29 March 2024

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MIKHO’S MAIDAN

The Saakashvili Show, or the struggle for Ukraine: perspectives?

Author:

15.12.2017

The new episodes of a political process ingeniously nicknamed Mikho’s Maidan came out in Ukraine in early December. Everyone has almost lost interest in Mikhail Saakashvili, when his name suddenly hit the headlines in mid-September as he managed to cross the Ukrainian border without a passport. People has discussed the incident for some time and almost forgotten it. On December 5, the media perked up again after an attempt to arrest the ex-president of Georgia and the former governor of the Odessa region. Saakashvili is allegedly suspected of assisting the members of criminal groups and concealing their criminal activities. He faces up to ten years in prison but calls himself a slandered fighter against the corrupt Ukrainian regime.

 

The Kremlin’s agent?

The world media has presented the spectacular episodes of Saakashvili’s detention with an obvious relish, especially when he climbed onto the roof of the apartment building threatening to jump out of there. He hesitated though, went down and was arrested. Law enforcement agents could not take him far away, as Saakashvili’s supporters started frenziedly upturning the cars, sprawling on the asphalt, barricading themselves with garbage containers, squibbing firecrackers, and throwing snowballs at the windows of Roshen shops that belong to Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko. These well-coordinated and frightening actions allowed them to get Saakashvili out of the car. On December 8, the ex-governor was detained again and placed in one of the isolators of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU), where he immediately announced a hunger strike and called himself “a prisoner of war of Ukrainian oligarchs”. But Saakashvili’s arrest did not last long either – the Pechersk District Court of Kyiv rejected the petition of the prosecutor's office and refused to send him under house arrest. Saakashvili joined his supporters, who demand the adoption of laws on presidential impeachment, anti-corruption court and elections, as well as the resignation of Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko.

In turn, the Prosecutor General prepares an appeal against the court’s decision claiming that the actions organized by Saakashvili in Kiev were financed by the associates of the former president Viktor Yanukovych (particularly the businessman Kurchenko) trying to overthrow the current power in Ukraine. Lutsenko also claims that he is under “enormous pressure” because of Saakashvili but he does not specify who exactly is pushing him. In fact, official Kiev considers Saakashvili an agent of the Russian security services and the author of the Operation Russian Winter, which is reportedly aimed at organizing a new Maidan against Poroshenko to change the existing government system of Ukraine. This may well be one of the answers to a question about Saakashvili’s supporters.

 

“Rostov isn’t made of rubber”

The “spectre of Yanukovych” has increasingly haunted the centre of Kiev recently. Poroshenko’s entourage is accusing Saakashvili of having ties to the former president Yanukovich while Saakashvili claims that Poroshenko is starting to behave like Yanukovich, as if hinting that the current president can share the fate of his predecessor. Another odious Ukrainian politician, Yuliya Timoshenko, has shared a rather explicit message addressed to Poroshenko on her Facebook account: “You are jailing your opponents as did Yanukovich. Remember how that ended up? Rostov isn’t made of rubber”. During Yanukovich’s presidency, Timoshenko has spent several years in prison for exceeding her official powers. In September 2017, she suddenly appeared as an ally of Saakashvili helping him break through the Ukrainian border. As always, the ambitious Yuliya Vladimirovna is silent about her plans, although there are suspicions that she needs Saakashvili as a tool for igniting the protest situation in the country, which will help her to reach the power again. Interestingly, the existing situation may well help Saakashvili to take the post of the prime minister. He has also shared his intention through ZIK television channel: “I am ready to take responsibility for the normal government of Ukraine unequivocally.”

It is interesting to follow the change in Saakashvili's rhetoric since the beginning of autumn. Initially, he declared that he had “no intention to organise another revolution”. Now, the leader of the Georgian Rose Revolution is dreaming about new “accomplishments”. In his broad interview for Strana.ua, Saakashvili stated that “in Ukraine, the presidents have always been kicked off”. He expressed confidence that even if Poroshenko could “kick him out” to Georgia, he would be released and “return to Ukraine” again; that “one forgets about the rest of the world during a revolution”. Interestingly, despite a seemingly ironical attitude towards Saakashvili, the Ukrainian media is diligently drawing a romantic revolutionary image of “an impulsive, possessed, desperate but talented man” emphasizing that Saakashvili is the person who has managed to eradicate corruption in Georgia. Then they compare him to President Poroshenko, who can do nothing with corruption in Ukraine.

In fact, many leading Western media outlets act in the same manner. For example, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports that “the Ukrainian president has betrayed the legacy of the Maidan revolution”. Le Figaro quotes Saakashvili, who says that Poroshenko has always loved money and “runs Ukraine as his own business,” and also receives money from Russia. The Washington Post refers to the research fellow of the Atlantic Council, Maxim Eristavi: “at the very moment when anti-corruption officials have really started to tackle the problem, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is moving to undermine them.”

The tension around the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), openly conflicting with the president, the Security Service and the Prosecutor General's Office, is closely followed in the West. According to The Washington Post, “Western governments have channelled hundreds of millions in taxpayer money into Ukraine’s anti-corruption reforms. The time to protect that investment has come... Ukraine’s allies must show that they know how to use not only carrots, but also sticks. They should warn the government in Kiev that the recently launched visa-free regime with the EU can be suspended if any efforts are made to further undermine NABU.” British The Economist: “…the prosecutor general’s office, controlled by Mr. Poroshenko, disrupted a sting operation [conducted by NABU]. The interior minister [Avakov] has intervened in the affairs of anti-corruption agencies... SSU officers tried to arrest Mikhail Saakashvili, who took on the role of a fighter against corruption in Ukraine... The army, the troops of the interior ministry and private forces act against each other, reporting to different politicians and oligarchs.” The Economist even calls for the use of all available funds to support the fight against corruption in Ukraine.

Obviously, Saakashvili’s supporters are insufficient to organize a new Maidan. The majority of Kiev’s population do not react to the ongoing process, except for the discontent of citizens from the completely paralyzed city centre. In this sense, all the hype around Saakashvili may well be just an eloquent message to Poroshenko. But nobody knows what can happen in the coming days – Ukrainians are full of surprises. Perhaps only some powerful groups in the West support Saakashvili, the ones that are dissatisfied with the incumbent U.S. President Donald Trump. Again, The Economist is hinting at this: “American policy under President Trump has little interest in fighting against corruption.”

That being said, Poroshenko’s actions look very strange and illogical. First, the security forces controlled by him let Saakashvili cross the border, then allow him climb to the top of a building and be released from the bus. In general, the decision to arrest Saakashvili attracted too much attention to Poroshenko. Why did the Ukrainian president need this? We can answer this question if we consider the complicated relations between Poroshenko and the interior minister Arsen Avakov. Although Avakov seems to hate Saakashvili even more than Poroshenko, the political life of Ukraine in recent years has seen even worse changes in preferences and attitudes of politicians. If the influential Western elite groups indeed support Saakashvili and Timoshenko, and if they are joined by Avakov and oligarch Igor Kolomoisky (and the forces supported by them, including those with real protest and combat experience), Poroshenko is in pretty rough situation then.

Another version is that Poroshenko and Saakashvili... are acting together. Allegedly, Poroshenko is trying to neutralise Timoshenko and believes that Saakashvili can take her votes during the elections. This opinion is shared by some Russian experts and, for instance, the influential American think-tank Stratfor.

 

The most important thing

Either way, the most important thing for ordinary Ukrainians is not the shift of power or the politicians replacing each other. They are also less interested in Poroshenko’s sins and crimes. It is not even about Saakashvili who completely lacks any motivation and cannot explain (either logically or morally) why the former Georgian president is such a devoted fighter against corruption in Ukraine. The saddest thing is that so far none of the actors in the current political drama has made clear and realistic proposals for saving the country's economy, which continues to stagnate with a huge budget deficit and the growing public debt reaching a record-breaking 86% of GDP. After all, the ongoing processes may result in an uncontrollable situation when it absolutely does not matter who governs Ukraine, since at current pace the country may simply cease to belong to its people.



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