{"id":19545,"date":"2013-02-04T11:00:00","date_gmt":"2013-02-04T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?guid=bf9859e61cd7562a510d6240899c3fd2"},"modified":"2013-07-04T12:34:19","modified_gmt":"2013-07-04T12:34:19","slug":"speech-british-ambassador-delivers-yalta-memorial-speech","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mostafa.openonline.co.uk\/?p=19545","title":{"rendered":"Speech: British Ambassador delivers Yalta Memorial Speech"},"content":{"rendered":"

Updated:<\/em> Added translation<\/p>\n

\n

I\u2019d like to start with a salute to the British Ukrainian Society, and the work that it does, the work that a lot of you here in tonight\u2019s audience do to bring Ukrainian and British people and institutions together. I offer another salute to your readiness to take a risk on me as your speaker this evening. After all, I have only been in place as Britain\u2019s seventh Ambassador to Ukraine for a bit over four months (and I pause to salute too Ambassador number four, who is also with us tonight). And I dare say you could therefore have chosen to hear from more experienced observers of the scene than me this evening.<\/p>\n

So what you are going to hear from me is going to have elements of what, when I first joined the Foreign & Commonwealth Office 26 years ago we still called a \u201cFirst Impressions Dispatch\u201d. This was generally a brave and sometimes unsuccessful effort to show that a fresh view, a view not yet smoothed out by familiarity or dented by cynicism was worth hearing alongside the perspectives of the old hand. They\u2019re not compulsory any more, and so there are fewer of them \u2013 and opinions are \u2013 let\u2019s say various on whether this is a gain or a loss. <\/p>\n

So \u2026 it\u2019s early in my tenure, and it\u2019s still early enough in the year to wish you a successful 2013 and briefly recall one of my favourite little cautionary tales of diplomatic folklore \u2013 with apologies if you\u2019ve heard this one before \u2026 this reminds us of a British Ambassador who had responded to a request for an end of year interview, at the end of which he was relieved to be asked a simple question about what he wanted for Christmas. He gave what he was sure was a satisfactory and innocent answer, and was surprised at the beginning of the following year to read his interview alongside several similar ones conducted with two colleagues. The magazine wrote: \u201cWe asked three Ambassadors what were their wishes for Christmas and the coming year; the French Ambassador hoped he would see progress in the resolution of conflict in the world\u2019s troubled regions; the Ambassador of the Soviet Union hoped that the coming year would see progress towards the eventual triumph of socialism worldwide; and the British Ambassador said he\u2019d rather like a modest but tasty box of crystalised fruit.\u201d <\/p>\n

I shall try to avoid the pitfalls of over-personalising my remarks this evening \u2013 but for what it\u2019s worth, to offer a few thoughts from the perspective of my first few months in Kyiv on how things look and feel in Ukraine as we begin 2013, and what we might expect from this year.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been an interesting few months: a period in which the political pulse was accelerated by the elections to the Verkhovna Rada held in October, and was then perhaps somewhat slowed as political decision makers took stock of the implications of the elections, and began the process of forming new alignments in the Rada, and forming a new government. <\/p>\n

I want to look at both these phases \u2013 first at the elections, and then at what we\u2019ve been able to learn about the implications of their results in in the first few weeks of the resumed Rada. And then I want to look ahead at the prospects as the year goes on, with a particular focus on the prospects for steps forward in the EU-Ukraine relationship. I don\u2019t intend to speak for long \u2013 because I also want to encourage questions and comments from you.<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s look first at the elections themselves. I won\u2019t re-visit in detail the assessment of the observer missions \u2013 just briefly to recall how many observers were struck by the distinct increase in tension in the polling stations once voting had finished and the process of counting and tabulation had begun. Having myself seen in a broad range of Kyiv districts what looked like a generally peaceful and orderly process of voting, I heard from a good many people \u2013 candidates as well as observers \u2013 who felt that it was precisely at the point that polling stations closed that the integrity of the process came under most serious and immediate threat. (And indeed it was doubts about counting and tabulation that underlay the decisions to re-run elections in five constituencies). At the same time, we saw and heard in the aftermath of the election \u2013 a good deal of evidence of how hard some members of election commissions at precinct and district level had worked to protect the integrity of the counting process, and defend it successfully from being compromised.<\/p>\n

I am glad to recall in this context that the British Government \u2013 in addition to a substantial contribution to funding both long term and short term election observers, also funded training \u2013 under a project entitled \u201cThe Professional Election Commission\u201d \u2013 for thousands of Commission members at precinct level. And I think we can take some satisfaction from the fact that in providing this support we were contributing to these Commissions\u2019 resilience and robustness in defending against threats to the integrity of the electoral process.<\/p>\n

But enough on the process \u2013 what about the results it delivered \u2013 in terms of the configuration of the Verkhovna Rada in its seventh convocation? I won\u2019t run over the relative strengths of the various parties and fractions \u2013 most of you will know all that, but I think it\u2019s fair to say that this was not quite the result that those weary and disillusioned with the Ukrainian political scene were expecting. <\/p>\n

There was, on the eve of the election, quite a widely held expectation that the Party of Regions would emerge in a dominant position after the election. But the result showed that no one party was offering a vision significantly compelling to persuade the electorate to assign it a dominant role in the Rada. Or, as some would argue, no one party was in the end able to steer the campaign or the voting processes sufficiently strongly to be able to emerge with a comfortably dominant role in the Rada. <\/p>\n

So we are left with an intriguing composition of the Rada, with quite a number of questions on future voting patterns not easy to answer at this stage. It is as a result too early to tell whether this new Rada will be a basis for pragmatic, constructive decision making, or for incoherence and confrontation. You can hear a lot of opinions in Ukraine just now arguing either way.<\/p>\n

I was talking to one close observer of the scene the other day who fears the worst. In his view \u2013 and he\u2019s not alone in this \u2013 there are only two coherent parties left in the Rada \u2013 the Communist Party and Svoboda. Everything else is flux and unpredictability \u2013 a recipe for short-term alliances, tactic and manoeuvre at the expense of strategy and vision. I see what he means, although I am not sure I see things in the same light. I share the view of those inclined \u2013 with a large dose of determined optimism \u2013 to see this as a time of opportunity. <\/p>\n

Yes, there is also a fair degree of cynicism around: which assumes that the new Rada will just offer more of the same. I remember reading during the run-up to the election some rather pessimistic coverage of one candidate\u2019s campaign: he was advertising himself with the help of a slogan that more or less said \u201cVote for him and he\u2019ll look after your interests\u201d; the author of this article commented sourly that it was all too likely that this candidate would win a seat in the Rada and then spend the next several years looking after his own interests, commenting that this was a far more typical pattern in modern Ukrainian politics.<\/p>\n

I may be looking at this with the naivety of a newcomer, but what I learn from my own initial conversations with members of the Rada is that there is a basis to be more hopeful and less cynical than that. We have already seen prominent and critical media coverage of early examples in this Rada of behaviours that were notorious in its predecessors. And no, I am not talking about the brawling, but about the phenomena of deputies who switch sides (\u201ctushki\u201d) and the so-called pianists, so called because they use all available fingers to cast not just their own votes but the votes of several absent colleagues. There\u2019s quite a strong sense that public tolerance of these behaviours is lower than it\u2019s ever been, and that this Rada will be under a critical public spotlight in perhaps new ways. I note here the obvious point that this potentially positive factor is unlikely to be sustainable without the kind of media freedom that allows the public to see and to judge for itself the extent to which the representatives they have elected are conscientiously discharging their mandates. <\/p>\n

I want now to shift focus from the internal scene in Ukraine and look ahead to two critical engagements coming up in the next few weeks which could tell us much about how might expect the new Ukrainian government to handle issues on the international horizon. I\u2019m referring here to important visits to Ukraine \u2013 either ongoing or imminent \u2013 by the International Monetary Fund, and by the EU\u2019s Commissioner for Enlargement, Stefan Fule.<\/p>\n

The IMF is already back in Kyiv, and we should hear later this week from its mission leaders whether progress has been made on agreeing the terms of a further stand-by arrangement for Ukraine.<\/p>\n

There are of course choices open to the Government of Ukraine to address what looks like a budgetary position of considerable difficulty through other measures: there\u2019s nothing obligatory about concluding a new agreement with the Fund. But it\u2019s hard to believe that any of the short-term fixes involving expensive re-financing in the market, or cutting a deal with Russia to reduce the gas bill would bring anything more than correspondingly short-term relief. Worse than that, they carry serious risks of compounding budgetary weakness and vulnerability in the future.<\/p>\n

So a key question to watch over the next few days is whether the new Ukrainian Government can commit itself to addressing the key IMF concerns on domestic gas tariffs and the exchange rate, and to putting in place the conditions which would encourage fund shareholders to be confident that their money was being successfully put to work in support of effective budgetary management strategies.<\/p>\n

I mention in this context the problem of un-paid VAT refunds to corporate payers. It\u2019s an issue on which a number of British investors have shared concerns with me. They paint a picture of a continuing, repetitive struggle to obtain correct levels of refund of VAT paid in advance \u2013 with the sums concerned sometimes in the 100s of millions of dollars. Again, in the short term this can be a means of making the Government budget look less burdened on paper \u2013 but in the longer term it\u2019s another negative and discouraging signal to investors.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re also heading for an interesting few weeks in the EU-Ukraine relationship. The next EU-Ukraine Summit is just 3 weeks away. And we should get a clearer idea of what that summit will achieve at the end of this week, following Commissioner Fule\u2019s meetings in Kyiv on 7 and 8 February.<\/p>\n

The basic texts for these meetings are already clear: the Foreign Affairs Council of the EU put it simply and straightforwardly in the conclusions agreed by Ministers on 10 December. I quote two key passages:<\/p>\n

First:
\n\u201cUkraine\u2019s performance will determine the pace of engagement, and will be assessed on the basis of progress in three areas: the compliance of the 2012 parliamentary elections\u2019 with international standards and follow-up actions, as well as Ukraine\u2019s progress in addressing the issue of selective justice and preventing its recurrence, and in implementing the reforms defined in the jointly agreed Association Agenda.\u201c<\/p>\n

And second:
\n\u201cThe Council reaffirms its commitment to the signing of the already initialled Association Agreement, including a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area, as soon as the Ukrainian authorities demonstrate determined action and tangible progress in the three areas mentioned above, possibly by the time of the Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius in November 2013.\u201d<\/p>\n

Note in particular the words \u201cdetermined action and tangible progress\u201d. The conclusions themselves didn\u2019t need to spell out in detail in what areas the Council hoped to see action and progress. Because that work has already been done in the Association Agenda. And without wanting to rehearse that agenda in its entirety, I do think it\u2019s worth reminding ourselves often of the specific agreed areas for action outlined in that agenda.<\/p>\n

So, with apologies to those of you who know it off by heart, let me remind you that it includes the following objectives:<\/p>\n