The Westernization of Ukraine
In his speech to the United Nations Security Council on Wednesday, Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko urged the UN to dispatch a peacekeeping operation to Donbass, a region mired by civil war between Russian separatists and Ukrainian nationalists. He suggested that peacekeepers would “restore justice rather than freeze the conflict and cement the occupation” and asked Western powers to supply him with weapons to retaliate against Putin-backed militias. More broadly, Poroshenko wants to unite with Western political and economic institutions in an effort to distance his bruised nation from the manipulative Russian regime. If Poroshenko hopes to succeed, he will need to reconsider his approach to Ukraine’s humanitarian refugee crisis and acknowledge his administration’s weak spot: an odd resemblance to the Russian government itself, an affinity towards fraud and bribery.
"Poroshenko wants to unite with Western political and economic institutions in an effort to distance his bruised nation from the manipulative Russian regime."
Ukraine emerged into the limelight when Putin challenged the former Soviet republic’s sovereignty and organized an illegal referendum in Crimea. Russia’s illegal seizure of Crimea in March 2014 deprived Ukraine of the valuable peninsula, which harbors significant natural gas fields and boasts a dynamic tourism industry. The country lost 4 percent of its GDP in the immediate aftermath of the invasion, and the pursuant violence in eastern Ukraine weakened foreign direct investment. The conflict in the region cost 10,000 civilians their lives and left many more without shelter.
Unable to support the growing number of refugees, the Ukrainian government ceased to pay pensions to these internally-displaced people. Anxious about the uncertain, volatile environment, businesses have fled to the Western and Central provinces, causing a sharp drop in production in the East and furthering intrastate inequalities. So far, only Germany and the United Nations Human Commissioner on Refugees have demonstrated a genuine concern for the crisis, donating millions of dollars and resources to the displaced Ukrainians; it remains to be seen whether Poroshenko will summon his political capital and dedicate more resources to the region. Until then, Putin will continue to use the refugee crisis as an pretext for interfering in Ukraine’s internal affairs.
If Poroshenko wishes to integrate with the West, he will have to reform Ukraine’s elitist government, which still harbors Soviet-era tendencies. In some places, property ownership is only weakly enforced. The metallurgical sector struggles to compete in the global economy because of outdated production models developed back in the Soviet era. Similarly, the agricultural industries are constrained by low productivity and restrictive laws on land ownership, a sign of the ineffective transition from socialism to capitalism.
Ukraine ranked 131 out of 176 surveyed countries in the 2016 Corruption Perceptions Index, at the same level as Russia and Iran. Civil servants receive paltry salaries, and many resort to bribery for personal and career growth. Political parties rely on large private contributions from wealthy donors, so legislation tailors more to the upper echelons of society. Within the state-run healthcare system, patients make ‘donations’ against their will in order to receive vital medical services. Purposefully intrusive regulatory inspections, cumbersome barriers to market entry, and rampant extortions in the judicial system discourage young Ukrainians from taking entrepreneurial risks.
Although the government created the Anti-Corruption Bureau in 2014, a plethora of transparency initiatives have yet to be implemented. Tetiana Chornovol, the former Commissioner for the Bureau, confided that “there is no political will in Ukraine to carry out a hard-edged, large-scale war against corruption.” Indeed, Ukrainian prosecutors pursued an investigation into a former president’s alleged stealing of $7.5 billion reluctantly, a reminder that rules do not apply to those in power. Like his archnemesis Putin, Poroshenko dispenses favors to his supporters and co-opts his opponents; in some cases, his political rivals are found dead for “unknown” reasons.
At the moment, Poroshenko is merely a wannabe liberal and a wannabe Westerner. The Ukrainian leader must understand that there is a distinction between being anti-Russian and anti-authoritarian. To enter the Western club, Poroshenko will have to check both boxes.