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Last Updated: Aug 26, 2008 - 1:29:27 PM |
Yesterday, President Viktor Yushchenko publicly called for Ukraine to
“join NATO quickly,” apparently in response to the recent conflict in
South Ossetia. This appeal reflects deepening concerns about how
Ukraine should respond to the crisis, and there seems to be little
agreement within Ukraine’s own political ranks on how to proceed. While
the Ukrainian president has fixed his eyes on NATO, the prime minister
has been reluctant to do so for fear of alienating pro-Russian voters.
While the echo of this war has reverberated all throughout the former
Soviet space and the CIS, nowhere has the fallout been felt as strongly
as in Ukraine. The obvious parallels with Georgia in its troubled
relations with Moscow (rulers brought to power by a “colored
revolution,” aspirant to NATO and EU membership, a large Russian
speaking population, potentially explosive tensions with Russia over
Crimea and Sevastopol) have made it a center of attention. Unlike
Georgia, however, in Ukraine the conflict in the Caucasus has proved a
catalyst for division rather than unity.
Yushchenko was quick to show solidarity with Georgia, flying to Tbilisi
to be photographed alongside Mikheil Saakashvili and threatening not to
allow ships from Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, which took part in
operations off the Georgian coast, to return to their base at
Sevastopol. Meanwhile, say Yushchenko’s supporters, his prime minister
and former orange revolution ally Julia Tymoshenko has been
suspiciously silent. So silent that some in the president’s camp
accused the prime minister of “betraying the national interest.” Later,
Yushchenko’s deputy chief of staff Andriy Kislynsky made more specific
allegations: seeking Russian support in the 2009 Ukrainian presidential
elections in exchange for taking a passive position on Georgia.
The accusations may or may not be based on fact. Kislynsky said
materials were being passed to the state prosecutor’s office that would
prove Tymoshenko’s treason, but as Andrew Wilson, senior fellow at the
European Council of Foreign Relations cautioned, “Ukraine has a grand
tradition of black PR.” Either way, the linking of Tymoshenko’s
betrayal with the election is revealing. The rivalry between president
and prime minister has a long history, and it is no secret that both
are focusing on next year’s presidential race. “Of course it is
Yushchenko’s ambition to be president for a second term, and
Tymoshenko’s ambition to become president too. And these accusations
about Tymoshenko’s contacts with Russia – it’s not serious,” said
Marcin Wociechowski, an expert on Ukraine for the Polish Gazeta
Wyborcza daily and former member of the Polish-Ukrainian committee.
The focus on the presidency offers another explanation for Tymoshenko’s
apparent reticence. “She has done the same thing before on other NATO
issues, for the very understandable reason of where her electorate is
and where she wants to expand it. She’s the single Ukrainian politician
best placed to bridge regional divides – particularly between the
nationalist west and the largely Russian speaking south,” said Wilson.
Taking a “carefully nuanced position” on Georgia and other issues
likely to rile Russia or Ukraine’s Russian population thus makes
political sense.
Despite Kislynsky’s accusations that Tymoshenko’s pragmatism has
finally crossed “the boundary where political battles end and the
betrayal of national interests begins,” there is a sense that behind
the public acrimony, the war in Georgia has actually scared Ukraine’s
elite into pushing for NATO membership even harder.
“I think before the Georgian war, Tymoshenko was sceptical about
joining NATO,” said Wociechowski. “But after the war, her advisors said
Ukraine can no longer be in this zone of insecurity between the East
and the West. That suggests she is finally for joining NATO.”
“On balance,” agreed Wilson, “It seems to have pushed things in that
direction. Depending, of course, on the other side of the coin: are
NATO and the European Union prepared to offer slightly more?” At a NATO
summit in Bucharest in April the alliance promised Ukraine membership
at an unspecified future date. Yushchenko and Tymoshenko will now be
looking for something more concrete.
That would be a significant shift. Caught between the pro-Western
sentiments of its elite and the more pro-Russian sympathies of much of
the general public (not to mention dependency on Russian gas), Ukraine
has traditionally trodden a careful path between East and West. But
with the war in Georgia, said Wociechowski, “the era of two vectors in
Ukrainian foreign policy is over.”
It is not clear, though, how the Russian vector will be closed. Ukraine
still relies on Russian gas, and is vulnerable to other levers of
Russian influence. Other measures, such as Yushchenko’s decree
demanding prior notification of movements of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet,
may prove not only unworkable but also counterproductive. Following the
decree, Russian ships nevertheless returned to Sevastopol from
operations off Georgia, apparently unhindered. As Wilson pointed out,
that has given rise to the fear in some quarters that “Ukraine might be
worse off having drawn attention to the fact that it can’t actually
control the movements of the Black Sea Fleet.”
Actually, there is some evidence that both sides understand that their
room for maneuvres is limited. “Yushchenko may not have been quite as
carefully nuanced, but what he said in Tbilisi on the 12th was more
solidarity with Georgia than direct criticism of Russia,” Wilson noted.
Waclaw Radziwinowcz, Kiev-based correspondent for Gazeta Wybrcza who
was in Tbilisi at the time, said that Yushchenko behaved visibly more
cautiously than Polish President Lech Kaczynski. “He let Kaczynski make
the cruder statements,” he said.
That common moderation seems to belie the claims, implicit in the
recent accusations against Tymoshenko, of a great policy gulf between
her and the president. It also underlines the difficulties of Ukraine’s
position.
While the hands of the Ukrainian leaders are thus bound by current
realities, much will depend on how far Russia is prepared to go to stop
it from entering NATO. Moscow has plenty of potential levers. The
continued presence of the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol is one. NATO
countries may not host non-NATO military bases, and the impotence of
Yushchenko’s decree has revealed just how difficult it will be to evict
the Russian fleet.
But the lease on Sevastopol only runs until 2017, and Yushchenko, at
least, says he will not renew it. That may prompt the Kremlin to look
for other measures. A particularly ruthless Russia could challenge
Ukraine’s sovereignty over the historically Russian (and largely
Russian populated) Crimean peninsula. Pronouncements by prominent
Russian politicians, including the mayor of Moscow, about the
“unresolved” status of Sevastopol have already stoked tensions.
Then there is the gas. Russia famously turned off the taps in 2005, and
Ukrainian politicians remain acutely aware of their reliance on
subsidized Russian energy. Gazprom has been loudly announcing its
intention to charge world prices to all its formerly subsidized CIS
clients since last year, making gas a particularly touchy subject in
Kiev (both sides have fallen foul of this. In 2006, Yushchenko was
connected with RosUkrEnergo and an unfavorable gas deal with Russia;
last week another Yushchenko staffer, Alexander Shapak, accused
Tymoshenko of entering into a “gas conspiracy” with Moscow – under
which price rises would be delayed until after the election).
It is unclear how far Russia will go in using any of these tools, but
as long as Ukraine’s leaders are determined to join NATO, it is likely
that it will use them to some extent. “For Moscow they are the same,”
said Wociechowski. “Except Tymoshenko is much smarter than Yushchenko.
She will do it with less aggressive rhetoric.” That may be unfair, but
whoever becomes Ukraine’s next president (and at this point polls
suggest that it will be Tymoshenko) they will need every ounce of guile
he ors
he can muster to navigate Ukraine out of the “insecurity zone.”
Source:Ocnus.net 2008
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