Description
Following the violent clashes between Euromaidan protesters and police in February 2014, Yanukovych was removed from power, and eventually replaced by Petro Poroshenko after the May presidential elections. Poroshenko’s attention soon turned to internal reforms and asked western support to implement reform processes. Police reform was particularly high on the agenda, due to the lack of civil society trust in the Ukrainian police, resulting from longstanding high levels of corruption and the disproportionate violence used during the Euromaidan protests. This paper compares the EU and US approaches to police reform in Ukraine, focussing specifically on the application of the principle of local ownership in the early stages of support. Local ownership has been of key interest in studies looking into security sector reform (SSR), and is particularly relevant in the case of Ukraine, due to the challenging civil society-police relations. The essay will contribute to the second generation SSR debate by examining the extent to which US and EU approaches to police reform have reflected horizontal and vertical inclusivity.
