An overview of the current situation, my attempt of objective analysys
based on facts known to me - which include reading Ukrainian press and
a lot of Ukrainian Facebook friends, some of whom are MPs or work in
executive branch, and reading Russian nationalist sources.I believe I am capable to discern facts from PR smear campaigns.
Where I write below "XYZ is corrupt/incompetent", it means I've seen
_lots_ of data supporting it, from different sources.
So here it goes.
As you all know, Ukraine is a very corrupt country. I wish I could write "used to be",
but it turns out, not much changed.
As in any other big country, internal political landscape consists of several groups.
Ukraine still doesn't have parties aligned along ideology, so these groups
basically compete with each other for the access to political power, governmental
offices, government enterprises, all of which give various opportunities
to get govt contracts, to gain non-market advantages, and many ways to privatize
country's budget.
This doesn't mean that all people in all these groups are complete scoundrels.
No. They all have various ideological preferences, and "in theory" many of them do want
to build a better country. But tactically, they have to compete with other groups.
Anyone who doesn't, gets trampled upon. And if you play as a "honest" player,
you often gets beaten to pulp by dishonest ones...
On to details. The two biggest groups are Poroshenko's group - "BPP", and
Yatsenyk's group - "People's Front", PF. They are nominally a coalition,
but, inevitably, they are competitors.
The "defeated" group of Donbass oligarchs is not really defeated. They have LOTS
of money, and this apparently persuaded Poroshenko to not prosecute most of them.
I can only guess how much they paid for it. On the order of $100m, each,
_at the minimum_.
By law, President (thus, Poroshenko) appoints Attorneys General, National's bank Head,
General Staff's head. _ALL_ of them perform poorly.
Specifically, Attorney General, Vitaly Yarema, did not bring any open cases
against former officials to any tangible results. Lots and lots (hundreds)
of cases of corruption uncovered by press, or previously known cases,
somehow did not make his office to open investigations.
This can't possibly be a case of negligence.
Chief of the General Staff, Viktor Muzhenko, is videly regarded as incompetent.
He is not a coward, but he seems to be utterly incapable to lead an _army_,
to plan coordinated operations of several divisions' worth of people.
At max, he can competently command one division.
Yatsenyk is a Prime Minister, but he doesn't appoint heads of individual ministries.
So, each ministry "belongs" to one or another group.
Interior Ministry (police) is led by Arsen Avakov, a member of PF.
His first deputy is Anton Gerashchenko, a very active FB user. He actually
talks to people over it, takes input on various (alleged) criminal wrongdoings,
reports what he found out, and such. However, the police has improved only slightly.
Many (most?) mid-level police officials are still in their positions,
even known corrupt ones. Generally, Avakov's performance is a mixed bag.
My understanding of situation in Ministry of Energy and Coal Mining is not
very detailed, but as I understand it now, the group which wanted to buy coal
and electric power from Russian (!) as of now managed to achieve it.
Looks like these people are from Poroshenko's group. They even managed to open
an investigation against previous Minister for buying South African coal,
allegedly it was too costly and bad quality (which seems to be not true).
Yatsenyk is very unhappy about this, and not only him.
I'm expecting continued infighting on this front.
The bottom line looks like that Poroshenko has a "pact" with many "defeated"
Donbass oligarchs that he will not destroy them, but will allow them to join
his group in exchange for lots of money and promise to be loyal to him.
(Of course, I have no hard facts proving this, but it's the only explanation
which makes sense).
It might sound surprising, but it's likely Yatsenyk _also_ absorbs some
of "defeated Donbass oligarchs" into _his_ group. An individual "donbass tycoon"
tries to negotiate with BPP or PF depending on how much bad blood from previous
years of infighting is between him and these groups.
Of course, there are "donbass tycoons" who can't be "forgiven" - those are
probably all in Russia now.
Besides BPP and PF, there are other, smaller groups "on the arena".
A notable one of Kolomoysky's group. He is a quite big banker based
in Dnepropetrovsk, known for his clever legal, barely-legal, and
somewhat-illegal business endeavors mostly involving hostile
takeovers of other companies, private and governmental.
This includes such methods as fake shareholders meetings,
paid-for court rulings, etc. Believe or not, he is far from being
the worst shark in the pack - Donbass tycoons often were just hiring
contract killers or "contract kidnappers" to solve their
"business disagreements". But he is clever, and not coward.
During the Maidan, Kolomoysky supported it. He and his people
even had to flee abroad by the end of January 2014.
However, he guessed right: Maidan won.
He returned and become de-facto "biggest Dnepropetrovsk tycoon",
and swiftly started "dealing with" Donbass tycoons who nearly
destroyed him just a month ago.
When first signs of Russia-backed "uprisings" appeared in eastern regions,
including Dnepropetrovsk, then newly-elected President Poroshenko
had to appoint Kolomoysky as "Representative of the President in
Dnepropetrovsk region" (Ukraine has such a Presidential appointee
in every region, it is not a new invention), giving him some
official levers to influence local politics. I think he had not much
of a choice: either give Dnepr to Kolomoysky, or lose it to separatists.
Kolomoysky did _exceptionally_ well. He managed to drive away most
of "Donbass guys" who were everywhere in government apparatus
at the time; he managed to forestall armed "uprisings"
(I dare not speculate by what means; evidently very efficient,
and quite possibly illegal means). He lobbied for central government
to create officially sanctioned volunteer battalions, and recruited
one of the first such battalions, buying equipment for them,
up to armored personnel carriers.
Recall that Dnepropetrovsk is right to the West of Donbass.
By this time, the war in Donbass started (first clashes, infantry weapons,
light armored vehicles at max). The Army was in a bad shape. Kolomoysky
threw everything he could to help it, up to providing thousands of tons
of aviation fuel free of charge, equipping field hospitals, organizing
airlift of wounded from the front to Dnepr. Many voluteer formations
(even those not organized by him) and regular army units' commanders
discovered that if they want something to work, it's much better to talk
to Kolomoysky than to Kiev.
This made Poroshenko very unhappy. Kolomoysky seems to be getting things done -
including helping to fight the war (!) - while Poroshenko looks far worse
despite having much more power.
Most people of Dnepropetrovsk, and many people in other regions
like Kolomoysky's team quite a bit (even though most people are not so naive
as to think that they are angels). And his team has a number of colorful
and likeable characters. I won't expand on that for now.
There is a number of new-ish, smaller (or should I say, less politically
powerful) forces and individuals in politics now. Like Right Sector,
and independent journalists and MPs. Some of them seem genuinely willing
to fix the country for real, not merely to turn tables in their favor.
For one, they are trying to force Poroshenko to sack Attroney General
and Chief of Staff.
An interesting phenomenon is civilian "volunteers" who help Army and
volunteer battalions to procure equipment (such as night vision googles,
drones - but at the beginning, just clothing and food!).
After first few months of purely voluteer work, since Army was
in a really bad shape, Poroshenko allowed them (or "was forced to"?)
to actually occupy some official positions in Ministry of Defence
- where they, with support of its Minister, proceeded
to fire hundreds of old bureaucratic ass-hats (MUCH kicking and screaming)
and started to overhaul Army supply apparatus. It seems to work!
On the international front, US and EU seems to be aware of the fact
that Poroshenko (and quite likely Yatsenuk) aren't really trying to fix
the broken system - thank God, seems like intelligence services DO their work
in US and EU!
And they seem to be telling Poroshenko/Yatsenyuk "No guys, quit pretending.
We won't be giving you money just because you fight with Russia.
This endless raiding of your own country's finances has to stop.
It's pointless lying to us about 'reforms', we know what you are really doing
(as in: 'you arent doing much')".
Maybe they even demand some specific steps, I don't know.
I truly hope they do. We need any help we can get beating our "leaders"
into working for the country, not their pockets.
