By Eamon Dyas

Modern Ukraine emerged as an independent state from the most multi-national state in history – the Soviet Union. When it did emerge from the Soviet Union, Ukraine itself bore the characteristics of a multinational state in the form of a presence within its borders of Russian, Hungarian, Romanian, and Cossack minorities with the Russian minority constituting the largest of these. However, Ukraine did not possess a European liberal tradition which might have guided it along the route to becoming a functioning multinational state and the former Soviet component which did possess the experience of governing across national and ethnic lines had been demoralised out of existence. This meant that the only sentiment that possessed the capacity and energy to develop an independent post-Soviet Ukrainian identity was that which had previously emerged during the Second World War as the most effective challenger of Soviet hegemony – an exclusive and extreme form of right-wing Ukrainian nationalism. 

The impact of this sentiment took a few years to assert itself as in the immediate post-Soviet period the country was to a large extent dominated by a pragmatic business element whose perspective was primarily focused on enriching itself and embedding capitalism within its previously socialist economy. It was only after the price of such a thing began to manifest itself in the form of widespread corruption that Ukrainian civil society began to seek a political expression that could offer an alternative. Left to its own devices, the search for such an alternative might have accommodated Ukraine’s multinational post-Soviet inheritance but unfortunately, almost from the start the United States had viewed its security policy in terms that would inevitably lead to its interference in the country’s internal affairs and in the process destroy any prospect of Ukraine developing along such lines. 

The early US perspective on Ukraine was made apparent by the Polish-born former US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski in his 1997 book “The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives”. In that work he said: “Without Ukraine Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire.” And on the basis of that he went on to argue that bringing the country into Washington’s orbit would not only deprive Russia of ever regaining its previous strength but also help the US to become “the key arbiter of Eurasian power relations” in the future. 

It was this geopolitical perspective that fuelled the US strategy towards Ukraine. In furtherance of that perspective bodies like the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the National Democratic Institute, Freedom House and USAID as well as other federal government agencies financed things like the training of journalists, judges and other civil society activists, the object of which was to move Ukraine closer to democracy and the west and away from Russia. Alongside that, the US government itself directly spent $65 million in the two years leading up to the 2004 presidential election to assist the campaign of their preferred candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, who favoured membership of the EU and NATO as opposed to the more independently-minded Viktor Yanukovych.

However, this was by no means an exclusively US effort. Alongside the efforts of the US was that of Canada which had a significant and influential Ukrainian population. Canada’s contribution to the cause of Ukrainian democracy was highlighted in an investigative piece by Mark Mackinnon, the senior international correspondent of Canada’s main national newspaper, the Globe and Mail in an article published in that paper on 14 April 2007 titled “Agent Orange: Our secret role in Ukraine” (see: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/incoming/agent-orange-our-secret-role-in-ukraine/article1354140/).

In the course of investigating his article Mackinnon discovered that the Canadian ambassador to Ukraine, Andrew Robinson, functioned as the main organiser of ambassadors of those countries seeking an “acceptable” outcome from the 2004 election. This involved him presiding over “donor coordination” sessions among 20 countries interested in ensuring that the western leaning Viktor Yushchenko succeed in the election. Mirroring the activities of the US government and as part of what they called “democracy promotion” the Canadian embassy spent hundreds of thousands of US dollars on opposition-aligned civil society groups. But it went further. In order to assist the US in avoiding being directly implicated in such actions, in the months before the 2004 presidential election in Ukraine, the Canadian embassy helped raise funds to bring veterans of Serbia’s “Otpor” movement (which helped bring down the Milošević government in 2000) and Georgia’s “Kmara” movement (which did the same for the Shevardnadze government in Georgia in 2003) to Ukraine to instruct Ukrainian organisations in their methods of “promoting democracy”.

But on this occasion in Ukraine democracy let itself and the west down when the second round run-off election on 21 November returned the independently minded Viktor Yanukovych as the president of Ukraine rather than Yushchenko. In response to this “failure of democracy” the west marshalled its resources with the EU and US officially refusing to recognise the result. José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission got involved as did the former president of Poland, Lech Wałęsa, who visited Kiev on 25 November to express his support for Yushchenko. This was followed the next day by a similar visit by the then President of Poland, Aleksander Kwaśniewski as well as the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs, Javier Solana and the Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus all expressing a refusal to recognise the results of the election and urging a new election. 

That investment in democracy culminated in weeks of civil unrest that became known as the “Orange Revolution” and succeeded in the overturning of the earlier election result and the removal of Yanukovych and his replacement by Washington’s favourite, Viktor Yuschenko. (For Washington’s involvement in this see: “US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev”, The Guardian, 26 November 2004 https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/nov/26/ukraine.usa).

In practical terms the Canadian government again in tandem with the US helped to finance the Orange Revolution. The Canadian embassy provided US$30,000 as a first donation to “Pora” the pro-EU and pro-NATO lead group that organised the Orange Revolution in Ukraine and the head of that group, Vlad Kaskiv, was employed by the Open Society Foundation. He later became an adviser to Yushchenko when he assumed the presidency of Ukraine.

A few words about the subsequent career of the unfortunate Vlad Kaskiv. Between 2007 and 2010 after serving as adviser to Yushchenko he acted as advisor on foreign investment to Yulia Tymoshenko who was then prime minister. When the original, but overturned winner, of the 2004 presidential election, Viktor Yanukovych, went on to win the 2010 presidential election he endeavoured to compile a government that reflected as wide a range of opinion as possible and appointed Kaskiv as head of the State Agency for Investment in Main National Projects of Ukraine. As a result of his association with Yanukovych, Kaskiv was forced to flee Ukraine after the Maidan coup of 2014. In 2016 he was accused of misappropriation of $279,000 during his time as head of the State Agency for Investment and a year late he was arrested and extradited from Panama although he’s always claimed that he returned to Ukraine of his own volition. 

However, although he was released on bail, I can find no report of any subsequent trial. Since 2020 he has been a member of the Zakarpattia Oblast Council which is in the Carpathian Mountains in the extreme west of the country – an area that is home to several significant national minorities including Hungarians, Romanians and Ruthenians. On the council he represents the “Opposition Platform – For Life” a Eurosceptic political party that is banned at the national level in Ukraine for its alleged Russian sympathies. No doubt Kaskiv has significantly modified his opinions about Ukraine and its relationship with democracy since 2004.

The justification for all this effort by western governments was to encourage the development of democracy. When The Guardian published its exposure of US involvement in fermenting the unrest in Ukraine in 2004 (see reference above) an indignant Chargé d’Affaires of the US Embassy in London wrote a letter to The Guardian which is worth quoting in full. In that letter, Chargé d’Affaires David T. Johnson says:

“So the Guardian thinks the US is behind the “turmoil” in Ukraine (US campaign behind turmoil in Kiev, November 26)? That strikes me as a bit odd. All the reporting I’ve seen has emphasised that the current situation is the result of a genuine popular quest by Ukraine’s citizens to choose their leaders through a transparent and open democratic process.

“It is true enough, however, that Uncle Sam is up to something. And not only in Ukraine, but also in Belarus, Georgia, Serbia and a host of other nations in Europe and, indeed, around the world. What we are up to is support for democracy. 

“As America’s former ambassador to the OSCE [the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe – ED], I am guilty of some of this myself. Accustomed as I am to the Guardian’s dreary catalogue of America’s shortcomings, both real and imagined, I now look forward to reading an editorial, signed or unsigned, lauding America’s efforts to work with others, throughout the world, to spread democracy.” (“What Uncle Sam is up to”, Letters to the editor, The Guardian, 27 November 2004).

But the pretence that in undertaking the actions it did in 2004 the US was only “encouraging Ukraine’s citizens to choose their leaders through a transparent and open democratic process” rings rather hollow when it is realised that in 2006, two years after those actions, the political party of the man who was deprived of the election at that time – Yanukovych’s Party of the Regions – won the parliamentary elections and in 2010 he was once again elected President of Ukraine but this time Washington didn’t dare attempt to topple him. It should also be noted that Yanukovych’s Party of the Regions, as its name implies, was the main political party which sought to ensure that the state took account of the multinational nature of the territory which Ukraine inherited from the Soviet Union. So, when in 2014 the US was once more “encouraging” the democratic process in helping to illegally oust Yanukovych from the presidency it was not only removing the legitimately elected president but also inflicting a fatal blow on whatever capacity there remained in the Ukrainian state to move beyond a narrow vision of Ukrainian nationhood.

The OSCE assessment of Ukraine as a multinational state in 2011

As he indicated in his letter of indignation to The Guardian in November 2004, David T. Johnson had been US ambassador to the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) from January 1998 until May 2002 after which his work for democracy was furthered by his appointment as the US Department of State’s Coordinator for Afghanistan. He was subsequently Deputy Chief of Mission at the US Embassy in London. Following the end of his Foreign Service career, he went on to serve the cause of democracy as the Vice President for Strategic Development and Washington Operations with Janus Global Operations, an overseas contingency and munitions response firm and as a Senior Adviser at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). 

Nine years after David T. Johnson had served as the US ambassador to the OSCE and seven years after he justified Uncle Sam’s contribution to the cause of democracy by reversing the result of the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election a paper was published in the OSCE 2011 Yearbook (the forerunner of the OSCE Insights policy paper series). The author of this paper was a German, Frank Evers, who had been the Deputy Head of the OSCE mission in Ukraine between 1996 and 1999 and Head of the Mission’s branch in Crimea. In 2011 he was still associated with OSCE as Deputy Head of the Centre for OSCE Research at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy situated in the University of Hamburg as well as being employed on implementing projects commissioned by the German Federal Foreign Office and other foreign ministries. Although it has its faults, his 2011 paper remains important as it provides an assessment of Ukraine’s prospects of becoming a fully functional democratic multinational state based on the direction in which the Ukrainian state was moving at that time.

Evers’s assessment was compiled from field-based research undertaken in Kiev and Simferopol in October 2009 with follow-up research conducted in Kyiv and Lviv in early 2010. The conclusions of the report highlighted the nature of Ukraine and its difficulties in formulating itself into a coherent nation since its emergence as an independent state after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The main limitation of the paper is that it fails to view the results of western efforts at inserting democracy into a multinational Ukraine as evidence of it being applied to an unsuited environment. Rather, the author skirts that difficult conclusion by couching it in terms that see it as a failure of government rather than something that was a reflection of the causes which he accurately describes in the bulk of his paper. In so doing he serves the western OSCM democracy-seeking agenda by continuing to hold out the increasingly unlikely prospect that at some point in the future Ukraine could transform itself into a democratic multinational state.

In the opening lines of this report the author points out:

“The opportunities and requirements for co-operation between the OSCE and Ukraine are largely determined by the latter’s domestic situation. This situation, the result of the events of the last five years, can be described in terms of four essential elements. First, a deep political disaffection among the public following the abandonment of the democratic goals of the 2004-2005 Orange Revolution. Second, ongoing attempts to formulate a concept of Ukrainian identity that would unite the multi-ethnic country by including both the Ukrainian titular nation and the non-Ukrainian ethnic minorities. Ukraine remains riven by deep ethnic divides. Denominational differences between and within the ethnic groups strengthen this. In some regions, such as Crimea, the problem is particularly clear. Third, poor governance and corruption, which have been exacerbated by the economic and financial crises since 2008 and the country’s dependence on foreign trade, particularly the import of energy and raw materials. These factors have conspired to rob Ukraine temporarily of the prospects of a democratic, European renewal and an economic revival. Fourth, these problems implicitly endanger the security of the Ukrainian state. Ukraine is extremely sensitive to both internal and external uncertainties. In the period up to early 2010, domestic instability and unpredictability also damaged Ukraine’s potential for external – European and Eurasian – development. The election of a new government in early 2010 created some movement in this frozen picture, particularly with regard to foreign policy.” (“Damaged Prospects/Damaged Dialogue in Ukraine and Crimea: The Current Situation in Ukraine and Future Co-operation with the OSCE”, by Frank Evers. Published in OSCE Yearbook, Baden-Baden, 2011, p.221).

The report argues that the basis of Ukraine’s 2009-10 problems was the failure to realise the democratic objectives promised by the Orange Revolution. However, subsequent events in the aftermath of the Orange Revolution have shown that those democratic objectives were incompatible with the nature of the society within which they were supposed to take root. But rather than see things that way the author provides an explanation which turns things around. In other words, instead of seeing the political expression behind the Orange Revolution as something alien to the multinational nature of Ukraine as a country, he views the post-2004 reaction of the national minorities as something that was caused by the behaviour of the government – a government that the Orange Revolution brought to power with the help of the US and the OSCE on the back of its supposed democratic credentials. 

“The Orange Revolution, which spanned the end of 2004 and the start of 2005, was the defining political event in Ukraine since independence. The damage that has since accrued to its democratic values has led to a lasting disenchantment in intellectual circles and among the country’s minority elites. Observers have spoken of a loss of Ukraine’s internal potential for renewal.” (Ibid.)

The author implies that if only the pro-NATO Yushchenko government brought to power by the US and the OSCE had lived up to its promises, then there would have been no alienation of the ethnic minorities. But we have only to look to events in Ukraine since then to see that this was never likely to have been the case. The Ukrainian state that now exists has been built not on the back of an inability to manage its national minorities but on a refusal to accommodate its national minorities. It has managed its national minorities through a democratic process that has been based on discrimination and coercion as that is only by such means that it has achieved any sense of democratic coherence.

But this was something that the author of the OSCE paper could not completely ignore even in 2010. Under the heading “The Unsuccessful Search for National Identities” he explains the impact of the “Ukrainianisation” policies that had been pursued at varying levels of intensity from the early years of independence. That policy was evident earlier but accelerated after the 2014 coup. It has since been built upon under the current regime in Kiev since 2019 with its attack on the Russian language, culture and public memorials as well as the banning of the public expression of the Russian Orthodox Church in Ukraine.

“The unofficial but nonetheless real search for identity on the part of Ukraine’s largest ethnic groups has been politically instrumentalised and emotionally charged more thoroughly in recent years than under Ukraine’s first two presidents, Leonid Kravchuk (1991-1994) and Leonid Kuchma (1994-2005). The rigid Ukrainianization policy pursued by the central government under President Yushchenko (2005-2010) served to polarize the ethnic camps rather than bring them together. In nearly two decades of independence, Ukraine has failed to develop an image of Ukrainian identity or national myth that could unite ethnic Ukrainians and the country’s minorities as a single nation. On the contrary, ethnic Ukrainians have insisted on maintaining their linguistic and cultural dominance. Ukrainian elites have resorted to traditional policies – particularly restrictive measures – to ensure their predominance in areas such as language, media, education, and administration. Together with incredibly polarizing gestures such as the veneration of controversial figures from Ukrainian history such as Symon Petliura (1879-1926) and Stepan Bandera (1909-1959) or the campaign for international recognition of the 1932/1933 famine (Holodomor) as a deliberate act of anti-Ukrainian genocide perpetrated by Moscow, their main effect has been to create distance between ethnic Ukrainians and Ukraine’s other nationalities. (Ibid., p.222).

And under the heading: “A Rigid Policy of Ukrainianisation”: he says:

“The inflexible policy of Ukrainianisation pursued first under President Kuchma and then even more vigorously under President Yushchenko has served rather to turn minorities away from any possible Ukrainian national idea, if any such thing can be said to have existed in the current period. Important minorities such as the Russians and Crimean Tatars refuse to see themselves as part of a Ukrainian nation, which they believe does not offer them a respectable place in nation building. While they accept Ukrainian statehood and the Ukrainian citizenship of members of their ethnic groups, they often simultaneously regard themselves as belonging to the larger East Slavic people, the Russians, or, in the case of the Crimean Tatars, stress their autochthony. The minorities marginalised by the central government’s Ukrainianisation policy include more than eight million Russians (ca. 17 per cent of the total population and 58 per cent of the population of Crimea) and some 250,000 Crimean Tatars (ca. twelve per cent of the Crimean population). Minority representatives describe the situation of their people as “discontented” at best.” (Ibid., p.223).

This description continues to be relevant today and, in fact, the events since the 2014 coup, like the events of 2004, have only served to accelerate and accentuate the process of what the author calls “Ukrainianisation”. 

Democratic or multinational – it seems Ukraine cannot have both

Despite the lessons provided by the history of post-Soviet independence which are largely confirmed by the 2010 OSCE investigation, the ideal of a democratic multinational Ukraine continues to be the one which the West and particularly the EU presents as the reality of present-day Ukraine. It is also the one which western governments and their media continue to concoct as the object of a noble cause that is now being used to justify placing the EU economies on a war footing. If there is one fact that comes out of the way Ukraine has dealt with its post-Soviet independence it is that it is not possible for it to be both a democratic and a multinational state. 

Although it is by no means an outright comparison, in some ways the situation in Northern Ireland offers a similar scenario at least in the way it reveals the limitations of democracy in managing a multinational political environment. For generations the Protestant unionist democratic majority proved itself incapable of accommodating its Catholic nationalist minority. It took the external influence of Westminster – convinced by a long war fought on behalf of the minority – to develop a system of government that gave an effective voice to that minority. But it could only do so by defying the basic principle of democracy. In Ukraine the main external influence on the state is not directed at the construction of an arrangement that compels an accommodation of the country’s minorities. Instead that influence is entirely constructed along lines that have been designed around a global mission for democracy irrespective of whether such a system is suited to the welfare of the societies within which it is supposed to operate.

Russia had attempted to sponsor a system that protected the interests of the Russian minority within the Ukrainian state through the Minsk accords of 2014 and 2015. Those accords afforded the Russian minority in the east and south of the country, where it is most cohesive, certain rights which defied the democratic process. However, in the face of the violent reaction to those arrangements by heavily armed extreme right-wing nationalist forces from within Ukraine the state showed itself impotent when it came to ensuring their effective implementation. It is as if in the North of Ireland the UVF had been heavily armed by elements within the British state in order to resist the Good Friday Agreement by attacking the Catholic minority as a re-assertion of democratic values and the British state proved incapable of preventing it. 

However, that is not how western, and in particular European politicians, see the situation. For them the issue continues to be one in which the state of Ukraine is denied the opportunity to function as a democratic multinational state because of an invasion by a powerful neighbour intent on overrunning the entire country and then the rest of Europe. But in order to sustain that perspective it is necessary for them and their compliant media to ignore the entire nature of the country and the history of its treatment of minorities since the early years of independence. But more importantly they cannot afford to admit that it is not possible for the Ukrainian state to function both as a democracy and a governing body which can accommodate its Russian minority.

For those wishing to read the full 2011 OSCE paper it can be viewed at:_

Click to access Evers-en.pdf