Transcript of interview with acting US Ambassador to Ukraine William B. Taylor Jr.
The following is an edited transcript of an interview conducted on Dec. 26 with acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William B. Taylor by Brian Bonner of the Kyiv Post, Ivan Verstyuk of Novoye Vremya, Sergiy Sydorenko of European Pravda, Mykola Siruk of Day newspaper, and Milan Lelych of RBK-Ukraina. I encourage all Anons to read this.
Acting U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine William B. Taylor Jr. on Dec. 26, 2019:
Introductory remarks Just to start off. I’ve been to the Prosecutor General’s Office. The Prosecutor General’s Office has just gone through a major re-attestation of all the prosecutors at the headquarters. They’ve had to take a series of tests — one about the law, another on general competence and another, the third, was an interview process where they interviewed all of these current prosecutors. So 55 percent did not pass. This is a major reform and a major reboot. They changed the name as well. It’s the Office of the Prosecutor General, rather than the Prosecutor General’s Office, which I’m told has implications in Ukrainian. They say it’s less Soviet. I was very impressed with that. So I am hoping you will cover that more broadly. I am pleased to talk with you all this afternoon and answer any questions, kind of at the end of my tour. I leave a week from today actually. I’m sure I’ll be back. As many of you know, I continue to turn up here over the years in Ukraine and I will continue to do that. This part of my tour has ended and, just to be clear, we all understood…that this was a temporary tour for me. There is a limited amount of time people can serve without Senate confirmation. There’s a law that says you can serve 210 days without Senate confirmation.
Q: But you haven’t hit that 210 days, it would be late January by my calculation, since you arrived on June 18. A: No, it would have been early January. That comes up and I will be heading out. I don’t know if I’m going back to the United States Institute of Peace [where he served as executive vice president.] But I will take a little time off.
Q: There’s another agency that’s not so impressive about reforms. What about the Security Service of Ukraine reforms — are they trying to keep the functions that shouldn’t be part of their powers? A: They are having a robust debate, a serious conversation about what goes into SBU (as the Security Service of Ukraine is known) reforms. We’ve made recommendations, the international community has made recommendations about what they should be focused on — counter-intelligence and securing secrets and not economic investigations, and maybe not so many of them [the agency has 40,000 employees]. These would be good reforms.
Q: The draft law is already ready at Bankova [the President’s Office]. A: I am told they are still working on it. If you’ve heard there is already a draft?
Q: They’ve already drafted it. A: I heard there was a draft that went to the presidential administration and they sent it back and said you didn’t get it quite right. That may be a couple of weeks ago. That’s why I say there’s still a debate.
Q: What’s your assessment of other reforms — anti-corruption and judiciary. What’s next to be done? A: They passed law 1088 on the judiciary and now the implementation is the big issue. This was a discussion of a lot of debate. The international community had mixed views. There was a whole debate about the size of the Supreme Court — should it be 200, should it be 100 — if smaller, how to decide which justices are retested. So a lot of questions. The implementation will be important.
Q: Isn’t the ultimate test of legal reform how many crimes are solved? A: The ultimate test is how many are solved, certainly, and another issue is how many cases come to the Supreme Court. They argue there are so many cases pending, such a backlog of cases, that to reduce the number of judges will increase the backlog, increase the time before they can get all the cases done. Part of the reform will be to limit the number of cases that come to the Supreme Court. So they don’t have to make a decision on every case new. That there can accept precedent. I understand that’s not the case here. They have to start over, hear each case, about matter of law. Certainly, the right answer will be how many people go to jail and how many cases will be heard. The number of justices and cases, whether there’s precedent, that will be taken into account.
https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/transcript-of-interview-with-acting-us-ambassador-to-ukraine-william-b-taylor-jr.html