UKRAINE: "ORANGE" RIFTS DEEPENING TWO YEARS AFTER

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 KYIV 004362 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 11/22/2016 TAGS: PGOV PREL UP SUBJECT: UKRAINE: "ORANGE" RIFTS DEEPENING TWO YEARS AFTER REVOLUTION Classified By: Pol Counselor Kent Logsdon for reasons 1.4(a,b,d). ¶1. (C) Summary. On the second anniversary of the Orange Revolution, November 22, a crowd of 500 or so gathered on the Maidan to commemorate the rise of democracy in Ukraine. Few leaders of the Maidan were there to share in the event. Disheartened by the failure to form a new "orange" government after the March Rada elections and the subsequent return of Yanukovych, the Maidan team has become mired in fingerpointing and allocating blame. Although they continue to have contact, for example, Tymoshenko reportedly meets with the presidential team every week, increasingly divergent views on the way forward suggest future cooperation between Tymoshenko, Yushchenko, and the Our Ukraine leadership will be superficial at best. ¶2. (C) A new generation of political reformers, frustrated by OU and BYuT, have begun to publicly and privately discuss a new political project to regain popular support for a pro-Euroatlantic, pro-market reform, and anti-corruption platform. The two most vocal proponents of this idea are Minister of Internal Affairs Yuriy Lutsenko and Rada deputy (Our Ukraine faction) Mykola Katerynchuk. Such an effort, which could redraw the political map of Ukraine in a way that positively incorporated the legacy of the Orange Revolution rather than continuing the same preexisting forces with the same political personalities, is what many people both inside and outside Ukraine expected would happen immediately after the Orange Revolution, but did not. Instead, very little new blood and new perspectives made it into the party lists for the Rada elections, even for post-Orange lists like OU and BYuT. Whether such a new political project proves any more effective in organization, message, platform, and electoral success than OU remains to be seen. End Summary and Comment. Lutsenko Looking for Way "Forward" -------------- ¶3. (C) Internal Affairs Minister Lutsenko seems to be on the tip of many tongues these days as a potential leader of the future. On November 17, Lutsenko told the Ambassador that he was planning a new political force to engage the populace at the grassroots level and to get back to the Orange Revolution's reformist ideals. There was a real need for a "third force" besides the "totalitarians" of Yuliya (BYuT) ;and Rinat (Regions); Lutsenko was ready to lead it. Real activity would start in the spring. The first step would be a loose union of civic groups, local political efforts, perhaps to be called the "List of 22", named for November 22 (note: the start of the Orange Revolution). Like Vaclav Havel's Charter 77 in the Czech Republic, this could be an open declaration that like-minded people could affiliate themselves with. Lutsenko and others would take advantage of the national month-long holiday break to reinforce preexisting informal networks, particularly in western and central Ukraine. Lutsenko's third force (tentatively: "Forward, Ukraine") would be created from the grassroots up, uniting democrat-minded left- and right-centrists. Lutsenko would help lead a series of provincial "plebiscite meetings" between February-May that would act as primary system, allowing people to endorse the leaders they wanted, not those imposed from above by an OU congress or the diktat of Yushchenko or Poroshenko. ¶4. (C) A young group of truly democratic-minded, western-oriented, not discredited politicians would serve as the core of this new party: Lutsenko, Yatsenyuk ("his economic good sense balances my revolutionary fervor"), Katerynchuk, Kyrylenko, Stetskiv. They would draw on Pora, the youth movement that helped organize the 2004 Maidan events, as well. Lutsenko added that it was important to keep OU in the fold because as a Rada faction, it had the right to representatives on 33,000 election precinct committees. It was also important to keep OU MPs from defecting to Regions and creating a 300 MP constitutional majority that would give Yanukovych the ability to override presidential vetoes. It was important too to destroy the image of East-West enmity; better to contrast oligarchs and crime with honest people and honest economic activity. Lutsenko didn't think there would be elections in the short term (i.e. spring),which would allow time to construct this new political force. Recent articles, however, in Ukrainska Pravda and Dzerkalo Tyzhnya speculated that if Lutsenko could pull off his project, his "mega orange bloc" could get 20 percent in early elections. Katerynchuk Heeding the Call -------------- ¶5. (C) Another new leader searching for a fresh political movement is Mykola Katerynchuk. After months of speculation KYIV 00004362 002 OF 003 that he would leave OU, he finally resigned from the People's Union Our Ukraine party on November 13 after the party congress rejected his ideas for reform. Katerynchuk had told us privately on October 27 that he thought the party needed to clean house and get back to advocating the democratic principles it had embraced on the Maidan. Katerynchuk outlined his vision for reforming the party in Ukrainska Pravda on the eve of the November 11 party congress, which earned him attacks from party leadership and delegates from central and eastern Ukraine. Two days later, he stepped down; he remains in the OU Rada faction, although it has been speculated that if he left OU for BYuT, he could take 12-14 MPs with him. After announcing his resignation, Katerynchuk said that the time was near for a new political force and that his political career was linked with up-and-comers Yatsenyuk, Stetskiv, Kyrylenko, and Lutsenko. Tymoshenko: Opposing on Her Own -------------- ¶6. (C) The potential for cooperation between BYuT and OU is dwindling as both sides target the same electorate and continue to snipe at each other. In the most recent edition of Dzerkalo Tyzhnya, Tymoshenko wrote a stirring editorial about the Orange Revolution and called on Yushchenko not to go out on the street and celebrate it, but to sit at home and reflect on what was gained and then lost. She placed a lot of blame on Yushchenko and the Our Ukraine camp for losing sight of their reform goals. In meetings over the past two months with Tymoshenko and her foreign policy adviser Nemyria, they talk about cooperation with OU, but their criticisms--they're indecisive; Bezsmertniy is a bad leader, future cooperation in early elections only with announcement that Tymoshenko will be next PM--belie their stated intentions. In her most recent meeting with EUR A/S Fried on November 16, Tymoshenko sounded a little more openly disgusted with Yushchenko and his circle. and said that BYuT was trying to cooperate with OU enough to at least stop Regions from gaining a 300-deputy majority, but there was not much potential beyond that. ¶7. (C) In another strike against broader cooperation, Tymoshenko's new political ally, the Reforms and Order party (led by former Finance Minister Pynzenyk) expelled up-and-comer Taras Stetskiv from its ranks on November 16 for allegedly working on a new political project for Yushchenko and criticizing Pynzenyk's decision to sign a cooperation agreement with Tymoshenko. Our Ukraine: Losing Momentum, Members -------------- ¶8. (C) Meanwhile, the People's Union Our Ukraine (PUOU) party is still trying to find its way. After a party congress on November 11 that failed to provide any qualitative changes to its leadership or political strategy, party leaders are bailing and fingerpointing. First Katerynchuk quit on November 13. Then businessman David Zhvaniya resigned from the political council on November 19 because he thinks "the party leadership is unreformable." At the congress itself, leaders of the political council--including Bezsmertniy, Poroshenko, Martynenko, and Yekhanurov--were resistant to accepting any blame for party problems, which elicited boos from delegates from Western Ukraine. Bezsmertniy has begun to reach out to pro-reform parties that did not make it into Rada in March, such as Kostenko's People's Movement of Ukraine, Reforms and Order, and Pora to form a new "European Choice" confederation. Yekhanurov said in an interview with Ukrainska Pravda on November 17 that Poroshenko, Tretyakov, and Zhvaniya should all resign to prevent the party from slowly dying. In addition, one of the Our Ukraine faction's constituent parties, Rukh, announced it will negotiate with BYuT independently of OU. ¶9. (C) OU is suffering regionally as well, especially in the West, traditionally its bastion of support. In Lviv, one of only three oblasts to deliver a plurality to OU in the March elections, supporters have been flocking to BYuT, according to an academic contact. The Ivano-Frankivsk and Lviv branches left the party congress early to show solidarity with Katerynchuk. Following the congress, a number of Zhytomyr members resigned from PUOU. Yushchenko and OU moving apart? -------------- ¶10. (C) There seems to be a growing distance between Yushchenko and the party leadership. The President skipped the party congress to attend a concert by Italian pop singer Toto Cutugno. Then, in a November 22 interview with the top three national TV networks, the President indicated that he KYIV 00004362 003 OF 003 supports, if is not an outright participant in, Lutsenko and Katerynchuk's project. He said that he could not be held responsible for the split in the "orange team," because he was above the political process. He regretted, however, the internal discord among the Maidan forces and suggested that they should all reconsolidate around a new political project that would be led by people who are not members of Our Ukraine (note: presumably a reference to Lutsenko et al). He also called on OU to "cleanse" itself. ¶11. (C) From its side, the party has started to demonstrate independence from Yushchenko. OU members told the press on November 10 that Yushchenko was urging OU to reform itself under the leadership of someone new, like Lutsenko, Bondar, or Yatsenyuk, but at the party congress, party leaders Bezsmertniy, Poroshenko, and Martynenko repelled efforts to get his "new team" into the leadership. They also indicated that Yushchenko's position as honorary head of the party is mostly symbolic at this point. "Orange Team": Going Forward, Separately -------------- ¶12. (C) Significant cooperation between the various groups seems unlikely. Lutsenko told the Ambassador that BYuT has been trying hard to unseat him because Tymoshenko feared his popularity might now equal hers. While he didn't agree with her politics, he respected Tymoshenko as a politician. Unfortunately, she didn't reciprocate, and she would continue to focus on settling old scores (against erstwhile orange allies) at the expense of achieving success. In his private comments to us, Katerynchuk underscored that he did not want Tymoshenko to be the only opposition leader. For her part, Tymoshenko appears increasingly skeptical of Yushchenko's role in the opposition, especially as he continues to pursue cooperation with Yanukovych. It may be that Yushchenko cannot be President and leader of the opposition at the same time in this system, but as BYuT becomes the only prominent voice of opposition, OU will lose even more stature, and Yushchenko will lose influence. Whether Lutsenko and Katerynchuk's new political project can bring together reformist forces any more effectively than existing parties remains to be seen. ¶13. (U) Visit Embassy Kyiv's classified website: www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/kiev. Taylor