Leadership Lessons from Ukraine
A Conversation with Robert Homans
Robert Homans is a business finance and micro-credit expert with over 25 years of experience. Mr. Homans is the former Founder and CEO of Norden Capital, a specialty lender and lease broker based in Los Angeles, a resident of Ukraine as of 2006, former executive of Access to Credit Initiative (ATCI), a USAID-funded technical assistance project with activities in Ukraine and Moldova, and a consultant to international donors and financial services companies in Ukraine, other countries in the former Soviet Union, the Middle East, Sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia. Mr. Homans received a bachelor’s degree from Harvard College in 1969, a Master’s in International Administration from the School for International Training in 1973, and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1977. Mr. Homans also served in the US Navy as a Lieutenant and is currently a member in the US-Ukraine Business Council (USUBC).
Arlene Brock/Anthony Mohr: Bob, thank you very much for your time and willingness to be interviewed about your views on the war in Ukraine. What do you believe are the leadership lessons from Ukraine’s organizational tactics and how effective have they been?
Robert Homans: They've been extremely effective. I believe that how the Ukrainian Armed Forces are organized and led is Ukraine’s “secret sauce.” It goes back 400 to 500 years to the Cossacks’ experience. Their organization incorporates a cultural tradition called “hundreds” — essentially small groups that make local decisions and can execute them effectively. This is reminiscent of the early colonies at the beginning of the American Revolution. Committees of Correspondence and Committees of Public Safety are similar to today’s civil society groups in Ukraine, which serve as a kind of shadow government at all levels of government in Ukraine. During the mid-1770s, the Committees of Correspondence and Public Safety sprang up in colonial cities. These service organizations served as a kind of shadow government to the British colonial administration. Similarly, as a result of Ukraine’s “Hundreds” tradition, combined with the military training received from Western countries, commanders of small local units, like sergeants and lieutenants have proven to be extremely effective since the Russian invasion because they can make tactical decisions on their own quickly and not run it up a chain of command. I also believe that the Ukrainian Armed Forces has been able to more easily accept and incorporate this structure, advice and training because it mirrored their own cultural traditions.
During the Revolution of Dignity, from 2013 to 2014, people came down to Independence Square as a sign of protest against the Ukrainian government's decision to decline signing a free trade and association agreement with the European Union. On the night of November 30/December 1, 2013, then-President Viktor Yanukovych's Interior Ministry police beat up several dozen students who were protesting in Independence Square, precipitating what came to be known as the Revolution of Dignity. For months, ordinary Ukrainians, acting on individual initiative and through civil society groups, organized the Euromaidan uprisings and forced Viktor Yanukovych from office in February 2014.
I believe based to this history of the determination and strength of the Ukrainian people, Ukraine was able to build up its Army from almost nothing in the eight years between Russia’s invasion of Crimea in 2014 to today. Now there is an effective military organization made up of small units that can make ad hoc decisions on the ground due to their local command structure. At least earlier in the war, when the Russians attempted to take Kyiv, I think this caused an incredible amount of confusion among the Russians, because they really didn't know what direction Ukrainians were coming from. That type of strategy is not working as well in the Donbas, where the war is more of a “set piece” encounter incorporating large concentrations of artillery. I think it is still working in the southern part of Ukraine, including in and around the City of Kherson, where Ukrainians are having some success with counter attacks. There's also significant partisan activity in Southern Ukraine; they’re blowing up bridges, liquidating Russian sympathizers. They're doing a lot of different things.
Brock/Mohr: What else would you like to add about Ukrainian resilience?
Homans: In addition to the people, weapons from the Western countries are needed. There is a graphic done by thermal satellite imaging that shows the volume of shelling that took place between July 7th, 8th and 9th compared with what went on between July 10th, 11th and 12th. Mapping from commercial satellites shows a drop off in Russian shelling. It’s most likely a result of these new weapons the US has been supplying to Ukraine — multiple launch rocket systems, called “HIMARS,” that have a range of up to 80 kilometers. I think they may have knocked out over 20 Russian ammunition dumps.
The Ukrainians originally asked for the multiple launch rockets systems in April. A friend of mine who is a very is a well-known anti-corruption activist was part of the delegation that came to ask for those weapons. Their request wasn't granted until June. You know you can't just ship them to Ukraine. You have to have some training. I would expect that the US will start delivering more because the Ukrainians have done an incredibly good job, not only using the weapons, but also protecting them. They only fire them at night, I think. Because they only have eight of these now — they’re getting four more — if they lose one, it's a big deal. I think they think they should have gotten it earlier, but I think that number one, the US was careful about wanting to see that Ukraine could use them effectively. And number two, I’m not sure how many the US has in their own stocks. That's a real problem. Wesley Clark, retired commander of NATO forces in Europe, has said the same thing. One of the reasons that I believe President Biden went to the Middle East back in July 2022 was that he's hoping to get some of the Middle Eastern countries to supply Ukraine with Soviet weapons which they know how to use.
Brock/Mohr: What about Ukraine’s ability to continue to export grain, like wheat, and gas?
Homans: What the retaking by Ukraine of Snake Island, back in June 2022, did was open up two ports at the mouth of the Danube River. Snake Island doesn’t have the loading facilities that Odesa does, but they can get ships in there to move grains, probably with the cooperation of Moldova. Ukraine is getting some relief that way, but they really do need to open up those big Black Sea ports like Odesa. As a stopgap, grain is being moved by train, however the rail link goes over a bridge from Odesa which I believe the Russians have bombed at least four times.
I read a report put together by the Kyiv of School of Economics that estimated Russia has stolen over $613 million worth of grains and oilseeds. Southern Ukraine is a big vegetable and fruit growing region, famous for its cherries. There are rumors that a lot of produce has either been stolen and sold in Crimea, or it has simply been destroyed.
In the medium-to-long term, with or without the existing gas pipeline network, Ukraine needs to move away from reliance on transit fees paid by Gazprom. At the start of the war, the “grey economy” accounted for at least 30% of Ukraine’s GDP. Reducing the percentage of the "grey economy" — the portion of Ukraine’s GDP operating outside normal reporting, like paying taxes, properly registering as a business, recognizing revenue, etc — and "de-oligarchization" would make up for the loss of gas transit revenues many times over. With Nord Stream 1 pipelinesshut down to undergo maintenance (and now destroyed), Ukraine needs to start developing the energy reserve resources that they already have. Apparently, there are large gas deposits offshore in the Black Sea and significant gas deposits in the eastern part of the country. There are a lot of theories that the energy reserves are one of the reasons why the Russians want Ukraine so badly. The second thing that Ukraine needs to work on more is energy efficiency. Ukraine uses a lot of gas relative to output. For example, they have a very inefficient communal heating system that dates back to Soviet times.
Brock/Mohr: How do you think Ukraine will emerge from the war?
Homans: Ukraine is going to emerge far stronger than it did when it went in because the civil society over the years had become almost a shadow government. Trust in the regular government by ordinary Ukrainians used to be very low. Civil society is now a major factor in supporting the military and has been since at least 2014.
To give some background, there's been a huge growth in Ukrainian civil society since 2000, when the first major anti-government demonstration took place. After former President Leonid Kuchma was accused of ordering the murder of a prominent journalist, ushering in the movement called “Ukraine Without Kuchma” in 2000, the growth of civil society in Ukraine really took off with the support of multilateral and bilateral agencies. The UNDP is there; USAID is there. German and British aid agencies were all involved. I'm sure other EU organizations were as well. Their work fell on very fertile ground.
In 2015, there was another example of civilian action. There was a big battle for the airport in Donetsk, which is in Eastern Ukraine, against pro-Russian separatists along with regular Russian troops. Eventually the Ukrainian army withdrew. The way that the Ukraine troops were getting resupplied was basically by civilians driving pickup trucks with supplies in the back — driving through extremely dangerous areas where they were subjected to hostile fire. The troops weren't getting resupplied by the army; a lot of it came from civilians.
There is also a very strong tradition of crowdfunding, both from within Ukraine and from outside. For example, there is the Lv’iv Entrepreneurs Group, a civil society organization made up of local businesspeople in the western Ukrainian city of Lv’iv. During the Revolution of Dignity, these small business owners raised $100,000 in just one day from within their own group, as well as from the Greek Catholic Church and Ukraine Catholic University. And that's just one city.
This type of activity has continued, and I’m sure that they are just as active now as they were then. That's one of the things that belies the narrative that the Russians like to put forward — that overthrowing the government of former President Viktor Yanukovych was a fascist coup organized and financed by the US. It was organized by Ukrainians, like the group I just described. The US was originally taken by surprise at how this happened, and I don't believe that the US provided any money to support the protests, except perhaps for the cookies that former Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland passed out to the protestors during one of her visits.
Ukrainian civil society groups and the military are joined at the hip. As I mentioned previously, in February 2014, the Ukrainian armed forces consisted of only 6,000 combat ready troops. This was after the Russian invasion and annexation of Crimea. Six to nine months later, they nearly drove the Russians and their proxies out of the Donbas, and it was only a major attack by the Russians that stopped them in September 2014. This relationship between the military and civil society has only grown over the succeeding eight years.
Another example is a woman named Anna Kovalenko, an art critic I think at that time. In late 2013, she showed up in a meeting with a book under her arm that had a bunch of illustrations showing how the ancient Romans set up barriers to protect their camps. She said, maybe that could be a good template for setting up barriers around Independence Square. Other people in the meeting said, “Get out of here. We have more important things to do than to listen to what the Romans did a couple of thousand years ago.” So, she left. A couple of days later, they gave her a phone call and asked her to come back, and many of the barriers designed came from that book. Later, she became a commander of a woman's volunteer battalion. She then went to Washington on a six-month fellowship at the Wilson Center, which used to be run by Jane Harman. She studied civilian control of the military. Then she went back and became an advisor to both the Defense Ministry and the Defense Committee of the Parliament. She also became Governor of Chernihiv, north of Kyiv, which was a major site of fighting early in the war. She is now a member of Parliament. There many stories like this — civilians volunteering and taking leadership roles with the result being that the trajectory of their lives changed completely.
Brock/Mohr: As we are discussing the civilians and military, an issue that deflects from wholescale support of Ukraine in some quarters is what appears to be the awarding of chevrons to the Azov Battalion and potentially other forms of acceptance of fascist fighting forces into the Ukrainian Armed Forces. What are your thoughts on this?
Homans: Regarding Azov, you are asking the wrong question about the wrong organization. Azov has always been a military formation. It has never had a political wing. There are members of the Azov Battalion who likely have extreme right-wing tendencies, and there are members of Azov who don't. Instead, your question should be directed toward the "Right Sector" and to a lesser extent Svoboda. Both are political organizations, but neither has any influence in Ukraine except at the extreme margins. Svoboda did very well in the 2012 Parliamentary elections, during Yanukovych’s presidency, but they were wiped out in the next Parliamentary election in 2014. They didn't even make the 5% threshold required to enter Parliament. The Right Sector has, as far as I recall, never received more than 2% of the vote. Since then, there has not been a far-right party that came even close to entering Parliament. There is no current evidence that far-right political organizations have any influence in Ukraine except at the extreme margins, consisting of organizing occasional demonstrations.
Note that in November 2014, Azov, along with several other volunteer groups established during the Revolution of Dignity, were incorporated into the Armed Forces of Ukraine. As I mentioned earlier, at the time of the Crimea invasion the Ukrainian Army consisted of only 6,000 combat-ready soldiers. Ukraine was faced with a choice: either incorporate those groups that were already organized and possessed some experience, or slowly build up strength through enlistment and the draft (conveniently, the Yanukovych Administration had destroyed all the Government's draft records). From early 2014, if Ukraine was to hold back advances by Russians and separatists, it had no choice but to incorporate these groups, including Azov. Members of Azov are now considered heroes in Ukraine because of their brave defense of the City of Mariupol. Many are now in Russian prisons where they have been subjected to abuses and torture.
Now when we contrast the lack of success of far-right parties in Ukraine with the substantial influence far-right parties are achieving in EU Member States (such as the National Front in France, AfD in Germany, and Fidusz in Hungary), the far-right in Ukraine is dwarfed in comparison.
Brock/Mohr: We have seen this Russian threat unite all Ukrainians and increase their support for democratic values. What is your advice on how Ukraine can build back better?
When Ukraine rebuilds, the society is going to resemble Israel in terms of military service. For example, everybody is fighting now, and very few people are dodging the draft. People who are not actually in the army, for example women, are doing an incredible job volunteering. I have a friend who was part of an all-women sniper team. She has now segued into training drone operators. Ukraine will emerge armed to the teeth, and you will probably see something along the lines of the Iron Dome. Some people have asked why didn’t Israel give something like the Iron Dome to Ukraine? I believe, first, they don't want to offend the Russians. But second, the Iron Dome would not work against the kind of cruise missiles the Russians are firing. It’s designed to work against the small rockets that Hamas sends up.
My hope for Ukraine post-war is to be an economy driven by the enterprise and creativity of Ukrainians, perhaps a combination of examples set by the three Ukrainian founders of Grammarly and other successful Ukrainian start-ups, and the enterprise and leadership shown by the Ukrainian Army’s response to the Russian invasion, applied to both business and public service.
Brock/Mohr: Do you believe the Ukraine that emerges will be free from corruption?
Homans: I do not know. But what bothers me the most about corruption is the small-scale stuff. For example, things like stealing money from capital funds contributed by residents living in older apartments. Those funds are supposed to be used to replace elevators. Some of the common areas of older apartments are run using something called the ZhEK System, governed by the districts that are usually sub-units within cities. There's a lot of corruption within the ZhEK system. Another example, coming from the Lv’iv Entrepreneurs Group, is a scheme that involves recycling motor oil. It involves a lot of money. Significant corruption happens nationwide but it’s often the little, everyday corruption that impacts small businesses and ordinary people.
I had a meeting with the head of the IMF in Ukraine, and I started talking about small-scale corruption. He had no idea this was going on, because his focus was on the big stuff — what’s happening in the Supreme Court or the district courts. Corruption in the judiciary is a real problem and must be addressed. Still too often it's the small-scale stuff that really hurts the people.
In the last couple of years, Ukraine has instituted a decentralization program where money from the federal government is sent back to local governments to use as they see fit. This decentralized funding has been, as far as I can tell, a huge success because the ordinary citizens living in these villages know what's going on. They know that their mayor and city council have this money, and they're starting to pay more attention to it.
Brock/Mohr: You are involved in the certified leasing specialist program or CLS. How does that program factor into both the Ukraine leadership and the issue of corruption?
My career has been in commercial finance. I went to Ukraine in 2005 to work on a USAID technical assistance project. One of the sub projects was creating an organization for people who worked in the equipment finance business, which was called the CLS and stands for certified leasing specialists. To become a certified leasing specialist, you had to work in the industry for at least a year. You also had to attend training for three consecutive weekends, and each weekend was a different module. Then, you had to take three exams, one for each module, and if you passed all three, you became a certified leasing specialist. The certificates were jointly awarded by the Ukrainian Union of Lessors and the Foundation, based in the US.
When I left the project, they had around about 100 certified leasing specialists in both Ukraine and Moldova. It was then expanded to Belarus, and eventually they had about 400 certified leasing specialists. So, unlike many technical assistance projects, this one actually had tangible results after the project ended. To address the corruption part of your question, the US felt strongly about this project because the specialists were certified. Previously, many parts of the education industry in Ukraine was corrupt — you could buy degrees. My understanding is that today it is far better than that it was back then.
Brock/Mohr: Who do you believe is going to win this war, and why?
Homans: My answer is that Ukraine will win. Over the next couple of months we will continue seeing Ukraine push the Russians back — especially with the combination of the successes that Ukraine is having with weapons they are getting from the West, and with what we hear about the lack of Russian morale among Russian troops and their use of 1960s era T-62 tanks. Ukraine is pushing the door, but I really do think that their partisan groups are going to be the ones to kick it open. There's been very little attention paid to them, and the partisans have been around for a long time. There have been far-sighted Ukrainians who started organizing these groups back in 2014. They saw the real threat that Russia would become.
Brock/Mohr: What could the average person do to assist or create a social impact in Ukraine at this point? Or help Ukraine in the war?
Try to find organizations that either work directly in Ukraine, with Ukrainian counterparts, or Ukrainian organizations. HarvardCAN is an organization founded by Harvard graduates, and they’re doing some amazing things. Personally, I’m contributing directly to friends who are engaged in the military. Please feel free to reach out to me (roberthomans@gmail.com), and I would be happy to provide additional organizations. For example, two churches in Islesboro, Maine contacted me to see if they could support a church in Ukraine. With the assistance of my wife, stepdaughter, and her friend, I put those two Islesboro churches in touch with a Ukrainian Orthodox church in a small city south of Kyiv. My stepdaughter’s friend’s family are members of that parish. The churches in Islesboro have held group walks in support of Ukraine, and they will be taking special collections, the proceeds of which will go to the Ukrainian parish.
Brock/Mohr: Thank you, that is a very generous offer. Also, thank you so much for your time.
Homans: It's my pleasure.
About the Authors:
Arlene Brock is a Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative Senior Fellow. Prior to ALI, she was Director of the African Ombudsman Research Centre that trains the 40+ National Ombudsmen throughout Africa. She previously served as Bermuda’s first National Ombudsman, a family magistrate, negotiation and mediation trainer (with late Roger Fisher’s Conflict Management Inc.), labour arbitrator and an insolvency litigator. Recently, she returned to Bermuda to revive The Adult Education School — a second chance for Learners who slipped through the cracks of traditional education.
Anthony J. Mohr is a 2021 Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative Fellow and has over twenty-six years of service within the criminal and civil justice system at the state level. He most recently sat on the Superior Court of California in Los Angeles County, where he presided over civil and felony trials. Earlier, he was a judge of the Los Angeles Municipal Court, and in private legal practice. Among his numerous professional affiliations, Anthony served on the Executive Committee of the Los Angeles Superior Court and chaired both the Superior Court’s ethics review and response committee and the statewide Committee on Judicial Ethics of the California Judges Association. He serves on the Regional Board of the Anti-Defamation League’s Los Angeles Region.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.