KYIV POST, Thursday, December 28, 2006
Ukraine: View from the Kremlin - by Walter Parchomenko*
A pensive Russian leader stands near a grated Kremlin window and gazes intently toward Ukraine. What does he see?
He sees the end of an Orange nightmare, a democratic revolution that once threatened to spill over into his own troubled country and possibly even contaminate an entire region. He watches as Premier Viktor Yanukovych, the man he has supported unconditionally during and since the very fraudulent Ukrainian presidential election of 2004 daily, aggressively attacks the modest gains and reformist tendencies of President Viktor Yushchenko’s Orange administration. The Russian leader advances closer to the window and stares absorbedly. He imagines a day not far off when a Moscow friendly Yanukovych and his Party of Regions will eliminate democratic challenges to their increasingly authoritarian leadership and promote close integration with Russia.
Vladimir Putin’s Orange nightmare is over. He can now sleep soundly. Viktor Yanukovych and the Party of Regions are clearly in charge in Ukraine and, in their own words, are cleaning house and restoring order. Putin’s recent visit (22 December) to Kyiv to participate in the Yushchenko-Putin Commission talks was an opportunity to observe firsthand the situation on the ground, and to quietly revel in the defeat of the Orange Revolution and its once worshipped hero, Viktor Yushchenko.
Much of the available commentary, here in Ukraine and in the West, has offered sweeping generalizations about the results of this meeting. Typically, experts have labeled it “constructive,” “productive,” “symbolic,” and an effort to “normalize relations.” Rather than add to this body of largely cautious generalization, it may be more insightful simply to highlight several key but generally inadequately grasped facts – essential background about recent Ukrainian-Russian relations. Doing so may shed light on Putin’s true intentions in visiting Kyiv and on his preferred vision for Ukraine.
Fact 1: President Putin has been and continues to be Viktor Yanukovych’s most loyal foreign benefactor. He has never hidden his support for the fraud-marred premier. His public expressions of support have been deftly adjusted since Ukraine’s 2004 presidential election to meet the country’s changing political landscape, but his allegiance to Yanukovych and his Party of Regions remains unswerving. Amazingly, after blatantly fraudulent rounds of that election, Putin - like a brash schoolboy, rushed not once but twice to prematurely congratulate Yanukovych on victory. Learning from experience, he subsequently adopted a more circumspect but no less active role in supporting Yanukovych and his Party of Regions in the 2006 parliamentary election. Significantly, in the short period since becoming premier, Yanukovych has already met with Putin on several occasions, in Moscow and Sochi, to discuss bilateral cooperation.
Fact 2: Yanukovych and the Regions-led majority in parliament have unabashedly rushed to demonstrate their profound gratitude to Putin for his faithful support in shaping the Ukrainian political scene. Their conspicuous haste to deliver major political dividends to their Kremlin sponsor, tellingly, reflects their steely determination to quickly and steadily repay their enormous political debt. In just over 100 days, they have begun to synchronize important Ukrainian security policies with those of their northern neighbor. And in the words of ordinary citizens here in Ukraine: “They are firing Orange-leaning Cabinet ministers and serving their heads on a platter to Vladimir Putin.”
Fact 3: In Brussels last September, Yanukovych did much more than close the door on a NATO Membership Action Plan in 2006. Although only dimly perceived in the West, he also effectively placed a cross on any future Ukrainian membership in NATO. To the great delight of the Kremlin and members of Ukraine’s Regions-led parliamentary coalition, he rested the issue squarely on a future national referendum. It is no secret that both of these parties adamantly oppose Ukrainian membership and relish today’s harsh realities: Ukrainian public support for NATO today is meager and declining, anti-NATO activities in Ukraine have increased over the past year, and the Ukrainian government’s support for a NATO information campaign remains scant. Moreover, Moscow, as in the past, stands ready to resort to active measures in Ukraine to support anti-NATO forces should the need arise. To believe that this decidedly negative trend line on Ukrainian membership in NATO can be easily reversed is, indeed, a pernicious myth.
Fact 4: Vladimir Putin waged economic wars –gas, meat, and dairy notably, during 2005 and 2006 with the clear intention of destabilizing Ukraine’s economy and Yushchenko’s Orange government. These “manmade crises,” unquestionably, harmed Ukraine’s economy and measurably influenced the political scene. With his man, Viktor Yanukovych, now in power, Putin no longer needs to wage economic wars.
Always strategically oriented, Putin, no doubt, was a man on a mission in Kyiv: he sought to convince audiences that Russia seeks good, friendly, “normal” relations with Ukraine. Ostensibly, the visit was a fence-mending effort and a call for long overdue realism and pragmatism on President Yushchenko’s part. However, the fundamental purpose of the visit, unmistakably, was to register Putin’s approval of Ukraine’s new government and to bolster the legitimacy of its new premier, Viktor Yanukovych. Strictly speaking, Putin only seeks good partner relations with Yanukovych and other Moscow loyal members of the Regions-led parliamentary coalition.
The strained smiles and many handshakes that closed the Yushchenko-Putin Commission’s proceedings should not distract observers from the above sobering facts. Putin’s aversion to color revolutions and their leaders remains categorical. His ongoing economic war with Georgia, home of the democratic Rose Revolution and reportedly 70% support for NATO membership, is compelling evidence of this fact.
At first glance, Putin’s decision to end economic wars with Ukraine and help stabilize its economy is welcome news. The crucial question, however, is at what price to the nation?
Putin’s preferred vision for Ukraine is a mirror image of what he has accomplished in Russia during his presidency. Translated this means total control of the “commanding heights” by a Moscow loyal Party of Regions with the virtual monopolization of parliament by pro-Regions forces, the consignment of any democratic opposition in parliament to the political wilderness, and judicial attacks upon any uncooperative big business. It also means that the future of Ukraine’s budding NGOs and any genuine security sector reform will be in grave jeopardy. It should be stressed that in Putin’s Russia a distinction is made between acceptable (government affiliated) and unacceptable (state adversarial) NGOs. Furthermore, his security services, unarguably, function as a political instrument.
Those who maintain that such a future is impossible in a post-Orange Ukraine would be well-advised to study carefully Putin’s creeping, incremental rollback of democracy in post-Yeltsin Russia. Astute Russian democrats and former Yeltsin advisers, such as Grigory Yavlinsky, Boris Nemtsov, and Yegor Gaidar, also believed – wrongly, that such democratic backsliding was impossible.
Viewed in this light, one thing is virtually certain about Ukraine’s future. Vladimir Putin will continue to view Ukraine through the prism of velvet revolutions and their clear and present danger to Russia’s influence in the post-Soviet space. He will struggle unceasingly to ensure the demise of the Orange Revolution and a Ukraine outside of NATO. Moreover, Putin and Party of Regions leaders will likely remain loyal partners in this struggle.
*Walter Parchomenko, Ph.D., is a Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council of the United States currently based in Ukraine. The views expressed are purely his own.