Blue &Yellow: Politics and Economics in Ukraine

According to Reuters, Firtash agreed to reimburse some $2.5 billion to Gazprom and Naftogaz, the Ukraine state gas company. But Timoshenko claims that the gas was worth about $3.5 billion, leaving about $1 billion in profit. She claims that some of that went for mischief against Yanukovich's opposition, including herself. "Since taking power, the Yanukovich administration, aided and abetted by the defendants and other co-conspirators, have launched a wave of arrests and investigations aimed at plaintiff Timoshenko and her political allies in what most objective observers consider to be a concerted campaign to intimidate, suppress and ultimately eliminate any and all political opposition in Ukraine," the suit alleges.

Tymoshenko's lawsuit discussed at Oil and Glory, where one can find more details about the case.  The most interesting part is her allegation that the new administration choose to lose the Stockholm arbitration case.  A good post on the ongoing legal battle between the former prime minister and the current government.

If elections to the Verkhovna Rada were held in mid-April, five parties would have garnered enough votes to qualify for the parliament, i.e. the Party of Regions (13.9% of the vote), the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (10.6%), the Front for Change led by Arseniy Yatseniuk (7.1%), the Communist Party (3.2%), and the Udar (Strike) party led by Vitali Klitschko (3.1%), as can be seen from a nationwide public opinion poll of 1,020 respondents conducted by the Kyiv International Sociology Institute on April 8 to 18.

From Kyiv Post, of course Rada elections aren't scheduled for this year. 

The negative effects have included a more restrictive environment for the media, selective prosecution of opposition figures, worrisome instances of intrusiveness by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), widely criticized local elections in October 2010, a pliant parliament (Verkhovna Rada), and an erosion of basic freedoms of assembly and speech. Corruption remains a huge drain on the country,and there is significant room for the situation to get even worse.

From a Freedom House evaluation on Ukraine. Its not too long a read, but let me present some excerpts from the report below.

Elections & Reform

But credible observers in Ukraine are now concerned that his administration is acting to alter the electoral environment in ways that will prejudice the political prospects of independent and opposition forces and help to concentrate power in the hands of the ruling party, both in Kyiv and in the regions. These concerns center on three interrelated issues: a new electoral code, currently in preparation; the conduct of the 2010 local elections; and constitutional reform.

Political Persecution

Nonetheless, the government’s anticorruption campaign lacks credibility. Authorities point to the prosecution of former prime minister Tymoshenko and former interior minister Yuriy Lutsenko as a signal that corruption will not be tolerated and that politicians are not above the law. However, these cases are not focused on charges of personal enrichment, but rather on administrative abuses. The government is correct that the prosecutions send a strong signal, but that signal is actually a warning to other would be opposition figures not to challenge the authorities. 

Constitutional Reform

The Constitutional Court’s September 2010 decision to invalidate the 2004 constitutional amendments associated with the Orange Revolution raised both substantive and procedural red flags. Substantively, the ruling shifted power from the parliament back to the presidency, granting Yanukovych the same level of authority wielded by former president Kuchma. Moreover, in the run-up to the decision, four judges who opposed the nullification of the amendments resigned and were replaced with judges who backed it. The subsequent formation of a Constituent Assembly under the auspices of the president has hardly inspired confidence in future constitutional checks and balances. There were also concerns that the arrest of the son-in-law of the Constitutional Court’s chairman, combined with a criminal case against his daughter, represented a not-so-subtle form of  pressure on the court.

On a future virtual presidential candidate 

Many of the observers we heard from expressed fear that this strategy—disqualifying the opposition party best able to challenge the Party of Regions while facilitating the growth of a more extreme nationalist party—may be replicated on a national level. These observers point out that in the presidential election, which came after Tymoshenko had presided over a massive economic collapse and extraordinary divisions with the incumbent president, she lost to Yanukovych by just 3.48 percentage points. To ensure Yanukovych’s reelection, they argue, the Party of Regions is intent on having him faceoff against a fringe Ukrainian nationalist candidate, knowing that this will depress opposition turnout in the center and energize Yanukovych’s base in the east and south.

The case seeks to represent all Ukrainian people in a class action and was filed under U.S. racketeering law and the Alien Torts Statute, a law that allows foreigners seeking damages for violations of international human rights laws to sue in U.S. courts. The complaint seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.

From Bloomberg emphasis mine, a PR stunt for the Ukrainian public and way of putting pressure on her enemies back home. I can't see this going far in U.S. courts, how can she represent all Ukrainian people?

Having failed to answer a question correctly in Russian, I get it repeated in broken, angry English. The interrogating KGB officer pushes me against a filing cabinet. "Where are y'fRRROM?" England, I say, cowering. He prods me in the chest, hard. "You are English? English spy! English spy!" In another "scene", a KGB doctor forces me to strip to the waist, in front of the other participants. "Jacket off! Shirt off! Strip to waist! Quick! Quick!" She sits me down on a stool, grabs a clump of cotton wool, douses it in alcohol, and sets it alight. This is then dropped in a glass jar and applied to my bare shoulders: known as "fire cupping", it was supposed to draw out disease through the skin.

 This is not someone recounting their time in the Soviet Union but a journalist visiting 1984: Survival Drama in a Soviet Bunker. Its located in Lithuania. On the other hand in Ukraine it appears that their focusing on the  happy moments living in a totalitarian regime.