Ukraine officials could face EU sanctions after failure to compromise

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s unwilling to compromise with the opposition may lead to the EU beginning to prepare next week lists of Ukrainian leaders subject to travel bans and bank account freezes, EU Parliament Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Elmar Brok told the Deutsche Welle news agency on Jan. 30. “I get the impression that this president obviously doesn’t have the desire for a peaceful resolution,” said Brok, who belongs to the European People’s Party that has a cooperation agreement with Ukraine’s biggest opposition party, Fatherland. “Not even by a millimeter are they ready to compromise,” he said. “They are a one-sided view that violence came from the other side. I think that’s a complete loss of touch with reality combined with a total claim on power.”

 

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will meet with Ukraine’s opposition leaders at the Munich Security Conference on Jan. 31 or Feb. 1. The conference will be attended by Ukrainian Foreign Minister Leonid Kozhara but the U.S. State Department hasn’t confirmed whether Kerry will meet with him. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland will visit Kyiv in the next week as part of a tour of European capitals.

 

The government’s terror campaign against the EuroMaidan continued on Jan. 30. Dmytro Bulatov, the leader of the AutoMaidan motorcade protests, was released from captivity on Jan. 30 near a Kyiv Oblast village after being missing for eight days. He was tortured throughout the time he was held hostage, having his ear cut off and was crucified, with punctures visible on his hands. He said his torturers spoke with Russian accents. At least 20 cars were set on fire in Kyiv on Jan. 30 as criminals reportedly targeted vehicles participating in the AutoMaidan.

 

Meanwhile in Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine’s fourth largest city, assailants attacked a lawyer defending the EuroMaidan protesters while others reportedly grabbed people off the streets, many randomly, for detainment and two months’ incarceration. 21 were reported arrested, at least seven of which weren’t in the city during attempts to storm state buildings and more who weren’t near the incidents.

 

Meanwhile, The Insider news site reported Ukraine’s parliament was close to approving measures returning the 2004 constitutional amendments creating a presidential-parliamentary republic and was in the process of forming a new majority on Jan. 29, reported The Insider news site, which would have an enormous step to resolving Ukraine’s political crisis. Yet under intense Russian pressure, Yanuokvych visited the parliament that evening to undermine the peaceful resolution, threatening to bury members of his Party of Regions parliamentary faction and warning there was compromising information (kompromat) on each of them, The Insider reported.

 

Yanukovych was accompanied by National Deputy Vadym Novinsky, a Russian steel magnate who took Ukrainian citizenship and got elected to parliament in 2012. Novinsky is the enforcer in Ukraine’s parliament for Russian President Vladimir Putin, The Insider reported, and consulted with numerous deputies on their voting behavior. The parliament voted that day for the president’s version of the amnesty, which sets a two-week deadline for the EuroMaidan to surrender in exchange for the release of imprisoned protesters. The vote was supported by dozens of deputies loyal to oligarchs Rinat Akhmetov and Dmytro Firtash within the Party of Regions, The Insider reported.

 

Zenon Zawada: Yanukovych’s direct involvement in undermining a peaceful resolution to Ukraine’s political crisis has drawn the attention of Western leaders, who are clearly not pleased yet still slow to react, in our view. It’s still a long time until the EU imposes sanctions on Ukraine’s power brokers, having not yet even begun the process, as EU MP Brok mentioned. The U.S. might act sooner, having begun to impose travel restrictions on Party of Regions leaders, yet Ukraine’s power brokers are more concerned about their status in the EU.

 

The interference with a peaceful resolution only bolsters the need for Yanukovych’s resignation and departure from Ukrainian politics. So does the ongoing terror campaign with the possible involvement of Russian special forces, which has been long suspected, demonstrates that either top Ukrainian officials have lost control of the situation in Ukraine or they are committing treason against the state’s interests.

 

The Russian pressure on the Ukrainian leadership demonstrates its interest in what we’d call a situation of “controlled chaos” in Ukraine, where the lack of order is significant enough to paralyze government but not enough to affect events in Russia. Recent calls for federalization by Kremlin-aligned politicians in Ukraine’s parliament also demonstrates Russia’s interest in radically reformatting Ukraine’s administrative structures to gain greater leverage in Ukraine’s eastern and southern regions. Therefore the ongoing threat of further violence serves the Russian government’s geopolitical goals in weakening the Ukrainian state.