The biggest stumbling block to the path to following this strategy may be events In Russia itself, where there are early signs that the wheels may finally be coming off the cart of Putinism, at least to the extent that some form of real opposition may have to be accommodated. The elections this year may well, in some way or other, be part of a shakedown in the Russian system. However, these people will not give up what they have gained easily. In Belarus for example, Lukashenka has been able to quell the hand-clapping protests against him despite many reports I’ve heard first hand that the locals no longer speak well of him.

Ukraine, even with its fair share of political apathy and debilitating pessimism, is different, even if the difference is more nuanced than substantial. It will have a shorter fuse than its CIS neighbours if faced with an undemocratic imposition. Notional support for a European future in Ukraine is still high, with countless young people still telling me philosophically that they still hope their country’s future eventually lies with Europe. And, as stated earlier, the inefficiency of the cronyist system will always leave it vulnerable to failure.

Ukraine now may become a fully authoritarian or 'unfree' regime, an imperfect but functioning democracy able to make friends, or a kind of European Venezuela, but if Putinism really is the model, and if events in Russia continue to suggest that Putinism is indeed now passé, Ukraine’s authoritarian masterplan may just need a rethink.