Anti-corruption, civil society and foreign partners (Original: Anticorrupción, sociedad civil y los socios extranjeros)

“The Ukrainian parliament unanimously restored the independence of the anti-corruption bodies NABU and SAPO [the anti-corruption agency and prosecutor’s office], just over a week after Zelensky’s decision to rein them in sparked protests in Kyiv and warnings from Ukraine’s allies. Ukrainian democracy in action: public opinion matters,” wrote Yaroslav Trofimov, one of the Financial Times’ most prominent international correspondents, on social media yesterday, not even attempting to maintain a semblance of objectivity. His newspaper’s official line is that Zelensky made an “unforced error” that he has had to rectify in the face of public and allied responses. That narrative isn’t false, but it does its best to disassociate foreign warnings from the protests and the organizations behind them. Hence, his analysis falls short and fails to take into account the significance of anti-corruption institutions and their evident connection with foreign allies, who this week demonstrated their persuasiveness. In this war, which is usually presented as a struggle between democracy and autocracy, it is important to highlight Ukraine’s democratic values. Authoritarianism is not measured in elections canceled or obstructed in parts of the country—long before the Russian invasion and the arrival of the state of emergency that prevents presidential elections from taking place—or in banned political parties, in opposition members killed, expelled from the country, or threatened, or in the treatment of minorities.

Democracy is measured, among other things, by the political presence and power imposed by so-called civil society, which is primarily made up of groups and individuals linked to the complex of non-governmental organizations that fight for causes that the major Western powers, including the press, consider acceptable. Thus, it is a sign of democracy that a segment of the population, especially the middle class, has demonstrated in favor of institutions used for internal struggle and prone to political revenge, but not the small demonstrations that have occurred over the last decade, for example, against the sharp rise in the prices of basic services or in defense of pensions. In democratic Ukraine, it was acceptable for the far right to demonstrate against the implementation of the peace agreements that Kiev had signed and had no intention of implementing, but any show of solidarity with the people of Donbass was seen as a sign of dissent with serious consequences in the form of attacks by the far right or criminal charges.

The law requiring non-governmental organizations to declare their foreign funding, which the Georgian government passed last year and sparked massive protests from the same sector of civil society that demonstrated last week in Ukraine, is a clear representation of the role that NGOs, think tanks, and foundations of all kinds have played and continue to play in the post-Soviet world over the past three decades. Almut Rochowanski, a feminist activist with years of experience in the sector who explained having helped organizations in countries like Georgia and Ukraine obtain foreign grants, explained at the time of the Georgian Maidan threat how such organizations can influence the country’s legislation and have the tools to lobby for policies that generally favor only capital, especially foreign capital. In Ukraine, it’s not just non-governmental organizations, but the technocracy created since the victory on Maidan, where all these external pressures have created a fully subsidized ecosystem of activism that, coincidentally, always fights for the political positions preferred by the European Union and, as long as it existed, USAID.

The paradigmatic example is Oleksandra Matviichuk, Nobel Peace Prize winner and star guest at all kinds of international events, who does not hesitate to give conferences alongside well-known figures from the extreme right and who boasts of having begun demanding weapons for Ukraine in the summer of 2014. It was the hot phase of the war in Donbass, when Ukraine decided to invent an anti-terrorist operation in Donbass to justify the use of the army on national territory, the process of including groups like Azov as a police battalion in the troops of the Ministry of the Interior began, the first steps were taken to use heavy weapons against a militia that did not yet have the form of an army, parks were attacked in broad daylight on Sunday and the de facto non-payment of pensions and social benefits occurred, which Poroshenko would make official months later. Matviichuk is part of a network of organizations funded from abroad to continue advancing the construction of a Ukraine on very specific foundations: facing Russia, as a reserve of resources and labor for the European Union, and as an external border of the European family.

Matviichuk is now a globally respected figure, and her opinion is a good example of what Ukrainian sociologist Volodymyr Ishchenko, arguably much less accepted in the country he had to leave, calls “Ukrainian voices,” a term that assumes uniformity and emphasizes unity above all else. As with NGOs, there are acceptable voices and others that are not, which is why they are silenced and vilified as Russian propaganda. This is a way of showing that civil society is not only active, but also participatory, and, coincidentally, always mobilizes in favor of initiatives defended, promoted, and funded by the West.

Western enthusiasm for civil society participation in the mobilizations is, therefore, directly proportional to the interest invested in the various causes. With each and every left-wing organization politically and ideologically disarmed, political parties banned, and their causes—the defense of public services—deprived of funding, the only activism possible in Ukraine over these eleven years has been that facilitated by resources that have made the protagonists of these causes celebrities. Among them, the anti-corruption cause, which has been used to justify absolutely everything in Ukraine, from cuts to the privatization of everything that the various governments since Maidan have managed to sell. In this sense, it is not surprising that the anti-corruption issue, and the government’s play with the institutions theoretically created to reduce it, have sparked protests in which well-known faces have participated. Based on a decade of work to present this small segment of civil society as representing an entire people, the media have been able to portray last week’s protests as a demonstration of democracy. This narrative is also useful in justifying Zelensky’s quick change of course, realizing that he could not confront those who sponsor the society that has demonstrated in recent days.

“Following the West’s declaration, Zelensky urged the parliament, which is under his control, to pass his law. This reverses his law, which had been passed and signed and which placed the US-organized anti-corruption agencies, which had begun investigating his cronies, under his control. This demonstrates the lack of independence of Zelensky, the parliament, and the anti-corruption agencies in Ukraine. But no one cares. Instead, this is called independence and democracy,” wrote Ukrainian-Canadian academic Ivan Katchanovski, framing the protests and the Ukrainian president’s swift reversal as a clear consequence of Ukraine’s dependence on Western allies. The displays of euphoria and gratitude that have followed from abroad, which contrast with the attempt by the political faction linked to Poroshenko to maintain the political confrontation, already completely defused on the streets since the anti-corruption organizations and their supporters managed to return to the status quo, are representative of this.

“Congratulations to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Rada for adopting the new anti-corruption law today. The law guarantees the independence of NABU and SAPO and empowers these agencies to operate effectively. This is a truly important and right step. It is a victory in the fight against corruption,” wrote Gitanas Nausėda, President of Lithuania. Her message is just one example of the satisfaction of the European political establishment, which has seen her power of persuasion. Brussels has failed to get China to comply with its orders not to flood the European market with products with which its deindustrialized economy cannot compete, nor to abandon Russia so that Western sanctions can have the desired effect, nor has it been able to achieve a decent and viable trade agreement with the United States. But it has understood that, at least in Ukraine, its words are orders.

Nauseda’s comment is just one of many published over the past two days, in which Zelensky has resumed his practice of retweeting every supportive comment he receives from European officials with a thank you. Significantly, he repeats the practice he used after the debacle of his Oval Office meeting, during which he was accused of not saying thank you. One of the comments the Ukrainian president appreciated yesterday was Ursula von der Leyen’s message, writing that “President Zelensky’s signature on the law restoring the independence of NABU and SAPO is a welcome step. Rule of law and anti-corruption reforms in Ukraine must continue. They remain essential for the country’s progress on the European path. The EU will continue to support these efforts.” António Costa echoed this sentiment, adding that “Rule of law and anti-corruption reforms in Ukraine must continue. They remain essential for the country’s progress on the European path. The EU will continue to support these efforts.” It’s clear that the congratulatory messages implicitly contain an order to stay the course and a certification that certain EU efforts —what has often been described as external control exercised by those who support and finance the institutions they themselves have created—will not only continue but will be consolidated. Democracy means that the European Union provides the resources, can give the orders, and that the President and Parliament of Ukraine only need a phone call to pass a law radically different from the one passed just a few days earlier.

I repeat: It’s hard to call them independent when the West is signing the checks, isn’t it?*

Related:

Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft: Almut Rochowanski (archived)

Almut Rochowanski is a non-resident fellow at the Quincy Institute and an independent activist. For the past 20 years she has collaborated with grassroots civil society organizations in Russia, especially the North Caucasus, Ukraine, the South Caucasus, Central Asia and Belarus, on a wide range of issues that were identified by grassroots activists as their priorities and/or existential needs: mobilizing resources; devising strategies and designing projects; learning; creating local and global networks; protecting themselves against threats. In the course of this work, much of it centered on women’s rights and feminist peace, she has engaged in refugee protection and asylum cases in the U.S. and Europe; grant–writing, grant–making, grant proposal review and advising grant–makers; organizing local and regional conferences and workshops for activists; mentoring young activists; strategic human rights litigation; and advocacy with policy-makers in the U.S., Europe, E.U. institutions and U.N. institutions. Her experience of working with international women’s peace organizations in Ukraine after 2014 led her to realize that the framework for civil society support increasingly reflects primacist, militarist agendas, particularly via foreign aid funding, and is therefore ill–suited for working towards peace, justice and liberation. She continues to support grassroots activists in the former Soviet Union, while contributing to critical analysis of Western foreign policy and foreign aid programs. 

Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft: List of Donors (Front Organizations)

Stand Together (Kochtopus – Atlas Network), Carnegie Corporation of New York, Ford Foundation**, Rockefeller Brothers**, DonorsTrust (Atlas), Robert Bosch Stiftung, Ploughshares Fund, Streisand Foundation, etc.

In an astonishing turn, George Soros and Charles Koch team up to end US ‘forever war’ policy

Wikipedia: Oleksandra Matviichuk

Oleksandra Viacheslavivna Matviichuk (Ukrainian: Олександра В’ячеславівна Матвійчук; born 8 October 1983 in Kyiv) is a Ukrainian human rights lawyer and civil society leader based in Kyiv. She heads the non-profit organization Centre for Civil Liberties (Nobel Peace Prize receiver in 2022) and is a campaigner for democratic reforms in her country and the OSCE region.[1] Since October 2022, she has been Vice-President of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH). Matviichuk is a member of the Steering Committee of the World Movement for Democracy, a project of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).[2]

*NABU: Soros calls for repeal of law on Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies

**Front Organizations