Roman Washchuk: «Abnormal normalization of business conditions in Ukraine»

Roman Waschuk (also Roman Vashchuk, born 28 January 1962 in Toronto, Ontario) is a retired Canadian diplomat of Ukrainian ethnicity, Ambassador of Canada to Ukraine from 2014 to 2019, and Business Ombudsman in Ukraine since January 1, 2022. Andriy Kulykov of Hromadske Radio last spoke to Mr Washchuk for «Ukraine Calling», the English-language Hromadske Radio’s podcast, in September 2022.

After more than a year we have not talked to Mr Washchuk, what has changed in the work of the Business Ombudsman’s Office?

Roman Waschuk: I would say that there’s been abnormal normalization of business conditions. People got used to the new normal. There are elements of it that are genuinely new because of the full-scale or large-scale war situation, but others are unfortunate echoes of pre-February 2022 problems in the way Ukrainian state and municipalities interact with business.

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You may also read: «The incredible national unity»: Michael Druckman on Ukrainians’ views and moods

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Bureaucracy to the rescue

Andriy Kulykov: Will you characterize your activities as full-scale, or are they limited because of the abnormal normal conditions?

Roman Waschuk: I think our team is fully engaged, both in person or through Zoom visits to the regions. I am planning a visit to Poltava this coming week. We are on top of things, we are keeping to our appointed deadlines as for how long it takes to process complaints. We have a ten-day limit for preliminary assessment, and we are now at little more than seven days. We have 90 days as the term for trying to resolve issues, and our average now is in the mid-seventies.

So we have adapted to the new situation, and of course this was helped to a great extent by the fact that Ukraine’s courts, the administrative appeal system, the bureaucracy in general are operating, with all of the upsides and downsides that come with that.

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You may also read: Russian invasion of Ukraine: manifestation of collapse of Soviet Union?

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Equilateral triangle?

Andriy Kulykov: Who do you report to as Ukraine’s Business Ombudsman?

Roman Waschuk: This allows me to draw a triangle, because it is not a direct reporting relationship. We are equidistant, with independence when it comes to the state. We have a governance mechanism that has three partners, or three points in the triangle.
One is the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, together with the OECD (the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), and this is one corner. The other corner is the Ministry of Economy, representing the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine. And then in the third corner there is the coalition of five Ukrainian business associations: the American Chamber of Commerce, the European Business Association, the Ukrainian Chamber of Commerce, the Federation of Employers, and the Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs who represent the business constituency. We try to position ourselves in the middle of this triangle, so that we can be objective about the businesses that come to us, because we don’t take every complaint at face value. We look at them first, figure whether they fit our criteria, figure out whether the business is being honest about its complaint. There are some who are trying to exploit us and use us as a front for what are essentially dishonest deals, so we don’t take those.

Andriy Kulykov: Or you think that you don’t take those.

Roman Waschuk: Or we think that we don’t take those. Sometimes we discover only in the second phase that we were not able to discover the full extent of the problem on the company’s side. But in most cases the problem is in fact with the government agencies that have been overzealous or not zealous enough, applied something not using common sense or even going beyond the letter of the law in some cases or being so literal as to make it nonsensical.

For what happens after (and if) the Business Ombudsman’s Office finds that the grievances indicated in complaints are genuine, why they strive at out-of-court settlement of disputes, how soon after the case goes to court anyway the Office is out of the case, listen to the podcast on this page.

ALSO: «People who work in the Ukrainian government have asked me, ‘Roman, when in your time you were for three or four years with the government of Canada, were you afraid of being locked up in jail? ’ And I would go, ‘No, I don’t think so. I was afraid of being humiliated; I was afraid of being never promoted again; I was afraid of being not understood, of never being trusted again with managing a lot of money if I screwed up.’ But unless I actually went and strangled someone at the Embassy, I was not afraid of being locked up on criminal charges. However, I think that a lot of people in the Ukrainian government system are concerned about this.»

ALSO: The case of a former Deputy Minister of Agriculture «who in the initial days of the full-scale invasion was buying any sort of food, macaroni, whatever, to feed the army, at whatever price. And now all these rules that were designed to prevent corruption, and all these good things that the Western donors actually like, too, are now being used to say, “He exceeded his legal rights by buying macaroni that was above the average price for macaroni over one-year period.” Hello, it’s early March 2022, and any macaroni you can get your hands on is the stuff you want. Such things create a disincentive for good people to go into government. And those who are already in the government, it makes them super risk-averse.»

ALSO: «I think Ukraine is the world champion in using the word ‘corruption.’ This makes both Ukrainians and people abroad think that it is in fact the most corrupt country anywhere. I think it’s not. I think there are government integrity issues, no doubt about it. But part of it is because of perverse understandings of the law and incentives.»

ALSO: Why Mr Washchuk thinks the lowering of the level of support for Ukraine was, in some aspects, inevitable. «You can’t expect people all over the world to stay at the same emotional pitch as they were. Frankly, Ukrainians themselves are not at the same emotional pitch they were in, let’s say, April 2022. And, with the passage of time, more and more extraneous problems pop up around the world.»

ALSO: «In an ideal world, everyone would be objective, no one would have civilizational blinkers of any sort, but that’s not the world we live in. And when I say that Ukrainians should recognize and deal with that it means that even when a message or an approach worked well for you a year or six months ago, as situations in other countries evolve, over which you have no control, your own way of framing your message needs to evolve as well.»

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You may listen to the full interview by turning on the audio player at the top of the page.