Ukraine wants more than words from Canada
Expectations high as Harper’s Kyiv visit nears
KYIV, Ukraine — Ukrainians will be looking to Canada on Saturday for more than the usual tired platitudes about affection for Ukraine when Prime Minister Stephen Harper becomes the first western leader to visit the country since Russia annexed Crimea.
Mentoring Ukraine’s feeble army and seizing Russian effects in Canada to compensate Kyiv for property it has lost in Crimea were among the measures that have been mooted here ahead of Harper’s roughly six-hour visit to the Ukrainian capital, which precedes an emergency G-7 summit in the Netherlands on the Crimean crisis.
Canada, meanwhile, extended sanctions Friday against 14 more Russian officials, as well as the Bank Rossiya.
“Together with our international allies, our government is taking a strong stance in our support for Ukraine,” Harper said in a statement on his arrival in The Hague.
Canada was quick to condemn last Sunday’s referendum in which Crimeans voted to secede from Ukraine and join Russia. Ottawa’s initial response was to join the U.S. and European Union in imposing a travel ban and economic sanctions on a small number of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s cronies as well as those associated with former president Viktor Yanukovych’s regime that was toppled in a coup in Kyiv four weeks ago.
“I cannot say whether Canada has done enough, but I am sure Canada is able to do much more and that is what your prime minister will discuss here tomorrow,” said Oleksandr Sushko of the Institute of euro-Atlantic Integration. “The reputation of Canada is quite positive here. Yours was the first government to react to human rights violations by the previous regime.”
Russia has declared that it now owns everything the Ukrainian government had in Crimea, including its Black Sea fleet. “Because of what was stolen, Russian ships of every kind in the West should be put under the permanent threat of arrest,” Sushko said. “Canada should seize any Russian aircraft that land in Canadian territory.
“Canada could also really help to support and strengthen our military capacity and as soon as possible. This would help us but it would also be symbolic to demonstrate that Ukraine does not stand alone.”
Vera Nanivska of the Kyiv-based International Centre for Policy Studies said Canada’s greatest contribution would be if it were to help Ukraine de-Sovietize still unreconstructed former Soviet institutions.
“This has been the cancer tumour of the democratization process in Ukraine,” Nanivska said, adding, “Canada could do something concrete and different such as teaching how public bodies should control finance rather than the Soviet system. Part of that would be basic principles in areas such as anticorruption.”
As well as meeting with a small number of key political figures, including acting prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, Harper’s trip is meant to show “solidarity with the people of Ukraine,” according to a background paper distributed to journalists before the prime minister left Ottawa for Europe on Friday.
Crimea and Sevastopol, which has had a slightly different legal status, formally became part of Russia on Friday when Putin signed into law an agreement that the Duma, or parliament, had approved with the Crimean government.
After congratulating Russians and Crimeans on “this momentous event,” Putin said that for now Russia would not go further than banning several American politicians from entering his country in a tit-for-tat response to similar measures announced by the White House.
Meanwhile, Ukraine and the EU inked an agreement on political association. Former president Yanukovych’s refusal to sign the deal was what sparked street protests last November that led to his eventual downfall three months later.
There has been disappointment in Ukraine at what many have considered to be the West’s timid response to Putin’s Crimean land grab. On the other side of the same issue, Russians have openly mocked the travel bans and the freezing of bank accounts of members of Putin’s inner circle.
“What is repeated non-stop on the issue of Russia and Crimea is that what Russia did looks unacceptable, and has been said to have been unacceptable, but it is still accepted,” Nanivska said.
She said there is the perception here “the West does not believe that Russia will do anything else, so they do not want to harm economic relations with Russia. They have basically accepted this by not putting in place very tangible sanctions.”
Elaborating on the same theme, Sushko said Ukrainians wanted to see measures which “made Russia suffer economically and politically and hurt its reputation in the world.
“This is necessary because we are not the only country at risk. The world has been made less safe and there must be punishment for those who upset the international order.”
Part of the feeling here that the West has let them down arose because of “an overestimation on the Ukrainian side about what could be done,” Nanivska said. “Many thought that all the West had to do was to call Putin and tell him to stop it. But that was not possible.”