A Sideshow and a Showdown in Kyiv

This week, with much of the world’s attention diverted to Washington and Jerusalem, Kyiv has been home to some high-stakes political drama of its own. Since Tuesday, Ukraine’s capital has been roiled by a pair of intense confrontations: one a personalistic clash of wills playing out across rooftops, amid mobs, and in full view of the cameras; the other a less camera-friendly but more consequential showdown, unfolding in the halls of Parliament and within the bowels of the state.

At the heart of the personal confrontation is Mikheil Saakashvili, the ex-Georgian President who quit his post as Odessa Governor last year in defiant protest of the corruption of Ukraine’s ruling class. Since then, he has been causing continuous headaches for President Petro Poroshenko—so much so that Poroshenko later stripped him of his Ukrainian citizenship in retribution. But that hasn’t stopped Saakashvili, ever the opportunist, from continuing to rail against his former patron. Three months after storming across the border with a supportive mob at his side and one month after stirring up anti-government protests outside the Verkhovna Rada, things came to a head in dramatic fashion on Tuesday, as the embattled Georgian eluded the state authorities who sought his arrest and accused him of a criminal conspiracy to betray Ukraine.

The morning began with the Security Forces of Ukraine (SBU) arriving at Saakashvili’s apartment in central Kyiv, sending Saakashvili scurrying to the rooftop to evade capture. After speaking to a gathering crowd of onlookers and supporters below, and reportedly threatening to jump at one point, Saakashvili was eventually led off the rooftop by SBU forces.

While the security services took Saakashvili into a police van, supporters put up makeshift barricades to prevent their exit. After a lengthy standoff, the crowd eventually forced its way to the van, opened the door, and forcibly dragged Saakashvili away from police custody. With one hand still cuffed, Saakashvili made his way forward to address the onlookers, calling for the impeachment of President Poroshenko and a new Maidan revolution to remove the “bandits” currently in power.

State authorities, meanwhile, publicly presented their charges against Saakashvili. At a press conference on Tuesday afternoon, Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko claimed that Saakashvili had conspired with Serhiy Kurchenko, a crony of ousted President Viktor Yanukovych who is currently on the lam in Mosow, to finance protests against the government in Kyiv. To back up the charge, Lutsenko then played snippets of recorded phone conversations that allegedly proved the two men’s collusion. Saakashvili has insisted the recordings are fake, and as of Friday was still at large in Kyiv, in defiance of an open arrest warrant.

The cat-and-mouse intrigue and explosive allegations have naturally rocked Kyiv, exacerbating a confrontation between Saakashvili, a perennial populist showman, and his one-time ally Poroshenko, who is increasingly using his powers as a strongman. Fundamentally, though, the dynamics here haven’t changed much since Saakashvili’s border-crossing adventure in September. The falling out between Poroshenko and Saakashvili has been a long and bitter one, but their protracted conflict in itself is unlikely to have much impact on Ukrainian politics (though it will reinforce Russian propaganda aimed to discredit the country). For all his efforts to claim the populist mantle in opposition to Poroshenko, Saakashvili lacks a substantial following of his own—roughly 2 percent of Ukrainians support him—and as a non-citizen, he cannot run for President. His fair-weather friends, whether young reformers like Mustaffa Nayyem or old-guard populists like Yulia Tymoshenko, have been carefully keeping their distance in the wake of his latest scandal, even as they criticize the government’s heavy-handed tactics. Nayyem has asked Saakashvili to explain the serious allegations against him, a sure sign of the lingering suspicions surrounding Saakashvili.

In short, Saakashvili’s heavily publicized face-off with the authorities is unlikely to boost his political standing or tell us much about who will come to power in 2019. But there is a more serious and consequential showdown in Ukraine running parallel to this sideshow: namely, the determined effort of Poroshenko to clamp down on his critics and assert control over the independent forces that pose a threat to his rule.

The prime focus of this battle has been the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU), an independent agency effectively forced on Poroshenko by the International Monetary Fund as a condition for financial aid. Since its establishment in 2014, NABU has been celebrated by civil society activists and Western patrons as a crucial achievement of Ukraine’s reform drive. It has also been a longstanding thorn in Poroshenko’s side, with its independent director Artem Sytnyk proving all too willing to investigate the dealings of Poroshenko and other major power players.

In October, for instance, NABU agents detained the son of the powerful Interior Minister Arsen Avakov on suspicions of embezzlement. Avakov interpreted the move as a covert power play against him by Poroshenko, even though NABU lies outside Poroshenko’s official control. In any case, the result has been an intensified campaign by Poroshenko to discredit NABU: smearing its officers, accusing the agency of illegal cooperation with the FBI, and allegedly deploying security forces to intimidate and unmask undercover NABU agents.

Poroshenko’s war on NABU moved into Parliament this week, after members of his party introduced a bill that would have removed Sytnyk as director of the agency and placed it firmly under presidential control. The measure was ultimately removed from consideration in the Rada, but only after a furious campaign by reformers to stir up opposition and bring Western pressure to bear. Pleas to #SaveNABU proliferated on social media, financial backers like the World Bank and IMF issued condemnatory statements warning Ukraine against backtracking on reform, and the U.S. State Department echoed those concerns, noting that actions “to undermine independent anti-corruption institutions” could “undermine public trust and risk eroding international support for Ukraine.” Former officials were much blunter. Michael Carpenter, a former National Security Director and adviser to Joe Biden in the Obama Administration, called the pressure on NABU a “disgrace” and said he would recommend that the United States cut all assistance to Ukraine if anti-corruption forces were undermined.

The international outcry clearly persuaded Poroshenko to table the legislation on NABU, but he has not been definitively foiled in his efforts to bring the anti-corruption movement under his thumb. Even after quietly shelving the bill to remove Sytnyk from NABU, the Rada passed a separate measure on Thursday to remove the outspoken head of Parliament’s Anticorruption Committee. Sytnyk, for his part, remains under scrutiny from the Prosecutor General’s Office. And that office itself remains hopelessly politicized. Its current leader, Yuriy Lutsenko, is a political ally of Poroshenko’s with no legal training, appointed to the role only after the Rada rammed through a law allowing a non-lawyer to hold the position. In recent months, his political nature has become abundantly clear as he has opened cases or cast suspicions on the President’s rivals—including young reformers like Mustafa Nayyem and Serhiy Leshchenko, whom Lutsenko sought to tar with their association with Saakashvili at Tuesday’s press conference.

All of this adds up to a clear pattern that has been apparent for several months now. Like many a Ukrainian President before him, Poroshenko is seeking to squash his rivals, slow walk or roll back reforms, and bring independent agencies under his control. As Ukraine’s economy slowly gets back on track and the country reduces its dependence on foreign assistance, he is acting with audacity to consolidate his power, jeopardizing the fragile progress made since the Maidan Revolution.

Ultimately, this is the battle that really matters for Ukraine: not Poroshenko’s squabbles with Saakashvili or the turf wars between rival oligarchic factions, but the long-term struggle to establish an authentic rule of law, which will hold whoever is in power accountable. To judge by recent events, Ukraine is on the verge of losing that battle. But as this week also showed, the West still has some leverage to combat Poroshenko’s backsliding, and there seems to be a growing awareness of the depth of the crisis.

Whether that awareness and pressure will make much difference at this point, sadly, is far from certain. As the situation stands now, things look quite bleak for Ukraine. With the Donbas war still blazing in the east, the public losing faith in Poroshenko and distrusting his challengers, and the country’s anti-corruption forces coming under daily attack, Ukraine could be in for a long winter of discontent.

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