To wrap up the year, who better to interview than Mychailo Wynnyckyj, the Canadian scholar and media personality, who has Ukraine as his home? Over more than a decade, Mychailo has lived through all the big and small developments that Ukraine has lived through. He was on the Maidan, from its beginning and through its darkest and most glorious moments. Mychailo has participated in and overseen the reforms undertaken after the restoration of democracy in Ukraine. For many, he has become one of the voices with which Ukraine speaks to the world. Mr. Wynnyckyj's judgements and predictions are bold and often attract criticism but that makes them all the more interesting.
NP: Why do you think Putin did not attack Ukraine on a wide scale in the fall?
MW: (laughs) I am not Putin's psychotherapist. What he is doing in Ukraine is not just about Ukraine, it's about in his mind trying to recover some supposed dignity for Russia he believes has been lost because of the hegemony of the United States. And Ukraine just happens to be his way of reacting and creating an image of himself as the protector of the Russian interests.
Why Putin did not attack further, I don't know. The most credible reason is that he was expecting a reaction throughout five of the eastern oblasts of Ukraine to be exactly the same as it was in the eastern Donbas, a far greater support for pro-Russians, some sort of discontent with Maidan. That didn't happen and I think he was a bit shocked. I think it's very important for all of us, Ukrainians in the diaspora, people that are analysts, that there is a new reality in Ukraine, which may not be very pleasant particularly for those who come from Western Ukraine, called “Russian-speaking Ukrainian patriots”. I don't think people expected this social phenomenon, including Putin.
The reality is that Putin's window of opportunity in Ukraine has probably closed at this point. There will likely be continued disturbances in Ukraine like in Vynnytsia and Zaporizhzhia, we are starting to see the things perhaps happen in Kharkiv, etc. But Ukrainians now are very much prepared for these types of disturbances and I don't think there is any threat to security at this point for Ukraine. The war is gradually descending into a frozen conflict situation.
NP: This war used to be called a “hybrid war”. Now it is more and more often called a “strange war”. Ukraine is trading officially and unofficially with the occupied territories, thus making the opponent stronger.
MW: Several months ago, I wrote that Ukraine's future for the foreseeable years ahead is comparable to that of the State of Israel over the last 30 years. Israel also regularly trades with its Arab neighbors despite being almost constantly at war with many of them. There is a reality of geographic dependence and economic expedience.
In Ukraine's case, the choice is very simple. We either live without electricity or we buy coal from Russia. In that kind of dilemma, the government has chosen to buy a small amount of coal from Russia. Clearly, within a year or two, we need to drastically reduce our energy dependence, but that's not something that happens over night. At the moment President Poroshenko is in Australia and is talking about bringing coal from Australia, but it will take it a month to arrive to Ukraine, while we need coal now. Probably, there is some mismanagement involved in all of this, but I would ask people to give the Ukrainian government a bit of slack.
NP: But this trade with the self-proclaimed “republics” makes the republics stronger.
MW: There is a very strong discussion in Ukraine in the political elite and among common men, what do to about the eastern Donbas. Technically, the people that live there are still Ukrainians. At the moment they are in a much more difficult economic situation than the rest of the country. The rest of the country needs coal. The coal is in the eastern Donbas, where Ukrainian citizens are starving. Should we buy it from them? I guess, from a humanitarian standpoint, it makes sense to buy it.
NP: There are a lot voices at the moment who are not expecting anymore that the current President, Cabinet and Parliament will carry out swift and deep reforms. These people are saying, based on the performance of the current authorities, that the reforms will be the issue for the next stage of revolution in Ukraine.
MW: We are all very maximalist in Ukraine after the revolution, we are used that with Maidan everything happens in a time machine. We want things to change overnight, but it doesn't happen that way. This parliament was elected six weeks ago and they've put together a plan, signed the coalition agreement and elected a government. The previous government I don't think was a bad government, but we've had a rotation. The talk of the third Maidan plays into the hands of one force in the world, Putin. There is no reason for Ukraine to have any more social upheavals.
There is a civil society that is de-facto in opposition to the current government, which is the way it should be. On the Maidan, noone particularly trusted anyone from the politics – Yatsenyuk, Klytchko or Tiahnybok, but at the same time, they were the leaders. It is exactly the same situation today. There is a lot of mistrust for formal political leaders, and the role of society is to control them. From the outside, it may look like a lot of criticism, but in reality, how many people in Canada approve 100% of everything that Steven Harper does?
The reforms will happen fast, and if they don't, Ukraine will go bankrupt and there will be another change of government.
NP: What is your estimate of the ability of the President and government to hold swift and deep reforms?
MW: I think that by the end of the spring we will be living in a new country.
NP: So, you think they are able to hold this kind of reform?
MW: I don't think they have any choice.
NP: At the same time, many people say that as the Prosecutor General, for instance, has not done much to prosecute many from the old guard, this may point to the lack of willingness on the part of the President for reforms.
MW: I will not be surprised if within the next month or so the Prosecutor General will be fired. The same, I would not be surprised if in the nearest weeks we had a new Head of the National Bank. Because with what is going on with the national currency right now, the current Head Valeria Hontareva is in a problematic state. However, it should be said that her position is actually being supported by the IMF, so, I am not exactly sure where we are going to be with the Head of the National Bank.
NP: Do you think that the result of the reforms in Ukraine should be the demolition of the oligarchy? Do you think the government will be able to do something about it so quickly?
MW: What I have to say about oligarchs is not particularly popular. I am very skeptical about the whole concept of oligarchy. In order for oligarchs to be real players in the Ukrainian politics they need cash to bribe and buy votes in parliament, etc. The fact is that Ukrainian oligarchs at this point have no cash. Many of them still have assets, like Akhmetov who still has assets “on paper”, Firtash doesn't even have assets, never mind cash.
The exceptions are Kolomoyskyi in Dnipropetrovsk and Baloga in Zakarpattia. Kolomoyskyi is growing a bit dangerous on the national level, but he is being tolerated because of his patriotic stance and support of the military. But how long is that tolerance going to last is an open question. If you are talking about Poroshenko being an oligarch, my answer to that one is: with this kind of oligarchs, I don't think we have any kind of problem.
NP: It seems as if the new government's program is putting the burden of the crisis on the masses rather than on the oligarchs.
MW: How do you tax someone who has no money? Oligarchs are bankrupt. We can be social populists and say “let's take from the rich and give to the poor”. Everyone has a Robin Hood's gene in them, everybody likes the Dovbush character. Wonderful idea, but maybe a hundred years after the Russian revolution and Lenin, maybe we've learned something? That that idea doesn't necessarily work, that behind these ideas usually there are pretty sinister motives. I am very skeptical of these ideas.
With respect to the government program, yes, Mr. Yatsenyuk tried to have the Parliament vote through a very general program that would give him a lot of leeway to do many different things. The Parliament did not allow him to do that, they included into the program 45 pages of the coalition agreement with very specific reforms. And now Yastenyuk's hands are a bit tied by this program. If he does not fulfill the program, the parliamentary majority will ask for his resignation, that's how democracies work.
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