License to Steal

I know Oleksandr Suhoniako not only as head of the Association of Ukrainian Banks and former People’s Deputy but also as an ardent Ukrainian patriot who numbers among his friends such pivotal cultural figures as Lina Kostenko and Yevhen Sverstiuk. Elsewhere I reviewed his collection of essays, Ukrayina: Povernennia do sebe (Ukraine: Return to Yourself) as an honest attempt to come to terms with the chasm that the Soviet period made in Ukrainian history (I have been much criticized for using the word genocide, but I still think it accurate). His view, which I find persuasive, is that only by returning to the sources of traditional Ukrainian culture can this country resume its natural development as a European nation. However, Oleksander (in his book he spells his name this way in a demonstrative return to the long-banned Ukrainian orthography of 1929) is above all the representative and lobbyist-in-chief of 103 Ukrainian banks, and when he says that 90% of state guaranteed loans have been repaid by the state, he knows whereof he speaks. If Her Majesty’s Secret Service gave the fictional James Bond a license to kill, government guaranteed loans in Ukraine are a license to steal. No more and no less.

This is not really news. People’s Deputy Viktor Suslov, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada Banking Committee, has been saying the same thing for some time. But it bears repeating. This country’s grossly inefficient economy has been used to rip off its people and state (is there at bottom a difference?) to the extent that, while part of the former Second World is on its way to the First most of the former Soviet Union seems to have opted for a fast track to the Third. People in one elite law firm say that Ukraine’s oligarchs are investing in real estate abroad and not here, that they are sending their children abroad in any way they can manage. Once again, apres moi le deluge (after me comes the flood). This simply has to be stopped. Ukraine cannot afford it, and the world’s conscience must be prodded to the point where it will cease to allow it. The world, Europe, and the people of Ukraine all deserve better. If nobody here is willing to guarantee this, the world will simply have to put its foot down. I, for one, see no other way out.