For your notice, it was exactly in Potsdam, where in the far 1945 a decision was taken about the new division of Europe, which resulted in more than 50-year occupation of Germany by Soviet and American troops. Today Potsdam University remains one of the few in Germany, the students and teachers of which research countries of Eastern Europe, namely of the former Soviet Union, at a high professional level. Among them there is a famous specialist in Russian issue, Professor Vitaliy Vilenchyk who became the head of the delegation of young German researchers who came to Ukraine with the aim of the study visit under the name “Place of Post-Soviet Ukraine in the global European space”. The visit lasted from 6 to 12th of August.
The task, which the Ukrainian organizers faced, seemed impossible – to show during 7 days to the people who have never been to Ukraine major changes, which occurred in the state during the last 18 years. The success formula for such a complicated visit was quickly found by the organizers: multiply the little time limit available by the high concentration of the meetings with the leading experts in the sphere of policy, culture, economical and social development. In addition, spice it with the traditional Ukrainian hospitality, which nevertheless could barely compete with the climax of the “dead season” and unpretentious Ukrainian service.
Indeed, the way Ukraine remained in the eyes of Germans is known only to them. Soon, this vision will be passed on to more professors who will read and estimate scientific works of young researches from Potsdam, and definitely to the acquaintances of the visitors themselves who they shall share with their impressions about the trip. At the same time, it would be unfair to deprive Ukrainian community of the opportunity to get acquainted with the opinions of leading Ukrainian state, civic and other experts on the current situation in Ukraine and the possible development of the events in the state. We offer our readers these opinions with the little remark that the provided thoughts belong exclusively to their authors and do not necessarily show the official standpoint of the institutions, which they represent, or Ukraine as a whole. Moreover, we are technically unable to cover all the comments given by Ukrainian experts, as not a single information resource has enough facilities to do so.
Ukraine faces complete support in terms of moving the state towards European Union.
This is the opinion of the Coordination Bureau on European and Euro Atlantic integration within the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. Today everyone sees the necessity for Ukraine to introduce European standards – the President and the Prime-Minister consider it one of the priorities in their work; Verhovna Rada and the Cabinet of Ministers not only realize this, but also have created corresponding departments for the more successful work in adapting. Even more to it, Ukrainian citizens positively and in a rather stable manner speak about the soonest joining European Union by Ukraine. According to the representative of Coordination Bureau Taras Krykun, it’s not the end in itself to join EU or NATO for the department, which he represents, – it is much more important that Ukraine took the standards of international organizations and followed them in everyday life. Though work on European integration has already lasted for more than 10 years in Ukraine, the basis for the more intensive dialogue was laid by the Orange Revolution, which became the catalyst for all the integration processes.Professor Andriy Meleshevych, the Dean of the Department of Law Sciences of Kiev-Mokhyla Academy, took up the opinion of the Bureau representatives. According to him, Europe didn’t use the chance given to it by the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. If the European Union had clearly pointed out the opportunity of joining for Ukraine, the latter would have seen more sense in introducing complicated EU standards. While today, when the phantom of membership awaits Ukraine somewhere in 2025, all the talks about the European choice of Ukraine remind the famous expression of one of the heroes from “Three Musketeers” – I fight, because I fight…
According to Mr. Andriy Ukrainians and Ukraine as a whole despite all the educational campaigns, which have been conducted, continue to live in myths and stereotypes. The topic of integration is not an exception in this sense. Who said that Ukrainians are against NATO? They don’t know almost anything about this organization. So, what can they really say about it?
What’s common between Holodomor and the European Union?
Professor Meleshevych continues – tragedies most often unite. For Ukrainians such a tragedy was Holodomor. Even though victims of Holodomor were mostly the dwellers of Central and Eastern Ukraine, the inhabitants of other regions of the country also percept those terrible events as their personal tragedy. The similar unity for Ukrainians can be observed only regarding the question of joining EU.At the same time, being a lawyer he cannot but think of the total lawlessness in Ukraine. The times, when the law was an inviolable rock, on which the democracy chapel was founded, went away long ago. In the modern world the law is being interpreted more and more often as an instrument, which serves as a tool in the hands of the masters in state construction, rather than the building material itself. So among the modern constructors, it’s not exceptional cases, when they simply forget the norms of professional and human ethics and turn the law into an instrument of lobbying their interests. As a result, for different political forces now it’s not fashionable to fight for some economic resource – they try to get control over some of the legal institutions (for example police, prosecutor’s office or courts); so that to establish their own rules of the game on the controlled territories in their name. This means that the thing, which we observe in Ukraine, is the simple game in the law and order, rather than some real law enforcement.
The opinion of the scientist is supported by Suzanne Schutz, the representative of the Embassy of Germany in Ukraine. According to the observations of international analytics, Ukraine demonstrates playing with the law, when it tried to make use of any legal gaps and legal collisions as if in defense of national interests. Whereas, it often turns out that the interests of Ukrainian oligarchs are often implied while talking of the interests of the state. For example Ukraine has been the member of the World trade organization already for a year, which means the execution by Ukraine of all the requirements of WTO, which includes prohibition of imposition of the additional entrance customs for imported goods. At the same time in the period of increasing the influence of the economic crisis in the state, Ukraine was deliberately breaking this norm, having imposed additional taxation for the majority of imported goods. Under the pressure of international organizations, the state had to cancel its decision, whereas it came to light that additional taxation continued to be in force for imported refrigerators and cars. Was this decision connected with the wish of Ukrainians to buy solely Ukrainian rather than German refrigerators or cars remains a mystery till present…
Corruption as a display of new Ukrainian identity
The thing, which could be only a terrible dream, is real at present – while characterizing the modern situation in the state, Ukrainians consider the three main trends to be total corruption, freedom of speech and complete chaos within the authorities. That’s why it’s quite clear that all these 3 topics were touched by all the experts in their speeches. It’s not a secret at all that Ukraine by the level of corruption has left behind all the new independent states of the world and is number one among the post-Soviet states according to this index. According to Oleksiy Khmara, the head of the Contact group of Transparency International in Ukraine, one can dispute a lot about the source of the total corruption in Ukraine, but it’s indisputable that the country lacks the unified strategy of fighting corruption, which would be perceived both by politicians, officials and normal citizens.Despite the fact that a number of national and international anti corruption campaigns has been initiated in the country during the last 3-5 years, almost all of them didn’t have general success, having been limited to some spot victories, which were barely noticeable in the general ocean of corruption. Moreover, all the strategies of decreasing level of corruption in the state faced real opposition of the authorities and were simply not perceived correctly by the citizens. That’s why it’s worth speaking today about the complex and independent estimation of the readiness of Ukraine for anti-corruption reforms, which would allow not only searching for problems in the work, but also develop a clear agenda on increasing the capability of these institutes to fight corruption. The results of this independent estimation should become the basis of national anti-corruption strategy.
Oleksandr Todiychuk, board member of the Ukrainian-German forum, the organization, which represents interests of big Ukrainian business in Germany, supports this opinion. According to him, energy sector in Ukraine is to the same extent profitable and corruptive in Ukraine. At the same time, the corruption has reached the level, when it becomes economically unbeneficial for the players of the energy resources market. Therefore, a new initiative has been recently started in Ukraine under the name “Energy Transparency”, which involves the usage by the chief players of the energy market more transparent (which means less corruptive) procedures. The initiative wasn’t supported by all the possible signers, but the fact that business wants and is ready to play fairly is quite significant…
Corporate and social responsibility helps business to be less corrupted
Viktor Lyakh, executive director of “Eastern Europe” Fund is convinced of that. According to him, Ukraine is ready to percept the fact that corporate social responsibility isn’t philanthropy or PR, but is business philosophy instead. CSR presupposes that business companies work in a more transparent way, which means less corruptive. But it’s worth mentioning that among all the Ukrainian companies, enterprises of steel mill industry are the most successful in introducing CSR; mostly they belong to Ukrainian and foreign representatives of big business.However, in the opinion of Kateryna Kotenko, executive director of Industrial television committee, business shouldn’t be demonized. Whereas, if to take the sphere of TV media, it will turn out that the media, which have the biggest ratings (which means audience), the biggest orders of advertisement placement (which means the money) are those, which are often associated with prejudice or lack of political neutrality. To support her words Ms. Kateryna provides popularity statistics among Ukrainian citizens of the political shows: the program of Channel 5 “I think so with Anna Bezulik” (as it is known this channel became the main source of objective and honest news during the Orange Revolution) is only number 5 in the rating, while number 1 is “Svoboda na Interi” from the Channel Inter (it has been recently blamed for prejudice). Therefore, Ukrainian citizens are not yet capable of realizing the influence of media owners on the content, which is broadcasted, or the editorial policy of the media.
At the same time, according to Ms. Kotenko Ukraine demonstrates real freedom of speech on the air. For example, in the neighboring Russia, there are 3 national TV media, each of them having some part of state capital and therefore broadcasts the events in the way, favorable for the interests of the state. In Ukraine among 18 national channels only 1 has the part of national funding. The rest of the channels, while forming editorial policy is led by the position of their owners, which have different opinions on the same events, therefore Ukrainian spectators see different points of view on the same problem.
Reserves „homo soveticus" still function in Ukraine
The best specialists in the sphere of ethnical policy know whether Ukraine is separated into East and West, and whether there is a real danger of regional separatism. Therefore, the meeting with Yuliya Tishenko, the representative of Ukrainian independent center of political studies was so important for the young German researchers. According to her, despite different historical experiences of different regions of Ukraine, despite periodical artificially brought up separatist moods, touching the topic of the second official language or joining NATO, Ukraine remains a single state. The evidence of it is not only national honouring of the victims of Holodomor, but also the readiness of all the regions of Ukraine (among them Donbas defenders) to fight for the notorious piece of land “Tuzla”.
At the same time, there still successfully exist in the 21st century the reserves of “soviet people” in the Crimea. It’s a unique territory today, where the Ukrainians, Russians, Tatars and other peoples, which were made “soviet”, live; they don’t remember their own traditions and culture and follow the stereotypes of the country, which ceased to exist 18 years ago. They create the biggest danger for the stabile ethno-political situation in the country, while they don’t want to adjust to the surrounding situation, and are apt to fighting the enemy, which they create for themselves.
In the opinion of Denis Kovryzhenko, the representative of the Laboratory of legislative initiatives, non-governmental organizations, which are in abundance in Ukraine, can and should be changing the consciousness of the citizens. The question of effectiveness, efficiency and political neutrality is open until now, but any way it’s the civic organizations, which have the potential for effective Ukrainian reforms. According to Mr. Denis, Ukrainian NGOs have followed rather a long way in their development during the years of independence: starting with the romanticism of the early 90-ties, surviving in the conditions of the permanent pressure in the mid 90-ties – the early 2000-nds, from the pragmatism of 2005-2008 to the philosophy of transparency as a result of economic crisis in Ukraine. According to him, today professional, experienced, and the main thing transparent and open in their activity civic organizations remain the only ones who are capable of mobilizing the community. Different doubtful politicians of regional and national level try to make use of it, creating various pseudo-civic organizations and movements. As a rule on the next day after their election these politicians forget about their promises and actively use pseudo-civic rhetoric, which substantially undermines trust to the civic sector of Ukraine in general. Instead, just the transparency of real NGOs can provide not only their survival, but also trust of the community. Taking into account the influence of the crisis on the lives of common Ukrainians, the civic sector of Ukraine now has to remember not only about the challenges, but also has to prove its necessity to the people.
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Creative Union, TORO, www.toro.org.ua
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