[Ohio UZO News] Ukraine: NYT; WSJ; Economist; VOA

[Deychak, Orest]

The Economist 

http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14273936

 

--Russia and Ukraine 

Dear Viktor, you're dead, love Dmitry

Aug 20th 2009 | KIEV AND MOSCOW 
>From The Economist print edition



Russia's president writes his Ukrainian counterpart an insulting letter

RUSSIA marked the first anniversary of its war with Georgia with a
verbal salvo against Ukraine. Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev, wrote
Viktor Yushchenko, his Ukrainian counterpart, an open letter with a
familiar litany of complaints: Ukraine was supplying arms to Georgia,
complicating the life of Russia's Black Sea fleet (which is based in
Sebastopol, a Ukrainian port), signing treacherous pipeline deals with
the European Union, kicking out Russian diplomats and falsifying joint
Soviet history.

Less familiarly, Mr Medvedev posted a special video blog to publicise
his letter. Dressed in ominous black, and overlooking the Black Sea with
two military boats on the horizon, Mr Medvedev said the Kremlin would
not be sending its new ambassador to Kiev. 

It took Viktor Yushchenko several days to reply. His response was
measured: Ukraine had done nothing illegal towards Georgia; had the
right to choose its friends; was entitled to its own view of history and
its language; and had repeatedly asked the Kremlin to remove some of its
diplomats involved in non-diplomatic work. 

But Mr Medvedev was not interested in what Mr Yushchenko had to say. He
wanted to register Russia's hand in Ukraine's presidential election due
on January 17th. That election is of almost as much importance to Russia
as it is to Ukraine itself. In the previous presidential election,
Russia backed Viktor Yanukovich, the Russian-friendly prime minister at
the time. He lost badly and so did Vladimir Putin, then Russia's
president and now prime minister, who had rushed to congratulate him.

The Kremlin fears making the same mistake twice. But this time, in
insulting Mr Yushchenko, it is kicking someone who it thinks is certain
to lose anyway. It is also laying down rules which it implies the next
president must respect if he or she is to be accepted in Moscow. The
ability to influence Ukraine's policy is seen by Russia as a test of its
resurgence. 

To show the range of options for reintegrating Ukraine into its "sphere
of privileged interest", Russia recently dispatched Patriarch Kirill,
the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, on a tour of Ukraine. "When I
walked through huge crowds of people, chanting 'Kirill is our
patriarch', I understood that our great spiritual unity ...has become a
basic value which cannot be shaken by politics," he told a doubtless
grateful Mr Medvedev on his return. 

As the war in Georgia showed, the Kremlin has other means of persuasion
at its disposal. On August 10th, a day before the video blog, Mr
Medvedev announced new, simplified rules for using Russian military
force outside the country to protect Russian citizens and defend units
stationed abroad.

A full-blown military conflict with Ukraine seems unlikely but is no
longer unthinkable. (Two years ago a war between Russia and Georgia
seemed equally unlikely.) Andrei Illarionov, once an adviser to Mr Putin
and now a fierce critic, says the key factor is not whether Russia has
the military capacity for a confrontation with Ukraine, but that
aggression towards the neighbours has become a way of life for the
Kremlin. In the past decade, Russia has managed to alienate almost all
the former Soviet republics, even undemocratic Belarus. Trade wars and
energy cut-offs have become standard policy responses. 

Of all the neighbouring republics, Ukraine remains the largest and most
important. As Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Polish-born American national
security adviser, once wrote: "Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an
empire, but with Ukraine, suborned and then subordinated, Russia
automatically becomes an empire." It is far from clear, even now, that
Russia has fully accepted Ukraine's sovereignty. At a NATO summit in
Bucharest last year Mr Putin reportedly told President George Bush, "You
understand, George, that Ukraine is not even a state!"

Unlike Georgia or the Baltic states, which had longer traditions of
running their own affairs, Ukraine has had little experience of
statehood. "In the last 80 years of the 20th century we declared our
independence six times. Five times we lost it," Mr Yushchenko pointed
out in a recent interview. 

Ukraine's politicians and voters seem to be leaving the country
vulnerable again. According to a recent poll, more Ukranians think their
own government is the biggest security threat to their country than
believe Russia is. Corruption and squabbling inside the ruling Orange
coalition have paralysed governance. The majority of presidential
decrees do not get implemented. Since June Ukraine has not had a defence
minister. Its economy contracted by 18% in the second quarter of the
year.

"People have lost any respect for their own state," says Yulia
Mostovaya, an influential journalist in Kiev. National ideals have been
discredited by cynicism and the corruption of ruling politicians tainted
by shady gas deals with Russia. Meanwhile the version of order projected
by Russia's television channels looks increasingly popular (more than
90% of Ukranians say they feel positive about Russia, whereas 42% of
Russians see Ukraine as an enemy). 

Few leading Ukrainian politicians publicly rebutted Mr Medvedev's insult
to Mr Yushchenko. Most used it as yet another opportunity to kick him.
"We have reached a critical point, a point of bifurcation," says Anatoly
Gritsenko, Ms Mostovaya's husband, a former defence minister and one of
the presidential candidates. "Either Ukraine is going down, towards
disintegration, or it will start recovering. But the current unstable
situation cannot last."

Russia's own situation may not be entirely stable and its current rulers
may be tempted to provoke a conflict with Ukraine to consolidate their
position. One thing looks increasingly certain: the relationship between
Russia and Ukraine will be a worry for European security.

 

The New York Times 

August 21, 2009

Op-Ed Contributor 

Medvedev's Message 

By EUGENE B. RUMER and DAVID J. KRAMER

Russia's president, Dmitri Medvedev, has had a busy August.

On Aug. 8, he met with Russian troops, who a year ago had, according to
the Kremlin Web site, repelled "Georgian aggression against South
Ossetia." 

On Aug. 10, he introduced a bill in the Duma to allow him to send
Russian troops abroad to defend Russian citizens or prevent aggression
against another state. 

On Aug. 11, he wrote to the Ukrainian president, Viktor Yushchenko,
announcing his decision to delay - indefinitely - the dispatch of the
new Russian ambassador to Ukraine. Mr. Medvedev explained his decision
by citing Mr. Yushchenko's anti-Russian policies. He also hinted that
the decision might be reversed after Ukraine's presidential election in
January, when the country will have "new political leadership." 

Few things can give Mr. Yushchenko, up for re-election with barely 3
percent support in the polls, a better boost than an attack from the
Kremlin. But that was probably not Mr. Medvedev's intent. The letter
contains ominous warnings that suggest Russian intentions to escalate
already tense relations after the latest gas cutoff last January.

The list of Mr. Medvedev's complaints about Kiev's policies covers
virtually every aspect of Russian-Ukrainian relations: Mr. Yushchenko's
government supported Georgia in the war with Russia last year and
supplied it with weapons. Kiev interfered with Russia's Black Sea fleet
based in Sevastopol; it disrupted Russian natural gas deliveries to
Europe; it used the specter of a Russian threat to seek NATO membership;
it mistreated Russian investors; it engaged in historical revisionism in
the glorification of Nazi collaborators; and it even tried to disrupt
the visit of the Russian Patriarch to Ukraine. 

The alleged offenses are so grave that Medvedev's letter leaves little
room for defusing the tensions. If the letter is "merely" an attempt to
interfere in Ukraine's domestic politics and warn voters that they
should not re-elect the Western-leaning Mr. Yushchenko, it would not be
the first time. During the 2004 presidential election, which preceded
Ukraine's "Orange revolution," the Kremlin intervened heavily on behalf
of Mr. Yushchenko's opponent, Viktor Yanukovich. But Moscow's
intervention backfired, and Mr. Yushchenko emerged as the nation's
democratic leader, propelled to victory in part by widespread resentment
of Russian actions. 

But what if Mr. Medvedev's letter is not simply a replay of 2004?
Relations between the two countries have been so bad for so long that
everyone has become used to fiery exchanges between the two capitals. In
this regard, the situation is reminiscent of Russian-Georgian relations
on the eve of the war a year ago. Relations between Moscow and Tbilisi
had been so bad for so long, and signs of increasing tension had become
part and parcel of Russian-Georgian relations to such a degree, that
even many close observers were taken by surprise when the war began.

Who would have predicted that Georgia's tiny military could go to war
against the Russian Army? And Russia, conventional wisdom held, would
not attack Georgia for fear of damaging its relations with the West.

Is Mr. Medvedev's letter a sign that Russian patience with Ukraine is
running out, that Russia is preparing to take drastic action - to
reclaim the Crimean peninsula, for example, with its ethnic Russian
majority? 

Conventional wisdom holds that such a move would cause irreparable harm
to Russian relations with Europe and the United States. Conventional
wisdom also suggests that the bill Mr. Medvedev introduced on Aug. 10 on
the use of Russian troops abroad is probably just a routine piece of
legislation intended to fix glitches in existing Russian laws. Russia,
after all, moved against Georgia without such legislation.

Conventional wisdom further argues that Russian leaders would not be so
careless as to use military force in Crimea, where ethnic Russians
reportedly have been obtaining Russian passports and where Russian naval
personnel serve at the Sevastopol naval base. And conventional wisdom
argues that Ukraine could pose a greater challenge for the Russian
military than did Georgia, thus acting as a further deterrent.

Conventional wisdom is reassuring. But relying on conventional wisdom
can lead to unimagined results, as last year's Russian-Georgian war
demonstrated. Mr. Medvedev's letter to the Ukrainian leader is an
occasion to engage in unconventional speculation as to what might be the
real reason behind it, and an opportunity to exercise our collective
imagination in pursuit of a course of action that would boost our
confidence in conventional wisdom.

Eugene B. Rumer is a senior fellow at the Institute for National
Strategic Studies, National Defense University, Washington. David J.
Kramer is senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States
in Washington and served as a deputy assistant secretary of state
responsible for Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova in the George W.
Bush administration.

The Wall Street Journal

WEEKEND JOURNAL

Taste: Not Your Father's Peace Corps 

By Claire St. Amant 

21 August 2009

Tysmentsya, Ukraine -- After graduating from college in 2008, I joined
the Peace Corps and was sent to Ukraine. I'm not sure where I meet more
people who know less about what exactly the Peace Corps is -- here or
back home. In Ukraine, people I meet either think that I'm a secret
agent (our language-training classes now include the phrase "I am not a
spy") or that I was forced to come here, as if in some sort of mandatory
military service. When I tell Ukrainians I actually chose this job, they
are unconvinced. The idea that a college-educated, single female with no
relatives in Eastern Europe would willingly give up two years of her
life to teach English in the former Soviet Union is hard for them to
fathom.

You might think that Americans would know more about the program, but
they are familiar with the Peace Corps only nominally. For many, it
conjures up memories of John F. Kennedy asking America's youth to put
aside their selfish ways and serve global humanity, not to mention
images of earnest college graduates helping to dig wells in Africa. In
fact, Africa is the default site of most Peace Corps iconography. Of
course, the Peace Corps still operates there. But it has changed a great
deal from the days of the New Frontier, even if its core mission remains
the same: to provide skills where they were needed, to educate other
cultures about America, and to educate Americans about other cultures.

Earlier this summer, President Barack Obama nominated Aaron Williams to
be the corps' new director. Mr. Williams, who was a volunteer in the
Dominican Republic from 1967 to 1970, has been tasked with doubling the
size of the corps from its current 7,876 volunteers by 2011. Mr. Obama's
proposed $373.4 million budget is a $33.4 million increase from last
year.

In 1965, when missionaries and soldiers were practically the only
developing-world travelers, the Peace Corps was twice today's size.
Other things have changed too. The fall of the Iron Curtain and the
advent of the Internet have propelled the program in a new direction.

To learn more about the roots of the corps, I phoned Jim Sheahan, a
Sierra Leone volunteer from 1961 to 1963 who now lives in Atlanta.
"You're calling me from Ukraine?" he asked incredulously. "The Peace
Corps sure has changed since I was there," he noted, recalling the
isolation from the rest of the world that volunteers used to experience.
Mr. Sheahan had to make an advance appointment at the post office to
telephone anyone abroad. "The charges were horrendous," he said,
particularly "on a Peace Corps salary."

While most people associate the corps with, say, Uganda, Ukraine is now
home to the largest Peace Corps contingent. These days, in fact,
Morocco, Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and Guatemala all host more
volunteers than any sub-Saharan African country. As the industries of
the corps have gradually expanded to include business development and
information technology, so has the scope of countries served. After
declaring independence in 1991, Ukraine was the first former Soviet
republic to invite the corps into its country. Currently there are 247
members here, 17% of whom are older than 50. Instead of the stereotype
of 20-somethings living in grass huts, volunteers are of all ages now.
And Ron Tschetter, the director under the Bush administration, had his
own ideas about how to encourage more applicants. His recruiting plan
targeted the 50-plus demographic through the AARP and retired teachers'
associations with a goal to increase the proportion of older volunteers
to 15% from 5%. While he didn't succeed in shifting numbers
program-wide, many of my colleagues in Ukraine could be my grandparents;
they include academics and former business executives.

Volunteers often live in apartments while teaching English or working in
business development. But indoor plumbing does not make a developed
country. In Ukraine, water supplies routinely break down and central
heating is a rarity. Double-digit inflation, gas shortages and poisoned
presidential candidates are just a sampling of the woes of this teenage
democracy. "This is not the end," my Ukrainian friend Svitlana reminds
me while baking an elaborate meal for family and friends or planting
rows of onions. Ukraine is definitely a work in progress. But things are
improving in fits and starts.

In between hand-washing clothes and dishes and making meals from
scratch, I teach fifth through 10th grade at the local school. While we
have a computer lab that theoretically has Internet access, I spend most
lessons without electricity. I teach new vocabulary through charades and
practice spelling with Hangman tournaments. A great deal of my work is
outside the classroom, talking with neighbors about American history
over a cup of tea or helping friends gather potatoes from their kitchen
gardens.

In the past, Peace Corps volunteers joined up to see the world and, of
course, to do good. But today a significant portion of the American
population has already been abroad by the time they have graduated from
college, although rarely have they spent any time in the countries where
the corps members work. When Mr. Sheahan worked in the corps' public
affairs division in 1963, he booked returned volunteers on the Johnny
Carson "Tonight Show" to promote the experience. Recruitment today is
mostly done online. Potential volunteers can learn facts and figures
about countries and programs, as well as look at pictures, watch videos
and read blogs from current volunteers. I bookmarked the page in high
school and would routinely check the site for new programs and the
latest updates from the field. By the time I attended a recruiting event
on my college campus, I had already started my online application.

Despite my longtime interest, I don't think I could have predicted what
my life is like now. And now I'm sharing the experience with baby
boomers. At a recent birthday party, we ate on the floor with pillows
and a hodgepodge of plates and cups. Volunteers enjoy celebrating
together, but our housing requirements allot only two plates and two
forks per person. The scene wouldn't seem that unusual for a recent
college grad, but the birthday boy was turning 64. "I never imagined a
birthday like this in my 60s," mused John Jensen, a former soldier,
business owner and blackjack dealer. He seemed to be enjoying himself. 

Voice Of America

Ukraine - 18 years of independence.  Interview with Orest Deychakiwsky

Myroslava Gongadze,

Washington

21/08/2009

(In English)

	
http://www.voanews.com/ukrainian/2009-08-21-voa6.cfm
<http://www.voanews.com/ukrainian/2009-08-21-voa6.cfm> 

 

 

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