Region Keeps Close Watch On Ukraine

WILMINGTON, USA -- When Ukraine Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych visited Washington in December to talk with the Bush administration about Ukraine’s economic progress, he met with Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.


Viktor Yushchenko (L) is pro-Western, while Viktor Yanukovych is pro-Russia
But Orysia Hewka, executive director of the Ukrainian Educational and Cultural Center in Jenkintown, Pa., kept her distance, even though she was invited to take part in the Washington ceremonies. She declined, she said, because she could not bring herself to meet Yanukovych.

“The new minister is constantly running back and forth to Moscow,” she said, adding that he stopped there on his way to Washington.

Hewka is wary of Russian interference. She points to the deadly famine in Ukraine under the Stalinist regime – in which millions of Ukrainians died in the early 1930s – as “what Soviets are capable of. They’re the ones who built the gulags and put our people in prisons,” she said.

While that might seem like a long time ago, feelings about the famine still run deep among Ukrainians. Ukraine’s parliament, the Supreme Council, officially declared the famine an act of genocide on Nov. 28. The gesture was something Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko had pushed for, signifying that the stockpiling of wheat and border restrictions enacted by the Soviet Union in the 1930s was tantamount to mass murder.

“The passage of genocide act was a moral victory,” said Yaroslav Bilinsky, 74, of Newark, who was born in Ukraine and is a professor emeritus of political science and international relations at the University of Delaware.

The suppression of human rights that existed in Ukraine until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 is also on the minds of many Ukrainians who don't want to see their country return to the old ways -- especially Ukrainians who came to the United States seeking freedom.

They view Yanukovych as a man twice convicted of crimes who wants to maintain close ties with Russia. Yushchenko, on the other hand, supports a Western-style democracy and is even married to an American.

Uneasy partnership

The president and prime minister are a political odd couple. While Yushchenko is the country's top leader, Yanukovych's party has a majority in parliament, which assures support for his initiatives, and the scales of authority are tipping lately toward him.

The two leaders opposed each other in the 2004 presidential election. Yanukovych appeared to have won it. But amid massive demonstrations by Ukraine citizens alleging vote-rigging -- a movement that was referred to as the Orange Revolution -- the country's Supreme Court overturned the results and called for another election that Yushchenko won.

In the spring of 2005, Yanukovych made a comeback, winning the parliamentary election to become prime minister.

The two politicians govern as an uneasy tandem. The law does not provide much guidance on how their power should be shared. Constitutional reforms that took effect this year stipulate that Yushchenko cannot fire Yanukovych, and Yanukovych cannot ignore the president.

The two leaders frequently clash over foreign policy, Cabinet appointments and government business. Yanukovych controls the country's finances. But in December, Yushchenko vetoed the 2007 budget, dealing a blow to his rival. It was the first time in Ukrainian history a president vetoed a parliament-approved budget drafted by the government.

Keeping the country together

Yanukovych's appointment by the Supreme Council was a move designed in part "to make sure there was no breakup of the Ukraine," professor Bilinsky said.

"There were threats that certain parts of the country could go to Russia," he said. "But it is a very strained relationship, especially since Yushchenko himself was poisoned in 2004, and he wasn't able to clarify the real cause of the poisoning."

Bilinsky also distrusts Yanukovych. "He's essentially [Russian President] Putin's man, as I see him. For that reason, the Ukrainian-American community has great reservations, and I think justified reservations about Yanukovych.

"I would tend to see what is going on in the Ukraine as Putin's takeover, part two," he said. "Part one was the 2004 election."

The Rev. Stephen Hutnick, pastor of Saints Peter and Paul Ukrainian Orthodox Church, said he usually steers clear of politics because he is a priest. But he understands the political situation in Ukraine is a volatile one.

"It becomes very difficult, because Russia can't afford to lose Ukraine with its wealth of wheat and food supplies, and also natural resources," he said. "When you look at the whole situation, nobody wants to lose a good thing."

Fears of return to communism

As a third-generation Ukrainian-American, Hutnick also understands what is at stake.

"Once you've tasted freedom, you don't want to be oppressed again," he said. "In that election, they came out in droves because they thought they were cheated in their right for a democratic vote. They wanted to think their vote counts."

Ukrainian-American Victor Melnychenko, 68, of the Newark area, also said he is not political. But, he added, "They tried to kill Yushchenko, and it didn't succeed, and it backfired on the communists. And anything that goes bad against the communists, I'm glad.

"The fact that there was a peaceful protest over there, the Orange Revolution, you would have never heard of that under the communist regime, because they would have squashed it."

Source: Delaware Online