#Ukraine - Tymoshenko’s cynical impeachment tactic plays right into Putin’s hands

When Ukrainian presidential hopeful Yulia Tymoshenko announced she was launching impeachment proceedings against incumbent Petro Poroshenko this week, it looked like a last throw of the dice for a campaign in trouble. Tymoshenko’s ratings have been sliding for weeks and latest polls put her a distant third, behind Poroshenko and pace-setter Volodymyr Zelensky, just a month out from the first round of the presidential election. She’d already tried to smear Poroshenko with graft claims on the campaign trail, but they hadn’t really stuck.

There’s little chance Tymoshenko’s impeachment attempt will actually succeed, but the former prime minister is nevertheless banking on it to give her enough of an image boost to make it into the second round of the election, likely to be held on 21 April.

But if Tymoshenko’s latest stunt does succeed in knocking Poroshenko out of the race, it will leave Ukrainian voters with an awkward choice. A tainted shape-shifter whose critics believe she sold her country down the river in a controversial gas deal with Moscow, or a comedian who’s played the president on TV but has no political experience in real life. If anyone’s going to be happy with this particular dilemma, it’s the man who’s spent the last five years trying to subjugate Ukraine: Vladimir Putin.

Indeed, Poroshenko’s presidency has been a constant thorn in the side of Russia’s autocratic leader. Poroshenko has responded to Russia’s constant aggression in Ukraine by pushing a raft of nationalistic reforms, designed to lift Kiev away from Moscow and towards Brussels. He’s changed the constitution to facilitate EU membership, promoted the Ukrainian language and backed the separation of the Ukrainian church from its Muscovite patriarch after 400 years of vassalage, a schism so important that one regional expert described it as the moment Putin had “lost Ukraine for good”. A Poroshenko victory, then, has been deemed Putin’s least preferred outcome of this spring’s polls.

Tymoshenko’s glass house

The exposé which Tymoshenko is using to back up her pursuit of Poroshenko alleges that the son of one of the president’s business partners was buying spare parts from Russia and selling them to the Ukrainian army at a sizeable mark-up. Although there is no suggestion that Poroshenko himself was involved, Tymoshenko has drawn ammunition from the fact that the report touches on military affairs at a time when Russia is stepping up its provocation. Instead of scaling back its hostility after the spat in the Kerch Strait, Moscow has staged a major troop build-up along the Ukrainian border while continuing its sponsorship of separatists in the Donbass. For the people of Ukraine, this five-year stand-off has become a struggle for national salvation, and many civilians have given their own money to pay for military equipment

Poroshenko has strived to tap into this belligerent sentiment. He’s upped military spending by 150% and condemned Putin’s tactics in a series of hawkish speeches. Yet Tymoshenko has seized the opportunity provided by this week’s allegations to accuse her rival of committing “state treason” by “collaborating with the enemy.”

Tymoshenko herself, however, is no stranger to such allegations. Most Ukrainians will remember the infamous gas supply deal she struck with Russia back in 2009, while serving as prime minister, which left Kiev paying through the roof. The deal proved so damaging for Ukraine that Tymoshenko was jailed two years later—though, admittedly, then-President Yanukovych was happy to find an excuse to imprison his arch-rival. Her opponents still describe her as a Kremlin sympathizer, highlighting her Russian-speaking upbringing and her oligarchic background in the energy markets — not to mention her controversial 2005 description of Putin as a “wonderful, dignified leader.”

Now the ‘gas princess’ is reinventing herself as a Ukrainian nationalist, but her campaign has been undermined by claims that her policies are inconsistent, and will in fact subvert Poroshenko’s pro-Western reforms. Critics point out that she has consistently voted against progressive policies in recent years, and she has found it difficult to shake off claims that she is nothing more than a cynical rabble-rouser — or, as one local magazine put it recently, the biggest liar in Ukrainian politics.

Enter Ukraine’s Donald Trump?

But while Tymoshenko will be eager to ram home advantage, the impeachment attempt could prove equally propitious for Zelensky, who gave his own opportunistic take on this week’s events by claiming Poroshenko was “earning in blood”. A TV actor with a sizeable following among young people, Tymoshenko is running on an anti-establishment ticket, promising to tear up the current political order – a similar message  to that which Tymoshenko is preaching. And just like Tymoshenko, Zelensky has attracted scrutiny for his background, both as a Russian speaker and a businessman with interests in Moscow.

Initially considered to be somewhat of a joke candidate and referred to as the “clown”, Zelensky is now leading polls. Despite his lack of experience, his huge media appeal and skillful use of social media have given him a real chance of winning the race, rattling foreign diplomats’ feathers. One Western diplomat remarked after meeting with Zelensky that he had “no concrete ideas. It was frightening if you consider that he is a presidential candidate”. Other observers have emphasized the fact that a Zelensky victory would be a “dream scenario” for Putin, given Zelensky’s anarchic policy platform and his professed willingness to negotiate with Moscow over Eastern Ukraine. But the Russian leader probably wouldn’t be too unhappy with Tymoshenko, either. After all, he did once describe her as the only person in Kiev he could work with

The one person Putin categorically doesn’t want is Poroshenko, who’s spent the past five years denouncing Moscow’s aggression. Tymoshenko is as beloved by some as she is reviled by others, and her loyal followers have compared her to Joan of Arc, particularly after her stint in prison. Leading a bid to impeach the president which has caused consternation in the Ukrainian parliament and likely provoked glee in Moscow, however, is not the action of a patriotic martyr.

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