Bershidsky: Biden is right to be scared of Ukraine

2014/11/23 18:16:22

Whether Ukraine itself will get funding from its Western donors depends on whether it's going to get serious about economic reforms, Biden told the Ukrainian president, stressing the need for the country to form a new government "within days, not weeks."

 


By Leonid Bershidsky* for Bloomberg View, Nov 21, 2014

 

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden's visit to Kyiv today was timed to coincide with the first anniversary of the Maidan proteststhat eventually toppled Ukraine's  corrupt regime. Still, Biden decided against attending a ceremony commemorating victims of the unrest, the so-called "Heavenly Hundred." His Secret Service escort said it would be too risky. That's a metaphor for what's going on in Ukraine today: The country is in chaos a year after its people decided to win freedom from oppressive corruption and stifling Russian influence.

 

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko attended the ceremony anyway, only to be heckled by the victims' relatives. He had promised to declare the dead protesters national heroes and and pay pensions to their surviving relatives, but failed to deliver. An investigation of the death of more than 100 people in late February went nowhere, and no one was punished. Former President Viktor Yanukovych, along with his closest aides and some odious businessmen who got rich during his rule, escaped. Most went to Russia, and little of their plundered wealth has been found, let alone recovered. 

 

For Ukrainians, the Maidan anniversary is a day of both sadness and pride. They argue hotly about whether life has gotten better. In an interesting Facebook thread, two prominent Kyiv journalists, Darina Marchak and Oksana Mitnitska, disagree on the general mood of Ukrainian business: Marchak maintains that legitimate entrepreneurs are relieved, encouraged and ready to capitalize on the high tide of patriotism; Mitnitska sees hopelessness, closing stores and restaurants, a rise in emigration. 

 

Both are right to some degree. Despite a 46 percent currency devaluation this year, the loss of Crimea, military defeats in the country's industrial east, about thousands of violent deaths, the never-ending wrangling of clueless politicians and the continuing depredations of a hidebound bureaucracy, I have yet to meet a Ukrainian who misses the Yanukovych regime, though they undoubtedly exist somewhere. It's hard to recall a single redeeming feature of that three-year period of boredom and despair. "If the question is whether you want to live minus a few limbs or die, the answer is obvious," the pessimist Mitnitska wrote. 

 

For complete text of the commentary, link below:

http://www.bloombergview.com/articles ... t-to-be-scared-of-ukraine

 

* Leonid Bershidsky is a Bloomberg View contributor. He is a Berlin-based writer, author of three novels and two nonfiction books. Bershidsky was the founding editor of Russia's top business daily, Vedomosti, a joint project of Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal, and the first publisher of the Russian edition of Forbes. He also founded the opinion website Slon.ru; ran the business book arm of Russia's biggest book publisher, Eksmo; and worked as managing director at KIT Finance investment bank. He has an MBA from Insead in Fontainebleau, France.

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