On the Ukrainian society’s demand and the enemy “den”

Montenegro was formally invited to begin NATO accession dialog in Brussels on December 2. Analysts predict that this little country will get membership in the alliance in two years. Ukraine, being the victim of the Kremlin’s aggression, is still enveloped in the clouds of declarations and statements. Despite the fact that our country began the process of integration with NATO in 1997 and made a number of decisive steps to strengthen cooperation, it had slowed down at some point. Ultimately, Ukraine had to face militaristic Russia alone, has lost some territories and is still wavering between declarative vectors, which are used for populist purposes by local, or rather hopelessly provincial politicians. In fact, this slowdown is explained by quite powerful Russian influence, both overt and covert, on Ukraine’s policies. It is unclear to what extent this influence still affects our policy directions even now.

During a ministerial meeting involving NATO member countries and the alliance’s partners, The Day talked to Deputy Head of the Mission of Ukraine to NATO Yehor Bozhok.

“OUR PUBLIC DID NOT TRUST NATO, AND ONLY LOSS OF TERRITORIES FORCED US TO COME TO OUR SENSES”

When entering NATO Headquarters, one sees at the door a retrospective poster listing landmark events associated with the alliance. In particular, it mentions the year 1997, which is significant for Ukraine as it was then that the special partnership agreement between our country and NATO was signed. Subsequently, Ukraine went on to take part not only in joint exercises with NATO, but was one of the participants of Iraq combat operations as well. It created army brigades with combat experience. However, when the annexation of Crimea and the war in the Donbas came, it appeared that we had no combat-ready brigades. They had disappeared. And when looking at the timeline down from 1997, we see that at some point, the fruitful cooperation period turned into dialing down of integration between Ukraine and the alliance, and this point was likely when president Leonid Kuchma, whose picture appears on this stand, came under the influence of Vladimir Putin. Don’t you think that our cooperation slowdown occurred precisely for this reason, that is, the Kremlin blackmailing the then president?

“Maybe something of that nature did happen, I do not know. The issue was that during this time, one of the parties of this partnership only imitated trust. It was a vicious circle: we did not trust NATO, and NATO did not trust us. The problem was that our public distrusted NATO. It did so because it was influenced by old myths planted very deep in their heads by the Soviet propaganda. This propaganda stressed that NATO was a hostile bloc, it was bad, it was a predators’ ‘den.’ Right now, you are standing in the very heart of this ‘den,’ I mean the headquarters of NATO in Brussels. Changing these myths was very difficult. Some frantic attempts were made under Viktor Yushchenko as well, when we tried to revive this cooperation, but we did not succeed in achieving tangible results then. Perhaps the human nature is such that we have to go through an experience ourselves to believe it. And the loss of territories was just such a bitter experience that forced many Ukrainians to come to their senses. Unfortunately, it took what the so-called ‘brotherly people’ did to us for Ukrainians to come to appropriate conclusions regarding their view of NATO.”

“PUTIN HAS STARTED A GAME OF ATTRITION”

However, there are organizational issues in Ukraine itself as well. In particular, some politicians, including those from the pro-presidential bloc, accuse the General Staff of sabotaging the process of creating the Special Operations Forces (SOF).

“I categorically deny all claims that the General Staff of Ukraine has derailed Ukraine’s cooperation with NATO regarding the SOF. I deny them because the General Staff did not derail it, but rather has not started working on it yet. This is an area where we would like to see better dynamic. But we would like to see this dynamic not only on the SOF creation issue. NATO expects reforms in areas including economic, social, and legal affairs to start as well. Everything that Russia is doing against us is done so that we do not reform. For our part, we are in a position where we are willing to hit back hard, and we are already strong enough to do so. Secondly, the West will not allow Ukraine to go back on reforms and bring about a critical situation. Thirdly, the sanctions imposed by the West have been quite painful for Russia, which is a powerful restraint on Putin’s actions. Putin has understood it all and started a war of attrition. That is, he decided to do everything possible to prevent Ukrainian authorities from making the appropriate changes.”

Don’t you think that border violations, particularly in Turkey, have been used by Putin to test the strength of NATO? Ultimately, his task was to convince the world that NATO has no potential.

“The Trident Juncture NATO exercise, which recently took place in Spain, was held with the motto ‘One for all and all for one.’ This motto expresses the principled nature and power of NATO. Putin provoked the Baltic States, Britain, sent his warships to sail off Norway, flew his planes towards Canada, crept into the Black Sea off the Bulgarian and Romanian coasts. Finally he crept into Turkey and got kicked in the teeth…”

That is, he met his match there…

“I think that this situation saw Putin receiving a collective punch, despite the fact that the plane was shot down by the Turkish Air Force. That is, Turkey feels the support of other NATO allies.”

The conflict in Syria has given reason to many experts to believe that NATO will shift its focus away from the conflict in Ukraine. Do you agree with this?

“No, I categorically disagree. Illegal actions of Russia are the focus of NATO’s attention. This has been confirmed to me repeatedly by colleagues at my level, and it was recently publicly stated by NATO Secretary General and leaders of most of its members. When creating the busy schedule of ministerial activities taking place at Brussels, NATO’s starting point was a clear understanding that the NATO-Ukraine Commission was an integral part of global security. Furthermore, we continue an active exchange of information with NATO on the situation in Ukraine. We provide information and we get some in return. Obviously, this exchange would not be so active, had there been no attention to the situation in Ukraine. All attempts by the Kremlin propaganda to convince the Western community that the Ukrainian issue does not exist do not bring results. The alliance is acutely aware of everything that is happening in Ukraine.”

I live in a hotel near the NATO headquarters. When watching TV yesterday, I came across the Russian RTR and “swallowed” some of the pro-Russian propaganda poison. How does NATO see it? Is there realization that Russia is actually closer and more dangerous than it seems?

“Everyone sees everything. Propaganda is a technology of the 20th century. NATO and the civilized world live in the 21st century. Now propaganda is expensive, and it is not needed in the 21st century. According to my information, RussiaToday’s budget is a hundred times higher than the entire budget of the information policy of Ukraine. And that is just RussiaToday. NATO and we are convinced that there are more important investment destinations. We have resolved that mirroring of the Russian propaganda is not the way to go. Our task is to form a common innovative approach. This tactic calls for a combination of efforts and creating a networking structure that would spread objective information. This tactic works.”

We heard at a press briefing at the headquarters on December 1 that NATO wants to hear from Minister of Foreign Affairs Pavlo Klimkin the statement of Ukraine’s willingness to engage in cooperation. Do you think there is a sense within NATO that Ukraine still has not made its final choice of integration vector in favor of the alliance?

“We have a strong political will at the level of leadership, and we also have society demanding integration with NATO. But in between the leadership and the people, there are levels that oppose reform. I cannot name them specifically, but the real obstacles to NATO integration are bureaucracy and corruption. The reforms relevant for the said integration should destroy many perverse elements in this system, which definitely resists this. It is understandable, because for them reform is a suicide, but I remain convinced that the objective process is unstoppable, and these bureaucratic and corruption brakes will be eliminated after all.”