WASHINGTON — Yulia V. Tymoshenko, a
former prime minister ofUkraine who now leads
a minority party in Parliament, said on Friday that she and her allies would
staunchly oppose constitutional changes that the United States and European
powers view as crucial to carrying out a peace agreement with Russia.
Her remarks
underscored the enormous obstacles still facing the nearly year-old peace
accord, known as Minsk II. A shaky cease-fire has sharply reduced the bloodshed
in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Russian rebels launched a separatist insurgency
in 2014, but the accord has never been enacted, largely because of acute
disagreements over how voting in the region would be organized.
Ms. Tymoshenko’s comments, though
not new, were particularly notable given that she made them in Washington. The
United States has been one of the new Ukrainian government’s strongest allies
and one of its main supporters in securing help to prevent an economic
collapse, including billions in credit from the International Monetary Fund.
Wrapping up a weeklong visit
in which she met with top administration officials and members of Congress, Ms.
Tymoshenko, 55, also said that she would push for early parliamentary elections
— “the sooner, the better” — which are opposed by the United States because the
parties of President Petro O. Poroshenko and Prime Minister Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk
are virtually certain to lose seats.
The two men are considered
allies of the West. But both have been dogged by criticism that they have
failed to sufficiently root out endemic corruption. This week, Ukraine’s
economy minister, Aivaras Abromavicius, abruptly quit his post, saying, “It has
become clear that any kind of systemic reform is decisively blocked.”
The continuing corruption and
the failure to carry out the Minsk accord have prompted some frustration among
American and European officials. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. met with
Mr. Poroshenko for four hours on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in
Davos, Switzerland, last month and was said to have pressed the Ukrainian
leader on both fronts.
In an interview in her hotel
suite at the Willard InterContinental, near the White House, Ms. Tymoshenko
said that the Minsk agreement was flawed because it combined political and
military issues, and that Ukraine could not move forward with regional
elections until it had greater assurances regarding its security, including
control of the border with Russia.
She said that early
parliamentary elections were needed to build public legitimacy and to “reboot”
the government before the constitutional changes — which would grant greater
autonomy to the disputed eastern regions — could win approval. But only Mr.
Poroshenko can call early elections, and both he and Ukraine’s Western allies
oppose the idea.
In a bid to push the peace
deal forward, Victoria J. Nuland, an assistant secretary of state, met last
month with Vladislav Surkov, a senior adviser to President Vladimir V. Putin,
in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad. The accord will also be a main topic of
discussion next week at the annual Munich Security Conference, where Mr.
Poroshenko is expected to come under heavy pressure from American and European
officials to move ahead with the constitutional changes, as a precursor to
elections in eastern Ukraine.
But Ms. Tymoshenko said that
Ukraine’s Western allies appeared to be putting their own political interests
first.
“Both the European Union and
the United States are facing their own complicated political concerns,” she
said, noting the United States presidential election and refugee crisis in
Europe. “The United States and the European Union want
to end the Ukrainian problem at any cost, as fast as possible,” she said.
Ms. Tymoshenko spent 28 months
in prison as the nemesis of former President Viktor F. Yanukovych, who was
ousted in the Maidan revolution two years ago. She was released in February
2014, a day after Mr. Yanukovych fled Kiev, the capital.
She is hardly uncontroversial.
Although her jailing was viewed as political, voters were clearly wary of her
after she emerged from prison, and she and her party have struggled because of
their association with past Ukrainian administrations notorious for entrenched
corruption and pervasive mismanagement.
Ms. Tymoshenko is widely known
to harbor continuing national political ambitions. Her opposition to the
constitutional changes and her push for early elections undoubtedly reflect a
move to capitalize on the falling popularity and perceived political weakness
of Mr. Poroshenko and Mr. Yatsenyuk.
The minority faction that her
party, Fatherland, controls in Parliament does not by itself have enough votes
to block the constitutional changes. But the changes, which can be approved
only by a supermajority of 300 out of 450 votes, are also opposed by another
influential minority party, Self-Reliance, and by numerous other lawmakers.
Ms. Tymoshenko said that
pushing too quickly to carry out the accord could allow Russia to retain the
ability to destabilize Ukraine politically at Mr. Putin’s whim.
“It seems to me a fundamental
mistake to try to end the Ukrainian conflict at any price,” she said.
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