[Ohio UZO News] Ukraine: AP; KP; FT (2), CSCE

[Deychak, Orest]

AP/International Herald Tribune

Yushchenko: Georgia conflict shows Kiev needs NATO 

20 August 2008

 

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - Ukraine's president said Wednesday that the Russian invasion of Georgia shows that NATO membership is the only guarantee of his country's independence.

Viktor Yushchenko told visiting U.S. Senators Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham that the conflict in Georgia demonstrates Ukraine's need for NATO protection. The Republican senators were on their way to Georgia to show support for its pro-Western leadership and discuss the crisis.

"Our aim is to receive international guarantees of Ukraine's territorial integrity which is only (guarantee) possible in the framework of collective security," Yushchenko told the senators.

Russian troops have been occupying large parts of Georgia for days. They moved in after Georgian forces tried to take the rebel province of South Ossetia by force earlier this month.

Many Ukrainians worry that after dealing with Georgia, the Kremlin might set its sights on Ukraine. Like Georgia, this former Soviet republic has angered Moscow by seeking closer ties with the West and membership in NATO.


Kyiv Post


Ukraine to beef up military potential in areas at risk from Russia 


Aug 21 2008

The events in Georgia are making the Ukrainian leadership rethink the country's military doctrine, a daily has written. Quoting a high-ranking source at the Ukrainian Defence Ministry it said that more attention is going to be paid to protecting national interests in Crimea and Ukraine's eastern regions bordering Russia. This will be accomplished by deploying new air defence units there. The following is the text of the article by Fedir Oryshchuk, entitled: Ukraine pointing missiles eastwards published in the Ukrainian daily Delo on 19 August; subheadings are as published:

The war in Georgia is changing the concept of Ukraine's national security. The military are starting to strengthen defence in the country's south-east.

For remainder of article:  http://www.kyivpost.com/top/29463/

 

Financial Times

No one will destroy us'

By Chrystia Freeland 

Published: August 16 2008 

Even in Manhattan's toniest restaurants I have never felt as frumpy as I do walking into the elegant prewar mansion in Kiev that serves as the headquarters of the prime minister's political party. The long-haired, high-heeled, short-skirted young women striding through the corridors look like the sisters of the Ukrainian girls that crowd western catwalks, and seem to be dressed by the same couturiers. Yet they are easily outshone by their boss, Yulia Tymoshenko, 47, the rabble-rousing heroine of Ukraine's 2004 Orange Revolution, who sweeps into her office just after 6pm wearing a still-spotless cream-coloured suit and a smile that is just as fresh.

Tymoshenko, who began her second stint as prime minister last December, has had a dramatic, poacher-turned-gamekeeper career, making a fortune in the shadowy gas-trading business before going into government in the 1990s on a corruption-fighting agenda. Her populist appeal was burnished by the Orange Revolution, when her fiery oratory helped rally Ukrainians behind pro-western democrat Viktor Yushchenko's ultimately successful bid for the presidency, in defiance of ballot-stuffing and media control by the pro-Russian incumbent regime.

The Kiev we meet in is a world away from the frozen, euphoric and frightening winter days of the Orange Revolution. Nor does this sunny, late spring afternoon, which most Kievites seem to be enjoying in the city's sidewalk cafés, offer many portents of the anxiety that friends will report a couple of months later, when Russia's invasion of Georgia will have many of them wondering if democratic Ukraine is next.

Before our meal - tea and a plate of delicious-looking pastries that the prime minister doesn't touch, and, so, alas, neither do I - I had made a private vow not to make much of Tymoshenko's looks. Her beauty is so lovingly - even droolingly - featured in most western press accounts that I had long been dismissive of the male reporters who seemed spellbound by their encounter with a woman who was both pretty and powerful.

But the prime minister's physical charm is so potent it works even on a fellow Ukrainian matron like me. Up close she is dazzling, both delicate and humming with the animal vitality of the charismatic politician. She opens our conversation with the practised pol's trick of telling me something nice about myself, thus making me feel good while letting me know she is on top of her game.

Her gambit: she thanks me for teaching my daughters Ukrainian. I say they mostly hate me for it but her prime-ministerial endorsement will be useful ammunition in my domestic linguistic wars. Ukraine itself has its own larger battles over language. Tymoshenko comes from Dnipropetrovsk in eastern Ukraine, an area often assumed to be largely Russian-speaking and keen on a closer relationship to the country known in Soviet days as their "big brother".

But, says Tymoshenko, the linguistic character of her region is changing. "When I joined the cabinet for the first time, I didn't speak Ukrainian," she recalls. "But after working in the government for two or three months, I simply began to speak in Ukrainian." The switch was easy for her, and for many urban Russophones, because "even if they Russified the city, no one ever Russified the countryside, even after 70 years [of Soviet rule] . . . When our grandmothers came to visit us in the city, they all spoke Ukrainian and we all understood them."

Like her fellow Orange Revolutionaries, she thinks language is an important marker of national identity - something you can't take for granted in a state that has been around for less than two decades and has declared independence six times in the past 90 years.

While these subtle shifts between Slavic languages are a big topic in Kiev, they're pretty obscure if you don't happen to be Ukrainian. So I ask Tymoshenko about a more recognisable Ukrainian cultural symbol - her trademark coronet of braids. At times, they've been a hot political issue. Once, challenged on whether the thick blonde plaits were her own - even Ukrainian politicians have to prove that they are "authentic" - Tymoshenko dramatically unpinned and unbraided her hair in a Rapunzel-like display.

Sounding a little defensive, she assures me her braids are a family tradition: her village grandmother favoured this style. But, she confides, the real reason she wears her hair this way is simpler than that: it makes her look good. "It is very important for us women how we look. That is an objective fact."

I've just arrived from an America greatly confused about gender and power and beauty, and her matter-of-factness intrigues me. Yet to Tymoshenko - a self-made millionaire, mother and the most powerful European female east of Berlin - none of this seems complicated. "If we are speaking about what is more important for a woman, her work or her looks, the answer is obvious," she tells me, looking a little perplexed that the conversation has drifted to such self-evident matters. "She will choose to look good, above all else, even at the cost of her work."

Tymoshenko cheerfully talks about the differences between men and women in a way that would shock most of us "we-are-all-equal" western feminists. Here are a couple of my favourite assertions: women are better at taking care of things - both kids and countries - than men: "You know how, when a family breaks up, in most instances, the child stays with the mother? She is the more reliable caretaker. It is the same with a country. I simply think that we are more reliable and we are more able to give up living a normal life in order honourably to fulfil our responsibilities."

Male voters are inevitably sceptical about female politicians: "Every man thinks he is more capable than any woman. This is normal. Women don't criticise them for this . . . In fact, we support them in their sense of superiority."

Her sensible bottom line when I ask her if being a woman has been a political disadvantage? "Sometimes it hurts, sometimes it helps." From a politician who uses her beauty as cannily as any supermodel but who also terrifies notorious Russian oligarchs, that sounds like a fair assessment.

She strikes a less balanced note - in fact, she doesn't even try - when the conversation turns to Viktor Yushchenko, the Ukrainian president and her Orange Revolution ally. An economist, talented central banker and former prime minister, Yushchenko is as dramatic a figure as Tymoshenko. He too was known for movie-star good looks, until an attempt to poison him on the eve of the 2004 election left him painfully disfigured.

The enmity between the two of them - the president's supporters see her as a dangerous populist with a poor grasp of economics and a greater commitment to her own career than to the good of the nation - is the country's great political drama, and its political tragedy. Together, they faced down a corrupt government with authoritarian leanings that was openly backed by Russian president Vladimir Putin. Today, despite their bickering, the Ukrainian economy is growing robustly and the country is democratic and independent. But essential economic reforms are more halting than they should be, especially given the growing aggression of neighbouring Russia.

The problem, she says, is that instead of attending to today's problems, "others" are focused already on the "battle for the presidency in 2010", when Ukraine will have its next election. She tells me she has publicly disavowed any presidential ambitions for 2010 and is prepared to back Yushchenko - if only he will let her - an assertion a little undermined by her also letting slip: "I am certain I would be a better president."

Tymoshenko thinks she is better at reining in the "political-oligarchic groups", which she sees as the biggest threat to Ukraine's prosperity. Indeed, she believes "corruption has become the rule, and the norm and, practically, the law" - quite an admission from a country's prime minister - and predicts that one day we will discover that many "billion-dollar bribes" have been paid in Ukraine. The oligarchs, she says proudly, "hate me . . . they don't understand me because . . . they cannot buy me or scare me".

She can also claim credit - as she does during our conversation - for the reprivatisation of Kryvorizhstal. This steel mill was sold off in the dying days of Ukraine's ancien regime to a consortium of oligarchs including the then president's son-in-law. Tymoshenko led the drive to sell it a second time in an open auction. That sale - shown live on Ukrainian television and won by the Mittals, the London-based steel magnates - fetched $4.8bn, more than any other privatisation in the entire former Soviet Union, a damning fact, particularly when you consider Russia's natural resources and the outsize personal fortunes their sell-off created.

For all their sparring, Tymoshenko and Yushchenko have been more united on foreign policy than many expected, with the prime minister moving towards the robust defense of Ukraine's national interest that the president has long espoused. Even before Russia's attack this week on Georgia, she has been measured but forthright in her attitude to the Kremlin.

Tymoshenko also understands that Ukraine's proudest accomplishment - its democratic revolution - makes it a particular target for its authoritarian neighbours. "They fear Ukraine as evidence that a post-Soviet country can quickly and effectively build a rule-of-law society and a democratic society," she says. "And this example is very, very uncomfortable for those who would like to keep everything undemocratic and untransparent."

With apologies for the gloom, my parting question is a bleak one: could Ukraine revert to authoritarianism? Despite her repeated and self-serving complaints about the dangerous divisions within Ukraine's democratic camp, Tymoshenko strikes a positive note. "We are now immune to that illness," she says decisively. "Today, I see Ukraine's path, perhaps not as swift as we would like, perhaps not as rosy or as serene, but unequivocally in the direction of the creation of a real, European, democratic, rule-of-law state . . . No one will succeed in plundering our national identity, or humiliating us, or, God forbid, destroying us. For all the difficulties we face, we are moving forward." This week, as Russian tanks rolled into Georgia, that path looks more treacherous.

Chrystia Freeland is US managing editor of the FT

Financial Times

Investors fear Kiev is next on Kremlin list

By Roman Olearchyk in Kiev and David Oakley in London 

Published: August 20 2008 

The cost of insuring Ukraine's debt against restructuring or default rose to its highest since the 2004 Orange Revolution yesterday, as investors fretted that the Kremlin's spat with the west could spill over into a vast country of 46m people that straddles the divide between a resurgent Russia and the European Union.

Worries about the debt intensified after a dispute over Russian warships' use of the Ukrainian Black Sea port of Sevastopol highlighted tensions between Russia and Ukraine, which became independent from Russia following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's president, sent a warning to Ukraine's pro-western leadership on Monday not to restrict Moscow's use of naval bases on the Crimean peninsula.

"Nobody should be telling us how we should behave . . . interference [by Ukraine] will not lead to anything good," he told reporters in the Russian city of Vladikavkaz.

Five-year credit default swaps rose six basis points from Monday's close to 467 basis points, Commerzbank said. Ukraine's CDS have risen sharply since August 8, the day when fighting broke out between Russia and Georgia.

Paul Biszko, senior emerging market strategist at RBC Capital Markets, said: "The market has become increasingly nervous as the Russians have refused to budge from Georgia. As the crisis has dragged on, the intransigence of the Russians has suggested to many investors that Ukraine could be next on the hit-list as they have the key strategic asset of the Crimea, where the Russian fleet is based in the Black Sea.

"Could the Russians decide to take back the Crimea from Ukraine? It is possible. That's why we have seen the cost to insure Ukraine debt rise sharply."

Kiev has been a vocal supporter of Georgia and in a bid to tie its defence policy more closely with its western allies, Viktor Yushchenko, president, last week offered Nato use of Ukraine's early warning radar system.

That move could inflame suspicions in Moscow that Ukraine plans to join a US- led anti-missile defence system along with Poland and the Czech Republic.

Another potential flashpoint is a sizeable Russian minority in the Crimea, where more than 100,000 of the region's 2m population have Russian citizenship.

Leonid Kravchuk, the first elected president of Ukraine after it declared its independence from the Soviet Union, urged the present leadership to be cautious with Russia. "We should not give any grounds for a forceful or conflict scenario of settling both country's differences, starting with the question of Russia's Black Sea fleet," he said.

Kiev worries that Moscow may refuse to remove its Black Sea fleet from Sevastopol when a lease agreement expires in 2017. More disturbing is the prospect of Russian support for separatists in the Crimea, with the aim of annexing it in much the same way Georgia claims Moscow plotted with Abkhazia and South Ossetia to wrest them from Tbilisi.

Proryv, a pro-Russian organisation that operates in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, is also active in Crimea. Nadyezhda Polyakova, leader of the group in Crimea, says "heightened tensions" in connection with events in Georgia and persecution of pro-Russian organisations by Ukraine's authorities could "spark serious escalation and conflict as seen in Georgia".

Influential Russians such as Yuri Luzhkov, the Moscow mayor, have repeatedly questioned Ukraine's territorial rights over Crimea, which was administered as part of Russia until 1954. The Kremlin has not publicly questioned Kiev's rights but Ukrainian officials fear it could have ambitions to reclaim the peninsula.

Kiev also accuses Russia of dragging its feet on agreements to demarcate borders on the Azov Sea. At stake, in addition to a strategic naval base, are potentially vast untapped oil and gas reserves.

Mr Yushchenko has urged Ukrainians to support his bid to join Nato as soon as possible, arguing that Kiev desperately needs foreign security guarantees.

However, two-thirds of Ukrainians fear it will upset Russia. Ukraine's armed forces are much bigger than Georgia's, but are dwarfed by the might of Russia.

Mr Yushchenko hopes fears that Ukraine might suffer the same fate as Georgia will bolster support for Nato. "What happened in Georgia is the best example [of] how easily military actions, and questions of territorial integrity, can in today's conditions be forced upon a country that does not have collective security guarantees," he says. If Ukraine's borders are "questioned", as happened to Georgia, "then that means we are on verge of deep and serious military actions".

President Victor Yushchenko has vowed to give strong moral support to pro-western allies in Tbilisi. Ukraine and Georgia, independent since the collapse of the Soviet Union, have angered Russia by seeking membership of Nato.

AP

Ukraine Fearing Russia; Russia warns Ukraine not to interfere at leased navy base amid tensions over Georgia war 

By OLGA BONDARUK 

Associated Press Writer

19 August 2008

 

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) - Russia's foreign minister warned Ukrainian leaders Tuesday against trying to restrict the Kremlin's use of a Crimean naval base it leases from Ukraine, adding to tensions that have heated up since Russian troops invaded Georgia.

Ukraine's pro-Western president, Victor Yushchenko, has sided with Georgia and moved last week to restrict Russian warships at the leased military base at the Black Sea port of Sevastopol, saying the vessels' movements were subject to Ukrainian approval.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov dismissed that argument in a sharply worded barb Tuesday, saying Russia's ships don't need any permission to use the port.

The lease agreement says "nothing about us needing to explain to someone why, where to and for how long the Black Sea Fleet ships are leaving their walls," Lavrov was quoted as saying by Russia's state-controlled ITAR-Tass news agency.

Ukraine's Defense Ministry said it was considering Russia's request to allow four Russian warships to enter Sevastopol on Wednesday, but declined further comment.

However, Foreign Minister Volodymyr Ohryzko sought to cool tensions, saying his country wouldn't physically prevent Russian ships from entering or leaving the naval base.

"Without a doubt, there won't be any mine fences or military collisions; one shouldn't even talk about that," Ohryzko said in Kiev, the Interfax news agency reported.

Many Ukrainians worry that after dealing with Georgia, the Russians might set their sights on Ukraine, which like Georgia is a former Soviet republic government that has angered by Moscow by seeking closer ties with the West and membership in the NATO military alliance.

Russia's critics say the conflict in Georgia heralds a new, worrying era in which an increasingly assertive Kremlin has shown itself ready to resort to military force outside its borders in pursuing its goals.

Many Ukrainians fear the Kremlin's fierce opposition to Ukraine's drive to join NATO and Moscow's desire to regain control of the palm-lined Crimea peninsula and the Sevastopol naval base might put Ukraine at a risk of a military conflict with its giant neighbor.

Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov has warned Ukraine that it still isn't too late to return "what doesn't belong to it" -- a reference to Crimea.

Ukraine is also important to Russia because its pipelines carry Russian oil and natural gas westward. The country also has a huge Russian-speaking population in its east and south that wants to remain linked with Russia.

While siding with Georgia, Ukrainian officials have acknowledged that Moscow's quick military victory exposed their nation's own vulnerability.

"I think that Russia is looking for a reason to have a serious conflict with Ukraine," said Iryna Mezentseva, a 21-year-old secretary in Kiev.

 

For those who may have missed this press release:

 

August 11, 2008

 

Helsinki Commission Co-Chairmen Condemn Russian Assault on Georgia  

(Washington, DC) Congressman Alcee L. Hastings (D-FL) and Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD), Co-Chairmen of the Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (U.S. Helsinki Commission), made the following statement on Russia's assault on the Republic of Georgia: 

"Russia's intervention into Georgia is a clear violation of Georgia's territorial integrity and Principle Four of the Helsinki Final Act," said Co-Chairmen Hastings and Cardin.  "We urge Moscow to cease its military operations immediately." 

Chairman Hastings noted, "The Russian Federation has departed from its commitment to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) guiding principles of refraining from the threat of or use of force in the settlement of disputes; respect for the inviolability of borders and the territorial integrity of states; and the peaceful settlement of disputes."  

Co-Chairman Cardin commented, "Georgia and Russia have accused each other of responsibility for this military confrontation.  But Moscow's rejection of arbitration by the international community clearly demonstrates its indifference to cooperation and ending the hostilities, which have been building."  

Said Co-Chairmen Hastings and Cardin "We are very troubled by media reports of Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov's statement to Secretary of State Rice that President Mikheil Saakashvili 'must go.' Only the voters of Georgia can make that decision.  Removing a democratically elected president through military action is unacceptable to the United States and the broader international community." 

Chairman Hastings concluded, "Last month, during the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly meeting in Astana, I introduced a resolution expressing concern of many Participating States about the alarming sequence of events that have long escalated tensions in the Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions of Georgia, and raised the prospect of armed conflict in the area.  I deeply regret that my apprehensions have now come to fruition."  

 

##

The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, also known as the Helsinki Commission, is a U.S. Government agency that monitors progress in the implementation of the provisions of the 1975 Helsinki Accords. The Commission consists of nine members from the United States Senate, nine from the House of Representatives, and one member each from the Departments of State, Defense and Commerce.

www.csce.gov <http://www.csce.gov> 

 

 

 

 

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