The decline of Ukrainian democracy, as well as the nation’s relationship with the European Union, can be traced through the four-year tenure of the EU’s ambassador to Ukraine, Jose Manuel Pinto Teixeira, who left his post in August.
When he arrived in 2009, Teixeira still had expectations that Ukraine would quickly integrate into the family of democratic nations. Even after President Viktor Yanukovych took power in 2010, the EU still had hope and gave the newly elected Ukrainian leader “the red-carpet treatment” and the benefit of the doubt, Teixeira said.
But it’s been downhill since then.
Yanukovych is unofficially persona non grata in the EU, especially after the jailing of his top political rival, ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, in 2011. The red carpet has been replaced with the cold shoulder and few Western leaders are ready to meet their Ukrainian counterpart. The EU and Ukraine may even skip their annual summit this year. Several hundred million euros in EU assistance are on hold because of nontransparent government spending. Quite simply, there’s not much to talk about because Yanukovych has disabused the West of its illusions.
Yanukovych has returned “vertical power” to Ukraine, as Teixeira diplomatically puts it. Others have called it creeping authoritarianism. Whatever the terminology, Teixeira said, 45 million Ukrainians are living under an administration that has monopolized power, imprisoned political opponents, fiddled with election laws and the Constitution and, perhaps worst of all, not “put the interests of the people, the interests of the country, above any other interests.”
The Portuguese diplomat’s replacement as head of the European Union delegation in Ukraine is Poland’s Jan Tombinski. Teixeira’s next assignment is Cape Verde, a group of islands off the West African coast and a former Portuguese colony. Compared to Ukraine, Teixeira said his new posting in the democratic nation of 500,000 people, with lots of sea fishing to be done, will “feel like going on a holiday for a very long time.”
Read more: Outspoken EU ambassador departs
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