‘Ukrainians are writing the chronicles of our times with their blood’: Viktor Yushchenko

KYIV

Exclusive Interview/ Viktor Yushchenko, former president of Ukraine

Viktor Yushchenko is a towering figure in Ukrainian politics. Starting with his key role in reforming Ukraine’s financial and banking systems and as one of the architects of the national currency, the hryvnia, introduced in 1996, Yushchenko steered the country away from the ruble zone, a significant step in asserting Ukrainian independence.

Appointed governor of the National Bank of Ukraine in 1993, he was internationally recognised as one of the world’s top ten central bankers. Under his leadership, inflation was reduced from over 10,000 per cent to below 10 per cent. Thanks to his reforms, the hryvnia withstood the shocks of the 1998 Russian financial crisis.

Yushchenko’s entry into politics was not easy. He was appointed prime minister in 1999 but resigned in 2001 due to political opposition and pressure from oligarchic groups. Undeterred, he founded a political party, Our Ukraine. It won a seat in parliament in 2002, and emerged as the leading candidate in the 2004 presidential election.

Facing government-imposed media restrictions, Yushchenko built his campaign through direct engagement with voters. His rival, Viktor Yanukovych (later president from 2010 until his ouster in 2014), accused him of being a Nazi—despite Yushchenko’s father being a Red Army soldier imprisoned at Auschwitz and his mother having risked her life to hide three Jewish girls during World War II.

In September 2004, Yushchenko survived an assassination attempt via dioxin poisoning, which severely disfigured his face and caused lasting health damage. The perpetrators fled to Russia and remain at large.

The presidential election that year was marred by widespread fraud, sparking mass protests in Kyiv’s central square, Maidan Nezalezhnosti. This non-violent uprising—later known as the Orange Revolution—marked a turning point in Ukraine’s democratic journey, with civil society and human rights activists taking centre stage. A court-ordered re-run of the election led to Yushchenko’s victory, ushering in a new chapter for the country.

As Ukraine’s third president, Yushchenko is widely respected for bringing the office closer to the people. His accomplishments are: free and transparent elections, media freedom, integrating Ukraine into international and Euro-Atlantic community, vast economic growth and investment, ease of doing business, education and health care reform, higher salaries and wages and promoting Ukrainian language, culture and history.

Known for his thoughtful communication, attention to detail and empathetic listening, he remains a beloved figure in the country’s political history. Yushchenko is known for his artistic creativity. His name is inseparable from such unique projects as the Baturyn Museum, the Art Arsenal—the largest art pavilion in Eastern Europe—and the Holodomor Memorial Museum dedicated to the 1932–1933 famine. While in office, he conceived the Holodomor Memorial, with the Candle of Memory and the emaciated girl symbolising the bitterness of a hungry childhood.

Today, he is developing an ethnographic museum, Code of the Nation, which showcases Ukrainian culture, crafts, beekeeping, and more, as well as the Shevchenko House. His paintings are auctioned to raise funds in support of the Ukrainian cause.

Excerpts from an exclusive interview with Yushchenko:

Q/ This is your first interview to any Indian media.

I have deep respect, appreciation and love for India. I vividly remember my meeting with the first Indian ambassadors to Ukraine. I thought I met my brothers. Our cultures and values are thousands of years old, and we have a lot in common.

Q/ You led the bloodless nonviolent Orange revolution, which brought sweeping changes in Ukraine. You led the country to high levels of economic growth. Did the current war come as a shock for you?

Our famous 19th century writer Panteleimon Kulish wrote: “Truth and Untruth walk together embracing each other, even the learned of the time are not able to distinguish who is what among them.” Today, we fail to see the truth about imperial and colonial Russia. It is enormous, populated by hundreds of nationalities, minorities, at least 200 indigenous peoples in Siberia and other remote corners, whose cultures are disappearing. Every two, three years a language of one of the indigenous peoples is dying silently.

The war on our territory shows that Russia specialises not on export of oil, gas, minerals, gold, diamonds and a lot of riches that it possesses, but it exports violence, death, war, destruction and danger. Leaders are shocked. All over the world we hear, “For Whom the Bell Tolls” or “Who’s next?”. I say, “It tolls for all of us.” No one realises the colonial nature of Russia.

This is the 24th war between Russia and Ukraine. Throughout history, we have had less peaceful times than frequent occupation and war. Even Lenin declared two wars against Ukraine. While we expect that Russia might wage a war against us, but when this particular war started, we were shocked.

Putin and Russia harbour other values and ideas. You will not have people protesting in Russia. Lone protesters are jailed immediately. Common people are manipulated by propaganda.

Q/ After you became president in 2005, the first country you visited was Russia. Many were very surprised. You had then met Putin. What were your impressions?

Of course, as a good neighbour of Russia I visited Moscow immediately after I assumed office. But I had met Putin earlier in 2000, when I was the prime minister, and many times after that also I met him. Certainly, the Putin that I see today, I do not recognise. Earlier, he made many positive and correct statements in relation to Ukraine, especially on security. He said Russia will never attack or occupy any part of Ukraine.

During his speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference, the world saw a different Putin. I was on a working visit to Germany, meeting Chancellor Angela Merkel. I was sitting near her in the same conference hall in Munich during Putin’s speech, which contained very categorical and rough statements. Each time Putin made these statements, Ms. Merkel was remarking, “What is he saying?”, “What does he mean?”

I think this change in Putin emerged then. We saw this change after the 2008 invasion of Georgia, when Russia occupied South Ossetia and Abkhazia, 20 per cent of the territory of Georgia.

Q/ Did your impressions of him change after 2008?

I have gone through so much. Today, without emotion I can say that each word he pronounces is a lie. Honestly, I would not like to discuss his persona today, but he is leading Russia to a disaster. He is undoing Russia, he is turning the wheels back, making Russia a third world country with low levels of development.

Let me give an example. During the past 25 years of Putin’s rule, the dynamics of Russian economic growth was 1 per cent. Just to compare! India’s growth during this period was 800 per cent. Imagine! Russia is such a rich country, spread across one-eighth of the globe; it has everything, timber, metals, gold, diamond, gas, oil. What has God not given them? But it is in the 119th place in medical services and quality of life.

Q/ Against this backdrop, how did you shape your policies? What was the essence of nation building for Ukraine?

Ukraine’s policies in many areas follow what I started in 2004-05. Our national poet Taras Shevchenko advised us to be away from Moscow. Why? Because we have two enemies over centuries—the external Tsarist subjugation and colonial assimilation that destroyed our identity. The second foe is internal, the fifth column, our people who are subservient to Moscow.

Ukraine, one of the largest European states, suffered. Under 300 years of Tsarist occupation, Ukraine had serfdom, which was worse than the African slave trade. Our villagers were tied to the soil and were bought and sold like animals.

Even during Stalin’s socialism, people in rural areas had no passports. Later, the institution of registration (propiska) did not allow people the fundamental right to freedom of movement. You had to live, work and die where you are registered. Change of place required special permission. You could only go out of your village to study, to work in construction brigades, in mines, etc., but nowhere at your own sweet will. Life in Soviet villages is seldom discussed in the world. People also need to know more about the fact that Ukraine, the breadbasket of Europe, suffered terrible famine, the Holodomor, that decimated millions of Ukrainians.

Thirty-three years of independence has made Ukraine a full-fledged nation, with language, culture and identity. We succeeded in economics as well. Our growth was highest in post-Soviet space. The 2008 financial crisis did not touch us. Only on the gas deal with Russia we had some influence of our own fifth column. One thing is clear: we have decoupled from Russia.

Q/ How deep are the roots of this war? Is there any imperial legacy that was left behind?

Leaders of Ukraine who tried to ally with Ukraine’s nearest European neighbours were poisoned, imprisoned, tortured or killed. This was the imperial and colonial attitude. Neither Pavlo Skoropadsky, the hetman of Ukraine, nor Augustin Voloshin, the leader of the Carpathian Ukraine are buried in Ukraine. We will have to search for the graves of the dissidents of the sixties of the 20th century in Siberia, where they were sent en masse.

Mikhail Frunze wrote to Lenin during his difficult fight against Ukraine that Ukraine perhaps should be left alone. Lenin responded: To lose Ukraine means to lose our head. Such was the importance of occupation of Ukraine for the Soviet state.

In fact, many stellar Ukrainian figures have enriched the Soviet and Russian space. Anton Chekhov, hailed as the Russian writer, wrote that he is a Ukrainian. The great painter Ilya Repin, president of the Russian Art Academy, was a Ukrainian born in Chuhuevsky in Kharkiv. His surname, Ripa, was Russified to Repin.

Peter Chaikovsky, whose original Ukrainian Cossack surname Chaika, was Russified, and is hailed as the great Russian composer, but he was a Ukrainian. These were our treasures “stolen” by the empire. Later, we see Ihor Sikorskiy, the aviation scientist, and Serhiy Korolyov, the space scientist, all were from Ukraine.

No doubt, there was a policy of Russification in all the Soviet republics, use of Russian in the family names and introduction of the patronymic, which were not the tradition in Central Asia or Caucasus. One trend is visible today, most of these former republics are distancing themselves from Moscow. The Baltics have drifted away long ago. The imperial legacy is waning, no matter Russia’s attempt to scare the world by genocidal war.

Q/ Did the world understand the real intentions of Russia’s war against Ukraine?

To understand the war, we need to understand the present Russian regime. Let us think for a moment that the biggest country of the world, Russia, does not have a free journalist. How can one survive in the 21st century without free thinking, creativity, critical analysis?

Political opponents were killed, like Alexei Navalny, Boris Nemtsov, my adviser and great friend. Vladimir Kara-Murza suffered attempted poisoning. Such persons with great vision and intellectual abilities as Mikhail Kasianov or Gary Kasparov are cornered. The largest number of creative people and dissidents are in the Russian prisons or out of the country today. This does not mean they are ideal. But they are competent to help Russia move forward.

When some world leaders use the word “conflict” instead of “genocidal war” to open a channel of communication with Putin, they look at the past not the future. Ukraine gave up its third largest reserves of the nuclear arsenal amounting from $200 billion to $1 trillion, depending on how you account for the deterrence value. In return we got the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which, unfortunately, Ukraine alone fulfilled. All the others who signed it shrugged off their duties. This is a war. What kind of “conflict” under such serious circumstances? Sad to say, the guarantors of the Budapest Memorandum are trying to mediate between the aggressor and the victim, putting them on equal planks, empowering the aggressor.

Q/ What is necessary for achieving security guarantees for the world? Reform of the UN Security Council?

The post-World War II security mechanism was never perfect. The war against Ukraine proved its deep flaws and ineffectiveness. Russia, a permanent member of the UN Security Council, attacked and occupied part of Ukraine, a founder member of the UN, and nothing happens. Reform of the UN SC is a must, of course the candidature of India will be a welcome change.

As far as the role of other states is concerned, there is certain loss of values in their leadership. The US is shifting away from its partner, Europe; US-Russia relations are nowhere near to stability and balance of power. Europe’s leaders are often hesitant, being afraid of Russia, whose economy is of the size of Texas, constituting 1.7 per cent of world GDP. How much bloodshed is too much until the world realises that we need to take joint action? How the life of the two-month-old infant, who was killed in a missile attack in Kyiv, is any different from that of any infant in peaceful Europe, or anywhere in the world?

In Europe, who needs peace the most? Ukrainians. This is no time for appeasement games, no juggling with the word “peace”. Ukrainians are giving their lives to protect peaceful days and nights in glamorous European capitals. Ukrainians are writing the chronicles of our times with their blood, we are shaping history.

As I already said, the bell tolls for each of us. Each and every country should act seriously and have the political will to help Ukraine and force Russia to peace.

Q/ What is stopping countries from doing so?

Political will is not the same everywhere. There is some solidarity, but to tell the truth, despite umpteenth package of sanctions and boycotts, trade continues via third countries. Not only China and India buy Russian oil, but Turkey and the EU are also buying gas, and all these countries are empowering Russia.

No nation in Europe has known this level of aggression like Ukraine. It is fighting for three and a half years along 2,500km of land border, including Belarus, and 500km of sea front.

Russia’s summer offensive failed. It took them one year and hundreds of thousands of soldiers’ lives to take 1 per cent of territory. Our president and PM are thanking the whole world and asking for arms and aid. Support for us increases or decreases with the change in political attitudes of particular leaders.

Q/ Apart from aid, what other factors are important?

Surely, there is the will of the people to win. How did the Vietnamese win against the Americans? All-powerful Americans? Our struggle has consolidated us as a nation, binding us into one whole. And our victory will hold it tighter and elevate to the levels of glory.

Q/ As governor of the National Bank of Ukraine, you had visited India and advised the then president of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma, to develop strategic relations with India. You wrote that Ukraine sold some $600 million worth of tanks to Pakistan. But Ukraine could have had billions if it had developed relations with India. President Kuchma visited India in 2002. How do you see Ukraine’s relations with India today?

Yes, those are great memories. We have historical links with India; our languages evolved from the same Indo-European root language. Historians have deciphered ancient relics, and Scythian inscriptions in Ukraine, and traced links with the Indian civilisation. We have to develop our relations with newer accents. Ukraine can propose better options than Russian oil and old hardware. Like most Ukrainians, I like India. We support the same multilateralism, peaceful coexistence and ideas that India adheres to. And the power of the Indian economy, its human and intellectual potential, should not be ignored. Let us roll up our sleeves and together, let us build a foreign policy and alliance of the future.