'..Kharkiv elites’ obsession with clinging to power, their lack of strategic planning for the future, and their insistence on preserving rent-seeking arrangements are the chief reasons why the region’s politics remain so shortsighted.''Kharkiv .. the cost of keeping in place corrupt governing practices and forestalling reform .. Kharkiv’s future depends on governance reform and serious investment, much like the rest of Ukraine. Facing these challenges, the region must find a way to invest in its core competences, namely to build on its educational, scientific, and economic potential. This mission requires more than adaptation and survival, but significant change is unlikely to occur as long as Kharkiv’s current governing arrangement continues to prioritize stability and enable rent seeking at the expense of meaningful reform.
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Kharkiv’s mayor, Hennadiy Kernes, a member of Yanukovych’s Party of Regions and initially an opponent of the Euromaidan.2 His change of heart came after a brief visit to Russia following Yanukovych’s escape. Kernes has been in local politics since the early 2000s and is known for his craftiness, criminal past, and adaptability. He supported the Orange Revolution in 2005, then turned to the Party of Regions. Saving the city also meant preserving his personal fiefdom, as his assets would have been destroyed had the separatists taken over. In April 2014, just weeks after he switched sides, Kernes was seriously wounded in an assassination attempt, the motive for which remains unknown. As of August 2018, the ensuing criminal investigation has not yet concluded.
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..Kharkiv’s Soviet legacy has a dark side, too, which the local ruling elites have preferred to keep obscured. The region’s population suffered most intensely from the Holodomor, the Soviet government’s orchestrated famine in 1932–1933, and Ukrainian intellectual elites concentrated in the then capital were brutally extinguished by the repression of the Great Terror.
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Locals in Kharkiv like to compare their city to Odessa rather than to Kyiv. Both cities generate significant income from their advantageous positions on key trade routes. Too often, these resources have been captured by corrupt local elites with alleged links to the criminal underworld who trade their loyalty to Kyiv in exchange for impunity to continue ripping off their hometowns for private gain. Essentially, these cities behave like self-contained city states where local opportunists meet basic expectations, like supporting Ukraine’s territorial integrity and providing stability, in exchange for Kyiv turning a blind eye on their corruption.
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Decentralization in the Kharkiv region has been diverted from its original aim of granting ordinary people more accountability. Instead, it has allowed elites to capture of even greater share of public resources, as previous conflicts between the old pro-Russian elites have ended, even as local elites’ pact with Kyiv further weakens accountability.9 the local budgets of the newly formed communities that resulted from fiscal decentralization has not been matched with increased transparency, accountability, or civic participation. In the absence of independent local media and strong, grassroots civil society organizations, patronage networks are being reinforced rather than challenged. To attempt to mitigate this negative trend, international donors who support decentralization reform in Ukraine could try making assistance to newly formed communities conditional on local governments adopting democratic tools and practices (such as public hearings, participatory budgeting, and local council meetings that are open to the public) and other necessary capacity-building efforts.
These governance challenges notwithstanding, Kharkiv’s economy has done fairly well reinventing itself. Historically, Kharkiv was known as an industrial region hosting machine building, hydrocarbon extraction and energy production, and the manufacturing of chemicals, pharmaceuticals, food, drinks, and tobacco. Since the 1990s, industrial production has been in decline. Meanwhile, the region’s finance and services sectors developed rapidly. As a result, the regional economy is now composed of a mix of service industries located in the city, with industrial capacity in Kharkiv and several other outlying towns. The region also has a vast rural agricultural sector and natural gas fields.
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..Kharkiv elites’ obsession with clinging to power, their lack of strategic planning for the future, and their insistence on preserving rent-seeking arrangements are the chief reasons why the region’s politics remain so shortsighted.
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..Decentralization reforms are not a cure for bad governance in this national and local political context. While Kernes remains the center of the fiefdom in Kharkiv, the mafia-like rule there differs from the oligarchic clans of Dnipro and Donbas in the sense that it does not aim to subdue national politics.
The region’s future development will depend on whether it can ensure the necessary investment into the core competencies of its educational, scientific, and industrial potential for innovation. Kyiv’s emphasis on patriotism and decommunization are unlikely to win hearts and minds in eastern Ukraine, but substantial (foreign) investment is held back by a corrupted governance structure and a business environment ruled by criminal interests.
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Kharkiv is just one piece of the puzzle of Ukraine, as the weak rule of law and rampant corruption there mirrors the overall state of the country. The state authorities should take responsibility for creating the necessary conditions that will allow Ukraine’s regions to prosper and renounce rudimentary tendencies inherited from the Soviet times toward centralized control of local politics. The possibility of transforming Kharkiv into a Silicon Valley for eastern Ukraine will remain just a utopian aspiration until the emergence of a Ukrainian state that prioritizes its citizens’ interests, economic well-being, and social mobility at home..'
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How Eastern Ukraine Is Adapting and Surviving: The Case of Kharkiv, September 12, 2018 (
Carnegie Europe is grateful to the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (NWO) for its financial support of this publication).
'Rule of law must be the absolute priority. If Zelenskiy wants to get a proper justice system functioning, he will find support in civil society and in Brussels.''Oligarchs—the word still means something in Ukraine—will want to stop him from getting things done. So will regional leaders, like Hennadiy Kernes in Kharkiv and Gennadiy Trukhanov, who is still mayor of Odessa, despite a
BBC investigation showing his links to gangsters.
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Rule of law must be the absolute priority. If Zelenskiy wants to get a proper justice system functioning, he will find support in civil society and in Brussels.
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The EU is the biggest donor to Ukraine, and this situation is unlikely to change as long as Ukraine’s leadership remains committed to reforming the country and integrating with the EU.'
- Carnegie Europe (
Source, April 25, 2019)
Context(Total Police Reform) - Calls For Dismissal Of Ukraine's Powerful Interior Minister Grow Louder After Alleged Police Rape, Gangland ShootingRegulation on dismissal of Ukraine’s MIA head approved by parliamentary committee, June 17, 2020
(Ukraine) - '..insist that broader reform of the SBU is needed. Galeotti, the security expert at RUSI, said corrupt heads should roll and the agency should be broken up..''..the establishment of an anticorruption court a "benchmark" of Ukraine's progress..'