Supporting Ukraine is the duty of everyone who cares about the future of Europe. So last weekend I went there with my father, an 86-year-old Oxford philosopher, to give lectures at the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) in Lviv, the main city in western Ukraine.
We were visiting a country at war. Collecting tins — for weapons, refugees and medical care — are ubiquitous. In the city centre, a glorious relic of happier Hapsburg days, recruiting stands for volunteer militias compete for public attention with Hare Krishna dancers. American soldiers, part of a military training mission, were drinking in an outdoor café surrounded by appreciative locals.
At the UCU graduation ceremony, some students were still recovering from wounds they had received at the front. We mourned those who had been killed, including at last year’s demonstrations against the crooked regime of former president Viktor Yanukovych, who has fled to Moscow.
But the war is fought on other fronts too. Ukrainians are struggling to attract outside attention. The Greek crisis, the wars in the Middle East and migration are more urgent. Russia is playing a long game, hoping that Ukraine, weakened by debt, hardship and corruption, will buckle under the strain of war.
Given the awfulness of past Ukrainian governments, the current mediocre leadership in Kiev looks good. But it is making little headway on the deep changes needed to reform the country, of the kind other ex-communist countries have been working on for the past 25 years. Ukraine is still run by what is in effect a provincial Soviet bureaucracy: slow-moving and self-interested. Behind the scenes (and sometimes in front of them) oligarchs wield far too much power.
There are some bright spots. Mikheil Saakashvili, the dynamic Georgian ex-president, is taking on the mafia in Odessa, Ukraine’s beautiful but sleazy main port. The local government in Lviv is importing Estonian expertise in e-government. But for the most part the state is unhelpful at best, predatory at worst. My father’s lecture on the state’s role in ensuring economic freedom received rapt attention: Ukraine’s future turns on such questions.
Ukrainians are the only people to have died in the cause of European Union expansion. But some now feel bitterly disappointed at the lack of support they have received from the West. Talk of “European values” rings a bit hollow when Europe is making its weakest ally bear the greatest burden in defending them.
As moods harden, Russia is making headway by stoking fear and prejudice, equating Europe not with dignity, liberty and justice, but with decadence and decline. Some Ukrainians, wittingly or not, echo Moscow’s anti-gay agenda: the Ukrainian Catholic University, a beacon of intellectual freedom and excellence, is under attack because of a “gay scandal” — an openly gay man gave a talk in the journalism school, and a visiting lecturer joined a march in support of tolerance.
A successful, liberal Ukraine is vital for the rest of Europe, just as a failed state beset by extremism and corruption would be a nightmare. There is plenty the West can do to help — supporting independent institutions such as UCU, military assistance, visa-free travel, even a Marshall plan to help to rebuild the country’s shattered economy.
But the most important thing we can do is to share the burden of resisting Russia. I pointed out to David Cameron at a conference in Bratislava last month that his robust anti-Putin stance would be a lot more credible if Britain were not renowned for its role in laundering money for Kremlin cronies.
He smoothly assured me that Britain had the toughest laws in the world on financial regulation. Perhaps. But he would have struggled to name a single banker, lawyer or accountant who has been prosecuted, let alone jailed, for breaching them with regard to Russia. As the brilliant Channel 4 documentary From Russia With Cash showed, our system allows even overtly corrupt buyers to stash their ill-gotten gains in the London property market.
Vladimir Putin and his cronies preach a vitriolic anti-westernism. Yet for all the fanfare of the Brics summit that ends today in Siberia, it is not Brazil, India, China and South Africa that the Russian elite depends on for the things that really matter. The Putinistas choose Britain, the US and continental Europe for shopping, holidays, schools, universities, medical treatment — and investment.
If we are serious about helping Ukraine and resisting Putin, we have to start here at home. We need to freeze Russian dirty money, prosecute the Kremlin’s accomplices, and deny visas to the Russian elite and their families: the people who are waging war on Ukraine — and on us. It will be painful, but not nearly as bad as the alternative.
