ANALYSIS: New appointment gives substance to Ukrainian-Russian strategic partnership (11/12/00)

ANALYSIS

New appointment gives substance to Ukrainian-Russian strategic partnership

by Taras Kuzio
RFE/RL Newsline

Ukraine's much-vaunted multi-vector foreign policy is again in flux following the dismissal last month of its pro- Western minister of foreign affairs, Borys Tarasyuk. Kyiv is finding it increasingly difficult to continue a foreign policy that recognizes both the United States and Russia as "strategic partners," but gives substance only to its partnership with the United States and NATO.

The strategic goals of Ukraine's Western-oriented multi-vector foreign policy are unlikely to be altered because they have majority support among the country's leadership. While Ukraine is proceeding with plans to upgrade the GUUAM alignment (composed of Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan and Moldova) into a full-fledged regional organization, this summer it released a new plan for integration into the European Union (EU), and a new Ukraine-NATO Cooperation Program for 2001-2004 will shortly be unveiled. Support among the country's leadership for integration with the Commonwealth of Independent States is minimal.

Nevertheless, there will be short-term changes. Anatolii Zlenko, who was appointed as Mr. Tarasyuk's replacement, called upon his ministry to "change some tactical approaches in order to better tap the potential of Russian-Ukrainian cooperation."

"We cannot proclaim a slogan and leave it unfulfilled," he added. For example, although both states signed a 10-year economic cooperation treaty in February 1998, the volume of bilateral trade has declined by half since 1996.

Mr. Zlenko, who was foreign affairs minister from 1990 to 1994, acknowledged the "low effectiveness of a purely declarative diplomacy" that Ukraine has conducted vis-à-vis Russia. Mr. Zlenko has been tasked with activating Ukraine's Russian policy. Not surprisingly, his first foreign trip was to Moscow.

Apart from the need to give a new lease on life to Ukrainian-Russian relations, Mr. Tarasyuk's dismissal as foreign affairs minister can be seen in the context of four other factors.

First, disillusionment with the West has been growing since Ukraine's chances of joining the EU were blocked. Although there is a non-leftist (but not necessarily pro-reform) majority in the Parliament and a reformist, non-corrupt government, no financial assistance has been forthcoming this year from either the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank. It is surprising that when Ukraine at last has a committed reformist government the IMF has declined to provide assistance.

Second, there are no longer any high-ranking officials in the presidential administration who are pro-Western. Anatoly Orel, a former long-standing Soviet career diplomat and the head of presidential administration's foreign policy department, is reportedly a pro-Russian "grey cardinal" who supported Russian demands that Mr. Tarasyuk be relieved of his post. In return for not taking a hard line on energy debts and the re-routing of pipelines, Russian officials have long urged that certain outspoken, pro-Western officials - including Mr. Tarasyuk - be dismissed because they were not committed to a Russian-Ukrainian "strategic partnership."

Third, Ukrainian oligarchs who have acquired their wealth from illegal deals on Russian energy are blocking the re-routing of Ukrainian energy supplies from Russia via the Caucasus. Construction of the Odesa oil terminal, which was designed to import and refine Azeribaijani oil, was started in 1993 but still has not been completed. Ukrainian oligarchs can conduct their illicit energy deals only through cooperation with equally corrupt colleagues in Russia. Russia has turned down Ukrainian requests to install meters on the pipelines crossing its territory to prevent theft of Russian gas, which, according to Western diplomats in Kyiv, is taking place on either side of the Russian-Ukrainian border.

Indeed, Ukraine's oligarchs and their centrist "party of power" parliamentary factions, which control the parliamentary leadership, are hostile to the reformist government of Prime Minister Viktor Yuschenko because its reforms are undercutting their financial operations. While Ukraine's economy has grown this year for the first time since 1990, the government's reformist policies can also be considered to have contributed to the payment of all wage, pension and social security arrears within nine months of the Cabinet taking office.

But President Leonid Kuchma has been noticeably reticent in supporting Mr. Yuschenko. If Mr. Kuchma were to remove him from office, the non-leftist majority in the Verkhovna Rada would collapse: more than 100 of the 250 non- leftists in the Parliament are pro-Yuschenko, but not pro- Kuchma.

And fourth, Russia is perhaps at last ready to accept that Ukraine is not Belarus and must be treated in a more equal, conciliatory manner than has been the case until now. It was, after all, Russia's poor treatment of Ukraine after Mr. Kuchma's election in 1994 that pushed Ukraine toward NATO. Russia's new attitude might yield better results in wooing Ukraine.

Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Igor Ivanov told his visiting counterpart, Mr. Zlenko, at the end of last month that Russia will develop "equal, mutually advantageous and friendly relations with Ukraine, taking into account the interests of both countries." Relations with Ukraine, therefore, will be built "on the principles of respect for Ukraine's sovereignty and independence," he added.

While a virtual strategic partnership was acceptable to former Russian President Boris Yeltsin, it is clearly not to the liking of his successor, Vladimir Putin, who will not tolerate an amorphous Ukrainian-Russian "strategic partnership" that has allowed Ukraine to cash in on its economic-energy relationship with Russia while developing political-strategic ties with the West. The Russian president is pressuring Ukraine to put substance into the two countries' "strategic partnership."

It remains to be seen whether Ukraine can develop such partnerships with both Russia and the West simultaneously.

Taras Kuzio is a visiting fellow at the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.

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