I am Ukrainian

(Business New Europe – bne.eu – February 12, 2014) The opposition and protestors continue to wage an increasingly effective media war against the incumbent Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

The latest video to surface on YouTube is entitled “I am Ukrainian” and is a heart felt message delivered by an attractive young Ukrainian woman in English.

“We are civilised people, but our government are barbarians,” the woman says in a professionally produced 2mins clip.

As of the time of writing the video had only scored 21,000 views, but the interest is a powerful resource for the opposition and protest movement that is attempting to sway international opinion and gain international support for their fight to remove Yanukovych from office.

Central Kyiv is marked by a relatively quiet stand off at the moment as both sides wait for the 15 day to expire under the terms of an amnesty law passed by the Rada at the start of this month.

No one is sure what will happen after that and there is a real possibility that the fighting will resume and become increasingly bloody. Yanukovych has used the hiatus to consolidate his control over the regional governments and security forces with a round of new appointments. These are not the acts of a man that is thinking about compromise and bodes ill for next week on February 17 when the amnesty deadline expires. After this date the government can claim that it attempted to compromise with the protestors and they ignored the offer and so justify a violent end of the conflict.

For their part, the opposition said the riders and caveats added to the amnesty bill made it impossible to comply and in effect there was no compromise at all on the government side, only a PR gambit to create a a situation that can be used to exonerate the government’s use of force without actually conceding anything of value to the protestors in the process.

In the meantime the economy continues to stall and looks to be again on the verge of crisis. As bne reported yesterday there is a reported run on one of the country’s biggest banks. The national currency is tumbling and trading at about UAH9/$1 from UAH8/$1 at the start of the year. And finally there are reports that retail sales, one of the few economic drivers still working, dropped by a third in January. Even if Yanukovych thinks he can tough out the protests until the elections in February 2015, clearly the economy will not last that long.

However, there may be some succour from Russia, after the Kremlin said that it may release the next $2bn tranche from the $15bn aid package agreed in December.

The EU has also been making noises about putting a financial package together. However, Brussels is so conflicted over what to do about Ukraine that a real deal is highly unlikely. The purpoted aid package will still have harsh reforms demands built in, which will make Yanukovych dismiss it out of hand. Besides, even if the EU manages to match Russia’s $15bn of cash there is still the issue of how to pay for expensive gas imports as Russia will certainly put prices back up again if Ukraine changes sides.

See the video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hvds2AIiWLA&feature=youtu.be