[Ohio UZO News] Ukraine: NYT; RFE/RL; EDM; WoE; FT

[Deychak, Orest]

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In Ukraine, Fear of Being a Resurgent Russia's Next Target 

By NICHOLAS KULISH and SARA RHODIN; Nicholas Kulish reported from Kiev,
and Sara Rhodin from Moscow. 

17 August 2008

Late Edition - Final

8

 

KIEV, Ukraine -- For 17 years now, several former satellites and
republics of the Soviet Union have cherished their democracies, all made
possible by the simple premise that the days of Russian dominance were
over.

The events in Georgia over the past week have made them rethink that
idea. Poland announced Thursday that it had reached a deal with
Washington to base American missile interceptors on its territory, after
months of talks. But then a Russian general went so far as to say that
Poland might draw Russian nuclear retaliation, sending new shudders
through the region.

The sense of alarm may be greatest here in Ukraine. Since the Orange
Revolution began in 2004, bringing the pro-Western Viktor A. Yushchenko
to power after widespread protests, Ukraine has been a thorn in Moscow's
side, though perhaps not as sharp as the outspoken Georgian president,
Mikheil Saakashvili.

''We're next,'' said Tanya Mydruk, 22, an office assistant who lives in
Kiev, the capital. ''Sooner or later our president is going to say or do
something that goes too far, and then it will start.''

Ukraine has done little to win Russia's favor since the crisis in the
Caucasus began. On Wednesday, Ukraine announced that it would restrict
the movements of Russia's Black Sea fleet into Sevastopol, on the
Crimean peninsula. On Friday, the Foreign Ministry issued a statement
saying it was prepared to give Western countries access to its
missile-warning systems.

''What happened here in the last week certainly came as a shock, not
only to Georgia but to a lot of others as well,'' said Peter Semneby,
the European Union's special representative for the South Caucasus. ''A
lot of people will, as a result of this, want to build a closer
relationship with their Western partners as quickly as possible.''

Tensions between Russia and Ukraine have been high for years. Mr.
Yushchenko, like Mr. Saakashvili in Georgia, has sought stronger ties
with the West, including membership in NATO, which Russia has said would
threaten its security. In early 2006, Russia cut off natural gas
supplies to Ukraine, in a bold maneuver to weaken Mr. Yushchenko's
government.

Yet despite fears of a Russian resurgence, Ukraine remains deeply tied
to Russia by culture and history. Its ethnic Russian minority, largely
in the south and east of the country, is roughly 17 percent of a total
population of 46 million. Many Russian speakers watched the conflict in
Georgia unfold through the prism of state-controlled Russian television
channels that are broadcast here.

A growing nationalist sentiment among other segments of society, along
with expanding trade and cultural ties with the West, has further
complicated the political situation.

Asked whether Ukraine's future lay with Russia or the European Union,
Lena Stepnevska, 24, who works at a construction company and was out for
a walk in the capital on Friday, opted for Russia. ''I would like to
believe it will be Russia, because we are fraternal nations and have to
support each other,'' she said.

Though he supports membership in both NATO and the European Union,
Anatoliy Grytsenko, the head of the national security and defense
committee in Parliament and a former defense minister, said Russia could
not be ignored. ''Russia will not disappear tomorrow, as well as in a
century or two,'' he said. ''We will always wake up and it will be
there, not Canada.''

The Baltic states, meanwhile, are gravely concerned about what a newly
dominant Russia could mean for them, even though they became members of
NATO in 2004 and therefore have more protection.

''In the public, there's a certain anxiety,'' said the Estonian
president, Toomas Hendrik Ilves. ''Given our history, we understand why
people feel anxious.''

While Mr. Ilves said fears that Russia would invade Estonia were
unfounded, he emphasized the serious consequences of Russia's actions in
Georgia in terms of maintaining international order. ''The assumption of
the post-1991 settlement has been that the old Russia is in the past --
that it is not a country that invades its neighbors,'' he said.
''Basically the entire European security architecture is based on this
premise.''

Estonia has been at the forefront of states that have provided aid to
Georgia. It also sent Internet security specialists and agreed to host
Georgian Web sites after those sites were attacked. Georgian officials
suggested Moscow was behind the attacks, a charge the Russian government
has denied.

In addition to fear in the region, there is anger with the West for not
doing more to rein in Russia. In an interview with a Polish newspaper on
Saturday, Lech Kaczynski, Poland's president, criticized the European
Union as being too soft on Moscow.

At Shevchenko Park in the heart of Kiev, card games have gotten pretty
heated since the fighting between Georgia and Russia began.

''Smart Russians keep silent and they still think about their fate in
Ukraine,'' said Vasyl Marsiuk, 70. He sat at one of the granite tables
where older men also play dominos or checkers, in the shade of chestnut
trees.

In his eyes, the Russians are the clear aggressors in the Caucasus
conflict, and they are by no means finished with their ambitions for the
region. ''Ukraine is under the same threat, the same kind of Damocles
sword,'' he said.

Mr. Marsiuk spoke Ukrainian, but a man overhearing him launched into a
defense of Russia, in Russian. ''It was Georgia that started the
conflict,'' said the man, Pyotr Lyuty, 53, who said he had served in
military intelligence in Soviet times.

Asked if he thought the Soviet Union should have broken up, he replied
with a simple and direct, ''No,'' before adding, ''My grandfather
explained it to me. You can break a bunch of twigs one by one, but if we
take a bunch of twigs you can never break it.''

 

Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

August 15, 2008 

Ukrainian Envoy Says Georgia A 'Lesson For Ukraine' 

by Maryana Drach 

A Ukrainian government official has called on the European Union to help
Kyiv avoid a "security vacuum" like the one that led to the current
conflict between Russia and Georgia.

"For a very long time, it's been clear that there was a security vacuum
in the South Caucasus," Deputy Prime Minister Hryhoriy Nemyria said in
an interview with RFE/RL's Ukraine Service. "It's a lesson for Ukraine.
Ukraine is the largest post-Soviet country after Russia, and one that
shares a long border with the European Union. It can't be left in a
similar vacuum."

Nemyria was speaking in Kyiv following three days in Tbilisi meeting
with Georgian officials and coordinating humanitarian aid shipments to
the country. 

Ukraine, a recent ally of Georgia since both countries' "colored
revolutions" brought pro-democratic leaders to office, has been staunch
in its support of Tbilisi since the start of Georgia's armed conflict
with Russia over the breakaway republic of South Ossetia. 

Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko joined a delegation of five
Eastern European leaders who traveled to the Georgia in a show of
solidarity with Georgian leader Mikheil Saakashvili, and Ukraine has
warned that Russia would face restrictions on if its Black Sea Fleet,
which is based in the Ukrainian port city of Sevastopol, was used in any
aggressive actions against Georgia. 

The posture has angered Russia, which often seems to regard both Ukraine
and Georgia as wayward neighbors that should be brought back into
Moscow's orbit. Kyiv and Tbilisi have actively sought membership in the
NATO military alliance, an aim that infuriates the Kremlin and is
believed to have played a significant role in Russia's military advance
on Georgia. 

Nemyria acknowledged the possibility that Russia might next turn its
focus to Ukraine. "I think old habits die hard," he said of Russia.
"What we can see in this overreaction is that there is a risk [for
Ukraine]. And of course, Ukraine has a frozen conflict on its own
border" -- a reference to Moldova's breakaway region of Transdniester,
which like South Ossetia and a third separatist region, Abkhazia, enjoys
Moscow's strong support. 

"We want to avoid a security vacuum that will be prone to a defrosting
of such a frozen conflict," he said. "European leaders must now realize
that the South Ossetia conflict has opened such a vacuum throughout the
entire area that Moscow sometimes calls its 'near abroad.' We welcome
the EU's effort -- led by France, and supported by Germany and others --
to be more visible as an actor in the region." 

Nemyria dismissed speculation that Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko --
who has been notably silent on the current Georgia-Russia conflict -- is
hoping to secure Russia's support for a future presidential bid. 

"The government of Ukraine adopted a clear position, the centerpiece of
which was the recognition and support of the sovereignty and territorial
integrity of Georgia," he said. "The president of Ukraine took the lead
in voicing the official Ukrainian position, and we felt no need to
repeat it. Those accusations against the prime minister are misplaced."

 

Window on Eurasia: After Georgian Events, Ukrainians See Dual
Citizenship as a Security Threat

 

Paul Goble

 

            Vienna, August 16 - Moscow's claim that it  had the right to
intervene in Georgia to protect people there with Russian passports and
indications that Russian and Ossetian officials stepped up the
distribution of such passports before that conflict have raised concerns
among Ukrainians that the Russia may do the same in Crimea or in other
parts of their country.  

            An article posted on Kyiv's Gazeta.24 website today argues
that "Ukraine can no longer close its eyes to the problem of dual
citizenship" because of the tactic Moscow adopted in Georgia and that
the Ukrainian government must do more to enforce that country's
constitutional ban  on that status (
gazeta.24.ua/news/show/id/60403.htm).

            At present, the website notes, there are only 15,000 Russian
citizens - almost all of whom are in the Russian navy -- out of the
400,000 residents of Sevastopol, but "representatives of certain
pro-Russian parties declare that on the peninsula [as a whole] there are
about 170,000 citizens of the Russian Federation."

            But the site notes that "certain politicians are asserting
that Russia is massively distributing its passports to Sevastopol
residents," something that could change the political coloration of the
city and that, as the events in Georgia show, could easily be invoked by
Moscow as a pretext for a military move there. 

            Anatoly Gritsenko, chairman of the Ukrainian parliament's
national security committee, told the site that "we will send queries to
the corresponding special services in order to clarify how many people
have on the territory of Ukraine have dual citizenship." If the number
is large, he continued, that in itself would represent "a threat to
national security."

            The Ukrainian constitution prohibits dual citizenship, but
except in rare cases, the government has not tried to do anything to
enforce this provision. And as a result, many Ukrainians currently have
dual citizenship including deputies of the parliament and other
prominent officials as well.

            Gazeta.24 reports that in one oblast, many Ukrainians have
Rumanian passports; in another Polish, and in many of the eastern
oblasts, Russian passports. In the past, few viewed this as an anything
more than a "survival of the past" or an irritant. But now Russian
actions in Georgia have raised the stakes.

            Even though the Russian embassy in Kyiv said reports that
Moscow is distributing Russian passports in Ukraine are
"disinformation," the very possibility that Russia could do so and thus
exploit the situation as it did in Georgia is the primary reason why
Ukrainian officials are currently re-examining their approach to dual
citizenship. 

But the portal notes, "the threat of the application of the South
Ossetian and Kosovo scenarios in Ukraine also comes from the side of
Romania." According to some experts, "70 percent of the population of
Bukovina have dual citizenship" with that country, the result of
Ukrainians wanting to take advantage of Bucharest's relationship with
the EU.

Since 1991, Moscow has regularly but largely unsuccessfully tried to
promote the idea of dual citizenship across the post-Soviet space, even
though as Vsevolod Loskutov, the minister counselor at the Russian
embassy in Kyiv points out, Moscow itself "does not recognize dual
citizenship."

"If an individual has a passport of Russia," the Russian embassy officer
continued, "we do not seek information" about what other passports he
may hold.  "For us, he is a citizen of Russia. And that's all." 

Not surprisingly, such a position, in which Moscow insists that it will
view as a Russian citizen anyone with a Russian passport but will not
recognize an individual with the passport of another country as having
dual citizenship is just the kind of asymmetry that will do nothing to
calm fears in Kyiv and elsewhere that Russia may play this card again in
the future. 

 

Eurasia Daily Monitor

August 15, 2008

 

KYIV ON GEORGIA: DIPLOMACY AWKWARD, PARTIES DIVIDED


Kyiv was among the first capitals to define its stance clearly in the
early stages of the conflict in South Ossetia. Deputy Foreign Minister
Kostyantyn Yeliseyev was the first high-ranking foreign official to
arrive in Georgia on a peacemaking mission. While the West was slow in
articulating its position, Kyiv hurried with statements condemning
Russia but had to backtrack somewhat later. Ukrainian parties have been
divided in their attitudes to the conflict.

Yeliseyev said in Tbilisi that Ukraine was ready to mediate in talks
between Georgia and South Ossetia (UNIAN, August 9). He also hinted that
Ukraine could provide military aid to Georgia (Ukrainska Pravda, August
9). Later on, however, Yeliseyev said that Kyiv did not plan to provide
such aid to Georgia (UNIAN, August 11).

The leaders of Georgia's breakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia
accused Ukraine of direct interference. Abkhazia's leader Sergei Bagapsh
blamed the West and Ukraine for bloodshed in South Ossetia (ITAR-TASS,
August 10). South Ossetian leader Eduard Kokoity said that Ukrainians
were spotted among "unknown men in NATO uniforms" in Tskhinvali (Rossia
TV, August 10). His foreign minister Murat Dzhioyev suggested that
Ukrainian mercenaries must have been fighting on Georgia's side (
www.24.ua, August 11). Ukraine denied the allegations (Interfax-Ukraine,
August 11).

On August 10, Ukraine warned that it might take measures to prevent
Russian Black Sea Fleet (RBSF) ships sent to Abkhazia's coast from
returning to their base in Sevastopol (see EDM, August 11). Later on,
however, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry's spokesman Vasyl Kyrylych
admitted that the threat to ban Russian ships from returning had been
hollow. "I can say nothing about mechanisms to banish the warships from
Sevastopol. We just made public our official position," said Kyrylych.
(Kommersant-Ukraine, August 11).

Yushchenko subsequently issued a controversial decree apparently aimed
both at saving face for Kyiv and at avoiding open confrontation with
Russia. The decree required the RBSF to agree on any future movement of
its ships with the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry. Russia rejected the
decree, pointing out that this requirement was not stipulated in the
1997 Kyiv-Moscow accords on the RBSF (Channel 5, August 13).

Richard Holbrooke, a former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., and Ronald
Asmus, a former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State, said in an article
that Ukraine would most likely be Moscow's next target (The Guardian,
August 11). Their concern was shared by the leader of Crimean Tatars,
Mustafa Dzhemilev, who suggested that Russia could provoke a conflict
over Crimea. Vadym Karasyov, an analyst close to the Yushchenko
administration, said that although a conflict between Russia and Ukraine
was highly unlikely, Kyiv should not have provoked Moscow by the
statement on the RBSF (Blik, August 11).

In theory, Russia could use the presence of its citizens in Crimea as a
pretext for a conflict with Ukraine, like it did in South Ossetia. Apart
from the BRSF personnel stationed in Sevastopol, many Crimean residents
also reportedly have Russian citizenship. It has been claimed that
Russian citizenship has been extended to as many as 170,000 Crimean
residents (1+1 TV, August 13).

Ukrainian leaders and parties have been divided in their attitudes to
the Russia-Georgia conflict. Yushchenko went to Georgia to express his
support for Georgia's territorial integrity (Ukrainska Pravda, August
12). Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko did not venture any comment for
several days, which prompted the presidential office to suspect her of
trading principles for cheaper natural gas from Russia and Russia's
support in the future presidential race (UNIAN, August 13). First Deputy
Prime Minister Oleksandr Turchynov, Tymoshenko's right-hand man,
criticized Georgia for killing civilians in South Ossetia (UNIAN, August
12).

The left-wingers sided with Russia. Communist Party leader Petro
Symonenko condemned "the aggressive policy" of Georgia as early as
August 8. He called on the Ukrainian leadership to stop supplying arms
to Georgia. The Communists also urged a stop to military exercises
involving NATO in Ukraine (Interfax-Ukraine, August 8-11). Hanna Herman,
an unofficial spokesperson for the main opposition force, the Party of
Regions (PRU), urged the creation of an ad-hoc commission in parliament
to look into the supplies of Ukrainian arms to "hot spots," meaning
Georgia (Ukrainska Pravda, August 9).

The PRU called on the government to refrain from openly supporting
Georgia. PRU leader Viktor Yanukovych was backed by Moscow against
Yushchenko in the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election. "We condemn the
powers-that-be for irreparably damaging Ukraine's national interests by
unequivocally taking one side in the Georgian-Ossetian-Russian
conflict," the PRU said in a statement (Ukrainska Pravda, August 12).

Yushchenko's Our Ukraine People's Union party expressed concern over
Russia's use of the RBSF "for tasks incompatible with the status of its
deployment in Ukraine." Although many Ukrainians sympathize with
Georgia, Kyiv has seen no mass actions in support of Georgia. Several
pickets near the Russian Embassy have been staged by marginal far-right
parties and Georgians residing in Ukraine (Interfax-Ukraine, August 11;
Inter TV, August 12). A television station reported that UNA-UNSO, a
far-right group, was recruiting young men in western Ukraine, a region
where Russia is historically disliked, to help the Georgian army (Inter,
August 13).


--Pavel Korduban


Financial Times 

Danger for west of a foreign-policy Wonderland

Published: August 18 2008 

>From Prof Alexander J. Motyl.

Sir, Anatol Lieven ("The west shares the blame for Georgia
<http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/95713d6c-6966-11dd-91bd-0000779fd18c.html> ",
August 14) cautions the west not to make promises it cannot keep "when
push comes to shove". Note: not "if", but "when". That one little adverb
reveals that Prof Lieven's underlying assumption about Russia is that it
must engage in expansionist behaviour and "shove".

Now, if this is true - and I happen to agree with Prof Lieven on this
score - then the rational policy response for the west is definitely
not, as he recommends, to bow to the inevitable, but to calculate just
what its interests are and just where pushing, or even shoving, back
might be advisable. He pointedly does not talk about interests,
preferring to invoke only legal and moral commitments. But such advice
is downright silly, if not dangerous. Surely, foreign policy should be
crafted on the basis of legal, moral and geopolitical interests. And, of
course, as everyone knows, it is. Prof Lieven's suggestion that only the
Baltics should be defended, and that Ukraine, Georgia and presumably all
the other non-Russian states in Russia's "near abroad" should not, is
thus a recipe for disaster.

A more sophisticated appreciation of how foreign policy should be and is
crafted would recognise that, if Georgia is irrelevant to the west's
interests, then so too is tiny Estonia. (Does Prof Lieven really believe
that Germany will send troops to Narva?) And if Estonia deserves support
for legal and moral reasons, then so too does Ukraine, which is a United
Nations member with the legal right not to be invaded and which lost
more than 10m people to German aggression in the second world war.

Prof Lieven, alas, inhabits some sort of foreign-policy Wonderland. That
is his choice, and we should respect it. But the west would do well to
forget Alice and stay above ground.

Alexander J. Motyl,
Professor of Political Science,
Deputy Director, Division of Global Affairs,
Rutgers University,
Newark, NJ, US

 

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