MAIDAN EVENTS JUST KEEP ON GOING

The second anniversary of the Maidan Square demonstrations has coincided with the first anniversary of the government crisis, a highly negative scenario in the development of which Ukraine will again have to go through early parliamentary elections. The Remembrance events have been held throughout the country to mark the events of February 2014, when more than 100 people died during the confrontations in Independence Square (Maidan Nezalezhnosti) in [the Ukrainian capital) Kiev. We would like to remind you that at the end of November 2013 Maidan [Square] was occupied by supporters of integration with Europe immediately after the statement of Mikola Azarov's government on suspending the signing of the European Union association agreement. On 22 February 2014, the Verkhovna Rada [Ukrainian Parliament] removed President Viktor Yanukovych from office, amended the Constitution and set the date for unscheduled presidential elections, which resulted in the appointment of Petro Poroshenko as president. But, although the Euro-Maidan protests ended in complete victory, two years later there is still a high degree of dissatisfaction with the government's policy in Ukraine.

Mini-Maidan and Yatsenyuk

During the mass protests in Maidan Square on 20 February, the protesters consisting of several hundred people would light campfires, destroy several tires, get into fights with the National Guardsmen, announce that a "civilian government" was starting to be formed, demand the resignation of the president and prime minister and that the Minsk Agreements be recognised as illegal, ban the raising of communal service charges and so forth. Attacks were made on branches of Russian banks and the office of the businessman Rinat Akhmetov in the city centre. Besides this, approximately 50 people dressed in camouflage uniforms, representing members of the "Radical (Revolutionary) Far-right Forces" organisation occupied several premises in the Kozatskiy Hotel, installed a headquarters there and declared that they had set up their own government. Moreover, just two days later they dispersed, the communal service operatives took down the tents and cleared away the rubbish, and yet another mini-Maiden protest ended successfully.

But what was formally cited as the cause of the outburst of dissatisfaction is still hanging in the air and no one knows what it might lead to. On 16 February, the Verkhovna Rada was not able to adopt a resolution on a vote of no-confidence in the government headed by Arseniy Yatsenyuk. The vote was supported by 194 deputies while a minimum of 226 votes were needed. But the deputies did recognise the work of the cabinet of ministers as unsatisfactory. The issue of making changes to the Ukrainian government arose after Ukrainian Economic Development and Trade Minister Aivaras Abromanovicius announced his resignation on 3 February. He said that the reason for his decision was the obstacles to carrying out reforms in the form of political pressure and corruption in the economy.

On 22 February, in the programme "Ten minutes with the prime minister" Yatsenyuk himself admitted that in the two years that had passed since the worthy revolution not everything had been achieved that the Ukrainians had hoped for and that he was also partly to blame for this. In order to cheer up his fellow countrymen, Yatsenyuk recalled the signing of the Ukrainian agreement on association with the European Union, stressed that Ukraine has "actually become an independent state", while it had previously "actually been under the foreign rule" of Russia. Yatsenyuk did not say how the government would extricate itself from the crisis though.

Immediately after the vote of no-confidence in the government failed, the "Batkivshchina" ["Fatherland"] faction stated that they would withdraw from the "Europe-Ukraine" coalition which had existed since November 2014 as part of the constitutional majority of five factions - the "Petro Poroshenko Bloc" (BPP), the "People's Front", the "Radical Party of Oleh Lyashko", the "Self-Reliance" party and the members of the "Fatherland" faction. In September 2015, the Radical Party abandoned the coalition, owing to the bill on amendments to the Ukrainian Constitution relating to "decentralisation" and the special status of the Donbass. After the withdrawal of the radicals which was accompanied by unrest in the Rada, four police officers were killed in a grenade explosion [outside the Vekhovna Rada], so then 281 deputies remained in the coalition.

Today the "Fatherland" faction which has depleted the coalition even further has given the reason for its withdrawal as the need to destroy the clan system of government, which is fraught with a threat to the state, and to stem the flourishing of corruption and combat economic problems. The party's leader, Yulia Tymoshenko, is confident that only a "radical overhaul based on a new Constitution" will save Ukraine. The former prime minister feels sure that the pro-European coalition in the parliament never existed and was always a "corridor, shady coalition". The members of the "Self-Reliance Party" have joined forces with "Fatherland" faction. The former called the attempt to remove Yatsenyuk a "cynical government coup involving the president, the prime minister and the kleptocratic part of the coalition and the oligarch bloc". Thus the parliamentary majority only consists of the BPP and the "People's Front" now.

The real reasons

But, not everybody believes Tymoshenko who has herself repeatedly been accused of corruption, so they are therefore looking for the real reason for her actions. Not long before the vote on Yatsenyuk's cabinet, at the beginning of February, Tymoshenko went on a visit to the USA. She met with numerous high-ranking American politicians there, among whom there was the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee John McCain, the head of the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs Ed Royce, the Republican House Majority leader Kevin McCarthy, Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and others. Many observers believe that Tymoshenko was drumming up support in the USA, which has allowed her to feel extremely confident at home.

Incidentally, a joke has been going round for some time now in Ukraine itself that, if Yulia Tymoshenko were to undo her plait, that would be a sure sign that the Rada would soon be dissolved. There is every chance to convince oneself yet again, how true this anecdote is, for, having cardinally changed her image, the "Fatherland" faction head appears to know exactly where she is heading. She is primarily combining efforts with former Ukrainian Security Service chief, Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, who was dismissed on Poroshenko's initiative and who they say is seriously regarded by Washington as a candidate for president.

"Our teams are firmly insisting on the resignation of the government as soon as possible. After that, we are obliged to do everything we can to form a new technical government, but, if we don't manage to do that, our joint team will insist on early elections," the "Fatherland" faction head stated. True, for the moment it is not clear what role Tymoshenko herself could play in this new set-up, for she has denied that she has any ambitions to be prime minister. Why does Washington need this? Behind the talk of corruption and political pressure may lie American dissatisfaction that the funds invested directly in Ukraine and via various international organisations have not resulted in any outcome nor is any envisaged. From an economic point of view the country is increasingly in decline and requiring increasingly new injections of finance.

This variant is indirectly confirmed by the actions of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko as well, who has stated that the government has completely lost the support of the parliamentary coalition and has appealed to Yatsenyuk to resign "in order to restore trust in the government". But, after the unsuccessful vote, Poroshenko showed that he was in no hurry to take advantage of his right to dissolve parliament (if another majority does not set to work within 30 days of the reshaping of the present coalition). He has said that he would only do that as a last resort, "which could not be ruled out", since the break-up of the coalition "will immerse the country in a profound and lengthy political crisis".

"The country does not have time to spare to be involved in an election campaign for the fourth time in less than two years, and in circumstances where it is facing aggression from outside," the Ukrainian president stated. In actual fact, it is most likely that this does not affect the whole of Ukraine, which has long developed a strong resistance to every kind of election, but just the "Petro Poroshenko Bloc" itself, which may not survive an election campaign at the present time. It would be much more advantageous for Poroshenko to reshuffle a right-wing coalition, so this may incidentally mean that Oleh Lyashko might be needed. There have been suspicions that Lyashko left the coalition in his time not because he disagreed with the "decentralisation", but because he wished to disconnect himself from the government in order to expand the field for political manoeuvres and provide an opportunity to bargain with his fellow parliamentarians.

This is precisely why one of the variants has it that the demonstrative protests in Maidan Square immediately after the failed attempt to get Yatsenyuk to resign were organised by Poroshenko himself. After stating that Russia was behind the unrest in Kiev on the second anniversary of the Maidan protests, he obviously wanted to say that the internal instability in the country will primarily be advantageous to those whom Kiev regards as an enemy, which means that there is a need to come to an agreement and to remain in the former set-up as far as possible.

At any rate, it can be seen that Ukraine is undergoing an internal political crisis and that there is no agreement among those who are standing at the helm. The government wants reform, and it is most likely that Tymoshenko will be calling the shots in this process, since she possesses valuable experience working in the Parliament and government, as well as the resources of her party, along with Nalyvaichenko with his ties to the USA and influence in the police and special services. So, one is bound to think that early elections cannot be avoided in Ukraine.

Another issue is the impact that what is happening in Kiev is having on a settlement in Donbass for the points in the Minsk Agreement should primarily be approved by the Parliament. The "Normandy Four" negotiations on Ukraine in Munich ended without any results. The next meeting is to take place in Paris at the beginning of March, but it is hardly likely that it will change the situation in any way. For the moment it is evident that the Parliament is not terribly capable of taking any action.