Communist and Post-Communist Studies 47 (2014) 8191

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Communist and Post-Communist Studies

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US democracy assistance programs in Ukraine after the

Orange Revolution


*, Ru
 ta Rudinskaite_
Povilas Zielys
Institute of International Relations and Political Science, Vilnius University, Vokieciu str. 10, LT-01130 Vilnius, Lithuania

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Available online 24 January 2014

The 2004 Orange Revolution failed to skyrocket Ukraine into the ranks of consolidated
democracies. Some previous research claimed that, in the similar case of post-Rose Revolution Georgia, its vague democratic perspectives can be explained by, among others, a
negative impact of politically biased US democracy assistance programs. This article examines ve groups of US programs (electoral aid, political party development, legislative
strengthening, NGO development and media strengthening) implemented in Ukraine in
20052010, and concludes that US diplomatic support for the pro-Western Orange
leadership did not translate into political bias of US-funded democracy assistance
programs.
2014 The Regents of the University of California. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights
reserved.

Keywords:
Democratization
Democracy assistance
United States
Ukraine
Orange Revolution

The 2004 democratic breakthrough, also known as the Orange Revolution, was a dramatic moment in the evolution of
Ukrainian post-communist political regime. Mass rallies against election fraud helped Ukrainian citizens to regain basic
political rights and civil liberties. However, the Orange Revolution fell short of skyrocketing the country into the ranks of
consolidated democracies.
During his ve-year term (20052010), President Viktor Yushchenko and his team could not overcome two major obstacles. First, the Orange leadership failed to reform state institutions and go beyond a mere personnel change. In the wake
of the Orange Revolution, President Yushchenko and other Orange leader, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko replaced some
18,000 government ofcials on the grounds of political loyalty (Bogomolov and Lytvynenko, 2009: 78) but, at the same time,
the number of draft laws submitted to parliament by the executive branch was the lowest ever for any one legislative session
since independence (Arel, 2005). Second, the Orange leadership devoted little effort to entrench the rule of law. On the
contrary, President Yushchenko abused his authority over the judiciary, even going so far as to abolish the court which ruled
in favor of his political opponents (Human Rights Watch, 2008). Both ruling and opposition politicians continued to bribe
judges, arbitrarily sack them and even storm the courthouses (Trochev, 2010). In sum, the overall failure to establish a clear
division of power and effective system of checks and balances has left Ukraine vulnerable to sliding back toward authoritarian
rule.
The academic community has widely discussed possible reasons that could account for the less-than-satisfactory outcome
of the 2004 democratic breakthrough in Ukraine. The research focused on both internal and external factors. Some authors
pointed to mistakes of the new ruling elite (Kalandadze and Orenstein, 2009) and individual leaders (OBrien, 2010). Others
highlighted the weakness of Ukrainian civil society and its exclusion from the post-revolution political process (Tudoroiu,
2007; Laverty, 2008). The institutional legacy of competitive authoritarianism was also examined as a negative internal
factor (Kubicek, 2009). Finally, some scholars questioned whether the Orange Revolution represented any revolutionary
* Corresponding author.
0967-067X/$ see front matter 2014 The Regents of the University of California. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.postcomstud.2014.01.006

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change at all (Hale, 2006; Katchanovski, 2008; Lane, 2008). Among the external actors, the European Union (EU) drew the
most of academic scrutiny. Many authors investigated the EU conditionality and its impact on democratic reforms in Ukraine
(Kubicek, 2005; Solonenko, 2009; Casier, 2011). Others focused on a negative external actor, Russia, arguing that its policies
weakened the democratic perspectives in Ukraine (Ambrosio, 2007; Tolstrup, 2009). Some scholars designed their research
so as to capture the overlap of EU and Russian inuences (Jonavicius, 2009; Petrov and Serdyuk, 2009).
Surprisingly enough, very little attention has been devoted to the policies of the United States (US) and their impact
on democratic consolidation in Ukraine after the Orange Revolution. Such an omission raises eyebrows because the
activities of US donors were judged to be instrumental in setting the stage for the Orange Revolution (Wilson, 2005,
2006: 183189; Prescott, 2006). Did US donors continue with democracy assistance programs after the 2004 democratic breakthrough? Did they revise their strategies? Did those programs protect democratic process or particular political groups?
The last question refers to the similar case of Georgia which is much better investigated. As documented by Mitchell (2006,
2009), Muskhelishvili and Jorjoliani (2009), Lazarus (2010) and Omelicheva (2010), US donors reoriented their support from
democratic projects to state-building initiatives after the 2003 Rose Revolution. The mentioned scholars concluded that the
US, as a key external actor, was partly responsible for Georgias stalled transition to consolidated democracy. On the one hand,
by redirecting their assistance, US donors undermined the ability of Georgian political opposition and civil society to monitor
and control policies of President Mikheil Saakashvili and his team. On the other hand, the unconditional US support to the
Georgian government fueled the sense of self-righteousness and impunity among the Rose leadership and failed to prevent
abuses of power.
This article looks into US democracy assistance programs implemented in Ukraine after the Orange Revolution (between
2005 and 2010). Based on theoretical insights and previous research on the Georgian case, it is hypothesized that US-funded
democracy assistance programs were burdened by US security interests and biased in favor of the US-friendly leadership. To
test this hypothesis, the following ve groups of programs will be examined: electoral aid, political party development,
legislative strengthening, development of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and independent media strengthening.
The ndings will answer the question whether US democracy assistance programs in Ukraine have been distorted by US
political support for particular Ukrainian leaders. This research will also provide material for further comparative studies of
the US role with regard to democratization in the post-Soviet area.
1. Democratization goals and security interests
It should be admitted that democratization can never be the sole foreign policy objective of any donor country. Even in the
US, which tends to promote democracy with a missionary zeal, democratization must coexist with other objectives and
interests: curbing the spread of weapons of mass destruction, combating terrorism, dampening regional rivalries and
developing better economic relations (Lowenkron, 2007: 202). Unavoidably, all these foreign policy goals not only coexist but
also conict with each other.
Most situations when the democratization goal conicts with other security interests can be described as one of the two
interrelated dilemmas. The rst dilemma occurs if donors efforts to promote democracy may lead to destabilization in the
recipient country. In this case, the donor country must choose between promoting more democratic or more efcient
governance (Spanger and Wolff, 2005). Consequently, the donor country may prefer a stronger executive branch at the
expense of political competition. The second dilemma occurs if the democratic process in the recipient country may bring to
power political groups that are perceived by the donor country as hostile to its interests. In this case, the donor country may
intervene by supporting political allies or by inhibiting the ascent of those forces that oppose the inuence and interests of the
donor country (Boudreau, 2007). Consequently, democracy assistance programs funded by the donor country may become
politically biased.
These theoretical assumptions have been veried by the previous research on Georgia. The Rose Revolution brought to
power young reformers who appeared to be pro-democratic, pro-Western and fully aligned with US security interests in the
region. From the very beginning, the George W. Bush administration demonstrated a rm commitment to support Saakashvili
government. As a side effect, US governmental donors scaled down or closed many democracy assistance programs that were
prioritized before the Rose Revolution. Certain US-funded organizations withdrew from sectors of electoral aid, political party
building, NGO building and independent media strengthening because the opposition to the Saakashvili government and
control over its activities was no longer considered as necessary (Mitchell, 2009: 130). What is more, US donors started to
discriminate certain elements of Georgian civil society depriving of funds those NGOs that continued to criticize the government (Muskhelishvili and Jorjoliani, 2009: 695).
In Ukraine, the rise to power of pro-democratic and pro-Western Yushchenko was welcomed by the US government
equally warmly. During his rst visit to the US, President Yushchenko was honored by the opportunity to address a joint
session of the US Congress and his speech was interrupted by applause 26 times ve times with standing ovations (Nynka,
2005). Most importantly, the US government saw Yushchenko as the only reliable ally among Ukrainian political leaders in its
effort to bring Ukraine into NATO. His value to the US was further reinforced by increasing public support for the pro-Russian
and NATO-skeptic Party of Regions and its leader Viktor Yanukovych. The linkage between the democratization goals
(consolidating gains of the Orange Revolution) and security interests (preserving the US-friendly executive) created preconditions for a political bias in US-funded democracy assistance programs in Ukraine. It is hypothesized in this article that



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after the Orange Revolution US governmental donors revised their priorities, so as to avoid strengthening Yushchenkos
political rivals.
What democracy assistance programs should be examined? This article focuses on the following ve sectors that were
prioritized by US donors before the Orange Revolution: electoral aid, political party development, legislative strengthening,
NGO development and independent media strengthening. It is assumed that the US attention to the free and fair electoral
process in Ukraine should have decreased as it already had its favorite leaders in power. It is also hypothesized that the US
should have reduced support for the Verkhovna Rada as it was dominated by the Party of Regions and often opposed
Yushchenkos policies. Similarly, it is assumed that US-funded organizations should have discriminated the Party of Regions
and other Yushchenkos political rivals when providing training for Ukrainian political parties. Finally, it is hypothesized that
US governmental donors should have cut funding for watchdog NGOs and independent media as the US was no longer
interested in discrediting the incumbent Ukrainian government.
Before testing the outlined hypotheses, a clear dividing line needs to be drawn between diplomatic and programmatic
levels of democracy protection. In general, the external actor can contribute to the democratic consolidation in two major
ways. First, it can try to constrain the government of the edgling democracy and prevent it from violating democratic rules
and procedures. Based on the principle of democratic conditionality, the external actor can apply public criticism, backstage
diplomatic pressure or economic sanctions as a means to deter the government from non-democratic actions. We call this
level of democracy assistance the diplomatic level as it refers to the interaction of two governments, that is, the political
leadership of the donor country and their counterparts in the recipient country. The diplomatic level of US democracy


assistance in Ukraine has been examined elsewhere (Zielys,
2010) and is not dealt with in this article.
Second, the external actor can try to enable the political opposition and civil society of the edgling democracy, and thus
level the playing eld and ensure greater government accountability. To achieve that, the external actor funds various programs that promote political pluralism in the recipient country. On the donor countrys side, the main actors are governmental and nongovernmental organizations (agencies, funds, institutes, and others) that administer and/or implement
democracy assistance programs. Since those organizations are analyzed as part of the state-implemented democracy protection, they must be funded from the state budget of the donor country. We call this level of democracy assistance the
programmatic level, and this article deals namely with this level of US democracy assistance in Ukraine. The following
research draws on a series of expert interviews with US assistance providers and recipients conducted by the authors of this
article in Kyiv in FebruaryMarch 2011, as well as on the available statistical data and published reports of organizations
involved.

2. US democracy assistance programs in Ukraine

2.1. Electoral aid
The 2004 presidential elections that triggered the Orange Revolution drew a special attention of the US government. In
2004, several famous US political leaders (Madeleine Albright, Zbigniew Brzezinski, George H.W. Bush, and others) visited
Ukraine with a mission to persuade President Leonid Kuchma not to rig the forthcoming elections. At the programmatic level,
the US Agency for International Development (USAID) allocated almost $1.5 million for election-related activities (Sushko and
Prystayko, 2006: 135). Ukrainian NGOs received enough money to carry out independent exit polls, produce television spots
encouraging people to vote, publish and distribute literature explaining to people their rights, and monitor violations of those
rights (Kempe and Solonenko, 2005: 118).
The special attention paid by the Bush administration can be explained by its discontent with Kuchmas policies and nondemocratic rule. However, with a pro-Western President Yushchenko being in charge of Ukrainian foreign policy, the situation seemed to have radically changed. Following the general hypothesis of this article, one could expect the US to significantly reduce or even terminate funding for electoral aid programs in Ukraine after the Orange Revolution. At least, this
hypothesis should be valid with regard to the 2006 parliamentary elections because Yanukovych and his Party of Regions had
not returned to power by that time. In addition, one should look for any bias of US programs in favor of the Orange political
forces.
All interviewed US assistance providers claimed that electoral aid continued to be provided on demand. An interviewed
representative of the USAID Mission in Ukraine (USAID/Ukraine) who spoke on the condition of anonymity argued that the
US government often made additional resources available to support election activities, especially when election-related
needs could not be foreseen (USAID/Ukraine representative, 2011). Sergey Reshetov, an expert for Democracy Small
Grants Program at the US Embassy in Ukraine, echoed this argument by saying that the US Embassy had announced additional competitions for funding before every parliamentary and presidential elections: I dont remember a single year when
we have not supported the national elections in Ukraine. He also admitted that local elections usually received less attention
(Reshetov, 2011).
Election monitoring and exit polls can be regarded as two most important programs in the electoral aid sector. Accordingly, they can serve as a litmus test when judging whether US funding for electoral aid programs remained steady in Ukraine.
Therefore it is important to check if the US governmental donors funded election monitoring and exit polls not only during
the 2004 presidential elections but also during the 2006 and 2007 parliamentary elections.

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In the eld of election monitoring the most active US donor was the National Democratic Institute (NDI). It both deployed
its own observers to Ukraine and funded election observation missions organized by other local and foreign organizations.
During the 2004 presidential elections, the Central Election Commission of Ukraine ofcially registered 1274 NDI observers.
During the 2006 parliamentary elections, this number plummeted to a mere 15 observers, and it rose again to 41 during the
2007 early parliamentary elections. At rst sight it seems that NDI has completely lost its interest in the electoral process in
Ukraine since 2004. In fact, NDI did fund numerous missions of other organizations during the 2006 and 2007 elections,
instead of sending its own observers. In 2006, NDI supported the Committee of Voters of Ukraine (CVU), which had the largest
local mission of 3166 ofcially registered observers, and the European Network of Election Monitoring Organizations
(ENEMO), which sent the second largest foreign mission of 440 observers. In 2007, NDI again provided support to the ENEMO
mission, which had 481 ofcially registered observers and was the largest foreign mission that year. As regards local organizations, NDI diverted its support from CVU to the Civil Network OPORA, which entered the eld of election monitoring with
54 observers. NDI continued its cooperation with OPORA during the 2010 presidential elections when this organization
deployed some 2000 local observers (OPORA representative, 2011).
Apart from election monitoring, the other important safeguard of transparent electoral process is an independent exit poll
conducted on the day of voting. Indeed, the results of such poll were highly publicized during the 2004 presidential elections
and helped to expose the election fraud. In 2004, the exit poll, titled as national, was carried out by the Ukrainian NGO
Democratic Initiatives Foundation (DIF). On the eve of the 2010 presidential elections, the national exit poll drew a lot of
media attention again but this time because of the lack of foreign funding. The organizers publicly addressed all presidential
candidates and ordinary citizens calling for nancial support (UNITER, 2010). Can US governmental donors be blamed for
terminating their support for exit polls in Ukraine after the Orange Revolution?
During the 2004 presidential elections, the national exit poll was funded by a group of foreign donors, including
three US governmental donors: USAID, National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and US Embassy (DIF, 2007). The poll
was also supported by the Eurasia Foundation, which is funded mostly by USAID and, therefore, can qualify as US
governmental donor as well. After 2004, USAID and Eurasian Foundation did not support the national exit poll anymore.
However, the rest two US governmental donors, NED and US Embassy, funded the poll during both 2006 and 2007
parliamentary elections. The exact sums allocated by donors are not available. Therefore, it is impossible to compare US
support year-by-year. Nevertheless, one can conclude that the US did not withdraw from this eld after the Orange
Revolution and continued supporting exit poll in Ukraine. Even in 2010, when the poll organizers faced nancial difculties, NED and US Embassy were still among the donors. In fact, it was not Americans who withdrew, but Europeans. In
comparison to the 2007 donors list, governmental donors of Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland and Norway disappeared
from that list (DIF, 2010).
The collected evidence does not support the hypothesis that the US government, being satised with Yushchenkos foreign
policy, may have abandoned its electoral aid programs in Ukraine. US governmental donors continued to fund both election
monitoring and exit polls after the Orange Revolution. Naturally, the 2006 and 2007 parliamentary elections received less
attention than the 2004 presidential elections but they were not neglected. There is only one caveat to be mentioned. Some
Ukrainian NGOs dealing with election monitoring reported that foreign donors did not work on important issues in the
periods between election campaigns (Shapovalova, 2010: 6). Various laws on elections can be mentioned as an example.
According to Ihor Kohut, the Chair of Ukrainian NGO Laboratory of Legislative Initiatives, the US was very interested in the
electoral legislation in Ukraine but recently it has not paid enough nancial attention to it (Kohut, 2011). However, the
collected evidence suggested that US nancial attention to the electoral process in Ukraine arose each time when a national
electoral campaign was approaching.
One more hypothesis, which needs to be tested in this section, assumes that US electoral aid programs may have been
biased in favor of the Orange political forces, namely pro-presidential bloc Our Ukraine and Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc. The
2006 and 2007 parliamentary elections were won by the Party of Regions which opposed President Yushchenko. Therefore,
one could expect US-funded assessments to be more critical toward the electoral process than assessments of other international organizations. To test this hypothesis, we compare respective reports published by the Organization of Security and
Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) mission and International Republican Institute (IRI).
The analysis of OSCE and IRI reports does not support the hypothesis of US donors bias. The OSCE and IRI reports on the
2006 parliamentary elections presented the same conclusions. Both OSCE and IRI observers criticized only some organizational aspects, such as incorrect voter lists, overcrowded polling stations and lengthy vote counting process. The OSCE report
additionally noted the insufcient transparency of campaign nancing (OSCE, 2006; IRI, 2006). Following the 2007 early
parliamentary elections, OSCE and IRI missions again published very similar reports. Both documents criticized last-minute
amendments to the election law with regard to home voting and compiling voter lists. IRI observers additionally reported a
few cases when Ukrainian political party observers assisted voters into the voting booths and possibly inuenced their votes
(OSCE, 2007; IRI, 2007). To summarize, there is no evidence supporting the assumption that US-funded organizations could
have implemented biased election monitoring against the victorious Party of Regions.
In general, the interviewed experts claimed that any inuence of a foreign donor on the nal report of election observation
mission is not likely. According to a representative of one of the largest Ukrainian election observation NGOs OPORA, foreign
countries fund local observers because they are interested in getting a real picture of voting. For this reason, they choose NGOs
that are considered to be an unbiased party, unlike local government and political parties. The interviewee added that, even if
they had such intentions, foreign donors often could not inuence the substance of the reports due to organizational



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limitations. More than once, OPORA has completed its report less than an hour before the press conference and thus left no
time for any donors review (OPORA representative, 2011).
2.2. Political party development
There are a few political parties in Ukraine that could be considered as hostile to US interests. First of all, it is the
Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU), which dominated the Verkhovna Rada throughout 1990s. In comparison with some other
communist successor parties in the post-communist region, CPU underwent little reform after the fall of the Soviet Union and
it retained the fairly orthodox ideology. In spite of this, Ukrainian communists were part of the ruling coalition in 20062007.
The Party of Regions (PoR) also promotes policies that are in conict with US security interests. During the 2004 presidential elections, PoR leader Yanukovych emerged as a Russian-backed competitor to the pro-Western candidate Yushchenko. Russian public relations consultants helped to build up Yanukovychs campaign and Russian President Vladimir Putin
personally demonstrated support for PoR leader (Kempe and Solonenko, 2005: 124125). Later, Yanukovych should have
antagonized the Bush administration when he halted Ukraines integration with NATO after becoming Prime Minister in 2006
(Finn, 2006).
It is hypothesized in this section that US-funded programs of political party development in Ukraine may have discriminated CPU and PoR. Some previous research indicated that, since the Orange Revolution, most US assistance has gone to the
Orange camp, that is, individual constituent parties of the pro-presidential bloc Our Ukraine and Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc
(Bader, 2010: 118). At the same time, PoR has received little assistance and CPU has barely received any assistance at all (Bader,
2010: 123124).
In fact, our own research did not yield any evidence which would suggest that certain Ukrainian parties could have been
discriminated by US governmental donors. The Resident Country Director of the IRI branch in Ukraine (IRI/Ukraine) Chris
Holzen claimed that his organization did a lot of work with PoR. He illustrated his argument by mentioning that, in 2009, the
highest percentage (around 20 percent) of participants in IRI-organized seminars came from PoR. According to Holzen, he
could not understand accusations that IRI discriminates PoR: When I hear people saying this: Oh, you are some American
organization, you are here, you are working against the Party of Regions because they are pro-Russian and you are Americans,
I am so surprised that I hear people saying this. Although Holzen admitted that PoR did not always adhere to democratic
principles internally, he believed it was meaningful for IRI/Ukraine to look for young PoR members, who wished to change
their party from within, and work with them (Holzen, 2011).
The IRI/Ukraine head also disagreed with allegations that US donors ignored CPU. According to Holzen, IRI/Ukraine
invited the communists to its programs but, with the exception of the city of Kharkiv and occasionally some people in the
Luhansk region, CPU was not interested to attend these programs. They think its weird when we reach out [to them],
they are like: Why would we come? Why are you inviting us?, said Holzen. He also admitted that IRI/Ukraine did not
attempt to persuade the communists: We say: Look, you may come or not but dont ever say you were not invited
(Holzen, 2011).
An interviewed representative of the NDI branch in Ukraine (NDI/Ukraine) who spoke on the condition of anonymity
assured that NDI/Ukraine was working with all parties represented in the parliament and with some non-parliamentary
parties as well. He stated that none of Ukrainian parties had absolutely refused assistance from NDI/Ukraine. PoR members participated in various NDI programs, although mostly at the local level. According to the NDI/Ukraine representative,
they had worked with the communists as well: We have engaged with them a little bit. They have not refused [to cooperate]
directly. We stay in touch with them and offer assistance when relevant. As an example, he mentioned that CPU had
participated in the training for party poll watchers (NDI/Ukraine representative, 2011).
In its turn, the CPU leadership tends to deny partys involvement in any US-funded training. An interviewed communist
Member of Verkhovna Rada stated that he personally had not seen any invitations for CPU to participate in IRI or NDI trainings
either at the level of the partys Central Committee, or at the level of regional and district committees. Therefore, the question
of CPUs participation in such trainings has not been discussed by any collegial body of the party (Communist Member of
Verkhovna Rada, 2011).
The collected evidence did not support the hypothesis that US governmental donors could have discriminated certain
Ukrainian parties that opposed to President Yushchenkos foreign policy and were regarded as hostile to US interests. On the
contrary, Party of Regions, as the best organized political party in Ukraine, was able to take more US assistance with each year.
US assistance providers were not prejudiced against this party and let its members to participate freely in various trainings
and seminars. Meanwhile, US assistance to CPU was probably limited to sporadic contacts with its individual members. It is
safe to conclude that CPU was not involved due to the lack of interest on both sides.
Finally, the possible bias of US party development programs could have manifested itself as an attempt to establish the USfriendly coalition of parties. This is precisely the strategy which has been applied by US governmental donors in Ukraine
before the Orange Revolution. For example, on the eve of the 2002 parliamentary elections, NDI gathered around ten
Ukrainian opposition parties in Poland to discuss opportunities for cooperation. At that occasion, NDI representatives urged
party leaders to unite into an alliance, nominate only one opposition candidate per single member district and thus challenge
the Kuchma regime (Bader, 2010: 117). Did any of US-funded organizations try to reunite the Orange political forces after the
2006 parliamentary elections, when PoR and CPU forged a ruling coalition? In fact, we could not nd evidence indicating any
US efforts of this kind. Holzen admitted that IRI was involved in coalition building activities in the past. However, since the

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Orange Revolution, IRI has only encouraged issue-based coalitions on the local level and never attempted to reunite the
Orange camp (Holzen, 2011).
2.3. Legislative strengthening
During his term, President Yushchenko has never enjoyed a full support of the Parliament. Although his bloc Our Ukraine
came rst in the 2002 parliamentary elections, it secured a mere 112 out of 450 seats in the Verkhovna Rada. In 2005,
Yushchenko won Radas support for the proposed candidacy of Tymoshenko as Prime Minister thanks to the revolutionary
euphoria. However, the relationship between the President and the Parliament steadily deteriorated afterward. In the 2006
parliamentary elections, Our Ukraine came only third surrendering the victory to Yanukovych and his Party of Regions. PoR
joined the ruling coalition with the communists and socialists and the Verkhovna Rada approved Yanukovych as a new Prime
Minister on 4 August 2006.
The ascendancy of PoR and CPU in the Ukrainian Parliament should have been a clear disappointment for the Bush
administration. Both parties opposed President Yushchenkos foreign policy and could be considered as hostile to US security
interests. Therefore, we can hypothesize that US governmental donors may have reacted by terminating assistance to the
Ukrainian Parliament or, at least, cutting funds for legislative strengthening programs.
The very rst glance at developments on the ground refutes the assumption that the US may have terminated its assistance
to the PoR-dominated Verkhovna Rada. USAID/Ukraine has been supporting the Ukrainian Parliament since 1994. According
to USAID, this represents one of USAIDs longest running, sustained legislative strengthening efforts anywhere in the world
(USAID, 2008: 1). As a rule, USAID used to choose Indiana University as the major contractor for implementing this program in
Ukraine. The term of President Yushchenko roughly coincides with the ve-year Parliament Development Project (PDP)
carried out by Indiana University from August 2003 to August 2008. The main PDP goals included strengthening Parliaments
internal management systems, improving executivelegislative relations and enhancing citizen access to the legislative
process (USAID, 2008: 4).
The Orange Revolution did not have any impact on the implementation of this program. According to an interviewed PDP
representative, PDP staff monitored political developments in the country but the goals of the program did not change. PDP
worked mainly with parliamentary committees trying to increase the transparency of their work and enhance the
involvement of NGOs (PDP representative, 2011). The open animosity between President Yushchenko and the Verkhovna
Rada in 20062007 did not impel USAID to terminate its support to the Ukrainian Parliament. In 2008, USAID offered Indiana
University a new three-year contract to continue the Parliament Development Project (named PDP II) in Ukraine. What is
more, USAID did not decrease but, on the contrary, increased the budget of this program. In the period of 20032008, the
average annual PDP budget was $1.1 million. For the period of 20092011, the projected annual PDP II budget rose to $1.3
million. This nding clearly contradicts the assumption that US governmental donors may have been less willing to engage
with the PoR-dominated Parliament.
Another illustrative example is the development of cooperation between the US Congress and the Verkhovna Rada. The
Orange Revolution became a catalyst which spurred US-Ukrainian interparliamentary relations. In January 2005, the US
House of Representatives adopted the resolution which called for the establishment and full funding of a staff exchange
program between the House of Representatives and the Verkhovna Rada as soon as possible (US House of Representatives,
2005). Although the agreement to establish such program was signed back in 1999, the interaction between the two parliaments remained conned to the format of video conferences. Following the Orange Revolution, the US showed much
greater interest to proceed with this program. Formally, the House Democracy Assistance Commission approved a legislative
strengthening partnership with Ukraine in November 2006. Within the framework of this program, several seminars and
trainings were organized for Ukrainian members of parliament and parliamentary staff in both Ukraine and the US. It should
be noted that the exchange program was approved two months after the new ruling coalition, comprising PoR, CPU and the
socialists, had been built. Such timing contradicts the assumption that the US may have reacted to the establishment of the
undesired coalition by withdrawing its support for the Verkhovna Rada.
One more US-funded legislative strengthening program should be mentioned in this context. After the Orange Revolution,
USAID decided to terminate an NDI-implemented program which aimed to introduce to Ukrainian parliamentary parties
peculiarities of work in factions and best practices of coalition building. However, this fact does not support the hypothesis of
this section either. According to the interviewed NDI/Ukraine representative, USAIDs decision not to extend the program was
made in the period when the Orange forces still prevailed in the Parliament, that is, before PoR gained the majority (NDI/
Ukraine representative, 2011). Again, such timing does not prove a link between political developments in Ukraine and
volumes of US funding for legislative strengthening programs in this country.
In order to obtain a full picture of US legislative strengthening programs in Ukraine, one more assumption should be tested.
It can be assumed that US governmental donors may have retained the total amount of assistance to the Verkhovna Rada but, at
the same time, discriminated PoR and CPU factions, when choosing aid recipients within the Parliament. The PDP representative rejected such assumption stating that PDP did not apply any selection criteria and offered assistance to all parliamentary
factions, including the communists: We are trying to be non-partisan. We are offering it to everyone. Whoever is answering,
we are providing. The interviewee added that the most active participants of PDP-organized trainings had been the two largest
factions of the time, Party of Regions and Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, and none of the factions had ever refused to participate (PDP
representative, 2011). Similarly, US-funded programs of inter-parliamentary cooperation also involved representatives of all



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factions, including the communists whose ideology was incompatible with US interests. The communist Member of Parliament
conrmed that representatives of the CPU faction took part in interparliamentary meetings, seminars and exchanges organized
by the US Congress in the US territory (Communist Member of Verkhovna Rada, 2011).
2.4. NGO development
The US support for the Ukrainian NGO sector was instrumental in setting the stage for the Orange Revolution. It could be
clearly seen that NGO activities were highly politicized at that time. In fact, NGOs played the role of political opposition to the
incumbent Kuchma regime. What happened after the Orange Revolution? Following the hypothesis of this article, one could
expect US donors to cut funding for the Ukrainian NGO sector and divert assistance to the governmental sector. According to
the logic of security-burdened democracy assistance, the US government may have lost interest in funding Ukrainian
watchdog NGOs, whose activities would likely result in criticizing the executive and thus undermine the public condence in
US-favored President Yushchenko.
After the Orange Revolution, the biggest US governmental donor USAID indeed scaled down democracy assistance programs in Ukraine. This is reected by changes in USAID funds expended annually under the heading of Democratic Reforms.
The USAID assistance to democratic reforms peaked in the scal year of 2005 (from 1 October 2004 to 30 September 2005),
which coincides with the Orange Revolution. Before the revolution, the funding was steadily increasing from $12.17 million in
2002 to $36.94 million in 2005. After the revolution, it started to gradually decrease and equaled $21.60 million in 2008 (U.S.
Department of State, 2010). Not all of those funds were allocated to the NGO sector but statistics on USAID democracy
assistance reect the general trend.
The sudden withdrawal of foreign donors from Ukraine after the Orange Revolution has been documented by the annual
survey of Ukrainian NGOs, which is conducted by the local NGO CCC Creative Center. According to this survey, following the
Orange Revolution the number of NGOs that received grants from foreign donors dropped almost twice: from 51 percent in
2004 to 27 percent in 2005. At the same time, the share of foreign funding in budgets of those Ukrainian NGOs that still
received it did not change (Palyvoda and Golota, 2010: 4142). Although this survey does not address US donors specically,
its results suggest that external funding has signicantly decreased in wake of the Orange Revolution. This state of affairs was
not lasting, however. The number of Ukrainian NGOs funded from abroad returned to the pre-revolutionary level as soon as
2006, according to the same survey (Palyvoda and Golota, 2010: 41). It cannot be ruled out that the quick return of foreign
donors to Ukraine was related to PoR victory in the 2006 parliamentary elections.
Of course, not all US governmental donors reduced their nancial support to Ukrainian NGOs after the Orange Revolution.
For example, the Democracy Small Grants Program, funded by the US Department of State and administered by the US
Embassy in Ukraine, enjoyed a budget increase after the revolution. In the scal year of 2004, the budget equaled $521
thousand. In 2005, it increased to $686 thousand, and then it surged to $887 one year later. In 20062009, the budget
uctuated randomly but it never went down to the pre-revolution level (US Embassy in Ukraine, 2011a). However, the increase of funding was rather modest in this case, if you compare it to the mentioned reduction of the USAID general spending
on democratic reforms in Ukraine.
The available statistical data does not give a precise picture of changes in US assistance to Ukrainian NGOs and, therefore,
needs to be complemented by evidence obtained from interviews with representatives of Ukrainian NGO community. In
general, all interviewees pointed out the decrease of US assistance to Ukrainian civil society after the Orange Revolution. In
their opinion, US donors were too optimistic toward democratic perspectives in Ukraine. For example, this opinion was
shared by an interviewed representative of Democratic Initiatives Foundation (DIF): After the Orange Revolution, our donors
decided that democracy has been established in Ukraine, and so the funding has been cut. Of course, not decisively but partly
(DIF representative, 2011). The head of Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union Volodymyr Yavorsky echoed the argument.
According to him, after the Orange Revolution everybody thought that Ukraine was already a democratic country and it did
not need external funding anymore. Yavorsky assessed such conclusion of foreign donors as strange (Yavorsky, 2011). The
head of Laboratory of Legislative Initiatives Kohut also noted that many democracy assistance programs, which were nanced
by US donors, ceased to exist after the Orange Revolution. However, the revolution was only one of several reasons accounting
for this change. According to Kohut, the other important reason was optimizing of funds by means of coordinating and task
sharing among international donors (Kohut, 2011).
There were several additional factors reinforcing the impression of Ukrainian NGOs that they have been abandoned by US
donors. First, USAID and other foreign donors started to apply a new assistance strategy after the Orange Revolution. Their
focus shifted from institutional development of many NGOs to implementation of particular projects by the strongest.
Recipient organizations in Ukraine have been told that donors are not willing to cover administrative costs and expect NGOs
to make their own contributions to the projects (Shapovalova, 2010: 7). Second, USAID centralized the distribution of its
assistance. Before the Orange Revolution, there were many civil society programs and many local contractors. In words of
Ukrainian NGO sector researchers Lyubov Palyvoda and Volodymyr Kupriy, there were big money and many players in that
eld (Palyvoda and Kupriy, 2011). After the revolution, this situation changed completely. According to an interviewed
representative of the local NGO Freedom House Ukraine, USAID now is trying to get one contractor for bigger amount of
money for bigger portion of the sector (Freedom House Ukraine representative, 2011).
So far, this section addressed the issue of cuts in US funding for Ukrainian NGOs. The other important issue is the balance
between assisting the government and civil society. Did US governmental donors offer their support to the Orange

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government at the expense of the third sector? The interviewed USAID/Ukraine representative claimed that all programs
under the heading of Democracy and Governance were equally important and USAIDs attention to each of them remained
unchanged after the Orange Revolution (USAID/Ukraine representative, 2011). However, available statistical data clearly
contradicts such claims. According to data published on the USAID website, the 20042007 period saw a 71 percent decrease
in the budget of the program Strengthening Citizen Participation and a simultaneous 59 percent increase in funds for the
Good Governance program (USAID, 2006).
The surge in US assistance to the Ukrainian governmental sector has been observed by interviewed NGO representatives as
well. The interviewed DIF representative noted that foreign donors redistributed their funding in favor of the governmental
sector after the Orange Revolution. According to the interviewee, this observation applies mostly to European donors, but to
American ones as well (DIF representative, 2011). Yavorsky, representing 29 Ukrainian human rights organizations, went even
further by stating that over 95 percent of foreign aid has been channeled through the Ukrainian government after 2004
(Yavorsky, 2011). By contrast, the providers of US assistance insisted that they never gave up supporting Ukrainian NGOs. For
example, the Democracy Small Grants Program administered by the US Embassy in Ukraine has reserved its funds exclusively
for NGOs and never worked with state institutions. The expert for this program Reshetov added that the other major donor,
USAID, also continued to support NGOs by involving them in its government-oriented projects (Reshetov, 2011).
Some Ukrainian NGOs failed to adapt to post-revolution strategies of foreign donors. According to Palyvoda and Kupriy,
donors then expected NGOs to start cooperating with the government but not all NGOs felt comfortable or were capable to
forge partnerships with state institutions. In addition, the topics of externally funded projects narrowed after 2004 and some
Ukrainian NGOs simply lacked professional skills to participate in those projects (Palyvoda and Kupriy, 2011).
For donors part, they probably made a mistake by not communicating to Ukrainian NGOs the new strategy of assistance.
Palyvoda and Kupriy regretted that NGOs were not explicitly told that their role had changed and now they were supposed to
supply products and services instead of going out on the streets and advocating against something. Unlike some other
donors, USAID/Ukraine has never discussed its strategy with local partners: We have not heard about any consultations,
discussions or round tables regarding the [USAID] strategy and its revision (Palyvoda and Kupriy, 2011). The US donors
failure to set Ukrainian NGOs for closer cooperation with the government partly accounts for the feeling among NGOs that the
US abandoned Ukrainian civil society after the Orange Revolution.
2.5. Independent media strengthening
The US assistance to Ukrainian independent media dates back to 1993, when USAID distributed its rst grants in this
sector. During the years of the Kuchma regime, external support was crucial to preserving an alternative point of view in
Ukrainian media coverage. Did the situation change after the Orange Revolution? Following the general hypothesis of this
paper, one could assume that US governmental donors may have become reluctant to nance media strengthening programs.
After the US-supported Orange leaders assumed power in Ukraine, the US may have no longer been eager to facilitate public
scrutiny of Ukrainian government policies.
In the sector of media support, the agship program was the USAID-funded Strengthening Independent Media in Ukraine
(U-Media). This ve-year program was launched in 2003 and implemented by Internews, in cooperation with International
Research & Exchanges Board (IREX) and few other organizations. It had an average budget of $2 million to spend annually on
improving legal, managerial and journalistic skills of personnel employed in Ukrainian media outlets. The Orange Revolution
had virtually no impact on U-Media. In October 2008, when the initial ve-year term expired, USAID extended the program
for another three years signing a new contract with Internews. The level of funding stayed at $2 million per year. The constant
US funding for the central media assistance program clearly contradicts the assumed logic of security-burdened US approach
to media strengthening in Ukraine.
Apart from USAIDs U-Media program, the other signicant source of support for Ukrainian independent media was the
Media Development Fund (MDF) administered by the US Embassy in Ukraine. It operated as a grant-giving entity providing
nancial support to Ukrainian journalists, media organizations and other NGOs for media-related projects. It should be noted
that the MDF budget fell from $882 thousand in 2006 to $424 thousand in 2007. The number of projects nanced by MDF
decreased from 117 to 54 in the same period. In spite of the slight recovery ($540 thousand) in 2008, the MDF budget further
shrank to $392 thousand in 2009 (US Embassy in Ukraine, 2011b). The expert for MDF at the US Embassy Olha Zhyryachenkova explained funding cuts by the fact that freedom of speech was considered to be one of the biggest achievements
of the Orange Revolution (Zhyryachenkova, 2011). The example of reduced MDF budget does not allow to reject the hypothesis outright and encourages to study the motivation of US donors more thoroughly.
Interviewed US assistance recipients mostly acknowledged the relative drawdown of US funding for media-related projects in the wake of the Orange Revolution. Natalya Ligacheva, the Editor-in-Chief of Ukrainian media monitoring website
Telekritika, observed that in 20052006 Western grant givers signicantly reduced their support for media NGOs as they
concluded that everything is now ne in Ukraine and freedom of speech has been established. Telekritika also felt the
consequences because there were much less projects to participate in (Ligacheva, 2011). An interviewed representative of
another Ukrainian NGO, Institute of Mass Information (IMI), echoed the observation that US nancial support for the media
sector was in decline during the Orange times (IMI representative, 2011).
One more local NGO, Internews Ukraine, faced severe cuts in funding somewhat later. The head of the organization Natalya
Pedchenko recalled that in 20032008 InterNews Ukraine was part of the U-Media project and enjoyed an annual budget of



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89

$400500 thousand. In 2009, its budget shrank tenfold to a mere $50 thousand. Pedchenko noted that US donors cut the
funding because democracy came to Ukraine (Pedchenko, 2011).
The IREX branch in Ukraine (IREX/Ukraine), another major player in Ukrainian media sector, did not experience any
signicant cuts in funding after the Orange Revolution. Since 2002, IREX/Ukraine has been implementing the Ukraine Media
Partnership Program nanced by the US Embassy in Ukraine. This program pairs independent Ukrainian and US media outlets
and conducts exchanges to encourage sharing of editorial and business practices. According to the coordinator of the program
Svitlana Zholobaylo, the number of partnerships was uctuating between ve and two in the post-revolution period. She
noted that the decrease in the number of partnerships was balanced by better opportunities to send Ukrainian journalists to
internships in the US (Zholobaylo, 2011).
Although somewhat mixed, the collected evidence tends to support the assumption that US governmental donors have
reduced their nancial assistance to Ukrainian independent media in the wake of the Orange Revolution. However, this does
not automatically conrm the hypothesis regarding the security-driven motivation of the US government. Did US donors
reduce funding for media-related projects in order to shield President Yushchenko and Prime Minister Tymoshenko from
public scrutiny and criticism?
Interviewed representatives of Ukrainian NGOs provided quite a different assessment. As noted by the IMI representative,
violations of journalist rights became less frequent during the Orange times. As a result, US-funded projects on monitoring
such violations were no longer appropriate. However, US governmental donors did not withdraw from the media sector. IMI
tried to draw donors attention to the poor quality of Ukrainian media reports and invited donors to focus on training of
journalists and pursuing certain media standards. According to the IMI representative, the problem did not lie in the authorities, not in their pressure anymore but rather in journalists themselves who were not willing to change. There is a
problem of paid content in Ukrainian media coverage. We put an emphasis namely on this [problem] and Americans took our
position into account. Unlike European donors that withdrew from Ukraine after 2004, US donors decided to stay in the
media sector. In interviewees words, US donors considered withdrawing in 57 years if everything continued to be ne but,
until then, they were ready to work on improving the quality of media reporting (IMI representative, 2011).
The Telekritika head Ligacheva also stressed that US support was essential in ghting the so-called jeansa, that is,
corruption in mass media (paid content, covert advertising, and so on). Since December 2006, the website Telekritika, which
advocates independent and impartial media, has merged into the Ukrainian business holding Glavred. Various grants obtained from Western donors (mostly, American) constituted 25 percent of Telekritikas annual budget and the rest of it was
nanced by the holding. Nevertheless, Western grants enabled Telekritika to retain the independence of its editorial policy.
Ligacheva acknowledged that sometimes Telekritika was pressured by holding owners to engage in jeansa but Telekritika
could resist them by saying: We cannot do this as we pursue independent editorial policies. We have received grants from
Western donors to monitor cases of covert advertising in Ukrainian media. [The cooperation with Western donors] is very
useful for you as owners of the holding because it improves your image abroad (Ligacheva, 2011).
3. Conclusions
The general hypothesis developed and tested in this article was largely refuted. We could not nd any reliable evidence
indicating that after the Orange Revolution US-funded democracy assistance programs in Ukraine were burdened by US
security interests and biased in favor of the US-friendly leadership. US governmental donors continued to focus on free and
fair electoral process, participation in US-funded training for political parties was not conned to the favored Orange camp
and interparliamentary cooperation between the US Congress and the Verkhovna Rada advanced even after allegedly proRussian parties had forged a ruling coalition.
Some indications of security-burdened assistance have been detected in the sectors of NGO development and media
strengthening. In the wake of the Orange Revolution, US governmental donors reduced their support for Ukrainian NGOs and
independent media, while diverting funds to Ukrainian state institutions. However, this shift can be explained by reasons
other than US security interests. The main idea behind those cuts was to revise the assistance strategy and adapt it to postrevolution realities in Ukraine. US donors decided to stop funding the institutional development of many NGOs and focus on
the implementation of particular projects that often involved cooperation between the most professional NGOs and Ukrainian state institutions. The other decision made by US donors was to cut funding for monitoring and watchdog activities in the
media sector and concentrate on the quality of media reporting instead. In both cases, the new approach produced quite many
Ukrainian civil society organizations that suddenly felt abandoned by US donors.
After having tested and refuted the hypothesis, it is of the utmost importance to discuss which assumptions and why
proved to be wrong. As outlined in the beginning of this article, the political bias in democracy assistance programs can occur
if the donor country is worried about the overall stability in the recipient country or if the donor country is interested to
prevent certain groups from coming to power. The results of the research suggest that the Bush administration either did not
consider the domestic political competition as a threat to stability in Ukraine or did not believe in the ability of the Orange
leadership to monopolize the power and govern efciently. Furthermore, US decision makers likely took into account deep
divisions within the Ukrainian society and the considerable support for Party of Regions in the eastern and southern parts of
the country. Therefore, the US government refrained from implementing its democracy assistance programs in a way, which
could be perceived as meddling in Ukraines internal affairs. As a result, US-funded programs did not explicitly favor the
Orange camp and discriminate other political forces alleged to be hostile to US interests.

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The relative strength of the opposition may be the key factor which makes the Ukrainian case different from the Georgian
one. Indeed, security-burdened US democracy assistance programs in Georgia reported by other authors may have become
possible due to the modest support base of Georgian opposition parties. The Rose leadership simply did not have equally
strong political rivals that would compete for their share of US assistance. However, to test this assumption, it is necessary to
conduct a comparative analysis of Georgian and Ukrainian cases. The present article has set a framework for such future
research.
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