Ukrainian leaders face EU sanctions

The European Union is poised to impose targeted sanctions on senior figures in the Ukrainian administration after at least 25 people died in the course of a police action to remove demonstrators from central Kiev.

Foreign ministers of the EU’s member states will gather in Brussels today (20 February) for an emergency meeting on Ukraine.

They are expected to endorse an agreement drafted by EU ambassadors yesterday to bar individuals responsible for the violence from entering the EU, and to freeze their assets.

The foreign ministers of France, Germany and Poland will arrive in Brussels direct from Kiev, where, they said yesterday (19 February), they intended to hold crisis talks with Ukraine’s President Viktor Yanukovych.

Prior to the police operation on Tuesday (18 February), at least four people are believed to have died in three months of protests triggered by Yanukovych’s last-minute decision not to sign trade and political deals with the EU.

It is not yet clear whether Yanukovych himself will be included on the sanctions list. However, José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Commission, said yesterday that “it is the political leadership of the country that has a responsibility to ensure the necessary protection of fundamental rights and freedoms”.

Yanukovych launched the crackdown a day after Russia said it would provide Ukraine with $2 billion (€1.5bn) in emergency funding. In December, Russia had promised support worth $15bn (€10.9bn), but it suspended the funds in late January after the resignation of one of Yanukovych’s right-hand men, Prime Minister Mykola Azarov.

Russia’s financial backing and the EU’s support for sanctions address two distinct elements in Ukraine’s crisis – its precarious public finances, and public demand for accountability for violence.

But it is unclear how the EU’s foreign ministers now plan to contribute to progress in the areas that they have identified as essential to any resolution of the crisis: the formation of a new government, reform of Ukraine’s constitution, and a fair presidential election.

The first bloodshed on Tuesday occurred when protesters approached the parliament, urging the reintroduction of the 2004 constitution. Inside the building, parliamentary officials refused to allow the opposition’s resolution in support of that move.

When EU foreign ministers last met, on 10 February, they held a broad debate about how to develop the EU’s policy, but diplomats afterwards remarked that, in Ukraine, the EU is recognising “the limits of its influence”, as one put it. The EU has consistently said that it does not intend to act as a “mediator” between the government and opposition, though it wants to “facilitate” talks. Diplomats also stress privately that, to be sustainable, any solution needs to be Ukrainian-owned – a position repeated publicly by national and EU leaders.

International co-operation

European diplomats’ emphasise the need for co-operation with international organisations that Ukraine belongs to, chiefly the Council of Europe – Europe’s top human-rights body – and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), a political grouping that includes Russia and the United States.

However, the secretary-general of the Council of Europe, Thorbjørn Jagland, told a small group of journalists on Friday (14 February) that the international community had failed to send a “coherent message” on constitutional reform. “Many ideas that are not compatible” have been aired about constitutional changes, he said, warning that “very often the international community adds more confusion than assistance”.

He urged national capitals to give fuller backing to his organisation. “There is one body that everyone could listen to,” he said: the Venice Commission, a body that advises the Council of Europe’s 47 members on constitutional issues.

He said that there could be “no quick fix” to Ukraine’s constitution. A “normal constitutional process… based on the rules that they have” would, he said, see the Ukrainian parliament hold one reading before the summer and another after the summer. Ukrainians are currently scheduled to vote in presidential elections in February.

Jagland said that the current electoral law and constitution benefit the Party of the Regions, the party that provides Yanukovych’s power base. He also said that reverting to the old constitution would worsen the already deeply problematic nature of the prosecutor’s office in the constitution and give the president the right to appoint the foreign minister and the defence minister.

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