| Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma arrived in
St. Petersburg on
Sunday for a summit
meeting with President Vladimir Putin.
An important item on the already crowded agenda will be recent
moves by both
countries toward closer ties with NATO. Russia and NATO have
upgraded their
relations with the establishment of a NATO-Russia Council, and
Ukraine made an
announcement on the same day President George W. Bush arrived
in Moscow that it
had decided to join the queue of countries wishing to become
members of NATO.
This latest meeting is set to continue the
discussions held at their May 17 summit in the
Crimea and Sochi.
The Sochi-Crimea summit touched on the vexed
question of gas supplies and Ukraine's role as a
transit country -- issues that have bedeviled
relations between the two countries for the last
decade.
The biggest surprise to come out of that summit
was that Kuchma agreed to make Ukraine an
associate member of the Eurasian Economic
Community -- the CIS alternative to the European
Union.
Kuchma had already promised to do this at a
March summit in Odessa between Putin, Kuchma
and Moldovan President Vladimir Voronin. But in
April the Ukrainian foreign minister and the state
secretary for foreign affairs both ruled it out as
incompatible with the country's declared
strategic goal of integration with the EU.
Kuchma has clearly now overruled them because he needs Putin's
personal support.
Highly placed sources in Kiev believe Kuchma consented to this
as a quid pro quo for
Putin not opposing Ukraine's move to join NATO.
However, Russia should be asking itself whether all these
summit meetings actually
produce any concrete results. And, if not, can Kuchma be
regarded as a reliable
partner, let alone ally?
A year ago during the "Kuchmagate" crisis that rocked
Ukraine
(after a presidential
guard released tapes he had made in Kuchma's office that
provided evidence of
numerous wrongdoings), Deputy State Duma Speaker Vladimir
Lukin warned that
Russia should be cautious when dealing with Kuchma. He
asserted that while Russia
was interested in a long-term partnership, Kuchma was only
interested in a short-term
relationship to shore up his power, particularly in times of
crisis.
Lukin hit the nail on the head when he said that Kuchma's
attitude toward Russia has a
tendency to improve as his position inside Ukraine
deteriorates and vice versa.
Putin must be proud of having cemented the "turn to the East"
forced upon the
Ukrainian president during the "Kuchmagate" scandal.
But does
this make Kuchma's
turn away from Europe and toward Eurasia any more genuine this
time? It is worth
recalling that Kuchma was first elected in July 1994 on a
platform of closer ties with
Russia, which he quickly dropped in favor of integration with
"trans-Atlantic and
European structures."
Russia has three problems in dealing with Kuchma and his
allies in the pro-presidential
United Ukraine parliamentary faction.
First, Kuchma's origins are in the high-ranking nomenklatura
of the pre-August 1991
Communist Party of Ukraine and his operating style and
mannerisms are steeped in
Soviet political culture.
Ukraine's first president and high-ranking member of the
Social Democratic Party
Leonid Kravchuk recently complained in the Kiev daily
newspaper Den (which is
controlled by Secretary of the National Security and Defense
Council Yevhen
Marchuk) that Ukraine has lacked any domestic or foreign
policy direction. Policies are
simply adjusted to suit the president's tactical agenda and
therefore are constantly in
flux. Ukraine's "multi-vector" foreign policy is merely
a
cover for the lack of any
coherent policy whatsoever.
Kuchma can never become a Ukrainian version of Belarussian
President Alexander
Lukashenko because he, unlike Kuchma, actually believes in
pan-Eastern Slavism and
Soviet revivalism. In Ukraine, such ideologically driven
policies exist on the left or
right, but not in the pro-presidential center occupied by
United Ukraine. A foreign
policy that is hostage to Kuchma's personal isolation in the
West cannot be regarded
as a foreign policy that is driven either by ideological
considerations or medium to
long-term goals.
Secondly, Kuchma trusts nobody apart from Volodymyr Lytvyn,
former head of the
presidential administration and leader of United Ukraine who
was not long ago elected
speaker of the parliament by somewhat dubious means. Lytvyn is
the only colleague of
Kuchma's to have remained by his side since 1994.
Kravchuk's critical remarks and the radical proposals for an
overhaul of Ukraine's
political system introduced into the newly elected parliament
by former Prime Minister
Viktor Yushchenko's Our Ukraine show there is growing
discontent within Ukraine's
political and business elite with the Kuchma presidency for
its conservatism, lack of
direction and neo-Soviet authoritarianism.
Thirdly, Kuchma is a lame-duck president with only two years
left of his last term in
office. Putin would be well advised not to put all his eggs in
Kuchma's and United
Ukraine's basket.
According to national opinion polls, Yushchenko is Ukraine's
most popular politician
and the current favorite to win the 2004 presidential
election.
Russian officials, including Ambassador to Ukraine Viktor
Chernomyrdin, have
expressed negative views regarding Yushchenko's pro-Western
orientation and his
"anti-Russian" Our Ukraine bloc. Yushchenko is, however,
not
"anti-Russian" and has
in fact taken the Rukh party toward a more pragmatic position.
Our Ukraine's election manifesto did not call for Ukraine's
withdrawal from the CIS. In
addition, it is worth recalling that Yushchenko's government
in 2000-01 was the first to
deal with energy arrears, halt the theft of Russian gas and
reduce corruption in the
energy sector.
If Russia believes it has a reliable partner in Kuchma it is
very much mistaken. His
record in office shows that he lacks any ideologically based
program -- either oriented
toward the West or Russia and the CIS.
His chief concern has always been to adapt domestic and
foreign policies to his own
benefit and that of his corrupt allies.
Putin's optimism, expressed after the Crimea-Sochi summit that
relations between
Russia and Ukraine are improving, is in serious danger of
being disappointed as a
result of Kuchma's complete inability to adhere to commitments.
Taras Kuzio is a resident fellow at the Centre for Russian and
East European Studies,
University of Toronto, and joint editor of "Ukrainian Foreign
and Security Policy."
See also:
the original
at
www.themoscowtimes.com
Relationships
with Ukraine
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