Firtash’s vector

The Land Court of Vienna is going to decide in late April whether to extradite Ukrainian businessman Dmytro Firtash to the US, the Austrian publication Kurier quotes the court spokesperson Christina Salzborn as saying.

According to Salzborn, the court will go into session on April 30. The ruling is expected to be handed down on the same day.

Waiting for the verdict, the Ukrainian businessman is not sitting with his arms folded. Vienna saw the other day a third event under his patronage – the international forum “Ukraine Tomorrow.” This time the organizers presented to visitors the newly-established Ukraine Modernization Agency. It is supposed to draw up within 200 days a road map of Ukrainian reforms, under which foreigners will give money to the real sector of the economy. The main document will be handed over to the Ukrainian leadership.

Vienna saw a lot of guests, such as Frederik Willem de Klerk, president of the South African Republic in 1989-94); and Lord Richard Risby, member of the House of Lords, Chairman of the British Ukrainian Society. There were also ex-leaders from continental Europe, particularly Peer Steinbrueck, the former finance minister of Germany, a Bundestag member, and Angela Merkel’s rival in the 2013 elections. For some reason, the expected current EU Commissioner for Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations, Johannes Hahn, failed to show up. There were also former Ukrainian statesmen Kostiantyn Hryshchenko, Iryna Akimova, and Mykhailo Papiiev and… not a single representative of the new governmental team. As the organizers explained, they were not invited on purpose at the request of the agency’s European experts who want first to draw up a Ukraine modernization plan and only then to present it to the president and the Cabinet. So, Firtash tried to involve some still influential, albeit retired, Europeans in this image-building project (for him, above all).

IT APPEARS THAT MANY UKRAINIAN OLIGARCHS FIND IT DIFFICULT TO TACKLE TWO PROBLEMS: TO CLEAR THE GAS PIPELINE AND TO GET RID OF “THE KREMLIN’S SHADOW” /  Photo by Ruslan KANIUKA, The Day

But the question is not so much in the star status of the Vienna guests as in what they were saying. French political journalist Bernard-Henri Levy, reportedly unofficial advisor to a number of European governments, said that Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko had supported Firtash’s Vienna project. Incidentally, Mr. Levy has been a frequent guest of Ukraine in the last while. Levy assured The Day that he had informed Poroshenko about this program. “Yesterday evening [we spoke on March 3. – Author], one of Poroshenko’s chief advisors told me that the president had approved this initiative and authorized me to say this [to those present at the forum],” he said in a comment to The Day. But, when asked whether he discussed with the head of state further support for the implementation of this program after its approval, Levy said vaguely that 200 days was a sufficient time to think it over.

It is not clear whether this message was preceded by a conversation between Poroshenko and Firtash. As is known, the two met in the spring of 2014 in Vienna on the eve of the presidential elections. So, Levy’s information raised another question: does Poroshenko really need this?

One of the European guests, who preferred to remain anonymous, presumed that the current Cabinet would not support this plan, but the government may change. It has long been the talk of the town that there are problems inside the coalition and in the relations between the president and the premier. Tension is mounting. The proof of this are the latest statements and behavior of the Radical Party leader Oleh Liashko whom many associate with Serhii Liovochkin, the chief of former president Viktor Yanukovych’s staff and an old-time business partner of Firtash. Does this mean that a new governmental team and parliamentary majority are in the making?

On the contrary, Ukraine’s first president Leonid Kravchuk thinks that the Vienna project is very promising. “I can draw a historical parallel. In 1991 the majority of Ukrainians did not believe that Ukraine could become an independent country. Nor were the elite unanimous in this. But we gathered in the Bialowieza Forest, drew up, and signed a document which changed Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus. A new country emerged on the word’s map – Ukraine gained political independence. The goal of today’s program is that every individual should be economically independent, could feel the results of their work, and be protected by the law,” he said. But Mr. Kravchuk did not say what his confidence in success is based on.

RINAT AKHMETOV PERHAPS SUFFERED THE MOST FROM THE WEAKENING OF THE UKRAINIAN STATE. RISKS SHOULD BE ASSESSED IN TIME /  Photo by Ruslan KANIUKA, The Day

The mechanism of the agency itself is not quite clear, either. It is only Firtash who has allotted money for it so far. Nor is it clear whether there will be Ukrainians in its structure because only program managers have been named – they are all Europeans. For example, the one in charge of integration into Europe will be Stefan Fuele, former EU commissioner for enlargement and European neighborhood policy (he was absent from the presentation). Finances and taxes are the domain of the abovementioned Steinbrueck. Trade is to be cared for by Lord Peter Mandelson, former EU commissioner for trade in 2004-08. Law enforcement has been entrusted to Kenneth Macdonald, former Director of Public Prosecutions of England and Wales. Bernard Kouchner, founder of the organization Doctors Without Borders, will be in charge of health care. Wlodzimierz Cimoszewicz, the Polish prime minister in 1996-97, will be responsible for anticorruption reform. What ideas will they write down in their programs, particularly as far as some controversial issues are concerned? It is not clear, for example, whether decentralization and federalization are in the offing (and if so, in what shape). We do not know this because Rupert Scholz, who is responsible for constitutional affairs, was not present at the forum.

Finally, other Ukrainian oligarchs are prepared to support the project financially, although Firtash has not named the whole circle of his potential “allies.” “So far, I am the first donor who has brought money to keep the agency afloat. There will also be Akhmetov. About 20-30 people,” he said, perhaps meaning that they themselves should say about their participation.

Why does Ukrainian big business need all this? For they were not exactly willing, for example, to respond to the last year’s proposal of the US political scientist Zbigniew Brzezinski to “chip in a billion each and buy Ukraine out of the IMF.” What has changed in this period? There was nobody to answer. There were neither Akhmetov nor any other Ukrainian business people there.

In the view of political scientist Vadym Karasiov, for Firtash it is a way to remind us of him and emerge in the new image of a reformer. But, on the other hand, there is one more interesting tendency in Ukraine. “Ukrainian oligarchs are seeking salvation for themselves and are forced to help Ukraine. They begin to understand that they should have been investing in the state and, concurrently, in their business empires. But they were doing the other way round: they were buying soccer clubs and TV channels,” he says. “The war has taught them a lesson.” There can be no security and business without a strong state. But it is impossible to change the economic model if the same oligarchs are still around. In Karasiov’s opinion, they should be not “dispossessed” but transformed into “business captains” who will observe the same rules for all, as is the case in Europe.

The agency is to present its program by October 1 (in 200 days). Besides, November will mark the end of the Yatseniuk government’s “immunity.” When we approach these dates, we will be clear about the political mood in the coalition and parliament as a whole.