Yulia Tymoshenko: a letter to Yanukovich

In response to Ukraine suspending talks over a trade and political agreement with the EU, jailed opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko has written a letter to president Viktor Yanukovich. Here it is in full.

Dear Viktor Fedorovych,

Today, I can write you a letter with no particular worries.

Viktor Fedorovych, I advise you to convene the National Security and Defense Council as soon as possible, to listen with fatherly attention to all doubts of your government concerning complications in the relations with Russia, to admit that you understand their sincere worries and immediately, at an extraordinary NSDC meeting to take the decision about signing the Agreement.

This is the only chance for you to survive as a politician, because now, when you are killing the Agreement you are making the biggest mistake of your life.

I know very well all your real internal motives, so I won’t overload you with moral or civic lessons. But I would like to give you three pieces of advice that you will certainly understand and, possibly, save the Agreement.

First. Your choice of international strategy for Ukraine now depends on how that strategy will influence your chances to be reelected as president. You’ve decided that the best option to achieve the goal is to maintain neutrality between the European Union and Russia; so you’re killing the Association Agreement with the EU. You think you will be able to bluff further, blackmail and play between two civilizations and to get the presents you want from the both of them in order to preserve your power. You want cheap gas and money from one party and international legitimization of your authoritarian rule from the other. But you’re wrong in thinking that you are clever enough to play Russia and Europe against each other.

I think after you have frustrated signing of the Agreement, the Western democratic world will simply turn its back on you until 2015 because Europe’s leaders do not consider themselves tutors for the re-education of primitive politicians who cannot see where their own, and their nation’s, self-interests lay. From the moment of the complete failure of the Agreement, you will lose any chance Ukraine may have had to gain practical benefits from Europe; the democratic Western world will simply not play the bribe game as you practice it. Instead, you will be left alone with Russia, and you will have to live all your life according to its diktats. Of course, right now, the failure to sign the Agreement with the EU will be perceived positively by Russia, and you will, probably, get some kind of a reward for the “courageous” step that you think that you have taken. I don’t know what this pay off will be – relatively cheap gas, moderate credits or simply removal of trade problems. It doesn’t matter. Keep in mind that this will be not simple presents but bait-presents you will swallow. For once you are hooked, truly hooked, you won’t be able to wriggle free. And that’s not all. When you find the country in a deep economic and social downfall, and you cannot turn to the IMF or the EU for help (and due remember that the West has the controlling votes at the IMF), your only “friend” Russia will undoubtedly help you. But the price for this will be surrender of national interests, the price you won’t be ready to pay. Russia will throw you into a dilemma: either it saves you from social and economic collapse that has already happened at the cost of losing the independence of state; or it won’t save you at all. Both options are politically deadly for you and for Ukraine. But when you reach that position, you won’t have any options because you have thrown away our European option. Thus, my first piece of advice: never stay alone with Russia as in this case you will lose everything. Only the Association Agreement with the EU can save you.

Advice 2. Don’t demand money so roughly and hysterically from the West in exchange for the Agreement. It looks like Neanderthal manners. Sign the Agreement and the West will give aid to you, just as it has every other European country that came into close association with the EU. They will save you from the looming financial and social-economic collapse that your failed policies since your election have brought us to. Understand that after you sign the Agreement it will be a matter of honour for the whole democratic world not to disappoint Ukrainian society. After all, Europe’s greatest asset is the attractiveness of the Union; and Europeans will always want to burnish that asset before the eyes of the world. So Europe’s leaders will do everything possible so that 46 million people feel real and tangible benefits in their lives from the signing of the Agreement with EU. In contrast to you, world leaders actually respect their peoples and seek their trust; so they will help you not to lose popularity as a politician and thus not to lose the country. So my second advice is this: if you want to get financial, intellectual and political support, sign the Agreement without engaging in humiliating and blustery bargaining. You will receive everything Ukraine needs if you join Europe. All huge Russian recourses cannot be compared to possibilities of all democratic world.

Advice 3. Don’t allow your obsession with me to drive your policies. Your fear is so noticeable that you cannot hide it. Signing the Agreement, when you have a political hostage in your torture chamber, will considerably decrease the cost of your European heroism. But it will be your risk and your loss. I give you my word that, if you make a decision to sign the Agreement at the NSDC meeting, on the same day I will appeal to European leaders asking them to sign the Agreement without fulfilling all criteria including the part regarding my release. I don’t know if they will listen to my appeal but I will do everything possible for the signing of the Agreement even as I continue to sit in prison. Remember my third advice and think about the success of the country for which you are responsible but not about a banal keeping power at any price because, frankly, the price will prove too high for the country, and will ultimately prove your undoing.

Of course, you can decide not to listen to my advice. It means that nobody will give even a penny to support your rule in Ukraine and that the fate and fall of your presidency will be sealed. But you still have time to make the right choice, for yourself and for Ukraine. Even if your motives are wrong and concern only yourself, the right choice is still Europe.

Yulia Tymoshenko,
Kharkiv, Kachanivska penal colony