24 TheEconomistOctober 12th 2019
1V
iktor yanukovych, out of office,
found himself in a bind. Having be-
come prime minister of Ukraine in 2002,
he had expected to be elected president in
December 2004. The official count in the
election had borne out his expectation. But
thousands of orange-clad demonstrators
had subsequently taken to the streets of
Kiev to protest that the tally had been
rigged. The Supreme Court ordered a re-
count. The result was overturned.
Post-Soviet Ukraine was just 13 years
old, and adrift. A home to hardline Com-
munists and ardent nationalists alike in
the 1980s, part of its territory long engaged
with Europe, part stalwartly Russian, it had
no real tradition of statehood. Oligarchs-
in-the-making took advantage of that lack
to carve up the country’s considerable
rents and assets. Some of these oligarchs
went into politics; some cultivated politi-
cians. All sought and bought protection
from people with power in Russia, Europe
and America. Ukrainian politics and for-eign relations became an extension of the
oligarchs’ business interests. Its parlia-
ment became a market.
After the election of 2004 Mr Yanuko-
vych’s stock plummeted—which was bad
news for Rinat Akhmetov. A coal and steel
magnate based in Donbas, an industrial re-
gion in eastern Ukraine, Mr Akhmetov was
one of the main sponsors of Mr Yanuko-
vych and his Party of Regions. If they were
to regain power, Mr Yanukovych would
have to win the next election more or less
fairly. That would mean overhauling his
image. So Mr Akhmetov introduced Mr Ya-
nukovych to Paul Manafort.
Mr Manafort thought he was on to a
good thing. A consultant to Republican
politicians in America, he also had a lucra-
tive business tending to unsavoury over-
seas clients such as Jonas Savimbi, an An-
golan guerrilla leader and Mobutu Sese
Seko, a Congolese dictator. He and his team
had turned Mr Yanukovych, whose nick-
name during his short stints in prisonwhen young had been kham, or “thug”,
from a Kremlin-backed bully into a self-
made man with blue-collar roots. Charis-
matic would have been too much to hope
for, but his tailored suits, Politburo hair
and deliberate manner gave him a plausi-
bly presidential demeanour. He seemed
practical and solid, the salt of the earth.
The campaign Mr Manafort devised for
this remade candidate used tactics he had
first seen used in Richard Nixon’s re-elec-
tion campaign in 1972: exploiting cultural
divisions and stoking grievances. Mr Yanu-
kovych was portrayed as a defender of the
Russian-speaking east against western Uk-
rainians who wished to force a new lan-
guage and culture on them while exploit-
ing their economic resources. He raged
against the joint exercises Ukraine was
holding with natoin Crimea. When the
American ambassador tried to get Mr Ma-
nafort to rein him in, he was rebuffed.
The election of 2010, which was pretty
much above board, saw Mr Yanukovych be-
come president. As such, he made Mykola
Zlochevsky, a burly, shaven-headed ty-
coon, his minister for ecology and natural
resources. In the early 2000s Mr Zlochev-
sky had been chair of the State Committee
for Natural Resources at a time when com-
panies he had started had been granted lu-
crative oil-exploration licences. These li-
cences were cancelled under the new
regime that came to power in 2005, thoughThe backstory
KIEV
The telephone call that led Congress to investigate Donald Trump was the latest
link in a long, sad and sordid chainBriefing Ukraine and impeachment