Quite an about face-from Yeltsinism.
Actually, I think it would probably be better for Ukraine if it was subordinated to Putin rather than Leonid Kuchma.
Chris Doss The Russia Journal
----------------------------- BBC Monitoring USA ready for return of Russian influence in Ukraine - Russian paper Source: Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Moscow, in Russian 29 Dec 01
When Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma announced the "Year of Russia" at the
end of 2001, he was giving a ceremonial gloss to political reality, the Russian heavyweight broadsheet Nezavisimaya Gazeta has noted. It adds that now that Russia and the USA are partners, Washington seems prepared to wind down its diplomatic offensive in Kiev, and leave the field open to Moscow. The article by journalist Taras Galyuk looks at how Russian influence is making itself felt in the run-up to the March 2002 parliamentary elections in Ukraine. It asks whether the activity of Russian PR companies is part of a concerted effort to influence the elections, and to lay the ground for the more crucial presidential election campaign in Ukraine in 2004. The following is an excerpt from an article by "and carried in Nezavisimaya Gazeta on 29 December. Subheadings have been inserted editorially:
Ukraine's new foreign-policy role was defined extremely clearly soon after the Belovezhskaya Pushcha accords [which formally put an end to the Soviet Union]. For Russia, it became the closest partner who simply could not be avoided. Ukraine blocked all Russian initiatives in the post-Soviet zone. The pattern was simple. When proposing any foreign-policy initiative to CIS states, Russia was first supposed to present it to Ukraine as the most senior of its partners. Ukraine would certainly reject the initiative, after which even the fact that it was unanimously adopted by all other CIS states could not rid it of a certain stigma. This happened to the Collective Security Treaty in May 1992 and to the CIS Charter in January 1993. Later, Ukraine refused full participation in the Economic Union Treaty. Generally, practically any collective decision made by the CIS was opposed by Ukraine. Thus, Ukraine proved to be a huge stumbling-block right in the middle of the
post-Soviet zone, preventing Russia from pursuing its geopolitical development.
In addition, it is important to note that Russia could not ignore Ukraine or
strongly pressurize it, because on each occasion it was confronted with the resistance of the Western patrons of the "independent state", which fact the
Ukrainian political elite deftly exploited...
Gleb Pavlovskiy, a noted expert on Russian-Ukrainian Relations, accurately defined the main principle of cooperation with the [Ukrainian] elite: "Let us stop trying to look for pro-Russian forces in Ukraine - they will surely let
us down". Nevertheless, Russia's Ukrainian policy has often boiled down specifically to attempts to find a pro-Russian element within the Ukrainian elite. The problem was that all the people it identified were equally pro-Russian and anti-Russian.
New US-Russian friendship returns Ukraine to Moscow's sphere
The sea change in Russian and US politics has significantly altered the balance of forces on the Ukrainian issue. The national-technocratic Putin regime appeared in Russia and then George W. Bush won the presidential elections in the United States. The recent events - terror attacks in New York, the triumphant advance of the antiterrorist coalition, and the virtual
amnesty announced by Russian on the Chechen issue - can be considered as signs of a radical change in the international climate, a new situation both
for Russian diplomacy and for Russia's erstwhile "best enemies".
The new US administration is embracing the "Rice doctrine" [that of National
Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice]. According to the logic of this, Russia has a right to special interests outside its borders and, consequently, to the special handling of Ukraine. The United States has abandoned its adherence to the old concept of the post-Soviet zone, which viewed Ukraine as an exclusive zone for American interests. Moreover, the analysts dealing with Russian diplomacy issues have recently mentioned something that, by analogy to a famous document which once determined the fate of Eastern Europe, can be called the "Ivanov-Rice pact" [Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Condoleezza Rice], a package of accords between the United States and Russia
on the post-Soviet zone. Naturally, it does not require the United States to
abandon Ukraine completely or give up all levers of influence there. It seems, however, that the ostentatious interest in the Ukrainian issue once displayed by America is history now. This means that Ukraine has less room to conduct its uncomplicated games...
Although the game on the Ukrainian field has become tougher and more organized, Moscow's position itself has also become tougher. Strange as it may seem, Russian influence on Ukraine started to increase after the two countries and peoples got a kind of psychological divorce, and the Russians stopped perceiving the Ukrainians as simply "our own people". It is hard to say when exactly this happened. Most probably it was when Russia acquired its own "experience", which Ukraine lacks, namely, the Chechen war experience. Today Russia is a country that has conducted and won a war. Ukraine has not gone through this. And now Ukraine has gone from being "native blood" to a "zone of influence", where Russia has started unsentimentally to apply all the political technologies it has devised in the past grim decade.
Ukrainian elections: Are Russian PR companies part of a concerted strategy?
The 2004 presidential elections are the main intrigue on which prospects for
Russian-Ukrainian relations depend. It is not certain at this point whether Leonid Kuchma will run for a third term: Legislation offers him such a possibility, while the vague declarations that he makes every now and then on his departure and possible successors can be retracted at any time.
The relatively low popularity rating of Yuliya Tymoshenko [former Ukrainian deputy prime minister] and her associates from the antipresidential coalition shows that the protest potential of the Ukrainian population has run out of steam. Events are likely to unfold in similar fashion to the Yeltsin-Putin scenario, which means that we will see a smooth, painless but no less revolutionary succession of power. The main point of difference from the Russian transfer of power is that the aforementioned foreign-policy context is more important in Ukraine.
We should hardly expect any global changes from the parliamentary elections that are to be held in Ukraine in late March of 2002. Everyone is more inclined to see them as a rehearsal before the future presidential elections. Election campaigns reveal not only the internal political balance of forces but also a configuration of forces that influence Ukrainian politics from the outside, including from Russia...
The Kiev weekly Polityka i Kultura [Politics and Culture], which is published in Ukrainian and known for its quite radical pro-independence orientation, offers an interesting, even if not indisputable, theory. Its observer believes that three well-known Moscow groups of consultants, who now work for three mutually competing political movements, have managed to coordinate their activity and support different stretches of the same front (the Kremlin front, to be sure). The For a United Ukraine bloc brings together representatives of the present political nomenklatura, such as Prime Minister [Anatoliy] Kinakh, the head of the presidential administration, [Volodymyr] Lytvyn, and others. They seem to be an exact analogy to the Russian Unity party: a party of power doomed to victory. There is some suspicion, however,
that the bloc is serving as a "place of exile" for high-level officials: So far, it has not climbed to the top of the popularity ratings and will hardly
manage to boost its popularity significantly before the elections. The bloc will most probably get over the 4-per cent threshold required to make it to the Supreme Council [Ukrainian parliament] but it will hardly achieve spectacular results. This will allow the president some time in the future to purge the executive on the quite legitimate grounds that "the people do not support you". This bloc's election campaign is managed by the Niccolo M group. Considering the particular reputation of this Russian company, the journalist supposes that its role is to act as a "team of undertakers" for that part of the Ukrainian elite that has outlived its operational life.
The campaign of the Ukrainian social democrats (which is quite energetic and
extensive, particularly in the hinterland) is handled by the Russian company
FEP. The head of the United Social Democratic Party, Viktor Medvedchuk, who recently stepped down as deputy speaker of the Ukrainian parliament, is thought likely to stand for president. Unlike For a United Ukraine, his party unites not the outgoing but, on the contrary, the young, up and coming members of the state elite - first and foremost, the regional high-and medium-level leaders. The observer believes that the role that Gleb Pavlovskiy plays as United Social Democratic Party consultant is to "bind his clients to their commitments to Moscow and use them in the future as Russian
agents of influence".
Finally, Polityka i Kultura mentions the bloc of Valeriy Khoroshkovskyy, although under its old name NLO [New Liberal Union], which was invented by journalists [NLO is the Russian acronym for UFO]. The bloc's main consultant
is Petr Shchedrovitskiy, who is known for his close relations with the Russian Union of Right Forces, particularly Sergey Kiriyenko. Polityka i Kultura believes that it is planned to mould the young entrepreneur with impressive movie-star looks into a Ukrainian Kiriyenko, the leader of the country's emerging business elite who would certainly have pro-Russian orientation. Let us note that Khoroshkovskiy's campaign is remarkable not only for is showy advertising but also for its working methods, unusual for Ukraine. It announced a contest, in which anyone can compete for a place on the party's electoral ticket. According to the devisors, this should make a striking contrast to the closeness and clannish nature of the Ukrainian political elite.
It is known, however, that similar contests are held in Russia as well. In particular, they are organized by the same Sergey Kiriyenko in the Volga District. Announced after the semifinals of the personnel contest, the new, and this time official, name of the union proved to be quite perplexing: the
Winter Crop Generation Team...
Decades of Russia?
The theory described in the weekly is too logical and symmetrical to be quite credible. Fear always exaggerates and there is nothing surprising about the fact that the Ukrainian journalist perceives the actions of political consultants from Moscow as components of the same wily plan. But the article
at least expresses the Ukrainian expectations and fears arising from the presence of Moscow political consultants. Russia has lost much in the past decade but there is also much it has learnt. One of its new assets is its ability to set realistic goals both in its domestic and foreign policies, as
well as to achieve them by pragmatic means. The elections in March will hardly usher a new generation into Ukrainian politics or make the general attitude towards Russia more friendly. There is no doubt, however, that for many currently influential politicians on the ballot papers, the "Year of Russia", which was announced recently by President Kuchma, will extend for decades.