President Kuchma questions Western strategies for Ukraine

Eastern Economist

SALZBURG, Austria - Three days before traveling to Moscow to meet with Russian President Boris Yeltsin and seven days prior to hosting German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in Kyiv, President Leonid Kuchma lashed out at the West, specifically, the European Union, for failing to provide adequate support for reform in his country.

According to Reuters, Mr. Kuchma accused the West of hypocrisy and neglect. The president of Ukraine, who was in Salzburg for the World Economic Forum's Central and Eastern European Economic Summit, said that in their dealings with Ukraine, Western countries sometimes behaved as Russian communists used to: they said one thing, thought another and then did something different again.

Asked if he is satisfied with the level of support Ukraine is receiving from the West, he replied: "In fact there is none. There is just talk, nothing else. We have promises. Could you explain the strategy of the European Union towards Ukraine? When we ask such a question, we don't understand the answer."

"When the West starts to discuss the pace of reform ... in my view there is a sort of hypocrisy, nothing else. You should understand that we cannot be compared with any other Eastern European country," President Kuchma added.

He had a better opinion of U.S. assistance, however. "The United States is more active in this respect than the European Union. If it were not for their assistance, the situation might have been absolutely different," he said. According to Reuters, President Kuchma complained that Ukraine was sometimes advised to emulate reform in countries such as Poland, yet it was forgotten that Poland had received massive debt relief. "But we are not going to beg," Mr. Kuchma added.

Asked what his priorities would be if he won a second term in the presidential election in October, President Kuchma said, "stricter implementation of my plans for reforming economic policy." He dismissed allegations by his leftist opponents of irregularities in the election preparations, saying they had nothing else to say. "My principal opponent is the economy," Mr. Kuchma said.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, July 11, 1999, No. 28, Vol. LXVII

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