Starting Points: Ukraine

Showing posts with label Ukraine. Show all posts

Apr 2, 2010

Ukrainians Likely Support Move Away From NATO

Cover of Ukraine: A History

Ukrainians Likely Support Move Away From NATO

Mar 1, 2010

New Ukrainian president could disappoint supporters in the Kremlin

By Philip P. Pan
Monday, March 1, 2010; A08

MOSCOW -- The inauguration of Viktor Yanukovych as Ukraine's president was celebrated in Russian media last week as a long-sought victory for the Kremlin, which tried to put him in office five years ago, only to be thwarted by the mass protests known as the Orange Revolution.

Now that he has taken power, though, the man who had been Russia's preferred choice to govern the former Soviet republic could prove to be far less accommodating to Moscow's interests -- and more open to Washington's -- than the Kremlin would like.

Breaking with tradition, Yanukovych is scheduled to make his first official trip abroad Monday to Brussels, the seat of the European Union, instead of Moscow, which he will visit Friday. The decision follows a campaign in which he labored to shed his image as a Kremlin lackey and recast himself as a proponent of further integration with Europe as well as closer ties with Russia.

The line that Yanukovych and his advisers have used is that he will be a pro-Ukrainian president, not a pro-Russian or pro-Western one. In his inaugural address, he pledged that Ukraine would serve as a "bridge between East and West, an integral part of Europe and the former Soviet Union at the same time" and "a European state outside of any bloc."

How such rhetoric will be translated into policy, especially in Ukraine's strategically important energy sector, remains uncertain and will be the subject of close scrutiny in Yanukovych's meetings this week and in the months ahead.

Many analysts say Moscow is more likely than the West to be disappointed, if only because it wants much more from a Yanukovych presidency. In five years of bitter feuding with his predecessor, Viktor Yushchenko, the pro-West hero of the Orange Revolution, the Kremlin built up a substantial store of grievances that plunged relations between Russia and Ukraine to a low point.

Near the top of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's agenda is greater control over Ukrainian pipelines that transport much of the natural gas that Russia sells to Europe. Other goals include scaling back Ukraine's cooperation with NATO, extending basing rights for Russia's Black Sea fleet in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol, and providing broader market access to Russian investors and businesses.

"I think that the elites here expect much more than Yanukovych could possibly give them," said Dmitry Oreshkin, an independent political analyst and scholar in Moscow, noting that the new president has been portrayed in Russian media as "a very pro-Russian politician."

In reality, though, Oreshkin said, Yanukovych is under pressure to broaden his political base, in Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine, by winning over voters in western Ukraine who are wary of Russia and feel more strongly about integration with Europe.

Washington and its European allies, analysts said, have more limited expectations, in part because they have looked on with frustration for five years as Yushchenko bickered with other Orange Revolution leaders and failed to deliver on the promise of the pro-democracy uprising.

"If the West was disappointed with Ukraine for the last five years, I think now it's Russia's turn," said Samuel Charap, a scholar of the region at the D.C.-based Center for American Progress. "If you believe the Russian press, they arrived with a wish list . . . and I don't think they'll get everything."

Charap said Washington's goals will be modest in comparison. U.S. and European officials will urge Yanukovych to continue cooperation with NATO and adopt legislation authorizing joint exercises, he said. They will also push for economic measures that would unlock a suspended emergency loan from the International Monetary Fund.

But the Obama administration is also expected to continue pressing Ukraine to clean up its corrupt energy sector, which is considered a source of political instability and was singled out as a priority by Vice President Biden in his visit last summer. The business interests that backed Yanukovych, however, make significant progress on that front unlikely, analysts say.

Mikhail Gonchar, director of energy programs at the Ukraine-based Nomos Center, said a key early test will be the fate of proposed legislation to bring regulation of Ukraine's domestic gas market to European standards. Another will be whether Yanukovych can put off a Russian proposal for an international consortium to upgrade and manage Ukraine's gas pipelines -- a plan that makes little financial sense for Ukraine, Gonchar said.

He added that Yanukovych is considering Russian proposals to establish partnerships in uranium and nuclear fuel production that would push out the U.S.-based atomic giant Westinghouse. "He's under a high level of pressure from the Russian side in the energy sector," Gonchar said. "It's a serious challenge."

Irina Kobrinskaya, a scholar at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow, said she expected "tough bargaining" on energy issues but an easing of bilateral tensions because Yanukovych will drop his predecessor's efforts to appeal to Ukrainian nationalism by rewriting history and taking "ideologically anti-Russian steps."

While the Kremlin endorsed Yanukovych five years ago and sent political operatives to help his campaign, it hedged its bets in the recently concluded race by signaling its willingness to work with Yanukovych's chief opponent, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, who lost by 3.5 percentage points.

Putin had praised her handling of a gas contract and said Russia was staying neutral because it had been let down by candidates in the past -- a remark widely read as an expression of disappointment in Yanukovych's ability to deliver for Moscow while serving as prime minister from August 2006 to the end of 2007.

How that snub will affect Yanukovych's view of Russia is complicated by the fact he still presides over a divided government, with Tymoshenko refusing his demand to resign as prime minister. To oust her, he will need to win over lawmakers in her coalition or call early parliamentary elections, and thus continue reaching out to western Ukraine.

Ivan Lozowy, president of the Institute of Statehood and Democracy in Kiev, warned that Yanukovych might also make an autocratic bid to consolidate power that triggers a confrontation with Ukrainian society. A similar authoritarian turn in the early 2000s alienated the West and strengthened Russia's influence in Ukraine.

Still, Lozowy said, Yanukovych is unlikely to embrace Russia immediately because the powerful businessmen who support him are more interested in Western markets -- and wary of Russian competition -- than they were five years ago. "Europe is what's exciting for them now," he said. "I don't expect Ukraine to be throwing itself into the Russian bear hug."

Oct 6, 2009

Ukraine-Russia Tensions Evident in Crimea - washingtonpost.com

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By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Tuesday, October 6, 2009

SEVASTOPOL, Ukraine -- On maps, Crimea is Ukrainian territory, and this naval citadel on its southern coast is a Ukrainian city. But when court bailiffs tried to serve papers at a lighthouse here in August, they suddenly found themselves surrounded by armed troops from Russia's Black Sea Fleet who delivered them to police as if they were trespassing teenagers.

The humiliating episode underscored Russia's continuing influence in the storied peninsula on the Black Sea nearly two decades after the fall of the Soviet Union -- and the potential for trouble here ahead of Ukraine's first presidential vote since the 2005 Orange Revolution.

Huge crowds of protesters defied Moscow in that peaceful uprising and swept a pro-Western government into power. Now, the Kremlin is working to undo that defeat, ratcheting up pressure on this former Soviet republic to elect a leader more amenable to Russia's interests in January.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev issued a letter in August demanding policy reversals from a new Ukrainian government, including an end to its bid to join NATO. He also introduced a bill authorizing the use of troops to protect Russian citizens and Russian speakers abroad, a measure that some interpreted as targeting Crimea.

A group of prominent Ukrainians, including the country's first president, responded with a letter urging President Obama to prevent a "possible military intervention" by Russia that would "bring back the division of Europe." Ukraine gave up the nuclear arsenal it inherited from the Soviet Union in exchange for security guarantees from the United States and other world powers, they noted.

If a crisis is ahead, it is likely to involve Crimea, a peninsula of rolling steppe and sandy beaches about the size of Maryland. The region was once part of Russia, and it is the only place in Ukraine where ethnic Russians are the majority. In the mid-1990s, it elected a secessionist leader who nearly sparked a civil war.

Crimea is also home to Russia's Black Sea Fleet, which is based in Sevastopol under a deal with Ukraine that expires in 2017. Russia wants to extend the lease, but Ukraine's current government insists it must go.

"It would be easy for Russia to inspire a crisis or conflict in Crimea if it continues to lose influence in Ukraine," said Grigory Perepelitsa, director of the Foreign Policy Institute in the Ukrainian Diplomatic Academy. "That's the message they're sending to any future president."

Russia's state-controlled media, widely available and popular in Crimea, have hammered the authorities in Kiev as irredeemably anti-Russian, and prominent Russian politicians have been calling for reunification with Crimea.

But five years of policies in Kiev aimed at drawing Ukraine closer to Europe and the United States and at promoting Ukrainian language and history have also alienated the region. Ukraine's president, Viktor Yushchenko, the hero of the Orange Revolution, won only 6 percent of the vote here.

"He tried to force his ideology on us, and he failed," said Valeriy Saratov, chairman of the Sevastopol city council. "We don't feel we were conquered by Russia, but by Europe. We fought the Italians, the Germans, the French, the British. . . . We would never take sides against Russia."

Vladimir Struchkov, a pro-Russia activist and leader of a parents' organization in Sevastopol, said residents are especially upset about a new regulation requiring students to take college entrance exams in Ukrainian, eliminating a Russian option.

While Kiev is playing identity politics, he argued, Moscow has been investing in Sevastopol, building schools, apartments and pools, repairing monuments and even opening a branch of Moscow State University.

The result has been a sharp shift in Crimean attitudes. In 2006, about 74 percent of Crimean residents regarded Ukraine as their motherland, but by last year, that figure had fallen to 40 percent, according to a survey by the Razumkov Center, a top research institute in Kiev.

Crimea became part of the Russian empire in 1783 after a long period of rule by Crimean Tatars, an indigenous Turkic people. During World War II, Germany captured the peninsula. After the war, the Soviet Union's Joseph Stalin accused the Tatars of Nazi collaboration and ordered their mass deportation. The Communists then sought to resettle the peninsula with politically reliable families, mostly Russians with ties to the military or the party apparatus.

When the Soviet Union collapsed, these people suddenly found themselves living in Ukraine instead of Russia, because Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had transferred Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 in a move that had little impact at the time.

Today, about 60 percent of the region's 2.3 million residents are Russian and 25 percent are Ukrainian. But the two ethnic groups are thoroughly intertwined. Opinion polls show majorities of both want the Black Sea Fleet to stay and support reunification with Russia, though there is similar support for greater autonomy for Crimea within Ukraine.

Crimean Tatars, who were allowed to return in the 1980s, make up about 10 percent of the population and are largely opposed to a return to Russian rule.

Refat Chubarov, a leader of the main Crimean Tatar political organization, said Russian media have vilified his people as criminals, playing on fears of Islam and their efforts to reclaim lost homes. But even among the Tatars, frustration with Kiev is rising.

"We are the strongest supporters of Ukrainian sovereignty in Crimea," Chubarov said. "But the disappointment is growing because the authorities have not done enough to provide land and other compensation to returning families."

Volodymyr Pritula, a veteran journalist and political analyst in Crimea, said the Kremlin has been trying to provoke ethnic conflict in the region, both to undermine the Ukrainian government and provide an excuse for intervention.

Three years ago, Vladimir Putin, then Russia's president, offered to help resolve tensions in Crimea after a clash between Russians and Tatars and suggested that the Russian fleet should stay to "guarantee stability," Pritula noted.

In recent months, he added, the Kremlin has stepped up its activities, with Russian nationalist groups staging protests on Ukrainian holidays and media outlets resuming the attacks on Tatars after a pause last year.

Emotions have been running high since Russia's war last year with another pro-Western neighbor, Georgia. The Black Sea Fleet participated in the conflict, and Ukrainian officials infuriated Russia by suggesting its ships might not be allowed to return to Sevastopol.

Tensions flared again this summer when Ukrainian police stopped Russian trucks three times for transporting missiles in Sevastopol without advance notice. Then came the episode with the bailiffs at Kherson Lighthouse, one of dozens of navigational markers along the Crimean coast that both Ukraine and the Russian fleet claim to own.

Judges have tried to order the fleet to hand over various facilities before, with the Russians routinely refusing and bailiffs departing without incident. But this time, the fleet accused Ukraine of "penetrating the territory of a Russian military unit" and warned of "possible tragic consequences to such actions."

Vladimir Kazarin, the city's deputy mayor, said the bailiffs stepped past a gate because no sentries were posted but quickly found the commanding officer, who asked them to wait while he sought instructions. Five minutes later, he returned with the soldiers who detained the bailiffs.

"Relations with the fleet have generally been good," Kazarin said. "But this just shows that people in Moscow are trying to find any excuse for conflict."

Sep 14, 2009

Kremlin Intensifies Pressure as Ukraine Prepares for Vote - washingtonpost.com

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Russia Lodges List of Complaints Against Neighbor

By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, September 14, 2009

KIEV, Ukraine -- Five years after Ukraine defied Russia and turned toward the United States and Europe in a peaceful, democratic revolution, Moscow is poised for a comeback in this former Soviet republic.

The pro-Western president who came to power as the hero of the Orange Revolution is struggling with single-digit ratings just months before he stands for reelection. The man Russia backed in 2004 is leading the race to succeed him. And the next-strongest candidate also appears acceptable to the Kremlin.

But rather than sit out the election, Russia has redoubled its efforts to portray Ukraine as a hostile neighbor, lodging a barrage of complaints against its policies and plunging relations between the two countries to their lowest point since the fall of the Soviet Union.

The vilification campaign has puzzled and alarmed analysts here as well as in Washington and Moscow. Many say Russia is trying to tilt the electoral field even further in its favor. But because that seems unnecessary, some are also asking whether Russian leaders might be laying the groundwork for a more serious confrontation with Ukraine, just a year after a brief war with another pro-Western neighbor, Georgia.

"Wars and conflicts begin with discussion of them as an option," said Valeriy Chaly, a foreign policy scholar at the Razumkov Center, a top research institute in Kiev. "Now, for the first time in years, the word 'war' is being used here, and it's not dismissed as impossible."

Eighteen years after the Soviet Union's collapse, Ukrainian independence still does not sit well with many Russians -- and a sizable minority in Ukraine -- who feel strongly about the country's cultural and historic ties to Russia. Relations have always been strained, but they became especially rocky after the Orange Revolution, when huge crowds protesting election fraud and autocratic rule rejected the Russian-backed presidential candidate and swept in a pro-Western government.

The democratic uprising worried Russia's own authoritarians, and Ukraine's subsequent push to join NATO alarmed them further. Recriminations between Moscow and Kiev became almost routine and culminated in a prolonged standoff over natural gas deliveries to Europe in the winter.

In recent weeks, though, Russian officials have ratcheted up the rhetoric, accusing Ukraine of sending troops to Georgia last year to kill Russian soldiers and of disrupting the operations of the Russian fleet in the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev issued a letter last month that denounced his Ukrainian counterpart, Viktor Yushchenko, and read like a brief for war.

The letter catalogued more than a dozen "anti-Russian" policies, including Ukraine's NATO bid, mistreatment of Russian investors, limits on the use of the Russian language, and efforts to promote a version of history that says the Soviet Union committed genocide against Ukrainians in the 1930s.

In a somber video released with the letter and staged with warships floating in the Black Sea behind him, Medvedev said he would refrain from sending a new ambassador to Ukraine, adding that tensions between the two countries had "hit unprecedented levels."

"Basically, we've entered a cold war," said Oleksandr Tretiakov, a parliamentary leader in Yushchenko's party who argues that Russia is trying to use its economic clout and control of the media to portray Ukraine as a "failed state" and unravel the Orange Revolution, which Moscow describes as a U.S.-engineered coup.

Some say the Kremlin is trying to distract its population from problems at home; polls show that Russians have more negative attitudes toward Ukraine than they do even toward the United States. But the message has resonated with many in Ukraine who are nostalgic for the Soviet era. Ukraine's 46 million people include 8 million ethnic Russians concentrated in the east and south.

A friendly government in Ukraine is a strategic priority for Russia. Ukrainian pipelines carry Russian gas to Europe, and the Black Sea Fleet is based in Sevastopol under a deal that expires in 2017. But there is also an emotional bond, because both Russians and Ukrainians trace their history to a medieval kingdom that was centered in Kiev.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin once argued to President George W. Bush that Ukraine wasn't a real country, and speaking to reporters in late May, he read approvingly from the diaries of an imperial general who referred to Ukraine as "Little Russia."

Dmitri Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, said the Kremlin cannot imagine Russia as a great power without Ukraine. The debate among policymakers, he said, is between moderates who want to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO and ensure that it continues delivering Russian gas, and officials calling for a proactive strategy aimed at "soft dominance" over the country.

"Recently, it's moving toward the more proactive position," he said.

Both Putin and Medvedev have a personal stake in reversing the Orange Revolution, which was seen in Moscow as a humiliating defeat. Putin, when he was president, recognized the losing candidate as the winner of the election, while Medvedev, then Putin's chief of staff, supervised the heavy-handed campaign effort that backfired.

Mikhailo Pohrebinski, a political consultant who advised Ukraine's former president and often worked with Medvedev, said Russia's president appears to be building a case that Ukraine is violating its 1997 friendship treaty with Russia -- the only agreement in which Moscow has recognized Ukraine's borders.

The escalation of tensions comes at a difficult time for Ukraine, which has been hit hard by the global economic crisis and is struggling to enact painful reforms required for billions of dollars in emergency loans. With the January presidential election approaching, the nation's fractious leadership is even more divided and distracted than usual.

Russia has not endorsed a candidate, as it did five years ago when it backed the then-prime minister, Viktor Yanukovych, who is now leader of Ukraine's largest opposition party and has made progress shaking his old image as a corrupt autocrat.

Though he may still be Moscow's favorite candidate, and is the front-runner in the race, Russia seems to be spreading its bets this time. Only Yushchenko has been attacked by name by Russian media, and he has proven such an unpopular and ineffective leader that he has little chance of winning reelection anyway.

Oleksandr Sushko, research director at the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation, said the Kremlin is trying to force itself onto the campaign agenda and hold a "casting call" in which the candidates must clarify their positions on the issues Russia cares about.

But all of the major candidates, including Yanukovych, favor further integration with Europe, and none is likely to make as many concessions as Russia demands once in office, he said. As a result, the Kremlin is trying to increase its leverage over them now, while also preparing for a confrontation if that fails.

Yanukovych's strongest opponent in the race is Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, a leader of the Orange Revolution and former ally of Yushchenko's who says she will improve relations with Russia without sacrificing Ukraine's independence.

Tymoshenko won praise from Putin after negotiating a deal with him to end the standoff that cut fuel supplies to much of Europe last winter. But she committed Ukraine to buy a fixed amount of gas in the contract, and now, with demand down in the recession, she is trying to renegotiate.

She and Putin emerged from a meeting last month saying Russia had agreed in principle to give Ukraine a break. But critics say Tymoshenko has left herself open to be blackmailed by the Kremlin, perhaps just before the election. For example, Russia has objected to a deal that Tymoshenko signed with the European Union to help modernize and reform Ukraine's gas sector.

Julia Mostovaya, deputy editor of Kiev's most independent newspaper, Zerkalo Nedeli, said Yushchenko's failure to pursue further democratic reforms after the Orange Revolution has left Ukraine vulnerable to Russian influence.

"It's a very dangerous situation now," she said. "We have two leading candidates without principles, and Russia has leverage to influence both."

Sep 13, 2009

The Retreat of the Tongue of the Czars - NYTimes.com

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By CLIFFORD J. LEVY

SIMFEROPOL, Ukraine

IN a corner of Bukvatoriya, a bookstore here in the capital of the Crimean Peninsula, are some stacks of literature that may be as provocative to the Kremlin as any battalion of NATO soldiers or wily oligarch.

The books are classics — by Oscar Wilde, Victor Hugo, Mark Twain, and Shakespeare — that have been translated into Ukrainian, in editions aimed at teenagers. A Harry Potter who casts spells in Ukrainian also inhabits the shelves.

Two decades ago, there would have been little if any demand for such works, given that most people in this region are ethnic Russians. But the Ukrainian government is increasingly requiring that the Ukrainian language be used in all facets of society, especially schools, as it seeks to ensure that the next generation is oriented toward Kiev, not Moscow.

Children can even read Pushkin, Russia’s most revered author, in translation. (This tends to bother Russians in the way that “The Star-Spangled Banner” sung in Spanish can touch off cross-cultural crankiness in the United States.)

The Ukrainian policy has become a flashpoint in relations between the two countries and reflects the diminishing status of the Russian language in not just the former Soviet Union, but the old Communist bloc as a whole.

The Kremlin has tried to halt the decline by setting up foundations to promote the study of Russian abroad and by castigating neighbors who shove the language from public life. In some nations, a backlash against Russian has stirred its own backlash in the language’s defense.

Still, the challenge is considerable. At stake is more than just words on a page.

Language imparts power and influence, binding the colonized to the colonizers and, for better or worse, altering how native populations interact with the world. Long after they gave up their territories, Britain and France and Spain have retained a certain authority in far-flung outposts because of the languages that they seeded.

Czars and Soviet leaders spread Russian in the lands that they conquered, using it as a kind of glue to unite disparate nationalities, a so-called second mother tongue, and connect them to their rulers. That legacy endures today, as exemplified by the close relationship between Russia and Germany, which stems in part from Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ability to speak Russian. She learned it growing up in Communist East Germany.

But with the language in retreat, there are unlikely to be many future Angela Merkels. For the Kremlin, could there be a more bitter reminder of how history has turned than the sight of young Estonians or Georgians or Uzbeks (not to mention Czechs or Hungarians) flocking to classes in English instead of Russian?

“The drop in Russian language usage is a great blow to Moscow, in the economic and social spheres, and many other respects,” said Aleksei V. Vorontsov, chairman of the sociology department at the Herzen State Pedagogical University in St. Petersburg. “It has severed links, and made Russia more isolated.”

Russian seems to be faring more poorly than other colonial languages because the countries that had to absorb it have a more cohesive sense of national identity and are now rallying around their native languages to assert their sovereignty.

Russian is one of the few major languages to be losing speakers, and by rough estimates, that total will fall to 150 million by 2025, from 300 million in 1990, a year before the Soviet collapse. It will probably remain one of the 10 most popular languages, but barely. Mandarin Chinese, English, Spanish, Arabic and Hindi head the list.

The situation has not been helped by the demographic crisis in Russia itself, which is expected to shed as much as 20 percent of its population by 2050.

The fall in Russian speakers has not been uniform across the former Soviet Union, and Russian officials praise former Soviet republics like Kyrgyzstan where Russian is embraced.

But countries that felt subjugated by Soviet power, like the Baltic States, have taken vengeance by mandating knowledge of the native language to obtain citizenship or other benefits. (As a correspondent in the former Soviet Union, I find that in some countries, I can often speak Russian with people older than 40 and English with those younger.)

The dispute is vitriolic in Ukraine, especially here on the Crimean Peninsula on the Black Sea, a former Russian territory where about 60 percent of the population of two million is ethnic Russian and others also speak Russian as a first language. Many residents here would prefer that Russia reclaim Crimea.

Ukraine’s pro-Western president, Viktor A. Yushchenko, indicated this month that a deepening understanding of the Ukrainian language is one key to keeping Moscow at bay. “With our native language, we preserve our culture,” Mr. Yushchenko told the German magazine Spiegel. “That greatly contributes to preserving our independence. If a nation loses its language, it loses its memory, its history and its identity.”

The policies in Ukraine, the Baltics and other countries have often drawn the ire of not only the Kremlin, but also local Russian speakers.

At the Bukvatoriya bookstore in Simferopol, the manager, Irina P. Germanenko, said locals were upset by “Ukrainization” — laws compelling the Ukrainian language in government, on television and in other areas.

Many schools in Crimea use Russian as their primary language, but they often must teach courses in subjects like geography and math in Ukrainian. And important national examinations are given only in Ukrainian.

Most of Bukvatoriya’s stock is in Russian, but Ms. Germanenko said sales of books for teenagers in Ukrainian showed the policy’s impact. “It’s an unfortunate process that is occurring,” she said. “People should be able to have freedom of choice in their language.”

The resentment can bubble up in unexpected locales. When Tajikistan, a former Soviet republic in Central Asia, said this summer that it would demote the status of Russian, requiring government documents to be only in the Tajik language, an outcry arose from those who saw Russian as a bridge to Russia and the outside world. And in former Soviet satellites in Europe, where Russian was essentially purged after Communism, there has been a small but noticeable revival.

The language is obviously helpful in doing business in Russia’s sizable market, so interest in Russian-language classes is rising. The lingua franca of Communism, it seems, is now an asset in the pursuit of capitalism.