NEWS ANALYSIS: Yevgeny Primakov, great power ambitions and Ukraine

by Volodymyr Zviglyanich

On January, 9 Boris Yeltsin nominated his chief spy master, Yevgeny Primakov, 66, a former journalist and academic, to be Russia's new foreign minister, signifying the more assertive and nationalistic stance the Kremlin has adopted toward the West. Why did Andrei Kozyrev resign, and what does the appointment of Primakov mean to the West and Ukraine?

Reasons for Kozyrev's resignation

Andrei Kozyrev, 44, son of a Soviet career diplomat born in Brussels and serving all his life in the Soviet and then Russian Foreign Ministry, was the only remaining member of the initial team of Mr. Yeltsin's "Young Turks" who came with him to power, and sharing Westem liberal-democratic ideals. He had served his boss since 1990 and was considered to be a political survivor.

But was Mr. Kozyrev a real liberal-democrat, or was it that his activities simply coincided with Russia's post-totalitarian democratic euphoria? Jim Hoagland asserted, on January 14 in The Washington Post, that Mr. Kozyrev was "loyal, imaginative, a true friend and admirer of Western democracies," who energetically destroyed Soviet Cold War diplomacy and the links of the empire. The author obviously forgot about Mr. Kozyrev's "The Russians Are Coming" speech in 1992 in Stockholm in which he presented to a stunned interational diplomatic community the future Russian foreign policy of 1995. The international news media deemed this an eccentricity of Moscow's l'enfant terrible rather than an admonition regarding forthcoming changes in the strategy of Russian foreign policy - possibly elaborated under the guidance and supervision of Mr. Primakov's men. At a time when the triumph of a full-fledged market democracy in Russia was fancied to be a matter of a few months time, the mere thought that the KGB's successors never backed off their beloved domain of foreign policy planning seemed to be ridiculous.

As subsequent events demonstrated, Russia's foreign policy after Mr. Kozyrev's notorious Stockholm speech became more and more assertive and chauvinistic, and Russia concluded 1995 with two basic tenets of its foreign policy: "no" to NATO's eastward expansion, and "yes" to the reintegration of the former Soviet empire. Both ideas were prepared by the Foreign Intelligence Service of Russia, and Mr. Primakov never made a big secret of them. Mr. Kozyrev simply acted as a diligent and cautious mouthpiece of these ideas rather than as a liberal-minded foreign policy reformer who allegedly was endowed with the right to execute a foreign policy independent of his government - something hitherto unimaginable in Russia. Why, then, was he sacked?

The reasons for his resignation are as follows:

1) He embodied in his activities the whole cycle of Russia's evolution from the contrived democracy and multicentrism of 1991-1992 to the full-fledged "great power" policy of 1995. He performed his function: he laid down the foundation of Russia's assertiveness - and appeared outdated;

2) He was criticized by the Russian Duma for Moscow's loss of "superpowerdom", for Russia's sell-off to the West, and for Russia's alleged failure to support the Serbs in Bosnia. This criticism, however, was caused mostly due to personal antipathy rather than essence. Pavel Grachev was criticized by the Duma with almost the same vigor, but nevertheless survived;

3) Mr. Kozyrev resigned only after Mr. Yeltsin's approval and after it became clear that the Duma would be dominated by the "red-browns" - Mr. Kozyrev's main opponents. Fearing that they would push forward their own candidate, Mr. Yeltsin decided to strike first and thus selected the head of foreign intelligence, implying that the traditional piety of both the communists and nationalists before the "organs" would help him obtain the necessary parliamentary approval for this position.

Primakov and the West

Mr. Primakov, born in 1929, was a candidate member of the Soviet Politburo in the 1980s (the same position Mr. Yeltsin occupied when he was Moscow's party boss). He was a Pravda correspondent on the Arab world and headed the Soviet Academy of Sciences Institute for Oriental Studies and later the Institute of the World Economy and International Relations.

Together with another old-timer of Soviet foreign policy, Georgii Arbatov, the former director of the Institute of the U.S. and Canada, he was in charge of Soviet foreign policy planning in the Middle East. In all those posts, he had the closest contacts with the former KGB. In 1988 he was named chairman of the Supreme Soviet in charge of national policy. After that Mykhailo Gorbachev made him a key member of his presidential council.

As Mr. Gorbachev's special envoy to the Middle East, Mr. Primakov met several times with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad after the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. Mr. Primakov worked primarily to serve his old crony Saddam's interests and to maintain Moscow's old influence in Iraq and the Middle East. Since the war, he has traveled to Iraq at least once, to negotiate the sale of nuclear power plant components with Saddam - a deal that will take effect only after international sanctions on Iraq are lifted.

Mr. Primakov was appointed as the Soviet Union's espionage chief by Mr. Gorbachev in 1991 and splitoff the Soviet foreign intelligence service (like that of the CIA) from the old KGB security police to turn it into an elite professional intelligence agency. Mr. Primakov promised to put a stop to the practice of sending Soviet agents abroad under journalistic cover. Instead, since 1994 he has initiated establishment of departments of the CIS countries in Russia's embassies.

Mr. Primakov is viewed as a pragmatist, neither particularly friendly nor hostile to the West. He is likely to stick closely to Mr. Yeltsin's line on foreign policy, which in the last few years has grown steadily more nationalistic and wary of the West. In this capacity he is notorious for the preparation of two conceptual documents. The first, titled "Russia-CIS: Will the Policy of the West Change?" released on September 20, 1994, proclaimed the tendency of the former Soviet republics toward reintegration as "objective" and warned the West against confronting that tendency. In the second one, Mr. Yeltsin's Edict No. 940 of September 14, 1995, titled "Strategical Course of Russia with Members-Countries of the CIS," Russia openly proclaimed its hegemonistic role in the region.

Mr. Primakov was Russia's foreign intelligence chief and was in charge of the Russian "super-mole" inside the CIA, Aldrich Ames, who allegedly caused multi-billion-dollar damage to the American budget and the death of at least 10 Russian agents working for the CIA.

The appointment of Mr. Primakov contains at least two messages for the West.

The first one presupposes that President Yeltsin is determined to shore up his shaky domestic base before June's presidential election and that Mr. Yeltsin will devote no energy in this election year to improving Moscow's relations with Washington or major European powers. Shortly after his appointment, Mr. Primakov said that, "Despite its current difficulties, Russia was and remains a great power. Its foreign policy must reflect that status." That means a search for "fundamental countermeasures" by Russia, both in Eastern Europe and in the CIS, in case of NATO expansion.

The second one signifies that Mr. Primakov is a transitional political figure and that he agreed to this position primarily in order to get rid of the precarious legacy of a successor to the cause of Feliks Dzerzhinsky, Lavrentii Beria and Yurii Andropov - all long-time chiefs of the Russian secret police. Any possible successor to Mr. Yeltsin after the June election would most likely replace Mr. Primakov with his own loyalist.

Primakov and Ukraine

In his new capacity, Mr. Primakov will try to revive Moscow's relations with former Soviet states and allies. Chief among them will be the Baltic states and Ukraine. Mr. Primakov said during his first press conference that the "strengthening of integrationist tendencies within the former Soviet Union" would be one of his primary goals.

However, Mr. Primakov does not have much time and assurance in performing such a global task. He could try to capitalize by exerting further economic pressure on Ukraine and pushing its involvement in CIS supranational bodies, such as the Inter-Parliamentary Assembly, the customs union and the collective security system, on the basis of the Treaty on Mutual Security of the CIS of May 15, 1992.

Mr. Primakov's Foreign Ministry could also promote a program of penetration by Russia of Ukrainian media (both TV and radio), education and book markets. Its major task will be the "protection of the rights of the Russians" in Ukraine (especially in the Crimea and the Donbas) as well as capitalizing on economic hardships in Ukraine in order to purchase objects of strategic significance (pipelines, energy storage facilities, etc.) on its territory.

However, one cannot expect dramatic changes in Russian-Ukrainian relations, as Mr. Primakov's primary goal will be the promotion of Western support for Mr. Yeltsin (or his possible successor) during the forthcoming election. Ukraine, therefore, has a real chance to use this breather to its own benefits.

Dr. Volodymyr Zviglyanich is adjunct professor of East European area studies at George Washington University.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, February 25, 1996, No. 8, Vol. LXIV

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