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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

DON’T BLAME THE MIRROR...

13 November, 2012 - 00:00

“Do you really think that Europe will accept you with this kind of mentality?” I was asked by an internationally known German political analyst the other day. He meant a lot of things, including Ukraine’s international image which has taken shape over the past few years.

There is no denying that this image is anything but attractive. What “European choice” can this country make when the EBRD annual convention in Kyiv made it clear that Ukraine is considered one of the most corrupt bodies politic on the continent. Later, the World Bank made it known that it would implement only a district heating adjustment project, putting off the rest (a package worth over $1 billion) until such time as Ukraine could show definite progress in market reforms. A little earlier a similar statement came from US Secretary of State Madeline Albright.

Under the circumstances Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski’s repeated impassioned calls for helping Ukraine start market reforms (including the latest, during a meeting with Leonid Kuchma and Latvian President Valdas Adamkus in Rzeszow) are not likely to be heeded.

There are still serious doubts that the leaders of the developed countries and financial institutions will hurry to lend a helping hand to a country whose chief executive does not seem to notice desperate starving miners and cannot make even the first step in those very reforms on which he has been soliloquizing for more than a year. Maybe this will be among the subjects broached by Chancellor Helmut Kohl come May 28. Significantly, the German leadership, only recently treating Ukraine as a chum buddy, no longer mentions its name when discussing plans for a new expanded Europe.

The Ukrainian government makes no official responses to repeated international accusations and reproaches — probably because it has nothing to say — and does not seem perturbed by the country’s dampened image. Likewise, the President and Cabinet have not taken any decisive measures to reduce the number of critical articles about Ukraine in the Western press, let alone doing anything to attract Western political leaders and businessmen to Kyiv.

It is possible that World Bank’s decision to freeze its projects in Ukraine was one of the last warnings addressed to Kyiv. One can only hope that this warning will be taken into consideration and proper conclusions drawn, so that Ukraine will no longer be treated like a bull in a china shop and its potential to help decide the continent’s destinies be duly acknowledged.

 

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