On “dancing with skeletons”

“Before changing power in Russia, one should change the opposition,” the Russian political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky said recently. Incidentally, the Ukrainians also have a lot of questions to the opposition.

But there is a politician that noticeably differs from the others, even though he has, of course, to bear the burden of a “legacy…” The Day has conducted an interview with Valentyn NALYVAICHENKO, chair of the political council of Our Ukraine.

We began the conversation with a “hot” issue.

Do you think “Kuchma’s money” (we know in what way it was earned and where it settled down) is still working? At least there are attempts to slip it, “bill to bill,” into the pocket of every promising opposition politician.

“My political position is that an honest and promising opposition politician should not take money from oligarchs. Moreover, we, young politicians, demand that these old skeletons be thrown out of the closet. It is not our closet. It was built by Kuchma and his successors, but it is still being filled with new skeletons. These skeletons are hanging like dead weight over all the living things in Ukrainian society. Are our partners prepared to part with these skeletons? It is difficult for me to say. It is a personal choice for everybody. I am personally sick and tired of ‘dancing’ with skeletons.

“The bustle around [electoral] lists and districts is a serious test for the opposition. The recently passed law ‘On Elections’ is plot against and a betrayal of voters. The parliamentary defectors who cast their votes for this law have given the current leadership the keys to a new parliament. Moreover, many MPs should mention ‘Andrii Kliuiev Cabinet’ in the ‘Place of Employment’ column in their service record cards. They are in fact working there. And parliamentarianism has been ruined. The judiciary is totally dependent on money and ‘red oligarchs.’ The Communists and the Party of Regions have stripped old-age pensioners, Chornobyl cleanup veterans, and public-sector employees of social benefits. What’s next? It is the result of parliamentary defections and various games in the vice-premier’s office room.”

The leadership in interested in an opposition split. It is clear.

“It is clear.”

It is not clear why opposition leaders themselves often provoke splits.

“[They provoke] splits and shake the voters’ confidence. As far as I’ve heard, even Yulia Tymoshenko called the law ‘On Election’ a mistake. I just wonder how those who used to call this law a big victory are going to explain this.

“But we’ve had enough of this. We are thinking of tomorrow now. What are we going to do further on? I have to say something to Arsenii Yatseniuk: like me, he is a regular reader of your newspaper.

“Arsenii, you are the highest-ranking opposition politician. Why not top a consolidated list of the opposition? There are no differences between our parties, as far as their programs are concerned. If we, the opposition, are not a party of frauds and puppets on a string, we must present a consolidated list here and now.

“Criteria? They are very simple, as formed by people all over Ukraine, from Kharkiv to Lviv: new individuals, ability to unite, and honesty – three things only. Is it so difficult for young people to meet them?”

Actually, the party UDAR is also expecting you to spell out clear-cut criteria: they are saying they would join the Dictatorship Resistance Committee (KSD) but do not understand the principles of unification.

“I am speaking not only about Vitali Klitschko, though I wish him success in Ukrainian politics. I am speaking about every Ukrainian, which is much more important. A Chornobyl cleanup veteran, an Afghan veteran, a doctor, a serviceman… How will they be living if there are no prospects in the future and honesty? Incidentally, these principles form the question of the survival of KSD and the opposition as such. I don’t mean the office-room opposition (I wouldn’t like to repeat in what office rooms it sits and from where it is funded). I mean the opposition that people need today. Yes, this opposition has to live poorly because it does not take money from the authorities, let alone oligarchs. But this opposition has political prospects. It can lead Ukraine to the place other than the Eurasian hole or the barracks which our neo-Stalinists are building for our children. We will not live like this, so we must unite.”

So there still are difficulties in forming a consolidated list?

“There are no difficulties at all. We must up and do this.”

Could you tell us in easy-to-grasp terms about how this mechanism should look because it is not so clear now?

“Some people opine that we should go to the elections in three columns representing three forces. Three columns – can you fancy that?”

Column is not a good word…

“I agree. People march in columns in prison camps and at North Korea demonstrations. And the Ukrainian KSD is also talking about columns. Nonsense!

“The formula of Ukrainian success is simple. What we need is political will. We need to unite, shut down all the unnecessary political projects, and draw up a transparent and open list. We promised this, didn’t we?

“If we have enough brains to understand that it is the only chance to preserve our political future, it is good. If we don’t, serves us right.”

To what extent is it likely that Anatolii Hrytsenko has some private interests in the Presidential Administration, of which he is now being accused?

“I am one of those whom Mr. Hrytsenko did not support even when I was being elected as SBU chairman. I must be the last person to love Hrytsenko. But I do not believe in his games on Bankova St. I don’t think the truth will ever harm the opposition because we are positioning ourselves as different. But it is often the case here that if you are saying what some opposition leader does not like, you are bad and wrong. For this reason, Mr. Turchynov’s statements are a thing of yesterday, I saw all these squabbles when the Orange were in power. Incidentally, those who orchestrated these squabbles remained behind in the Yanukovych government. It is moronic to repeat those mistakes as well as to despise one for taking a firm position.”

“THE COMMUNIST PARTY SHOULD BE BANNED IN UKRAINE”

One more court case ended last week contrary to common sense. Trident followers were given a three-year prison term for fighting the monument to Stalin in Zaporizhia. It is a defeat for the public that failed to defend its viewpoint. But it also looks like a defeat for the opposition. Moreover, the Communists…

“No, it is not a defeat. We, the opposition, have no leverage at all to influence the court. Nevertheless, we defended these guys in courts, secured their release from the detention center, and offered them legal assistance. We did our utmost.

“But the ruling of Zaporizhia’s Zhovtnevy Court is a shame. A Ukrainian court – I mean the Kyiv Court of Appeals – has already condemned both Stalin and the Communist Party leadership as organizers of genocide. The current authorities – from Yanukovych to this concrete judge – failed to meet Ukraine’s international commitments: in 2008 each PACE and OSCE member state pledged not only to condemn Nazism and Stalinism but also to prevent, by all the possible means, the proliferation of the ideology, symbols, doctrines, and political movements of this kind.

“I am convinced that the Communist Party should be banned in Ukraine. An international tribunal should ban communist ideology, which most of the countries are prepared to do. Only Ukraine is not prepared because the communists are still part of the government. The same applies to Russia because their communists are also cherishing some plans. But even in Moscow they have already been told to scram.”

Yet they polled 20 percent in Russia…

“You can even claim 30 percent. The Ukrainian communists also think they will claim a high percentage. But I will tell them they will be in for a very nasty surprise.”

Let us touch upon another very important topic. As a former SBU chairman, do you see the hand of Russian secret services in the activation of radical opposition against the Majlis of the Crimean Tatar People?

“A normal leadership in our state would be supposed to support and protect the Crimean Tatars – as a people, a culture, and a world – in particular, to protect them from the interference of foreign secret services.

“Why have temples always been built under a dome in Ukraine? Professor Serhii Krymsky explained this very well. Everybody gathered under the same dome and formed tiers to defend from foreign enemies. There were no columns, no prison camps, and no blind adoration of leaders. All are equal in a temple. This is the idea of Ukrainian statehood. So, in the present-day Ukraine, this dome must cover all the peoples, all the minorities.

“The Crimean Tatars were deported by Stalin. It is a matter of peoples’ feelings and genes. One should not revile the Crimean Tatars, as some politicians are doing. The Ukrainians were insulted in the sane way, when it was told that there had been no Holodomor until we proved this fact in court. The Convention and the international statute regard deportation as a variety of genocide. But [the authorities] do not even want to investigate into Stalin’s deportation of the Crimean Tatars. In 2009 we opened and handed over to the Majlis the KGB archives so that lawyers could institute criminal proceedings. The property, mosques, and razed graveyards should be returned. Who by? By those who perpetrated the crime. This organization no longer exists? Then the state and the international community should take care of this.

“What hinders this are foreign interference and the funding of overtly prevocational structures in the Crimea. Some artificially-formed organizations are trying to set the Crimea’s Slavic and Tatar populations at loggerheads. Stupidity! They are all citizens of Ukraine. Whoever gives in to, allows, and panders to this kind of actions is the main separatist in this country.

“It is up to the Crimean Tatar people to elect a leader – it is their internal issue. But the key task of this leader is to support democratic reforms in Ukraine so that our children live in a free state, where nobody cares whether you are Tatar or Ukrainian…”

“THERE ARE MANY OTHER INTERESTING POINTS IN THE LAZARENKO CASE”

Is the present-day Security Service (SBU) able to take up these challenges?

“I have nothing to do with the SBU today. But I think it is the number-one task today to get back to the true interpretation of national security. It is the security of an individual. Do we feel secure? There are some explosions and investigations of some terrorist acts. Who are these terrorists, where did they come from? The SBU must answer these key questions and tell the public whether we can sleep untroubled. Four or five years ago we knew exactly that there was not a single terrorist organization or cell on the territory of this country. And today?

“Instead, crime is increasingly rife in Ukraine. The incidence of robberies is on the rise, especially in Donetsk, as is the number of closed-door trials that acquit organizers of murders and head-cuttings. This is a police state governed by a regime, not by the authorities. One of the main causes of this may be the fact that policemen live in the same poverty as do most of the Ukrainians. Their families are equally unprotected. It is double nonsense to build a police state on the basis of its own poverty.”

The president’s spokesperson Anna Herman said again recently that it was not Yanukovych who decided to put Tymoshenko behind bars. So there are other centers of influence. And what about the myth of a strong chain of command with the president at the head?

“This is a question to the authorities. I am indifferent to the internal and external movements in the Party of Regions. I am looking at this from the viewpoint of us, the grassroots. If Tymoshenko’s conviction is not the decision of this regime and Yanukovych is not implicated in this, then it is very simple: ensure proper defense and stop the frame-up trial. Set the person free and give them the opportunity to defend themselves.

“Secondly, if this regime is not involved, why then only this episode of a 15-year-old case is being taken into account? There are many other interesting points in the Lazarenko case. I was among the diplomats who were honestly helping the then Deputy Prosecutor General Mykola Obikhod to receive information from the US and Swiss justice. That information mentions many other names and offshore zones, including one in Cyprus, where 80 percent of the current Ukrainian government annually hides 6 billion dollars each. This money was stolen from Ukraine’s budget, including the energy sector. Maybe, Mr. Boiko is finding it so difficult to make a gas price deal with Russia because everything was stolen well before him? This is why trials are being cut short.

“I know from where money can be taken for social benefits – an urgent national investigation into the money laundering over the past 20 years. There are mechanisms for bringing these funds back. What are Azarov and Tihipko afraid to say? The US justice once gave us an example, when, believing in the sincerity of the Ukrainian government’s intentions to prosecute the Lazarenko case in 2000, it handed over the first million dollars by a simple check.”

“STALIN AND PRISON CAMPS, ON THE ONE HAND, AND FREEDOMS, HUMAN DIGNITY, AND A FREE ECONOMY, ON THE OTHER”

You took part in the congress of the European People’s Party in Marseille. That forum was widely regarded as a beauty parade of the Ukrainian opposition. What are the results of your meetings with European politicians?

“European leaders – 16 premiers and 9 presidents, who are EPP members – are supporting Ukraine. They want to see Ukraine in the united Europe. It was not a beauty parade at all: in any case I did not take part in one and did not drink free champagne. You should remember that it is a European world. There is no hunting, saunas, or banquets at this kind of meetings. The modern political world works differently. Political leaders are anxious about their peoples and work.

“The Marseille forum of European leaders came to a conclusion that is very deplorable for the current Ukrainian leadership. In reality, all the Ukrainian politicians who are playing in the interests of Eurasians and the present-day Kremlin are preparing a resounding foreign-policy flop for Viktor Yanukovych because the failure to sign the agreements on association with the EU and on a free trade area and, hence, the loss of markets for Ukrainian businesses, is the president’s strategic mistake. In Ukraine, the president is personally in charge of the foreign policy.

“Generations of Ukrainian diplomacy have been making a strenuous effort in the past 20 years to bring closer The Day of December 19, 2011, and, what is more, the Ukrainians have been paying taxes for this. The Foreign Ministry of Ukraine has been kept up over 20 years for the sake of this day.

“In case Ukraine associates with and joins the EU, Europe will receive a factor of security and a radical change in the geopolitical space around Russia and other post-Soviet countries. And this entails the choice of a civilization. On the one hand, it is Asia (in the worst meaning of the word), Stalin, and prison camps; on the other, it is freedoms, human dignity, and a free economy. Incidentally, in the economic terms, our chances are not worse than those of, say, Bulgaria and Romania, as far as resources and labor are concerned.”

…and as far as rules are concerned?

“Here lies our interest in Europe. I am one of those politicians who say that it is Europe, not we, that needs the association. We want our children, not only the children of oligarchs and governmental officials, to live in a free society and study at European universities. What is standing in our way is Soviet-style mentality, corruption, and oligarchy. We can only overcome this by joining the community of free people.”

So many parallels have been drawn lately between Maidan and Bolotnaya Square in Moscow. What is in common?

“Bolotnaya Square is a very modern political action. The people, most of whom belong to no parties, united in the online mode and went on the streets. No KGB or FSB will ever stop this action.

“Yet the real Russia opposition is behind bars now – Navalny, Udaltsov… The authorities are afraid to release them. Having no money or support of oligarchs, they began with launching an anticorruption website.”

In other words, you don’t see the possibility of cooperating with the Russian opposition on the European “front line”? For now you have many common interests with Yavlinsky, Ryzhkov, and Nemtsov. Take, for example, the “Schroederization” of Europe.

“We unequivocally support democratic transformations in Russia. But there is no ‘Schroederization’ of Europe. There can be corruption – even among European bureaucrats.

“Yes, Ukraine is in a way a hostage to the economic alliance of Russia and Germany – first of all due to its weakness, rampant corruption, and absence of any position. But, very soon, the European Union and Germany itself will also fall hostage to their own policy of appeasing the aggressor. Ask Georgia what the Russian aggression ends up with. In reality, there are some very ‘sober-minded’ countries in Europe, including Poland. They are not being romantic whenever they fully support Ukraine. They are pursuing their national interests. And our interests coincide here.

“This pragmatism may even look egoistic. But this position is the only way out. All this should be frankly discussed with German politicians and we should act honestly inside this country.

“I saw at the EPP summit what interstate partnership means. They are confident of each other. The French premier supported the German chancellor in the main political ideas. They did not discuss how to, say, grab Lorraine or station some fleet in the Baltic Sea. These are 19th-century issues.”