Yanukovych On A Roll!

By Dr. Myron Kuropas

President Yanukovych’s rollback is breathtaking.  Hardly a week passes before we learn of a new initiative.  

During his first few months in office, President Yanukovych has moved quickly to put his stamp on Ukraine, placing it closer to Putin’s Russia.  

While Yulia and Viktor I squabbled for five years, Viktor II waited patiently in the wings for his chance to return with a vengeance.  He prepared his cadres well for the Soviet-style transformation that is enveloping Ukraine today. Ukraine’s president may be intellectually challenged but he is a pragmatist who knows how to get things done.  It’s pay-back time. 

Yanukovych’s first order of business was to award Communist mass murderer Raul Castro with the Order of Yaroslav the Wise.  Fidel was also honoured. 

A presidential decree later scrapped a commission that had been overseeing Ukraine’s preparations for the country’s eventual membership in NATO.

The Ukrainian language has been downgraded as the President’s Chief of Staff announced that Ukraine’s new government will give “broad cultural autonomy” to the country’s regions including the right to choose the main language used in local governments and schools.  This is all in keeping with the thinking of Dmytro Tabachnyk, Ukraine’s new Minister of Education and Science who rarely speaks Ukrainian, has little love for the people of Western Ukraine, and has promised to abolish university entrance exams.  Under Tabachnyk, the Soviet version of Ukrainian history is returning.  School textbooks, for example must now be rewritten;  references to “World War II”  will  be replaced with  “the Great Patriotic War” portraying Russians as liberating heroes and UPA members as Nazi  collaborators.  

Ukraine’s National Memory Institute, established in 2006 by President Yushchenko to examine Soviet-era archives, has been shut down lest, in the words of one Yanukovychite, its findings lead to “divisions” among the people of Ukraine.  An aide to the President concluded that “the truth which was necessary for the Ukrainian people to consider has already been brought to their attention.”  In other words, Ukrainians now know all they need to know. 

Stalin statues were unveiled in Zaporizhzhya and Odesa. More are planned. Attending the ceremony was Ukraine’s Vice Prime Minister Viktor Tykhonov.  A Lenin exhibit recently opened at Ukrainian House in Kyiv to coincide with the 140^th anniversary of Lenin’s birth. On May 8, a monument was unveiled to the “People of Luhansk Who Perished at the Hands of OUN/UPA”

The Rule of Law?  Forget it. Yanukovych has trashed the Ukrainian onstitution. Twice. Allowing the Russian fleet to maintain a base in the Crimea is unconstitutional since the Ukrainian onstitution disallows the deployment of foreign military bases on its territory. Ukraine’s Constitution also clearly states that a ruling majority can be formed only by factions, not by individual lawmakers and that lawmakers cannot switch allegiances once elected.  The Supreme Court caved in, ruling in favour of the Party of Regions allowing individual parliamentarians to form their own factions and to switch parties at will.

Speaking before the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Yanukovych denied that the Holodomor was genocide. It was the result of Stalin’s totalitarian regime, but “it would be wrong and unfair to recognize the Holodomor as an act of genocide against one nation,” he explained.  Following that “expert testimony,” only 21 PACE assembly members voted for recognizing the Holodomor as genocide, while 55 voted against.  Yanukovych obliterated two decades of effort by Ukrainian scholars.

Opposition leaders are being intimidated.  Ukrainian Weekly correspondent Zenon Zawada informs us that Yulia Tymoshenko was called in by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General, questioned, and warned that criminal charges could be filed against her. Mr. Zawada also informs us that agreements between Ukraine and Russia will be signed on May 17 integrating the military, energy and industrial sectors, particularly aviation and nuclear energy.  

Self-censorship by the press and TV reporters has returned following not so subtle pressure from the Yanukovych regime.

Will Europe come to Ukraine’s assistance?  A column by Jerzy Haszcynski’ in the Polish newspaper Rzeczpospolita argued that the decision to allow Russia to keep a naval base in Ukraine “is a ticking time bomb” which “could spell the end of Ukrainian sovereignty”.  He urged the EU to reach out to Ukraine.  But with Greece, Spain and Portugal in financial free-fall, the EU already has too much on its plate to spend much time worrying about Ukraine. And you can forget about the U.S.  For the Obama Administration, Europe is on a far back burner.

But surely the people of Ukraine will resist.  Think again. One poll indicated that 61% of Ukraine’s people believe that Russia is their main ally. Only 3% point to the U.S.A., 19% to the EU. According to other polls, most people appear pleased with Yanukovych, so who are we to complain. We’re the Diaspora.  Far away and easy to ignore.