Russia back in fashion as Ukraine as 'orange revolution' founders AFP
MOSCOW Sept 27-They took power vowing to cast off Russian shackles and cozy up to the West. Not a year later, Ukraine's divided "orange revolution" leaders are lining up to receive Moscow's blessing and the Kremlin is once again playing kingmaker in its southern Slavic neighbor.
First President Viktor Yushchenko fired his prime minister and revolutionary cohort, Yulia Tymoshenko. Then he made a deal with his pro-Russian political nemesis, Viktor Yanukovich, and said his new prime minister would go Moscow to confer with Russian leaders as quickly as possible.
The jilted Tymoshenko beat him to the punch, praising President Vladimir Putin and making a furtive dash to Moscow -- she never visited while prime minister -- to meet prosecutors, who promptly dropped their warrant for her arrest in connection with a bribery probe.
Suddenly, Putin is voicing support for Yushchenko and plans to visit him in Kiev next month, Yanukovich has escaped from the political boondocks and all roads seem to lead to the Kremlin, which looks again like the real locus of power in Ukraine.
What about the angry masses who protested in the freezing streets of Kiev last year, decrying the previous Ukrainian regime's suspect bonds to Moscow? What about Yushchenko's promises to lead Ukraine away from Russia and into western Europe? Where did the "orange revolution" go?
"It's a post-revolutionary hangover," said Yury Korgunyuk, political expert with the INDEM think tank in Moscow. "After the 'orange revolution,' whatever government came to power would sooner or later have had to repair relations with Russia.
"Russia is the country from which money, and lots of it, comes to Ukraine. There is no way around this. Ukraine's economy depends heavily on Russia. All the talk about 'turning West' was euphoric. The fact is Russia and Ukraine have long and close ties that neither can do without."
Under a European Union-brokered compromise at the height of the political crisis in Ukraine last year, key presidential prerogatives are to be transferred to parliament at elections next March -- polls looming as the most important event on Ukraine' political calendar for years ahead.
Even those most dedicated to the nationalist, Ukrainian-speaking, pro-Western "orange" movement strongest in the mainly agrarian west of the country understand that to win in next spring's parliamentary elections they must also secure support in the industrialized, Russian-speaking east.
And winning that support, analysts say, depends in large measure on signals sent to those voters from Russia itself, where much of the ruling elite privately regards Ukraine not just as within Moscow's traditional "sphere of influence" but practically as part of Russia itself.
"Who will really run Ukraine in the coming years depends on the results of the elections" next spring to the new, fortified parliament, the online newspaper Gazeta.ru said in a commentary.
"For the 'anti-orange' regions, the word from the Russian powers may prove decisive," the article said, noting that the Russophone eastern portion of Ukraine, where bonds to Russia are strongest and where many of Ukraine's profit centers are located, simply holds the most voters.
Yushchenko and Tymoshenko together rallied support among Ukrainian voters last winter partly with promises to lead their country into the European Union (EU) and into the greater prosperity and Western-style democratic values most voters there associate with the West.
France's failure to ratify the EU constitution last spring, coupled with wider questions about EU expansion and the bloc's future, have put Ukraine's EU ambitions on the back burner, while a major influx of foreign investment has failed to materialize since last year's crisis in Ukraine.
At the same time, Russia, stung after backing the losing side in last year's election, has implemented basic changes in conduct of policy toward countries that were once part of the Soviet Union, aimed at making relations more pragmatic, less personalized and more profitable.
"The very fact that the Russian leadership is no longer trying to define 'good guys' and support them against what it sees as the 'bad guys' means that Russian-Ukrainian relations are becoming more pragmatic and rational," said Nikolai Petrov, expert with the Carnegie Moscow Center.
Revived political synergies between Kiev and Moscow, he added, may also have been fostered by the fact that "the West itself was not very happy with Mrs Tymoshenko's policies" as prime minister, notably the way she planned to revise the privatizations of the past decade.
Nu, zayats, pogodi!
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