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Nataliya Gumenyuk
Founding Director of the Public Interest Journalism Lab
DHSF class of 2018

As a journalist who covers conflict, today I am 100% consumed by the current situation in Ukraine. It is my job to explain what’s going on to a global audience, as well as to the Ukrainian one. Yet I and other Ukrainian professionals feel a bit trapped. The situation is so uncertain, we cannot afford to cancel all other plans; we are always busy with so many things happening, we can neither cancel nor fully engage. I am saddened that so much of our strength and energy is wasted on this situation. And on top of everything we are thinking about our families and considering various scenarios. As for myself – I am on duty.

Russia’s demands are not about Ukraine, they are about changing the international security architecture, canceling the ‘open door’ policy by NATO, which undermines the whole idea of the alliance. If Russia is allowed to invade further (and by the way Russia has already occupied parts of Ukrainian territories since 2014) – we are essentially agreeing that it’s acceptable to conquer other states by force.

The key takeaways for me are that we really should be discussing the current international relations system and to what extent it is able to protect countries outside of these alliances, and young democracies when they are threatened and bullied. This is a discussion not only about Eastern Europe.

Nataliya Gumenyuk is a Ukrainian author and journalist specializing in foreign affairs and conflict reporting. Gumenyuk is the author of the book “The Lost Island: Tales From Occupied Crimea” (2020), based on six years of reporting from the annexed peninsula. You can read some of her recent work here: 

• Full-scale war in Ukraine is not inevitable. We journalists must stop suggesting the contrary. (Vox Europe)
• Ukrainians can't afford to be afraid (The Washington Post)
• What makes Putin fear Ukraine? (The New Yorker)
   

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Oleksiy Honcharuk
Former Prime Minister of Ukraine
2021 Bernard and Susan Liautaud Visiting Fellow at CDDRL and the Freeman Spogli Institute

Democracy is one of the primary threats for Putin. Russia invaded Ukraine because of our choice to be a free, democratic country. That’s why the war between Ukraine and Russia is not a regional conflict – it is an important part of a larger war for democracy. 

Global democracy has been in a recession for at least the last 15 years due to a lack of democratic leadership around the world. It looks like the West has forgotten about the real value of democracy and has taken it for granted. This was a mistake and Ukraine is already paying a big price for it. Ukraine is now a beacon of democracy for millions of people in Eastern Europe and Asia, and we cannot lose this battle. 

I want Ukraine to be a successful, free country but Putin is trying to destroy it. I'm not scared and I am ready to fight for democracy.

More from Oleksiy Honcharuk:

• Ukraine vs Russia: War for Democracy (2021 Liautad Lecture)
   

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Oleksandra Matviichuk
Head of the Center for Civil Liberties (Ukraine)
UELP 2017-18

Russia under Putin has finally turned back into an empire. Unfortunately, the empire cannot remain stable. Putin thinks in terms of the Soviet Union. But now Russia does not have enough resources to play a full game, so the Kremlin is betting on war.

This is not about the war between Russia and Ukraine – it is about the war between authoritarianism and democracy. Thus, Ukraine acts in an unexpected role as an outpost that protects the values of the free world. Putin does not fear NATO, but the values of freedom in the post-Soviet space because it threatens his authoritarian regime.

We are preparing for a new armed attack by Russia. Recently, the President of Ukraine gave a press conference to foreign media, which raised many questions. However, there is something that the Kremlin cannot understand and that is underestimated in the West: People in America and the EU have lived for years with efficient and stable state institutions. We have never had such a luxury in Ukraine, so we are not used to relying on the government at critical moments.

I have been working in the field of human rights for more than twenty years, the last eight of which were focused on the war with Russia, so I have no illusions. Human rights defenders, journalists, and civil society activists will be the first targets of Russia's armed aggression. We have seen this before during the seizure of Crimea and Donbas when in order to gain rapid control of the region a non-violent minority was physically destroyed or driven out for their resistance. I have talked to my fellow human rights defenders, and I can say the following: We will stay in Ukraine and protect human rights as much as we can.

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Nataliya Mykolska
Strategic transformations expert, Member of the Board Ukrhydroenergo JSC
UELP 2018-19

The Russian aggression against Ukraine and potential military invasion is not only about Ukraine. It is about democracy prevailing in the former CIS region and Ukraine being a success story. A truly independent and successful Ukraine is a major threat to Putin’s autocratic regime in Russia and his short and long-term prospects in the region. 

We, Ukrainians, are ready to fight for our values, our freedom, our dignity, our country, our land, and the future of our children. We have done so in 2014 and have continued to do so for eight years. There is no other way for us to move forward.

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Ivan Prymachenko
Founder, Prometheus
UELP 2018-19

In 1946 George Kennan famously wrote the following about the Soviet state: "impervious to the logic of reason it is highly sensitive to the logic of force. For this reason, it can easily withdraw – and usually does when strong resistance is encountered at any point."

In 2022, this description is still fitting for the self-declared successor of the USSR – Putin's Russia. The best way to provoke Putin now is to show weakness. The best way to achieve peace is to demonstrate strength by preparing a devastating sanctions package against Russia and delivering modern weapons to Ukraine.

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Artem Romaniukov
Co-founder at SaveDnipro / SaveEcoBot, Co-founder at Civil Control Platform
UELP 2019-20

There are two competing points of view here in Ukraine on what is going on. The first is that Ukraine is a bargaining chip between Russia and "the West.” This means there will be no exacerbation of war, just bluffing.  

Second is that Putin for some reason felt that this was the right time to push for his agenda and started to raise the stakes, but "the West" appeared to be more united than ever before, providing Ukraine with lethal weapons and making strong claims. This means he may find himself in a stalemate with no choice except to invade Ukraine and become a pariah in the international community. 

It looks like president Zelensky believes in the first scenario. But the relevant emptiness on Kyiv streets in recent days shows that Ukrainians do not always share the government's view.

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Igor Rozkladaj
Deputy Director at the Center for Democracy and Rule of Law
DHSF class of 2018

Democracy is the best thing that we have in the modern world. But democracy needs to be trained – much like muscles on your body – or else it will become weak.

In a time of economic stress, pandemic, and uncertainty people seek simple explanations and decisions– that is the Achilles' heel of democracy. And in combination with disinformation and easy money, autocratic regimes can take hold. That's how the Soviet Union and modern Russia manipulated the Western world and did it with great success.

Russia always was and still is an authoritarian country. Nowadays under the autocratic Putin regime, we see increased militarization and pressure on independent people to stop their activities or face being arrested. 

Ukrainians, whose territories have been occupied by Russia, whose language and culture was under imperial pressure, whose identity is now denied now by Russia’s leadership, whose millions of people were killed in famines and wars know the real face of this country. The reforms we have made in Ukraine since 2014 are vitally important, from anti-corruption to decommunization. This conflict is not only about Ukraine, but about stopping Putin’s vision of  “Russkyi mir” from spreading throughout the region. 

We Ukrainians have made three attempts to wrench ourselves away from Russian influence: in 1991, 2004, and 2013-14. We have been at war with "unidentified little green men" for the last 8 years. We lose our best people to protect our country from Putin’s ambitions, and yet still fight. The question is what will prevail: corruption and kleptocracy from Putin or the democratic values that millions of Ukrainians have sacrificed for.

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Olexandr Starodubtsev
Deputy Head at the National Agency for Corruption Prevention
UELP 2017-18

The war that Russia started in 2014 is hybrid in nature. Misinformation and cyber-attacks by Russia have become commonplace in Ukraine since then. Of course, Ukrainians feel worried today about the latest news, but we see the support of international partners, including supplies of weapons. We hope that these weapons will not have to be used and that the latest signals from Russia are just another attempt to intimidate Ukraine and the global community.

For our part, we at the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) are preparing for a new Russian cyber-attack. The NACP maintains several strategic portals, such as a register of e-declarations of all public officials, and has access to 17 other government databases. It is important for us that these data do not fall into the hands of the enemy. The last big cyber-attack did not affect us significantly because of the high level of training of our IT specialists. Therefore, we are confident that we will be able to resist future attacks.

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While the West is trying to negotiate a de-escalation of Russia’s buildup of forces on the borders of Ukraine, Putin renegotiates the world order. It’s not only Ukraine’s NATO integration he is concerned with. Putin wants informal veto power in NATO and the EU as well as a quiet funeral ceremony for the rule-based international order. The West needs two things to counteract such a scenario. First, unity and readiness to defend its redlines, which can be costly.  Second,  a long-term comprehensive strategy to withstand Putin. Because even if we succeed in stopping his invasion now, make no mistake, it will not be his last move.

More from Svitlana Zalishchuk:

• Digital Disinformation Forum: Francis Fukuyama interview with Svitlana Zalischuk

Click the link for a transcript of “Ukraine, Russia and the Fight for Democracy.”

The Complicated History Between Russia and Ukraine
 

Ukraine played a key role in the collapse of the Soviet Union, and it came out as the biggest independent country of the former Soviet states. Ukraine decided to be a democracy, thankfully, and this has been our path for the last thirty years.

This is a great achievement for our nation, because if you look around our country, even among hundreds of other successful European countries, there are not many other good examples of democracy. They have problems: Turkey has problems; Belarus has problems; Kazakhstan as well. We have some problems with corruption, but we are still an electoral democracy with fair elections.

Now, unfortunately, Russia understands itself as the successor, or empire, coming after the Soviet Union, and Putin has said many times that this collapse was the biggest catastrophe in the last twenty years of the last century. For him, Ukraine’s success is a tragedy.

Putin has invaded Ukraine before during the annexation of Crimea. He tried to divide Ukraine into a Russian, authoritarian Ukraine and a European, democratic Ukraine. But he failed. Our civil society worked hard to create voluntary military and paramilitary organizations and units, and Ukrainians pushed back as a nation.

And that was a moment when Putin understood, finally, that he lost Ukraine not only as an economic partner, but ideologically. Ukrainians chose freedom. We chose democracy. And for Putin, it's very dangerous to have examples of successful democratic countries – especially Slavic Orthodox Christian countries with close ties to Russia – like Ukraine. Putin needs the Russian people to believe that democracy is a weak, failing idea that doesn’t work.

A Struggle Broader Than One Country
 

This buildup of Russian troops along the Ukrainian border is not juist a regional conflict, and it's not just about NATO. It’s a battle between two conceptually different systems: the authoritarian system and the democratic system. It’s an attack towards democracy and the Western world. Our values in the Western world are a threat for Mr. Putin himself.

Putin is trying to shape the situation and to undermine the trust among countries and among people. He's trying to create destabilizing situations like an immigration crises, organize sabotages among the military, have political murders, and so on and so forth.

This buildup is only one element of this game to create one more additional crisis to attract attention, and to create a situation where Western leaders have to decide and make very hard decisions. Putin is trying to show that, “If I do attack, nobody will protect you. All of these values you have are just fairy tales. The West is weak, the West is insincere. When they tell you that values matter, it’s a lie because the only real value is money. There is no democracy.”

The Role of the West in Supporting Democracies
 

For Putin, the weak reaction from the West to the aggression towards Ukraine was a signal that it was acceptable to act like this. That's why Putin is raising the stakes and why he will continue to raise the stakes every year. Right now, the sanctions policy and general Western policy is creating a situation where time is playing against the victim, not against the aggressor.

Putin’s strategy is to wait, to use all his resources to undermine his democratic opponents, and to make sure that the next politicians in the western world will be more flexible. And maybe in 10 years or 15 years when the annexation of Crimea has become deep history, he will find some new trade-off with the next generation of democratic leaders.

This is why there needs to be a new model of smart or cascading sanctions where the EU adopts a package of sanctions for some period of time, maybe five, seven or ten years, and every next wave, every next package of sanctions will automatically come into power if the problem is not solved. So every single day, it automatically raises the price for the aggressor.

Supporting fragile democracies is not just about making a morally right choice; these countries on the frontlines that have paid an additional price – an additional tax, if you will, for democracy, and have taken on additional burdens, because they choose the democratic path. Whether it’s Ukraine or other countries, we need Western support now in a much bigger way than we have it now.

For more from Oleksiy Honcharuk, listen to his his remarks on "Ukraine vs Russia: The War for Democracy," given as a Liautaud Lecture at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL).

This interview by Melissa De Witte originally appeared in Stanford News.

The upcoming summit between President Joe Biden and President Vladimir Putin is not rewarding the Russian leader for his bad behavior: It’s opening negotiations and delivering a warning to him instead, says Stanford scholar Kathryn Stoner.

Here, Stoner is joined by Stanford political scientist and former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, Payne Distinguished Lecturer at CISAC and former Deputy Secretary General of NATO Rose Gottemoeller and Russia historian Norman Naimark to discuss what to expect at the summit in Geneva on Wednesday.

The meeting, the scholars say, could reset U.S.-Russia relations, signal deterrence on certain issues – including cybersecurity in light of attacks like the SolarWinds breach that the U.S. has blamed on the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service – and launch strategic stability talks related to nuclear weapons.

Interviews have been edited for length and clarity. For more information on what to expect about the Biden-Putin summit from FSI scholars, visit the FSI website.

Where does diplomacy now stand between the U.S. and Russia?

Naimark: Russian-American relations are at their lowest point since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, perhaps even since the last years of Gorbachev’s rule. When relations are fraying between the world’s two most powerful nuclear powers, the coming of the summit on June 16 between President Biden and President Putin should be welcomed. It’s worth recalling the heightened military tensions just three months ago between Moscow and Washington, when Moscow moved tens of thousands of troops to the Ukrainian border and mobilized its air and sea power in the region. Both leaders have emphasized that they seek stability, reliability and predictability in their bilateral relations; at the same time, their respective administrations have warned that expectations should be kept at the minimum for any kind of serious breakthrough at the summit.

Stoner: We’ve lost a lot of leverage because of the withdrawal from global politics that started under the latter part of the Obama administration and continued with Trump with his America First platform, which meant America alone. There is some leverage, it’s just how much. We don’t necessarily want to destabilize Russia because it’s a big, complicated country with nuclear weapons, but all signs point to Putin staying in office until 2036. He’s not going away. I think we have to try to signal deterrence on certain issues, like trying to move into another former Soviet republic as he is doing with Ukraine, Georgia and potentially Belarus, but then cooperate in other areas where it is productive to do so.

What do you think about some of the criticisms toward Biden meeting with Putin? For example, that Biden meeting with Putin is only rewarding him for his bad behavior.

Stoner: There is a reasonable question about why Biden and Putin are meeting and if it is somehow rewarding Putin for bad behavior by having a summit with the President of the United States. Rather than rewarding Putin, however, I think this meeting could be Biden’s warning to him that if hacking and other cyberattacks continue, we have a menu of things we could do as well.

Naimark: There is no reason that the American president cannot talk about difficult subjects like cybersecurity, ransomware attacks, human rights, the release of Alexei Navalny, the protection of Ukrainian sovereignty and other important items on the American agenda while focusing on issues of mutual interest: the future of arms control, global warming and the regulation of the Arctic, and outer space. One can always hope that, like the last summit on Lake Geneva between Russian and American leaders [Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan] in November 1985, this one can lay the groundwork for serious improvements in relations in the near future.

Is this meeting a reset of diplomatic relations between the two nations?

Stoner: I know in Washington it is popular to say that Biden is not having a reset of relations with Russia when past presidents all have tried that. I think that’s wrong. I do think it is a reset in the relationship in that there should be more clarity and stability, but that doesn’t mean it’s going to be friendly and universally cooperative, given that we still see many differences in perspectives and some antagonism too. Still, Russia and the U.S. need to talk because there are a lot of issues in common where it would be helpful to coordinate with Russia. After all, even in the depths of the Cold War, the leaders of both countries still talked. Russia has reestablished itself as the most formidable power in Europe and it looks like Biden is acknowledging that and the fact that the U.S. can no longer afford to ignore Russia.

Is there anything the two leaders will be able to agree upon?

McFaul: I used to organize these kinds of meetings when I worked in the government and back when President Medvedev was there. We would have these meetings as a way to force our governments to produce what is called in State Department-speak “deliverables.” We didn’t have meetings to have them, we wanted to get things done. In the first Obama-Medvedev meeting we had a long list of deliverables when they met in July of 2009.

But there is no way that will happen with Putin today because he doesn’t really want to cooperate, he doesn’t really want deliverables. That’s challenging for President Biden, I think, because he has said that he wants a stable, predictable relationship with Putin. I think that’s fine to aspire to, but I don’t think Putin is that interested in that kind of relationship, so that creates a challenge of substance for summits like this.

Gottemoeller: With such different threat perceptions, the two presidents are not going to agree in Geneva about what should go into the next nuclear treaty. They can agree, though, to put their experts together to hammer it out. They can also agree to put the two sides together to tackle the different threat perceptions and the question of what stability means. Finally, they can agree to a deadline, so the talks don’t stall. It won’t be a headline-grabbing outcome, but at least Moscow and Washington will get moving again on the nuclear agenda.

Where can Biden make progress?

McFaul: I think the most likely place to make progress is to launch strategic stability talks, which is an abstract phrase for beginning the process of negotiations about nuclear weapons and their delivery vehicles that would be a follow-on to the New START treaty. Biden and Putin rightfully extended the New START treaty early in his term for five years, and I think that was very smart. I personally worked on that treaty, so I think it’s a good treaty and deserves to be extended. But it’s going to run out really fast because the next set of negotiations are going to be much more complicated. I hope they would start some process to begin those negotiations now.

Gottemoeller: Maybe the only place where President Biden can make progress with Vladimir Putin in Geneva is the nuclear agenda with Russia. Since the two men agreed, in February, to extend the New START treaty by five years, they have put out a clear public message that they intend to pursue a deal to replace New START and to launch strategic stability talks. They are not going to have identical ideas, however, about what those two goals mean.

Biden wants a new arms control deal that will control all nuclear warheads, whether launched on intercontinental strategic-range missiles or on shorter-range systems. He also wants to get a handle on some of the new types of nuclear weapons that the Russians have been developing. One new system, for example, uses nuclear propulsion to ensure that it can fly for many hours at great speed over long distances, earning it the moniker “weapon of vengeance.” These exotic weapons did not exist when New START was negotiated; now, they need to be controlled.

Putin, by contrast, focuses on U.S. long-range conventional missiles that he worries are capable of the accuracy and destructive power of nuclear weapons. The United States, in his view, could use these conventional weapons to destroy hard targets such as the Moscow nuclear command center. He also worries that the United States is producing ever more capable ways to intercept his nuclear missiles and destroy them before they reach their targets. In his worst nightmare, the United States undermines his nuclear deterrent forces without ever resorting to nuclear weapons.

What advice do you have for Biden?

McFaul: One, do not have a one-on-one meeting – just have a normal meeting. Two, I would recommend not having a joint press conference that just gives Putin a podium for the world to say his “whataboutism” stuff; it’s better to have separate press conferences because most of the world will be more interested in what Biden says compared to what Putin says.

Third, I think it’s important to cooperate when you can but also be clear about your differences and don’t pull punches on that. In particular, I want Biden to talk about Alexei Navalny, the Americans who are wrongly detained in Russia today, Crimea still being occupied, Russian proxies in eastern Ukraine, and parts of Georgia that are under occupation. They have been attacking us relentlessly with these cyberattacks, these Russian criminals who in my view have to have some association with the Russian government.

That’s a tough list, but I think it’s really important for President Biden to say those things directly to Putin. I have confidence that he can. I was at their last meeting. I traveled with the vice president in 2011 when he met with then Prime Minister Putin. Biden is capable of delivering tough messages and I hope he uses this occasion to do so again.

What would be a sign that their meeting was productive?

Stoner: One sign the meeting was productive would be if Biden and Putin could agree to establish a joint committee or council on some rules surrounding cybersecurity. Another would be if they make plans to talk again about either replacing or reviving the Minsk-2 agreement [that sought to bring an end to Russia’s war on Ukraine]. And three, a positive sign would be if they plan to do some negotiation on further reducing tactical nuclear weapons or strategic nuclear weapons. An agreement to disagree on some issues, but to continue talking on others would be indicative of at least some small progress.

Ukraine finally has a chance to create a strong counterintelligence service and shed the Soviet standards of the old KGB.  

The Ukrainian parliament recently passed the first reading of a bill to reform the Security Service of Ukraine, known as the SBU. This is a crucial step in efforts to remake the SBU into a modern security service guided by Western democratic standards. 

This process owes much to the US Congress. In 2019, Congress voted to condition half of American defense assistance to Ukraine on adoption of a bill on national defense that laid the groundwork for future security service reform. 

In 2021, the United States will allocate USD 250 million for the Ukrainian defense sector. If this money is conditioned on real security service reform, it can prove a game-changer, not only for domestic law enforcement, but also in Ukraine’s fight against Russia.

A modern security service for Ukraine should deal exclusively with counterintelligence, counter-terrorism, protection of state secrets, and countering subversion. The SBU should not be included in any foreign intelligence operations, since this is done by the Service of Foreign Intelligence, which reports directly to the Ukrainian president.

The question now is whether Ukrainian MPs are ready to take responsibility and vote for such a security service. Recently, Maryana Bezugla, deputy head of the Ukrainian National Security, Defense, and Intelligence Committee, reported about pressure on MPs from the SBU’s leadership not to vote for the bill.

The SBU reform bill envisions a number of major changes in Ukraine’s security services. Crucially, it will eliminate the anti-corruption and organized crime department of the SBU. Ukraine has created specific agencies to fight corruption, namely the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) and the State Bureau of Investigations (SBI).

In the past, the SBU has duplicated the functions of both NABU and the SBI, and has been accused of misusing its authority to protect corrupt state officials. Eliminating the SBU’s anti-corruption function would also meet a key demand of the international community. 

The current anti-crime department is regarded as one of the most corrupt wings of the SBU. It stands accused of regularly engaging in raids on businesses. Pavlo Demchyna, former head of the SBU’s Anti-Corruption and Organized Crime Department, came under criminal investigation a few years ago for precisely such actions. He could not explain how he came to own his elite property and luxury cars. 

In line with the current reform proposals, the number of SBU employees would be reduced from 27,000 to 17,000 within four years. At present, Ukraine has the largest security service in Europe. The proposed cuts would still leave the SBU far larger than many comparative services. For example, Britain’s MI5 has only 4,400 employees, even though it is recognized as one of the top security services in the world. 

Reducing the number of SBU employees over four years can be done without harming Ukraine’s national security. The reduction will provide an opportunity to retain the best officers and raise salaries while ridding the service of old Soviet functions. The SBU does not need its own kindergartens, hospitals, or sanatoriums filled with “secret nannies and doctors” in order to be an effective security service.

While these proposed changes are encouraging, the new bill on Ukraine’s security service still needs to include additional important reforms.

It is vital to eliminate the SBU’s investigative functions. As long as the SBU has investigative powers, the service will remain a law enforcement agency rather than a Western-style security service. The SBU should focus on counterintelligence and national security, not ordinary crime, which should be left to the National Police. 

Eliminating the SBU’s investigative functions would cut opportunities for corruption. The European Union Advisory Mission in Ukraine also notes that the SBU should not have authority to conduct pretrial investigations, which are the purview of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine and National Police.

All SBU employees (except covert counterintelligence officers) should submit transparent asset declarations. Reforms introduced in 2015 obliged SBU officials, along with millions of other Ukrainian state employees, to publish asset declarations. However, SBU officials have ignored this rule, claiming that all 27,000 employees (including “secret” kindergarten nannies) should be exempt due to national security requirements.

It is important to remove the loopholes that currently enable corruption within the security service. In its present state, the new bill would allow the SBU to put inappropriate pressure on private businesses. This includes the ability to access databases, documents, audio, and video files without requiring any prior court permission. Such powers are subject to widespread abuse and should be eliminated.

The selection process for SBU officers must be competitive. Officers need to be chosen on the basis of competence not nepotism. 

Given Russia’s ongoing aggression against Ukraine, those with family ties or other links to Russia require specific scrutiny. It makes no sense, for example, to appoint someone as head of the security service whose wife holds Russian citizenship, but this has happened in the past.

Ukraine must end the SBU monopoly in wiretapping. Understandably, the SBU wants to retain that monopoly, which allows the service to control criminal investigations, even against its own officers. A few years ago, SBU officers misused this power and declassified the identities of NABU agents working on a corruption case.

The current reform drive is also an opportunity to provide public access to declassified information. The SBU tends to overprotect information. For instance, even Ukrainian MPs are currently forbidden from knowing the exact number of SBU employees.

As Ukraine reforms its security service, it is important to avoid creating any new threats to the country’s democratic system. The new bill would empower the SBU to ban, without any court decision, political parties or individual candidates from participating in elections. That provision should be removed.

At a time when Ukraine finds itself engaged in an undeclared war with Russia, the country urgently needs to abandon the Soviet standards of the KGB and adopt the best practices and standards of Western security services. Ukraine also needs to restrict or remove powers that allow the SBU to pressure business or help certain oligarchs.

The current reform process has been a long time coming. It gives Ukrainian MPs the chance to transform the SBU into a modern, Western-style counterintelligence agency that will better serve the country’s national security interests. Parliament must not pass up this opportunity.

Oleksandra Ustinova, a Ukrainian MP with the Holos party, is an alumna of Stanford's Ukrainian Emerging Leaders Program. Steven Pifer, a fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin and affiliate of the Center for International Security and Cooperation, is a former US ambassador to Ukraine (1998-2000).

Originally for Ukraine Alert