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

AFP

Insulting friends and influencing people

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.

Kirill's Visit Exposes Dangers in Moscow-Kiev Ties

August 7, 2009

By SOPHIA KISHKOVSKY

MOSCOW — Wittingly or not, a just-completed 10-day visit to Ukraine by Kirill I, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, has exposed the dangers lurking in relations between Russia and Ukraine, the two most populous nations to emerge from the breakup of the Soviet Union.

It was Kirill’s first trip to Ukraine since he was elected patriarch in January. The visit opened on July 27 with an affirmation of Russian-Ukrainian brotherhood in Kiev, regarded as the cradle of Russian Orthodoxy. Prince Vladimir adopted Orthodoxy from Byzantium for himself and his subjects, who were baptized en masse in the Dnieper River in 988.

“If you will, Kiev is our common Jerusalem, from which our Orthodox faith came,” Kirill said after a service dedicated to the prince, St. Vladimir. “Praying here, we, the heirs of Vladimir’s baptism, living in different states, inviolately preserve the spiritual unity bestowed by him upon us.”

But if the call to unity was a constant theme, and Kirill even offered to take out Ukrainian citizenship, it was clouded both by demonstrators hostile to a visit they saw as an attempt to assert Russian domination, and by political, religious and military tensions that have festered and in some ways grown since the Soviet collapse in 1991.

Top church officials at a news conference in Moscow on Thursday depicted the trip as a triumph that strengthened the transnational character of the Russian Orthodox Church. Protesters represented marginal, isolated groups “that dislike the patriarch simply because of their anti-Russian sentiments,” said Archbishop Hilarion of Volokolamsk. “There is no real opposition to the Russian church today,” he said of Ukraine.

The Reverend Vsevolod Chaplin said that what he called Kirill’s pilgrimage underscored that the church extended far beyond geopolitical borders or terminology. “We are not the church only of the Russian Federation , nor only, as sometimes said, of the Russian people,” he said. “‘Russian’ in the name of the church refers not to the ethnic definition ‘Russian,’ but to the concept ‘Rus,’ which is not political but rather spiritual.”

He said Russia and Ukraine were vital parts of Europe but should not compromise their values and identities to integrate into the modern European system.

By contrast, Mykola Tomenko, vice chairman of the Ukrainian Parliament, said in a statement Thursday that Kirill was hijacking the idea of Rus and that he had used his to “test out the idea of a new ideological doctrine of Russia.”

Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, has yet to visit Ukraine since he took office 15 months ago. Most pointedly, Mr. Medvedev refused an invitation last year from Ukraine’s president, Viktor A. Yushchenko, to the unveiling of a monument to the millions who died in mass famine under Stalin in the 1930s, which Ukrainians call Holodomor and often regard as genocide inflicted by Russia.

Mr. Medvedev railed against the use of distortions of history to cast Russia in a bad light. Kirill, however, visited the monument with Mr. Yushchenko, and used pastoral intonations and personal history — he told of his family’s suffering under Stalin — to cast Stalin’s crimes in a larger context, speaking of famine killing millions across the Soviet Union.

“This is the common tragedy of our entire people, who lived in that time in one country,” Kirill said at the monument, according to the Patriarchate Web site. “That’s why there’s nothing surprising in the fact that we are praying for innocent victims, that we are remembering those who died.”

Underscoring the importance of Kirill’s trip, Mr. Medvedev received the patriarch Thursday to discuss it.

“We’ve had rather complicated relations recently, and we are not happy about this,” Mr. Medvedev said of Ukraine. “That’s why I’m interested in your evaluation.”

Mr. Yushchenko has irked Russians by seeking support from the Patriarchate of Constantinople, with which the Russian church jockeys for power, for a unified Ukrainian Orthodox church free of Moscow’s control.

Traditionally, religious conflict between Russia and Ukraine has centered on the Uniates in Ukraine, especially its western region, who observe the Byzantine rite but are loyal to Rome. Those tensions have abated but have flared between the rival Orthodox churches. During his tour, Kirill rejected demands for formal independence of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, which accounts for over one third of the Russian Orthodox Church, noting it has near total autonomy.

The “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine in 2004 and its turn toward Europe have alarmed the Russian church and the Kremlin. Speaking at a monastery near the border with European Union member Poland, Kirill took care to address Europe, warning it against repeating the Soviet experiment of living without God.

His trip took him right across Ukraine, a country of some 46 million roughly the size of France, traveling from Kiev to Donetsk, a mining hub in the east, where many Russian speakers live, to Crimea and to western Ukraine.

Perhaps the greatest Russian-Ukrainian tension centers on Crimea, where Russia’s Black Sea fleet is based at Sevastopol. There, laying a wreath at a war memorial, Kirill struck a slightly more ominous tone.

Crimea was part of Russia until the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev bestowed it on Ukraine in 1954. When the Soviet Union crumbled, this left Russia’s Black Sea fleet in a different country. Ukraine would like it out after its lease expires in 2017; just days before Kirill’s visit, Russia acknowledged that it had violated treaty stipulations by transporting cruise missiles near the base.

At the war monument, as Russian and Ukrainian naval officials listened, Kirill spoke of the potential for escalation and commonalities that might prevent it.

“As a result of historical events about which we know and remember, it turned out that there are two fleets here, and not one,” he said. “But in these two fleets serve brothers — brothers in faith, heirs of the Holy Equal-to-the Apostles Prince Vladimir. And today it is my fervent prayer that never and under no circumstances should brothers take aim at each other, because nothing divides brothers so much as spilled blood.”

L’Ukraine penche de plus en plus à l’Ouest

La voisine de la Russie a proposé samedi à l’Occident ses radars de défense antimissiles.

De notre correspondante à Kiev MATHILDE GOANEC

QUOTIDIEN : lundi 18 août 2008

L’Ukraine, qui avait fait sa révolution orange un an après celle de la rose géorgienne, se sent aujourd’hui menacée par l’intervention russe en Géorgie et cherche sa place sous le parapluie occidental. Candidate à l’Otan, comme la Géorgie, mais devant rester prudente en raison de la présence d’une importante communauté russophone, l’Ukraine est montée en ligne samedi pour proposer à l’Occident ses radars de défense antimissiles. Cette offre intervient deux jours après un accord entre Washington et Varsovie sur l’installation en Pologne d’éléments du bouclier antimissiles américain. Depuis 1992, l’armée russe utilisait, en accord avec Kiev, les informations fournies par deux radars placés sur le sol ukrainien. Cet héritage de l’époque soviétique apparaît aujourd’hui intenable. L’Ukraine cherche de nouveaux pays susceptibles d’utiliser ses radars mais ce tournant vers l’Ouest pourrait achever de fâcher la Russie.

Flotte russe. Car mercredi dernier, le président ukrainien Viktor Iouchtchenko a déjà signé un décret restreignant les mouvements de la flotte russe de la mer Noire, historiquement basée sur le sol ukrainien, à Sébastopol en Crimée. Désormais, les Russes devront demander, soixante-douze heures à l’avance, l’autorisation de l’armée ukrainienne dès qu’un de leurs bateaux ou avions souhaitera entrer ou sortir du territoire national.

Pour Moscou, il s’agit là d’«une grave mesure anti-russe». «La flotte de la Mer noire n’obéit pas à Vicktor Iouchtchenko, mais au seul président russe», a répliqué l’état-major moscovite. Viktor Iouchtchenko aimerait voir partir la flotte russe au terme, en 2017, de la location du grand port de Crimée. Et il se peut qu’elle le propose alors à l’Otan.

Malgré ces signes de virage dans les relations russo-ukrainiennes, jusqu’où Kiev peut-elle aller dans son opposition à Moscou ? Iouchtchenko, en visite de soutien mardi dernier à Tbilissi, est resté en retrait derrière les virulents présidents polonais et baltes, présents eux aussi dans la capitale géorgienne. Car si ces derniers sont bien à l’abri dans le système de sécurité de l’Otan et de l’Union européenne, l’Ukraine est, elle, seule face à son grand voisin. La Première ministre Ioulia Timochenko le sait bien, et se fait étonnamment discrète depuis le début du conflit géorgien : elle négocie actuellement le prix du gaz russe pour cet hiver et devine que toute déclaration hostile pourrait bien se payer au prix fort. Sa prudence est alimentée aussi par la peur de froisser une partie de l’électorat ukrainien, toujours attachée à des relations cordiales avec Moscou.

Froideur. «L’Ukraine reçoit, assez explicitement, des menaces de rétorsion au cas où elle se mettrait en travers de la Russie. Cette situation est grave car le pays n’est pas prêt à un réel affrontement avec Moscou, estime Pétro Bourkovsky, analyste de l’Institut national d’études stratégiques à Kiev. Pourtant, il est important de soutenir la Géorgie, car si ce pays reste seul face aux attaques russes, Moscou se sentira dans le futur en droit d’utiliser la force contre n’importe qui, l’Ukraine par exemple.» Raison de plus, selon l’analyste, pour forcer vite la porte de l’Otan. Et ce, malgré la froideur affichée par les membres européens de l’organisation. «Si, pour sortir de la crise, il y a un compromis réalisé à l’Otan sur le dos de l’Ukraine et que les Européens nous abandonnent sous la coupe des Russes, alors nous vivrons en Ukraine dans une insécurité permanente», insiste, non sans inquiétude, Pétro Bourkovsky.

http://www.liberation.fr/actualite/monde/345761.FR.php

© Libération

Le conflit géorgien aggrave les tensions entre Moscou et Kiev

LE MONDE | 18.08.08 | 14h48  •  Mis à jour le 18.08.08 | 14h49

MOSCOU CORRESPONDANCE

e conflit géorgien multiplie décidément les tensions diplomatiques entre Moscou et ses voisins : la guerre éclair dans le Caucase pourrait bien avoir déclenché l'une des crises les plus importantes de ces dernières années entre Moscou et Kiev. A l'origine du conflit : la base militaire russe de Sébastopol, qui abrite une partie importante de la flotte russe de la mer Noire, et qui est située dans la République autonome de Crimée, à l'intérieur du territoire ukrainien.

La question de la flotte russe constitue l'une des questions les plus délicates des relations russo-ukrainiennes depuis la chute de l'URSS. Après l'indépendance de l'Ukraine, en 1991, Kiev a accepté de louer aux Russes les installations militaires nécessaires au maintien de leurs troupes navales, dans le cadre d'un traité renouvelable tous les dix ans.

Signé en 1997, reconduit en 2007, son renouvellement en 2017 est plus incertain : les autorités ukrainiennes actuelles, notamment le président pro-occidental Viktor Iouchtchenko, souhaitent le départ de la flotte au terme de l'accord.

La question a refait violemment surface la semaine dernière. C'est d'abord le ministère russe des affaires étrangères, Sergueï Lavrov, qui a accusé Kiev, dès le début de l'offensive géorgienne, d'avoir "activement armé les troupes géorgiennes, encourageant en cela les dirigeants géorgiens à procéder à une intervention et à des purges ethniques en Ossétie du Sud".

La réponse ukrainienne ne s'est pas fait attendre : dès le lendemain, Kiev menaçait d'interdire le retour sur la base de Sébastopol, "en territoire ukrainien", des navires russes ayant participé au conflit. Une menace transformée en décret présidentiel qui contraint désormais les navires russes à demander l'autorisation de l'armée ukrainienne 72 heures avant de prendre le large, mais que la Russie ne reconnaît pas. "Nous n'avons qu'un seul commandant : le chef de l'Etat russe", prévient Andreï Krylov, porte-parole de la flotte russe de Sébastopol, joint par téléphone.

"Etrangement, l'accord de 1997 fait l'impasse sur les conditions selon lesquelles la flotte russe stationnée en Ukraine peut prendre part à des combats", nous explique Vladimir Fessenko, analyste politique ukrainien joint par téléphone à Kiev. " C'est d'autant plus problématique aujourd'hui, alors que l'Ukraine a signé avec Moscou un traité d'amitié et de coopération, et avec Tbilissi un traité semblable. La participation des navires russes au conflit géorgien porte donc préjudice aux intérêts nationaux ukrainiens", estime l'analyste, réputé proche du président Iouchtchenko.

A Moscou, la réaction à l'oukase ukrainien a été immédiate : "Une nouvelle mesure anti-russe très grave", selon le ministère des affaires étrangères. "Iouchtchenko a besoin de cette nouvelle crise pour accélérer le processus d'adhésion de l'Ukraine à l'OTAN", explique au Monde le général-major Leonid Cherchnev, rédacteur en chef de la revue Sécurité à Moscou. "Les dernières actions irréfléchies du président Iouchtchenko visent à provoquer une grave crise entre Moscou et Kiev, pour parvenir à cette fin."

Car Viktor Iouchtchenko ne s'est pas arrêté aux bâtiments navals de la flotte russe. Le ministère ukrainien des affaires étrangères a déclaré, samedi 16 août, que les radars antimissiles ukrainiens, exploités jusqu'au début de cette année en commun avec Moscou, pouvaient désormais "être mis à disposition des pays européens ou d'autres pays étrangers (...) intéressés par le renseignement spatial". Une annonce faite deux jours après l'entente signée entre Washington et Varsovie pour l'installation d'une partie du bouclier antimissile américain en Pologne.

"Victor Iouchtchenko n'a pas le soutien de la population ukrainienne pour effectuer ce genre de manoeuvres", estime Constantin Zatouline, député russe réputé pour ses positions tranchantes sur la question ukrainienne. "Viktor Iouchtchenko n'a pas consulté le Parlement, il n'est pas autorisé à mener une telle politique", renchérit Mikhaïl Pogrebinski, directeur du Centre d'études politiques et des conflits, joint à Kiev par téléphone.

A un an des élections présidentielles ukrainiennes, le taux de popularité de M. Iouchtchenko est au plus bas. En embuscade, Ioulia Timochenko, premier ministre et concurrente du président ukrainien dans le camp "orange" pro-occidental, s'est d'ailleurs bien gardée de prendre position depuis le début du conflit géorgien. "Appuyer la position pro-géorgienne aux côtés de Iouchtchenko risquerait de lui faire perdre la présidence", estime Mikhaïl Pogrebinski. "Impossible de remporter le prochain scrutin sans adopter des positions modérées sur la question russe."

Mais Viktor Iouchtchenko avait-il le choix ? Soutenu par les milieux nationalistes nettement hostiles à Moscou, le président ukrainien est également un ami personnel de Mikheïl Saakachvili, dont il est le parrain du dernier fils. Ce que la presse et la télévision russes n'ont pas manqué de rappeler avec ironie tout au long de la dernière semaine...

 

Alexandre Billette

Article paru dans l'édition du 19.08.08

Parliament speaker:Ukraine's entry to NATO's action plan not imply automatic membership

www.chinaview.cn 2008-01-19 05:09:11 

KIEV, Jan. 18 (Xinhua) -- Ukraine's entry to NATO's membership action plan does not imply that the country will automatically become a member of the alliance, parliamentary chairman Arseniy Yatsenyuk said Friday.

    He pointed out there are some countries that have implemented NATO's membership action plan but have not become members of the alliance.

    Yatsenynk said the stay of Russia's Black Sea Fleet in Ukraine could be a factor determining Ukraine's future possible membership of the alliance.

    "Ukraine's entry into the NATO will be linked to the presence of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol (the port city in southern Ukraine). Thus, the controversial issue of Ukraine's future NATO membership should emerge until 2017, when the Russian fleet is supposed to leave the territory of Ukraine," Yatsenyuk said at a news conference.

    According to the Interfax-Ukraine news agency, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Volodymyr Ohryzko traveled to Brussels on Friday and handed NATO Secretary-General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer a formal letter, signed by President Viktor Yushchenko, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and Parliamentary Speaker Arseniy Yatsenyuk. The letter asks that Ukraine's bid to join NATO's membership action plan be considered at the alliance's summit in Bucharest, capital of Romania, in April this year.

    NATO membership is a highly controversial issue in Ukraine. Lawmakers from the Ukrainian Communist Party and the Party of Regions blocked the parliament's work on Friday, protesting the authorities' latest efforts to join NATO's membership action plan and demanding that Yatsenyuk recall his signature on the letter.

Editor: Yan Liang