REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK: The complexity of Viktor Pinchuk (07/30/06)

REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK

by Zenon Zawada
Kyiv Press Bureau

The complexity of Viktor Pinchuk

Viktor Pinchuk sure knows how to host a party. And a conference to boot.

The Yalta European Strategy (YES) conference he launched in July 2004 has become an annual affair for Ukraine's dealmakers for good reason.

Tell me who would turn down the chance to hobnob with top leaders, experts and policymakers with free room and board at a Yalta beachfront hotel.

While the YES conference is part of Mr. Pinchuk's strategy of influencing Ukrainian politics toward Europe, it does an excellent job of lifting his status among Ukrainians and foreigners alike.

Ukraine's former oligarchs, now referred to as businessmen, have a stereotype as ruthless, conniving thieves who swindled Ukraine of its natural and industrial resources for their own profit, doing little for the nation and leaving its people in destitution.

All stereotypes possess an element of truth, or else they wouldn't have emerged in the first place.

And everyone has his own set of sins, so we're not to judge others. It's said that a crime is behind every great fortune, and who knows just exactly how Mr. Pinchuk made his.

Watching him in action though, in my very limited exposure, I must say Viktor Pinchuk's a hard man not to like. His people skills surpass those of most Ukrainian businessmen, possessing a unique ability to relate and communicate.

At the last evening party at a Georgian restaurant near the Livadia Palace, Mr. Pinchuk made it a point to approach every table and talk to the guests, both the powerful and the less-than-powerful, before they left.

He exchanged hugs with Yushchenko confidante Oleh Rybachuk and handshakes with Tymoshenko ally Hryhorii Nemyria.

He seemed to know that reporters crave access more than anything, and that's exactly what we got at Yalta. The host with the most chatted with us for a full hour under the hot Crimean sun, fielding our prodding questions, which were sometimes incisive, sometimes useful and, admittedly, sometimes stupid.

But the athletically built 45-year-old was patient and good-humored, speaking with a confident, easy-going air and even exhibiting candor at certain points.

We felt respected, which goes a long way for a Ukrainian journalist who is used to being constantly lied to, stonewalled or simply ignored by press secretaries.

Reporters like to hammer away at public figures with whom they have no personal relation. It's easier.

The YES conference allows Mr. Pinchuk to reveal other sides to his persona that the media or public rarely see.

Throughout the conference, he stood alongside his father-in-law, Leonid Kuchma, trading laughs and comments with the old man, even saving him a seat in the front row. (And Mr. Kuchma listened intently to the discussions.)

It put a human face on an alleged murderer and a swindling son-in-law.

Seeing Mr. Pinchuk hold his wife's arm, even caressing it, added another dimension to my perceptions.

Elena Franchuk appeared to be the wife that many men secretly dream of - the pleasant, cheerful helper who entertained the guests and kept things moving along smoothly.

I'm aware that even the likes of Al Capone and John Gotti both had wives and kids (Mr. Kuchma has one daughter, Mr. Pinchuk two).

I don't know what I would have done walking in Mr. Kuchma's and Mr. Pinchuk's shoes in the minefield that was the post-Soviet business landscape.

May I put forth the outrageous notion that, in the anarchy of the early 1990s, anyone with a good set of brains and the right set of connections took advantage of the situation and snatched up what they could?

Yes, ideally all of Ukraine's factories and mines should have been auctioned to the highest bidder, with the proceeds benefiting the Ukrainian people. Or perhaps many of them should never have been privatized, or not privatized so quickly.

But any mature person knows that you can't base decisions on how the world should be. You have to act on how it is, and in a lawless environment, only the most cunning survive.

Now that Mr. Pinchuk has made his billions, most of which won't be taken away (with the looming exception of Nikopol), perhaps the public should assess him on what he does with his wealth.

Whether Mr. Kuchma was ever serious about Ukraine's EU membership remains unclear to this very day. It seems possible that he did want Ukraine to draw closer to the EU, considering that Mr. Pinchuk supported his presidency. After all, Mr. Pinchuk launched YES in July 2004, before the Orange Revolution.

Speaking of which, I asked Mr. Pinchuk: "What do you think of the Orange Revolution looking back in hindsight?"

"We can be proud of the social phenomenon," he said. "It was a display of the society's emotions."

"But nothing concrete?" I followed up.

"It was positive. In another sense, many politicians did not fulfill the expectations of these people."

(Gosh, did he really want the maidan's expectations to be fulfilled? If so, he might have lost more than Kryvorizhstal and Nikopol. He could be sitting in jail.)

"They fought for their future and it will go down in the country's history and the world's history as something unique. I am involved in the media. I have to recognize that afterwards, freedom of speech became wider and deeper," Mr. Pinchuk said.

But now that the Orange Revolution and Mr. Kuchma have come and gone, Mr. Pinchuk has begun to beat his own political drum, calling for Ukraine's membership in the European Union and a new political paradigm that goes beyond the country's current east-west divide.

As he stressed throughout the conference, EU membership isn't the only prize.

"We can go down this path and then just say that we have gone down a useful path and we don't need EU membership," he told reporters on July 14. "The main thing is that we have compromised on reforms that are important for us. That's all. And then we will see. Maybe Europe will not be so interested in us."

Merely establishing better trade and economic relationships with the EU would exponentially benefit Ukraine (as well as Mr. Pinchuk's business).

By hosting the YES conference, Mr. Pinchuk may be promoting his self-interest, but he's also doing more to promote Ukrainian EU membership than most are willing or capable of.

Just as he was getting into a sleek black Mercedes alongside former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, I asked Mr. Pinchuk whether he was interested in financing a documentary film about the Ukrainian Holomodor, just as he had agreed to do for the Jewish Holocaust.

He replied: "I thought about it many times. I'm planning to finance a project that is connected with gathering the stories of eyewitnesses who had gone through it. Maybe some films will be made from these materials, but I want to take part in gathering those testimonies because there are fewer survivors every year. And then it might be some documentary. I think that it is very, very important for the Ukrainian people."

A progressive, a reformer, a humanitarian, an exploiter, a swindler, an opportunist. Like all of us, Mr. Pinchuk is a complex figure.

He is also among Ukraine's most influential people.

Time will tell whether he'll be most famous for his notorious relationship with Mr. Kuchma, or if he comes out from under that shadow to make his own mark on Ukrainian history.

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