Who Wouldn’t Want Vitali Klitschko On Their Side?

Ukrainian for "Civil Society."

Who wouldn’t want Vitali Klitschko on their side in a fight?

We can all agree that few people are eager to look like Samuel Peter, the Nigerian Nightmare, does in the above picture from his October 2008 fight against WBC heavyweight champ Vitali Klitschko. So maybe Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich might consider easing off Yulia Tymoshenko.

For those who don’t know, Tymoshenko, the former Prime Minister of Ukraine and one of the most instrumental figures in the 2004 Orange Revolution (which prevented Yanukovich from winning a rigged election against Viktor Yuschenko and installed a facially-withered Yuschenko as the rightful President) is on trial. The charges are that Tymoshenko, while Prime Minister in January 2009, broke the law by signing off on a gas deal with Russia’s Gazprom without clearing the deal with Parliament. The deal doubled the price of gas but put an end to a dispute that caused Gazprom to cut off gas supplies to Ukraine for two weeks and rattle the continent, making places like Bulgaria, Greece, and Slovakia a little chillier.

The trial shows just how shaky the concept of rule of law is in Ukraine as Yanukovich blatantly abuses the justice system for his own political gain–it furthermore highlights just how far Ukraine has retrograded since the enthralling democratic changes of the Orange Revolution. The charge is dicey at best and concocted at a seemingly random time. But just as things looked bleak in Ukraine for Tymoshenko and the supporters of the Orange Revolution, democracy seems to be reawakening in Ukraine, with a little help from two unlikely places: a boxer and a judo champion.

Riding a Wave of Popular Resentment.

In the last week, WBC heavyweight champ Vitali Klitschko came out and announced that he would delay his title defense in September in solidarity with Tymoshenko. Klitschko also happens to be head of a political party, the Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform (because when you’re the heavyweight champ, no one really is going to tell you, “no, you really can’t go into politics.”

But in a strange turn of events, judo champ and Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has come out in support of Tymoshenko and asserted that the Gazprom deal was in ‘strict accordance’ with the law. In the past, Putin displayed nothing but derision towards Tymoshenko. It would be an understatement to say he reviles her. Furthermore, Yanukovich was widely considered to Putin’s stooge in 2004, and many figured the Kremlin was awfully pleased when he was elected President in 2010.

So why is Putin jumping to Tymoshenko’s defense? There’s three reasons. The first, voiced by Boris Nemtsov, former Deputy PM and Presidential hopeful during the Yeltsin-era turned opposition figure during Putin era is,

“Putin reasonably believes that if they’re going to put her in jail as a result of this agreement, then sooner or later someone will put him in jail for the same thing,”

Oh, this is awkward.

Nemtsov’s suggestion is that Putin is acting out of fear of being held to scrutiny by the law, which is pretty unlikely given his record of total impunity and disregard for the rule of law, so I’ll give more weight to the other reasons. The second reason is that, while Yanukovich has been depicted as pro-Russian, he hasn’t been as pliable as Putin hoped. For all the sound and fury that comes out of Tymoshenko’s mouth, it was she that signed a gas deal favorable to Russian interests, and if she returns to power, maybe she can be pushed around again.

The third reason is that perhaps Russia doesn’t really want Ukraine’s footing to ever be too solid, lest Ukraine be able to wean themselves away from dependence on their Eastern neighbor. So Putin and Russia are always going to back the underdog in Kiev to keep a little intrigue in the political scene.

What’s hopeful is that democracy and resistance to autocracy seem to be re-emerging in Ukraine again, with Tymoshenko again serving as the firebrand. It seemed it was all but dead when Yanukovich was elected President over Tymoshenko, with Yuschenko long ago having departed after burning all his bridges and the Orange Coalition fractured. As more and more Ukrainians (and ethnic Russians) criticize Yanukovich, and the crowds start to swell in the streets of Kiev, it seems that Ukrainians are still thirsty for rule of law. After all, most people who voted for Yanukovich, according to the Kyiv Post, did so holding their noses; ethnic Russians and Ukrainians in the recession-battered rust belt Donbas region, who voted for Yanukovich en masse, only did so because they abhorred Tymoshenko and what they perceived as cronyism. By jailing her, he’s made her a sympathetic figure to even those who once found her repulsive.

Maybe Klitschko and democrats in Ukraine will finally learn the special technique of Shadowboxing:

Ukraine Returning to “The”?

Yulia Tymoshenko was ousted this week after 243 of the Ukrainian Parliament’s 450 deputies gave her a vote of no confidence. Not surprising given her post-election antics, but Ukrainians better hope she returns to politics; otherwise Yanukovich may let corruption reign even more than it already does.

Ladies and Gents, Your New President is:

Viktor Yanukovich, who was once nearly assassinated by an egg:

The event in question occurred during Ukraine’s 2004 campaign, after his rival, Viktor Yuschenko, gained sympathy after being poisoned. Presumably Yanukovich planned his own assassination attempt as a publicity stunt, but it kind of blew up in his face.

I’m not sure of all the implications of his defeating Yulia Tymoshenka, but I can assure readers that it’s not as cut-and-dry an East/West issue as most media would have you believe. Ukrainian politics are pretty messy–I’ll have more to say later. But first, our best to Yulia Tymoshenko, who probably won’t fade from Ukrainian politics anytime soon:

She Doesn't Always Wear the Braid