[Ohio UZO News] Ukraine: NYT; WSJ (2)

[Deychak, Orest]

The New York Times

www.nytimes.org

 

TV Refugees From Moscow 

By CLIFFORD J. LEVY 

24 January 2010

Late Edition - Final

5

KIEV, Ukraine -- In the final weeks of Ukraine's presidential campaign,
all the candidates have wanted to appear on Savik Shuster's political
talk show. Denied an invitation, one even threatened to carry out a
swashbuckling raid on Mr. Shuster's television studio in Kiev to force a
very impromptu live debate with a rival.

It has been a bit like the old days -- back in Moscow.

Mr. Shuster is a refugee from Vladimir V. Putin's Russia. As the
television news has been whitewashed there, some big-mouthed journalists
like Mr. Shuster have decamped for neighboring Ukraine, where the
political and media climate is far more lively and diverse and just
plain interesting. (Can you imagine the steely Mr. Putin chasing after a
journalist, demanding to be interviewed?)

The split between the two countries has become increasingly evident
since the Orange Revolution of 2004 put Ukraine on a path toward a more
European-style government, in contrast to the autocratic regimes in much
of the rest of the former Soviet Union.

Mr. Shuster left Moscow after his program, ''Freedom of Speech,'' was
canceled. His supposed sins: he asked tart questions that cast doubt on
the authorities and sought guests who had displeased them. He did, in
other words, what journalists tend to do.

''Television there now is like in Soviet times,'' he said. ''I see more
and more conformism. You are not allowed to invite people who have
different positions and can debate those positions. So today in Russia,
you can't do a real talk show.''

Another newcomer in Kiev, Yevgeny Kiselyov, who was a pioneering
television journalist in Moscow in the 1990s, said self-censorship was
pervasive in Russia. ''There are all kinds of don'ts,'' he said. ''All
kinds of black lists that are never on paper. But every producer, every
editor knows them by heart.''

With competing hit political talk shows, these two immigrants have
unexpectedly become media kingmakers in the Ukrainian presidential
election, which is heading to a Feb. 7 runoff. It is to be decided
between Viktor F. Yanukovich, the loser in the Orange Revolution, and
Prime Minister Yulia V. Tymoshenko, one of its heroes.

They were the top finishers in the election last Sunday, and the fact
that no one knows who will win is a telling sign that Ukraine is not
like most post-Soviet countries.

Both candidates have regularly been on the programs of Mr. Shuster (who
resembles a college professor) and Mr. Kiselyov (more the typical
anchorman).

Interviewing Mr. Yanukovich this month, Mr. Shuster went after a big
vulnerability: a perception that he might be a Putin pawn. ''They say
that you will agree to turn over the government to the Kremlin -- is
that the case?'' he asked.

Ms. Tymoshenko was the candidate who almost barged into Mr. Shuster's
studio. She had clamored for a debate with Mr. Yanukovich in December,
but he refused, so she let it be known she might ambush him. In the end,
she didn't.

Mr. Shuster has been in Kiev since 2005, and Mr. Kiselyov since 2008.
They thrive in part because Ukraine and Russia are Slavic siblings with
interwoven cultures. While Ukrainian is the national language, Russian,
which is relatively similar, is widely spoken, and many people speak
both.

Given the post-Soviet landscape, it is easy to glamorize the media in
Ukraine, just as it is with recollections of Russian television,
pre-Putin. The truth -- in today's Kiev as in Moscow back then -- is
messier.

Ukraine's stations are largely controlled by oligarchs who often use
them to settle scores and blatantly support candidates. The same thing
occurred in Russia.

European election monitors in Ukraine have called most television news
coverage slanted. Some journalists are believed to give politicians
favorable coverage in exchange for bribes.

Still, the government does not exert wide-ranging control over
television news content, as in Moscow.

Roman Golovenko, a lawyer who monitors the media, says that television
news has generally improved since the Orange Revolution, though it has a
long way to go.

Mr. Shuster and Mr. Kiselyov said that because of their stature, they
had avoided pressure from their channels' owners.

An obvious question is, why have Ukraine and Russia diverged? Ukraine
seems more pluralistic, in part because of a geographic divide that
makes it harder to dominate the country. Ukrainian speakers in the west
look toward Europe, and Russian speakers in the east and south are more
loyal to Moscow.

Both men said they were not sure that the Ukrainian experiment in
democracy would turn out well. The public is tired of political
bickering and upheaval, and corruption is as entrenched here as in
Russia. The Orange Revolution has lost its luster. Maybe the next
president will tighten the government's grip over the media.

''It's not my joke, but I like it,'' Mr. Kiselyov said. ''The difference
between Russian politics and Ukrainian politics is the difference
between a cemetery and a madhouse.''

Even so, Mr. Kiselyov said Ukrainians had become accustomed to their
freedoms and were not likely to turn back. ''Most politicians, even in
the West, don't like the media,'' he said. ''When Western leaders were
criticizing Putin for his handling of the media, deep in the hearts,
they were thinking, 'I wish I could do the same.' But Ukrainian
political culture has changed dramatically since the Orange Revolution.
In Ukraine now, they are playing by different rules.''

The Wall Street Journal 

http://online.wsj.com

 

Ukraine Needs the West's Support 

By Matthew Kaminski 

27 January 2010

J

A15

Kiev, Ukraine -- When Ukraine captured the world's imagination in 2004,
waves of orange-clad protestors shook off Soviet cobwebs and ushered in
democracy. From afar, the first presidential election since those
dramatic events looks like a sorry epilogue.

President Viktor Yushchenko, who survived near fatal poisoning to lead
what became the Orange Revolution, was humiliated in last week's first
round of voting. His 5.5% tally was "kefir-like," went a joke, meaning
that it was around the fat content of the local yogurt. To add insult,
the leading vote-getter was the loser in 2004, Viktor Yanukovych. The
so-called pro-Moscow candidate who tried to steal that vote with help
from Russia's Vladimir Putin is the favorite in the runoff a fortnight
away.

As the election shows, Ukrainians are fed up with shambolic Orange
leadership, economic hardship (GDP fell 15% last year), and entrenched
corruption. As deep, and more dangerous, may be the disillusionment in
the West. Washington and Brussels suffer from what officials in both
places call "Ukraine fatigue."

Before anyone rushes to declare the Orange Revolution dead and Kiev
destined to return to Moscow's embrace, a distinction needs to be made.
Disappointment with politicians doesn't mean Ukrainians have soured on
political freedom. Look closer at this sprawling (the size of Germany
and Britain, combined) country of 46 million to behold a genuine, if
still shallow, democracy.

This is a minor miracle. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall,
a new divide sunders Europe. On one side are free nations safely behind
the walls of the West's elite clubs, the European Union and NATO, or
about to hop over. To the east, from Belarus to the Caucasus and Central
Asia, stretches an authoritarian wilderness. In this inhospitable
terrain sits Ukraine.

It remains strategically critical. A stable, prosperous and free Ukraine
ensures Russia can't rebuild its regional empire; it'd also be a
teachable counterexample to the deadening hand of Putinism for their
Slavic cousins up north. The press is free and diverse and political
parties vibrant. At all times of the year, protestors hurl abuse at
their ministers or parliamentarians along Kiev's central Hrushevsky
Street. Try to find such scenes on Red Square. Russian oligarchic elites
who handpick their leaders hate the Ukrainian, and across the Black Sea
the Georgian, experiments with free elections for good reason.

The first round was the cleanest vote to date in Ukraine, with no
significant fraud. In contrast with 2004, no one tried -- so far -- to
murder any candidate. No one knows for sure -- a marvel for this region
-- who'll win the Feb. 7 runoff. Mr. Yanukovych leads Prime Minister
Yulia Tymoshenko, a former Orange leader famous for that braid of blonde
hair, but her charisma and campaigning mojo could yet close the gap.

Concerns about democratic backsliding here overlook the ability of
people to change. As a society, Ukrainians have picked up the habit of
chucking the bums out. Its elites, meanwhile, have also learned that
elections aren't life or death contests that inevitably lead to the
widescale redistribution of property.

Monosyllabic and gruff, Mr. Yanukovych comes from the Sovietized
industrial east -- or, as in Ms. Tymoshenko's colorful barb, "the Stone
Age" -- and plays the part. Yet he looks like a different candidate than
in 2004, more polished and confident. He tells Western ambassadors he
used to be too afraid to meet that he won't sell out his country to
Moscow and that he needs their support as leverage against a pushy
Russia. For that matter, Ms. Tymoshenko also surprised the world. Before
turning heroine to Ukraine's nationalist west, she was a shady,
Russian-speaking gas baroness who made billions in the early post-Soviet
years.

So full of contradictions, Ukraine eludes easy tags. Former President
Leonid Kuchma wrote a book titled, "Ukraine Is Not Russia." Ukraine also
isn't Poland, the other former sovereign in these lands. For centuries
though, Poland was the bridge to the West, helping explain why Ukraine's
political culture resembles Europe more than Eurasia, inclined to
compromise and defend its freedoms.

Even the frequently mentioned divisions between Russian-speaking eastern
and nationalist western Ukraine -- which led the CIA in 1992 to predict
civil war -- are a source of unrecognized strength. Power and wealth are
dispersed too widely for any would-be czar or commissar to grab Ukraine
by the throat. The next generation of politicians who emerged with this
election has been able, in the meantime, to appeal in all regions.

In the short run, Ukraine needs to get through the vote without fraud or
chaos. Some 20,000 Yanukovych supporters are camped down in Kiev in case
the vote doesn't go their man's way and he calls them to the streets.
Ms. Tymoshenko has teams of lawyers ready to challenge the result in
courts, the weakest institutional link in Ukraine. Best case scenario is
a clear outcome, the process the victor.

Once in power, either of these candidates could be tempted to try to
quash the press and freedoms in the name of "stability." This worst case
scenario is hard, as parliament remains strong and voters assertive, but
not impossible to imagine.

This should be the cue for the West. Today Ukraine, still the biggest
piece of the puzzle in the ex-U.S.S.R., is out of fashion in Washington
and Brussels. The well-worn path taken westward by its Central European
neighbors isn't considered right for it.

On taking office, Barack Obama outsourced relations with Ukraine and
Georgia to Joe Biden, refusing to pay either a visit. NATO is off the
table. The EU suffers from an acute case of strategic myopia, seizing on
any excuse -- and Ukrainians provide all too many -- to slam the door
shut.

Better ideas are heard from diplomats who want to "press the reset
button" here, as the U.S. so grandly did on Russia. The message of this
election is that Ukrainians -- like their immediate western neighbors
before them -- want their politicians to stop their bickering and build
a properly functioning democratic state integrated with the West. We
should be there to help them.

---

Mr. Kaminski is a member of the Journal's editorial board.

The Wall Street Journal

World News: Kremlin Ends Freeze With Kiev, in Relief Over Election 

By Richard Boudreaux 

26 January 2010

A11

MOSCOW -- Russia ended a five-month diplomatic freeze with Ukraine on
Monday, demonstrating the Kremlin's relief over President Viktor
Yushchenko's failed re-election bid and its willingness to work with
either of his successors.

Mikhail Zurabov, whose posting as Russia's ambassador had been delayed
since August, arrived in Kiev and handed his credentials to Ukraine's
foreign minister. He avoided the lame-duck president, who had angered
Russian leaders with policies they considered hostile.

Mr. Yushchenko ran far behind the top two finishers in the Jan. 17
election, who will face each other in a runoff next month. Before
dispatching the new envoy, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said last
week he expected the Feb. 7 vote to produce "competent and effective
authorities . . . open to the development of constructive, friendly,
all-around relations with Russia."

Those relations have been severely strained since Mr. Yushchenko led
Ukraine's pro-Western Orange Revolution of 2004.

Moscow's improved position is certain to complicate, if not reverse,
Ukraine's political and economic integration with the West. It could
also ease tensions that periodically led to price wars and halted winter
supplies of Russian gas through Ukraine to Western Europe.

Mr. Medvedev wrote a scathing open letter to Mr. Yushchenko in August,
complaining of anti-Russian policies. That was widely interpreted as an
appeal to Ukrainian voters to dump him for someone more accommodating.

But it was far less meddlesome than the Kremlin's ill-starred attempt to
sway the 2004 vote. Vladimir Putin, then Russia's president, twice
visited Ukraine that year to support Viktor Yanukovych's candidacy and
rushed to applaud his tainted victory, only to be humiliated when poll
results were overturned amid massive street protests against alleged
fraud.

The Orange Revolution gave Ukraine a pro-Western government that
appeared to stand as a model for other former Soviet republics seeking
to distance themselves from Moscow. Mr. Yushchenko angered Russian
leaders by seeking Ukrainian membership in the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization, supporting Georgia in its conflict with Moscow and
campaigning to classify as genocide a Stalin-era famine.

Infighting among the Orange leaders paralyzed his efforts. Voters
disillusioned by a limp economy turned against him.

Moscow's satisfaction with his demise is tempered by a wariness that its
influence can go only so far, analysts say. Wary of another backlash,
Russian leaders refrained from endorsing any candidate in January's
first round of voting, while making it clear they couldn't work with Mr.
Yushchenko, The Kremlin instructed Russian television networks to air
balanced coverage of the race.

"Russia should be very happy that this strong anti-Russian trend in
Ukraine is over," said Sergei Markov, a member of parliament from the
ruling United Russia Party who observed the Jan. 17 election. "But I
wouldn't call it a feeling of triumph. The mood is more cautious."

With Mr. Yanukovych back from disgrace and running again, the Kremlin
cultivated both him and Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, the
Orange heroine who later turned against Mr. Yushchenko. She finished
second to Mr. Yanukovych this month. In November, Mr. Putin praised Ms.
Tymoshenko's work as prime minister after striking a deal with her on
gas prices. Later he denied favoring her candidacy and noted that United
Russia is allied with Mr. Yanukovych's Party of Regions.

Both second-round candidates said they would repair relations with
Russia and shelve Mr. Yushchenko's bid to join NATO, even while pursuing
closer ties to the European Union; neither is expected to continue the
president's campaign on the genocide issue or his effort to restrict use
of the Russian language.

"Russia played it subtle and smart," said Steven Pifer, a former U.S.
ambassador to Ukraine and now a senior fellow at the Brookings
Institution. "No matter who wins in Ukraine, there will be fewer points
of tension with Moscow."

Mr. Pifer and others say, however, that either candidate would resist
being drawn into a customs union with Russia at the expense of a trade
accord with the EU. Russian partisans of Mr. Yanukovych, including
Konstantin Zatulin, a member of parliament from the ruling party, view
him as a tough adversary on gas prices and other trade issues.

 

 

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