Bruce Jackson, president of the non-governmental organization Project on Transitional Democracies, is well-known in expert circles, and numerous politicians keep the doors of their offices open to him. This attests to his great clout, at least in the US, his home country. Jackson admits that nobody likes being given advice. In his view, Ukrainian politicians are no exception, because Kyiv has ignored many recommendations by authoritative specialists and thus committed many errors. Yet there is a glimmer of hope. The US expert thinks that the March 26 parliamentary elections will be of decisive importance. In his last interview with The Day in the summer of 2005 he expressed concern about five tendencies in Ukraine: price regulation, reprivatization, “criminalization” of political opponents, the Ukrainian government’s populism, and the protracted “revolutionary process.” What has changed since then? This was our first question to Bruce JACKSON.
“What is your assessment of the current stage of Ukraine’s development? Has the number of your criticisms increased or decreased?”
I think last summer big questions were mostly governmental. It was, so to say, a governmental period. Now you are in a political period. This is more about the parties than the policies of government. So we focus on how successfully the three major parties have reformed. I guess there is now a sixth concern added to the five I was speaking about last year: the negotiations and agreement on the energy deal with Gazprom. This is a disaster for Ukraine in terms of security. If this deal is accepted, it will make Ukraine’s economy serve Russia, especially its energy sector. So, this is now the sixth concern.
“Does Ukraine have any chances to reverse the situation? Do you think it is too late to retreat, now that an agreement has been reached?”
The intermediary company, RosUkrEnergo, has to go. We have to know who the company is; otherwise it has to leave the deal.
“But this means Ukraine will have another dispute with Russia.”
That’s inevitable. Russia had an agreement with Ukraine to provide energy for the rest of the decade at an agreed price. They didn’t like that deal and they demand a higher price. You have a signed deal, and they say it is not worth anything — their deal isn’t worth anything!
Let me shift from the energy crisis to the political question. I think there is a change of attitude in Washington. I think that Washington and Brussels regard the three major parties, — Our Ukraine, Yuliya Tymoshenko’s Bloc, and Party of the Regions, and maybe three or four others, — as legitimate parties. All of them have problems with the reform, but it’s a democratic choice. That means that the United States is not going to play favorites. The US government says that they will work with any freely elected government of Ukraine. This kind of approach makes the next election the first modern election in Ukraine’s history. It’s also the most important election in Europe this year, maybe even in this decade. It’s also the first election in Ukraine’s history where you really don’t know who is going to win.
“To what extent did the Ukrainian side conduct the talks with Russia in a professional manner? Did Ukraine have opportunities to conclude them in any other way?”
Of course, it is possible to negotiate with Russia successfully and fairly. But don’t do it alone. Russia is in a very bad period, an antidemocratic period. And Ukraine deals with it all by itself. It never told Brussels and its European and American friends what was going on. Everybody read about it in the newspapers. It took them three weeks to figure it out. Why not tell your friends you are in trouble?
This deal also affected the energy security of Europe. I think that the problem of Russia’s unreliability as an energy supplier is a European problem. And Ukraine made it only a Ukrainian problem. Why were people trying to keep the negotiations and the deal a secret from us and from the Ukrainian people? What purpose was served by secret deals? You don’t have secret treaties in Europe any more for at least a hundred and fifty years. So, in my opinion, this needs to be done over.
“It is no secret that NATO is devoting a lot of attention to the ‘Russian factor,’ so it may be assumed that an exacerbation of the Kyiv-Moscow conflict will deal a blow to Ukraine’s integration into the alliance. Do you think the disputes with Russia will jeopardize Ukraine’s accession to NATO?”
I think the short answer is no. The Russian factor does not influence Ukraine’s integration in this period. Everybody is concerned that Russia has entered the new period of imperialism and is acting badly towards people in Central Asia, Georgia, the Baltic States, NGOs, civil society, the business community, etc. — they’ve done absolutely everything. Ukraine’s campaign for NATO’s qualifications is going surprisingly well. There is widespread support in NATO for movement to the next level, the Membership Action Plan, which would set up a two to three years’ program to membership. We expect that promotion to occur within two or three months after your elections are completed, as early as June. This is incredibly successful for two years. Probably relations with the EU are not going as quickly, because many of the issues of judiciary reform, constitutional reform, business reform, election reform, the very difficult parliamentary decisions show that the parties are still not ready for this. Ukraine is going well in short steps with NATO and less well in long steps to the European Union. Difficulties with the WTO legislation are evidence of this. Our questions to the Ukrainian parties come to reform, reform, and reform again. How soon, how quickly, how committed, how soon will they start after March 26? I don’t think anybody would say, “We would not like Ukraine in Europe because of Russia.” We are waiting for Ukraine to become qualified. Ukraine has a lot of inside work that has to be done.
“In your interview in The Day you said that the Orange government has no right to make mistakes. Do you think that time has mostly run out? Are the parliamentary elections a last chance?”
If we have elections with cheating and interfering in the election process, then we will be in trouble. We now understand that the first one or two years of these new democracies look very chaotic. Frankly, we didn’t get through the first year without mistakes, but they do not disqualify Ukraine. Obviously, the other question is if there is anything that would disqualify Ukraine. For example, a referendum against NATO would be disqualifying.
I believe that Russia is pressuring Ukraine, and Ukraine is trying to stand up to it by itself. Other people in Washington and Brussels believe that this is dangerous behavior. We don’t take over things; we settle things in courts. I think it might be rather a political disqualification than technical.
“But is the Ukrainian leadership fairly raising the question of joining NATO without explaining to its citizens what the alliance is all about?”
We have been pushing Ukraine for the last nine months to start an educational campaign nationally to inform Ukrainian people about their options in the EU and NATO: security in NATO, political integration in the EU, economics, trade, etc. It takes a lot of time to understand what these possibilities are. For domestic reasons nobody has had time to talk to the Ukrainian people about this: they were too busy fighting among themselves, firing the government and so on. I am not saying that Ukraine has to decide to be in NATO today. Hungary started with 33 percent of people supporting entering NATO, but when they understood what they could expect from it, they came to 67 percent. We want that process to start in Ukraine as soon as possible and we are disappointed that it hasn’t started yet.
