[Ohio UZO News] Ukraine: WP; Reuters; Economist; WoE

[Deychak, Orest]

The Washington Post 

www.thewashingtonpost.com

A Section

In Ukraine, a reckoning for Russia; New president downplays ties Analysts say Kremlin is likely to be disappointed 

by Philip P. Pan 

1 March 2010

FINAL

A08

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."

Reuters

Ukraine leader vows reform, reliability in energy

March 1, 2010

BRUSSELS, March 1 (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych promised the European Union on Monday he would keep Ukraine on the reform path and ensure it is a reliable transit route for Russian gas supplies. 

Visiting Brussels ahead of Moscow on his first foreign visit as head of state, Yanukovych called for better ties with the EU but made clear he would also try to improve ties with Russia when he visits Moscow on Friday.

"We all know what Europe is expecting us to do...it wants us to take the road of reforms," he said after meeting EU leaders.

"Our imminent steps are primarily directed at achieving political stability ... overcoming the consequences of the economic crisis and going along the path of systemic economic reforms."

Yanukovych also sought to reassure the 27-country bloc over the flow of Russian energy supplies which have in the past been cut off during gas price disputes with Moscow. Europe is heavily dependent on these supplies.

"I have confirmed that Ukraine will remain a reliable transit country for the energy resources to Europe and will comply with all its commitments," he said.

Yanukovych, whose initial election as president was overturned by the 2004 "Orange Revolution" protests, is expected to tilt Ukraine closer towards Russia but is also keen to show he favours further integration with Europe.

"Our priorities will include integration into the European Union, bringing up friendly and constructive relations with the Russian Federation, and developing friendly relations with neighbouring partners ... and the strategic partner, the United States of America," he said.

EU WELCOMES VISIT BEFORE MOSCOW

The EU has welcomed Yanukovych's decision to visit Brussels before Moscow as a sign he is seeking balanced ties. It also wants a good relationship between Kiev and Moscow to avoid a repetition of rows that led to disruption to gas supplies.

Yanukovych has opposed Ukraine joining NATO, which his predecessor sought, but said Kiev would continue partnership programmes with the Western military alliance, including an agreement to contribute to its Rapid Response Force.

"As regards issues related to NATO, they are currently on the level that my predecessors have developed," he said. "As to the future, it's an issue to negotiate, to discuss. But the status of Ukraine is not going to change."

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso underlined the importance of Ukraine carrying out reforms, and rapid progress in modernisation and restructuring its gas sector.

"I believe it is the fundamental interest of the European Union and Ukraine to have stronger and closer ties," Barroso said. But he added: "Reforms are necessary."

"We need urgent progress on modernisation and restructuring of the gas sector," he said, reiterating a long-held EU demand.

Both sides backed speeding up talks on a broad EU-Ukraine cooperation agreement and Barroso said they discussed "an indicative date" of one year to conclude a free trade agreement.

Yanukovych said the two sides also discussed visa-free travel for Ukrainians to the 27-country EU. Progress was not expected on this from his initial meetings.

Barroso said successful talks with the IMF, which suspended a loan programme to Ukraine last year, would be a first step to an improved investment climate.

However, having defeated Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko only narrowly in a Feb. 7 election run-off, Yanukovych could find that, like his predecessor as president, his ability to act is limited by political battles with her and with parliament.

Ukraine's parliament will hold a vote of no confidence in Tymoshenko's government on Wednesday as Yanukovych seeks to consolidate his power in the assembly.

If the vote succeeds, Tymoshenko and her government will remain until a new cabinet replaces them. The fickle factions in parliament would then begin weeks of horsetrading to replace the ruling coalition and create a new government

 

The Economist

www.economist.com

 

Yanukovich's mixed blessing

Feb 25th 2010 | MOSCOW 
>From The Economist print edition


A triumphant Viktor Yanukovich is inaugurated in Kiev, but his political problems have only just begun

EVEN in Ukraine, elections can end. After two rounds of voting and weeks of legal rumbles, Viktor Yanukovich was inaugurated on February 25th as Ukraine's fourth democratically elected president. In November 2004 he tried and failed to steal the crown. Now he has played (mostly) by the rules-and won. Although Yulia Tymoshenko, his charismatic rival (and Ukraine's prime minister), refuses to recognise Mr Yanukovich's victory, she withdrew her legal appeals this week. Ukraine's highest office has thus moved from an incumbent to an opposition leader: a rare achievement in an ex-Soviet republic.

Mr Yanukovich's legitimacy is now accepted by the world's leaders, and not just by Russia's prime minister, Vladimir Putin, who rashly congratulated him on his rigged victory in 2004. This time Moscow made no such crude statements. Instead, it asserted its feelings of fraternity towards Kiev by dispatching Patriarch Kirill, head of the Russian Orthodox Church, to bless Mr Yanukovich before his inauguration. This says as much about Mr Yanukovich's piety as about Moscow's tactic of using the church to extend its influence. Rarely have the Russians used soft power so well. Yet Mr Yanukovich, conscious of his pro-Russian image, tried to downplay the patriarch's visit, and is planning his first foreign visit to Brussels, not Moscow. 

His biggest problems lie at home, where his slender victory is yet to turn into real power. Ms Tymoshenko's legal challenge was not meant to overturn the election or trigger street protests. Her aim was to rally supporters by showing that she never gives up, to label Mr Yanukovich's victory illegitimate and to blame Ukraine's corrupt courts for "cynically refusing to establish the truth". All this was meant to chip away at Mr Yanukovich's mandate. As it is, he is the first directly elected president in Ukraine's history to win with less than 50% of the vote.

The election has affirmed Ukraine as a functioning democracy, but it has neither brought political stability nor resolved the crippling question of where power lies in a country of 46m people. Ukraine is still trapped in the constitutional compromise agreed to by the outgoing president, Viktor Yushchenko, which divides executive power between the president and a prime minister chosen by the Verkhovna Rada (parliament). This means that, despite his win, Mr Yanukovich can do little without a new parliamentary coalition.

Creating one has proved harder than he expected, not least because of conflicting interests in his own Party of Regions. After a long and expensive campaign, his backers want to turn his victory into profit and are thus reluctant to share power. Ms Tymoshenko is now calling on the Rada to hold a confidence vote in her government. Next week her nominal coalition could formally break up, but even that would not resolve Mr Yanukovich's problem. 

Mr Yanukovich may muster sufficient votes to oust Ms Tymoshenko as prime minister. But to form a majority coalition he needs the support of Mr Yushchenko's Our Ukraine block. Our Ukraine's deputies have their own financial and political interests-and satisfying them does not come cheap. Ms Tymoshenko is also bidding to hang on to some of the party's deputies. Despite Mr Yushchenko's spectacular defeat in the presidential election (he won just 5% of the vote in the first round), his party is now in a position to be kingmaker. In the words of Yulia Mostovaya, editor of Zerkalo Nedeli, a weekly, the losers are bargaining as if they were winners.

Despite the cynicism of Ukrainian politics, ideology plays a part in all this. Our Ukraine draws support exclusively from western Ukraine, the more nationalistic part. Its voters will see betrayal in any alliance with Mr Yanukovich, who made his first victory speech in Russian, who has suggested that the Russian Black Sea fleet may stay in Sebastopol after its lease runs out in 2017, and who has offered Gazprom the lure of a joint consortium to operate Ukraine's gas pipelines. The blessing by Kirill may be the last straw. 

To make an alliance more palatable, Mr Yanukovich may have to accept a compromise prime minister. One choice is Arseniy Yatseniuk, a former central banker who has served as foreign minister and speaker of the Rada. Mr Yatseniuk, who himself tried for the presidency, has proved flexible in dealing with different political forces and yet is popular with Our Ukraine's voters. He is also said to be favoured by Rinat Akhmetov, Ukraine's richest tycoon and Mr Yanukovich's sponsor. 

Yet part of the new president's entourage feels this would be too much of a concession to a losing party. Mr Yanukovich would prefer to see an old comrade, Nikolai Azarov, as prime minister. Mr Azarov served as Mr Yanukovich's deputy in 2006 and is loyal to him rather than to Mr Akhmetov. He is seen by some as an ideal caretaker prime minister who could bring Ukraine's dire public finances into some sort of order, even if he may not turn out to be much of a reformer.

If Mr Yanukovich fails to build a new coalition, he will have to call a new parliamentary election. This may be the best way to break the stalemate. It would certainly be more democratic than gluing together a coalition dependent only on participants' vested interests. But it would be risky for Mr Yanukovich. Given his narrow win in the presidential election, there is a chance that his party would lose more seats than it would gain in a parliamentary vote. Serhiy Tyhypko, who came third in the first round of the presidential election, taking votes from both front-runners, will form a faction and have demands of his own. Unlike Mr Yatseniuk, Mr Tyhypko is seen as a potential rival to Mr Yanukovich.

The next few months may bring more clarity. But for the moment Ukraine's politics continues to be in chaos. And its politicians are too busy making deals to pay much attention to the country's economic problems-or its national interests. 


Window on Eurasia: Union of Political Émigrés from Russia Organized in Kyiv

 

Paul Goble

 

            Vienna, February 25 - A group of Russians who have been forced to flee their homeland because of political persecution have formed a Union of Political Émigrés in the Ukrainian capital, the latest and in some ways most curious and disturbing case in the long history of political emigration from Russia.

 

            On Tuesday, at the Glavred Media Center in Kyiv, Russians who have fled to Ukraine announced the formation of the Union of Political Émigrés there to call attention to threats to political freedom in their homeland, to help others similarly situated to survive, and to try to spur the larger Russian-language diaspora to political action.

 

            Olga Kudrina, who was forced to flee Russia after her calls in 2006 for Vladimir Putin to leave office and is a leader of the new group, said that the first task was to change the way in which most Russians think about "the political emigration."  It does not consist, she said, only of people like Berezovsky, Chichvarkin, and Zakayev, oligarchs or Chechen activists.

 

            Instead, she continued, it includes a large number of "journalists, rights activists and opposition figures" who have left Russia and "obtained the status of refugee" or who simply have left without such status. The new organization shows that there is a common reason for their departure (http://forum.msk.ru/material/kompromat/2537719.html).

 

            The Union of Political Émigrés, which is registered as a non-governmental organization in Ukraine and which hopes to extend its reach to other centers of Russians living abroad, Kudrina said, shows that "the problem of a [Russian] political emigration exists [and that] it can insist on its own rights and perhaps have an influence in the future on the situation in Russia." 

 

            She and other organizers and other organizers and supporters, some of them who continue to live in Russia, distributed an appeal in which they noted that according to the United Nations, only two other countries - Iraq and Somalia - are the source of more political refugees than is the Russian Federation.

 

            The appeal continued with an expression of hope that "by joint efforts [of Russian activists at home and the political emigration,] civil society will be able to change the situation [in Russia] and construct a legal state and help those who in the struggle for their own dignity and a better future for our country have been subjected to persecution and forced to flee Russia."

 

            Denis Bilunov, the leader of Russia's Solidarity Organization, said that "political persecutions in Russia, a norm of contemporary life, is a sad fact and quite well known. [Moreover,] despite all the reforms President Medvedev talks about, the so-called Center for Blocking Extremism (Section E) continues to exist."

 

            "Instead of occupying themselves with real problems connected with genuine extremism as when a train between Moscow and Petersburg or similar things happen, [officials in that section] follow young men and women who have been brave enough to go into the streets" to defend their rights.

 

           Bilunov explained why in his opinion this new émigré group arose in Ukraine: If someone is trying to save himself and is not an oligarch, "of course for him it is simpler to go to a country which does not require a visa, a country where people speak Russian freely and where - and this is especially important - persecution for politics is almost impossible."

 

           The Solidarity leader said that he wouldn't evaluate Ukrainian life more generally. "But a fact remains a fact: our colleagues feel themselves there relatively secure, and they do not face problems with possible extradition" back to the Russian Federation, although Moscow has tried (www.specletter.com/svoboda-slova/2010-02-25/po-politicheskim-motivam.html). 

 

           The new Union, while relatively small in numbers, nonetheless represents yet another piece of evidence that Ukraine for all its problems remains a relatively free and democratic state while the Russian Federation despite all its claims and those of its supporters elsewhere is not and has in fact become less free and less democratic over the last decade.

 

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