ANALYSIS: Britain sees Ukraine as Europe's new strategic front (04/28/96)

ANALYSIS: Britain sees Ukraine as Europe's new strategic front

by Taras Kuzio

Prime Minister John Major's one-day visit to Ukraine on April 18 on his way to a two-day nuclear summit in Moscow indicates that Kyiv is now becoming a regular stopover for Western leaders on their way for consultations and meetings to the Russian capital. Prime Minister Major will assure President Leonid Kuchma that Britain is committed to a "free and prosperous Ukraine" and hopes to boost British exports to, and investment in, Ukraine, which are now lagging far behind Germany, the U.S. and even France and Italy.

Britain, together with Germany, the U.S. and Canada, is promoting the strategic importance of Ukraine to European security after years of neglect. That is producing a storm of diplomatic activity on the eve of the Russian presidential elections. U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher has met President Kuchma on three occasions this year, on one occasion demonstrably in the presence of Russian Foreign Minister Yevgeniy Primakov in Helsinki. President Kuchma paid a highly successful and high-profile visit to the U.S. last month that led to further security assurances for Ukraine.

Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary Malcolm Rifkind and German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel will pay a joint visit to Ukraine next month, aiming to demonstrate both countries' support for Ukrainian independence and backing its attempts to forge closer links with the West. "We both have an interest in the political development of Ukraine and its reform processes," a British official said.

Last year Ukraine undertook the largest number of military exercises within NATO's Partnership for Peace program of any former Soviet-bloc country. With an eye on domestic developments in Russia, Ukraine is keenly interested in forging a "special partnership" with NATO due to its geopolitical location, which should include a political consultative mechanism. Ukraine is, for the moment at least, not applying for NATO membership - but this could change if a commissar or tsar wins the Russian presidential elections.

Although the West is now committed to an enlarged NATO that includes all, or some, of the Visegrad Quadrangle countries, it has still to resolve the more complicated question as to where Ukraine fits into the new post-Soviet European security system.

After the distingration of the former USSR, Britain largely ignored Ukraine and, like many other Western countries, followed a Russia-first policy that, at times, served to legitimize the carving out of a Russian sphere of influence in the CIS through a new Russian Monroe Doctrine.

The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry complained on the eve of Mr. Rifkind's visit to Ukraine last September that, "Britain has in fact not yet formed a clear, well-thought-out concept of relations with Ukraine. The policies of John Major's government regarding our state are in fact being formulated from week to week, which means they have no consistency." Although Ukraine was finally being viewed separately from Russia, British policy towards Ukraine nevertheless, was, still "reserved." Mr. Rifkind told his Ukrainian hosts that Ukraine is Europe's new "strategic pivot" and backed its reintegration into Europe.

One attempt to rectify Britain's slow recognition of Ukraine's strategic importance was an international conference titled "Whither Ukraine" held at the Foreign Office conference center at Wilton Park in Sussex, England, last December, during the same week that President Kuchma visited the U.K. on a three-day visit. A major survey of post-Soviet and East European studies in the U.K. last year will also reverse the Russo-centric bias of Soviet Studies in the U.K. by creating 35 new posts, three of which are in Ukrainian affairs at the universities of Birmingham, London and Essex. Five other newly created posts include Ukrainian affairs as part of joint studies of the region.

A major international conference on Ukraine titled "Soviet to Independent Ukraine: A Troubled Transformation" will be held at the University of Birmingham on June 13-14, funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and the Economic and Social Research Council. The conference will be attended by participants from the U.K., the U.S., Germany and Ukraine, with a keynote speech by former President Leonid Kravchuk.

During President Kuchma's visit to the U.K. last December, Prime Minister Major told his guest that, "Ukraine has an absolutely pivotal role to play in the future of Europe." Ukraine, a country for so long pushed to the sidelines of Western strategic thinking, is now increasingly ranked alongside the three Baltic republics as of vital strategic importance to European security. "Ukraine occupies an important place in the European security system because its strategic and geographic location requires this," British Defense Minister Michael Portillo said during Mr. Kuchma's visit to the U.K.

Speaking before a specially invited audience at the Royal Institute of International Affairs, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Hennadiy Udovenko underscored that "Ukraine reserves the right to become a member of any military and political structure which, in its evolution, would tend to be part of a new system of European security."

Mr. Udovenko also unquestionably backed his British colleague Foreign Secretary Rifkind's call for Ukraine to play a role worthy of its strategic importance in Europe's newly developing security architecture. "While developing Ukraine as an independent European state we, properly speaking, return to historical traditions which determine the natural place of our country as a participant with full rights in the European community," Mr. Udovenko said. "By transforming and reforming, Ukraine itself is getting closer to Europe, in the same way as Europe, changing, moves towards Ukraine," he added.

Western support for Ukrainian independence is all the more urgent in the aftermath of President Yeltsin's cancellation for the sixth time of his planned visit to Kyiv earlier this month to sign a legally binding interstate treaty that would have recognized the borders inherited from the former USSR. Mr. Yeltsin's calculated gamble not to visit Kyiv could only have been undertaken with a view as to how damaging his signing away of "Russian territory" would have been to his chance of re-election in June. The majority of Russian public opinion still finds it impossible to accept either Ukrainian sovereignty over these territories or even Ukrainian independence as such.

Russia would find it impossible to restore its great-power status to challenge the West and NATO as a new military-political bloc without the incorporation of Ukraine. Both leading Russian presidential candidates - President Yeltsin and Communist leader Gennadiy Zyuganov - know this and have targeted Ukraine as the next link to be included in the new Eurasian empire they both seek to forge. Prime Minister Major's visit to Ukraine, therefore, will reinforce the Western view to Moscow that the independence of Ukraine is seen as a vital test of Russian intentions.

Any attempt to incorporate Ukraine within the new "SSR" (as the new Belarusian-Russian Union of Sovereign Republics is known) should, therefore, be perceived as an attempt to rebuild a new Russian empire and be condemned by the West. Russia must be politely warned that any such action would be detrimental to its own national interests and merely lead to a new Cold War, Russia's isolation from the world community of nations and an end to Western economic and political assistance.

Taras Kuzio is a research fellow at the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Birmingham.

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