Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
07KYIV2290
2007-09-13 10:34:00
CONFIDENTIAL
Embassy Kyiv
Cable title:  

UKRAINE: OUR UKRAINE DISCOURAGED FROM THE TOP DOWN

Tags:  PGOV PREL PINR UP 
pdf how-to read a cable
VZCZCXRO6503
PP RUEHDBU
DE RUEHKV #2290/01 2561034
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
P 131034Z SEP 07
FM AMEMBASSY KYIV
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 3729
INFO RUEHZG/NATO EU COLLECTIVE
RUCNCIS/CIS COLLECTIVE
RUEHLMC/MILLENNIUM CHALLENGE CORP WASHDC
C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 KYIV 002290 

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/13/2017
TAGS: PGOV PREL PINR UP
SUBJECT: UKRAINE: OUR UKRAINE DISCOURAGED FROM THE TOP DOWN

REF: A. KYIV 02239

B. KYIV 001516

C. KYIV 002169

KYIV 00002290 001.2 OF 003


Classified By: Ambassador for reasons 1.4(b,d).

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 03 KYIV 002290

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: DECL: 09/13/2017
TAGS: PGOV PREL PINR UP
SUBJECT: UKRAINE: OUR UKRAINE DISCOURAGED FROM THE TOP DOWN

REF: A. KYIV 02239

B. KYIV 001516

C. KYIV 002169

KYIV 00002290 001.2 OF 003


Classified By: Ambassador for reasons 1.4(b,d).


1. (C) Summary. Conversations with Our Ukraine-People's
Self-Defense (OU-PSD) Leader Yuriy Lutsenko, First Lady
Kateryna Yushchenko, and members of the bloc's regional
headquarters show a political movement struggling to keep
pace with the more aggressive Tymoshenko Bloc. Lutsenko and
Mrs. Yushchenko both blamed the decision to make one issue --
eliminating parliamentary immunity -- for much of OU-PSD's
troubles; an analysis many Ukrainian political observers
share. Lutsenko also thought that the campaign was being
overtaken by a focus on the 2009 presidential election, which
was hurting the bloc's chances on September 30. He said that
Tymoshenko was beginning to attack OU-PSD, despite his
commitment with her to not fight dirty, and he worried that
she would try to discredit OU shortly before voting day.
Outside of Kyiv, many OU-PSD headquarters seem disorganized
and a few seem demoralized as well. Some political analysts
think Lutsenko might have done better on his own, although
his presence may be helping OU. When asked about a
coalition agreement with Yanukovych, Lutsenko predicted that
it would lead to a rupture in OU-PSD. However, he said that
if the Akhmteov wing of the party could agree to a
technocratic government that did not include the current PM,
he could support it -- a scenario he termed better, but
unlikely.


2. (C) Comment. No one doubts that OU-PSD will get into the
Rada, but how far it is behind Regions and BYuT may affect
its bargaining power during coalition negotiations. Recent
polls show the bloc down to 12-13 percent from a peak in the
high teens. OU has always had problems with organization, in
part because it lacks the strong leader and top-down control
of BYuT and Regions, so it is no surprise that
disorganization plagues them now. The disappointment with
their efforts so far, however, and the pessimism from
Lutsenko and Katya Yushchenko are new and indicate that
internal disagreements over campaign strategy may be hurting

the bloc. Having identified its internal problems -- a
campaign message that's not selling, tension between Kyiv and
the regions -- it will be up to OU to make a mid-course
correction and get up to the higher ratings they enjoyed in
July. End summary and comment.

Lutsenko, Mrs. Yushchenko Campaign Strategy Misguided
-------------- --------------


3. (C) Joking that after his latest round of stumping he had
switched from tea to whiskey, Lutsenko told the Ambassador on
September 10 that OU-PSD was facing an uphill battle.
Overall, Lutsenko thought that OU-PSD might get 17-18 percent
of the vote. In contrast, he thought BYuT would get at least
25-30 percent, although he said Tymoshenko herself was
confident she will win 226 seats alone. (Note: A sentiment
not shared by any major pollster. End note.) Separately,
Kateryna Yushchenko also expressed disappointment with the
campaign thus far, telling the Ambassador on two occasions
that she was not optimistic about OU's chances. In her view,
OU was not well-organized, and she wished her husband got
credit for more of the social issues that he (and she) had
been associated with over the years.


4. (C) Lutsenko singled out the decision to make the
elimination of parliamentary immunity the bloc's only major
campaign issue as a bad mistake -- advice he blamed on
American consultants. Mrs. Yushchenko told the Ambassador
that she doubted the competence of the US political advisors
who counseled sticking to that one message. Political
analyst Volodymyr Fesenko on September 11 said the one-issue
campaign had backfired on OU-PSD -- its ratings had crashed
in the past month from 15-16 percent down to 12 percent.
Head of the Cherkasy branch of Committee of Voters of Ukraine
thought that OU-PSD's campaign against immunity for
parliamentary deputies was a good idea, but that there had
not been enough time to make this a key issue for people.
Political analyst Vadym Karasyov thought OU still had a
chance to build back up some of its popularity if it worked
hard. (Note. Many Ukrainians tell us that they support the
issue, but that they do not feel passionately about it --
parliamentary immunity is a Kyiv-centric elite issue. And
now that PM Yanukovych and Regions have signed on in support,
OU is pushing for an issue on which all agree. End note.)

Lutsenko Evaluates Campaign Thus Far
--------------


5. (C) Lutsenko also said he was not in charge of the

KYIV 00002290 002.2 OF 003


campaign's direction, not even Baloha was fully in charge
anymore. Deputy Chief of the Presidential Administration
Ivan Vasyunyk had been tapped to start planning Yushchenko's
2009 reelection campaign and his decisions were having
negative effects on the OU-PSD Rada campaign. He also said
that some of the presidentially-appointed governors in the
South and East were now working for all sides, which was
hurting OU-PSD.


6. (C) Lutsenko said OU-PSD had decided not to campaign in
the heart of Regions' territory -- Donetsk, Luhansk, and
Crimea. They are counting on low voter turnout to help them,
and showing up in Region's strongholds might anger people and
mobilize them to come vote against OU. Better to let
sleeping dogs lie. Instead, they would cover the territory
around Donbas -- Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Mykolayiv, Kherson
-- and try to mobilize support there.


7. (C) Tymoshenko was becoming a major problem for OU-PSD,
Lutsenko added. He accused her of using black PR to tarnish
OU-PSD's image, playing up the possibility of a broad
coalition agreement between Yushchenko and Yanukovych, even
though Lutsenko stated at every campaign stop that that would
not happen. He was opposed to black PR, so he would not let
his bloc retaliate; as a result, they were suffering damage.
He also believed that Tymoshenko was planning to set OU up --
she was attending meetings with Baloha and Kolesnikov to talk
about the broad coalition, although she had no intention of
participating. Lutsenko thought that she would eventually
secure a written statement that documented the
Baloha-Kolesnikov negotiations, that she would make public
the week before the election in hopes of taking half of
OU-PSD's votes. She was also giving a lot of unofficial
money to television stations to secure good coverage.


8. (C) Lutsenko commented that he does not expect mass fraud,
although there might be some attempt to increase the number
of votes cast. Our task, he said, is to make sure the number
of votes counted in the East accurately reflects number of
people who voted.

Campaign Outside of Kyiv Uneven
--------------


9. (C) PolOffs have been visiting OU-PSD regional
headquarters across Ukraine, and these offices seemed to be
disorganized or unmotivated. In Odesa, OU-PSD leaders
complained that the Presidential Secretariat was managing the
whole campaign from Kyiv, marginalizing party activists on
the ground (ref A). They also mentioned they had been given
specific voting targets, a claim we have heard about
Dnipropetrovsk as well. Earlier in the summer, OU had almost
no presence in Dnipropetrovsk, and most people we talked to
there did not take the bloc seriously (ref B). Head of the
Zhytomyr OU-PSD campaign said that OU preparations for the
elections were progressing, but the tomb-like atmosphere of
their headquarters lacked a sense of urgency and organization
(ref C). The CVU representative there said that OU has been
complacent at the local level and had trouble mobilizing its
parties, but hoped to capitalize on Pavlenko's popularity.
The Kirovohrad OU-PSD headquarters was also disorganized --
when DCM and Poloff showed up for a September 10 meeting,
representatives of the party were nowhere to be found.


10. (C) In Odesa, the OU rep predicted that OU will lose by a
significant margin. He said that the poor results and
restrictions placed on party members and staff will be the
death of OU. The OU reps in Dnipropetrovsk acknowledged that
they weren't much of a factor--that Tymoshenko was the only
serious challenge to Regions. Cherkasy and Dnipropetrovsk
said the party would play up ties to Yushchenko, who they
believed had seen a bump in his ratings since the spring.
Kirovohrad party workers said they were receiving material
help from Kyiv, which was useful, but that the strategies
being sent from the capital had to be reworked to fit oblast
interests.


11. (C) In contrast, OU's Kharkiv headquarters was active and
bustling, although their activists admitted that they were
low in funds. Poloffs noticed that there were few OU
billboards and signs up around the city, as opposed to the
large numbers for Regions and BYuT. In contrast, Econoff
reported that OU-PSD had far more billboards than anyone else
in Regions-dominated Luhansk.

Lutsenko Factor: Good for OU, Not So Good for Lutsenko
-------------- --------------


12. (C) Contacts around the country questioned whether the
OU-PSD alliance was working. Cherkasy and Zhytomyr CVU
representatives said they believed Lutsenko would have gotten

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more votes without OU, especially in the east. Rada
candidates Mykola Katerynchuk and Oles Doniy, both high on
PSD's list, have expressed dissatisfaction to us with their
current bloc. Doniy told a roundtable of European diplomats
on September 11 that Lytvyn's chances of getting into the
Rada increased when PSD joined OU. Previously, Lutsenko was
well positioned as the alternative to both Regions and
OU/BYuT -- now Lytvyn had that spot.

Lutsenko on Coalitions: No to Yanukovych, Maybe to Regions
-------------- --------------


13. (C) Lutsenko also covered coalition variants with the
Ambassador. He said he could never be in a broad coalition
with Yanukovych's Regions -- after all his public statements
against it, to do so would make him a liar and end his
political ambitions. (Note. On the other hand, Lutsenko is
personally loyal to Yushchenko and if asked to support, or at
least not to oppose a broad coalition, it is possible that he
would do what the President asked. End note.) According to
Lutsenko, Tymoshenko as PM would be aggressive and dangerous,
but she might flounder trying to fulfill all the ludicrous
campaign promise she was making and undermine her own
presidential campaign. Better that than a
Yushchenko-Yanukovych alliance that would bring the
President's political career to an end and hand Tymoshenko an
easy 60 percent of the presidential vote in 2009. If a broad
coalition did happen, Lutsenko said that he would take his
PSD MPs and, he suspected, more than 20 OU MPs, and form a
new group in the Rada. This new group could not formally be
an independent faction, but it could vote with the
opposition.


14. (C) He had a more hopeful scenario, but he termed it
unlikely and fantastic. If Akhmetov and Kolesnikov could
really gain control over Regions and agree to a technocrat as
the next PM in place of Yanukovych, then he and his people
would stay in the OU faction. Such a move might splinter
Regions, but that was not a requirement for him, as long as
Yanukovych, Azarov, and Klyuyev were no longer in the
Cabinet. Lutsenko said Yushchenko and Baloha were still open
to all variants. He said he had trouble thinking who such a
neutral compromise figure might be, naming Lytvyn as a
possibility. (Note. We've also heard Foreign Minister
Yatsenyuk and Defense Minister Hrytsenko as other possible
"technocratic PMs" who might be acceptable to both Regions
and OU. End Note.) He added that Kolesnikov and Baloha were
meeting daily, so all options are still on the table.


15. (U) Visit Embassy Kyiv's classified website:
www.state.sgov.gov/p/eur/kiev.
Taylor