COMMENTARY ON THE NEWS: Russia bashing time (08/15/04)

COMMENTARY ON THE NEWS

Russia bashing time

by Roman Kupchinsky

It seems that now is the appropriate time to engage in something that some people do not particularly enjoy, but with the danger of losing everything why not? The unpleasant exercise is Russia bashing and, with an election brewing in Ukraine, the President of Russia has provided the needed provocation.

On July 26 Vladimir Putin told an audience of Ukrainian politicians such as Leonid Kuchma, Viktor Yanukovych and their busboys, along with an assortment of oil oligarch's and other hangers-on that evil Western intelligence agents were actively trying to sow discord between the Ukrainian and Russian people and prevent "the integration of Russia and Ukraine."

"The intelligence networks of our Western partners are trying in every way to hamper our movement towards each other," the president of all of Russia told the gathering in Yalta. Nobody in the crowd dared to contradict his words and, as with all such pronouncements, it was rapidly picked up by different news agencies and Internet websites and disseminated worldwide.

Given Mr. Putin's somewhat awkward intellectual abilities - formulated and molded by years of service in the KGB, and his team's penchant for nostalgia, the statement by itself will no doubt be written off by many people as yet another "Putinism," along with his other quaint views such as his threats of drowning people in toilets.

But in this case it is not only President Putin speaking - it is the voice of imperial Russia. The silly canard that Western intelligence services were somehow preventing Ukrainians and Russians from merging into one giant samovar was used by Soviet politicians throughout the existence of the USSR. Spokesmen for Russian chauvinism have always claimed that Ukrainian patriotism was an imported concept ("Ukrainian-German nationalism" was the term used by Stalin) and, therefore, not a natural phenomena.

This bizarre idea stuck in the minds of its users for decades and seemed to have been buried when the USSR went to its grave, but now Mr. Putin is bent on digging it up. In effect it means that any attempt on the part of Ukraine to prevent "integration" with Russia and remain independent is a plot inspired in Langley or on the Thames in London and, therefore, not the natural will of the Ukrainian or Russian nations.

What had failed miserably during bad old Soviet times (the USSR collapsed mainly because Ukrainians did not want Mr. Putin's predecessors ruling them any longer) is now being mindlessly resurrected by the post-Soviet Russian leadership which has elected Mr. Putin as their new great white hope.

President Putin's statement is not the first time this concept was unfurled. The Russian media, along with the Kuchma camp, had long been spreading rumors that Viktor Yushchenko's wife, Katherine, was an "agent of the CIA." She was, after all, an American, had worked in the State Department and in the twisted logic of the former Chief Security Service of Ukraine boss Leonid Derkach and his pal Leonid Kuchma, this made her a CIA agent. It stood to reason that her husband, who was not willing to play along with Russians, was under her influence. Nothing could be more clear.

Everyone knew that this was a dirty smear campaign, but that did not prevent image-makers in the Kremlin and their Ukrainian sidekicks from repeating it over and over in the hope that someone would nibble at it.

Any reader can be sure of one thing: when voicing this view, President Putin did not mean that Western agents were trying to influence the sober Russian nation into rejecting integration with Ukraine. There they clearly did not stand a chance. It was the Ukrainian nation which, in Mr. Putin's view, was the target for those unnamed Western agents.

It might be interesting for Mr. Putin to name these agents and the countries that employ them. Have any of them been arrested and charged with "preventing integration"? Is there such a crime in the Ukrainian or Russian criminal codes?

President Putin's revelation about these mythical agents was his formal entry into the Ukrainian election campaign on the side of Viktor Yanukovych. Mr. Yanukovych had clearly demonstrated his loyalty to the Kremlin only a few days prior to the Yalta summit by reversing his mind on the matter of which direction oil would flow in the Odesa-Brody pipeline. The Ukrainian prime minister chose the route favored by Mr. Putin and the Russian oil companies, that is from Brody to Odesa.

By doing so, Yanukovych endeared himself to the Russians and proved that no Western agent was capable of messing with his mind.

Roman Kupchinsky is a journalist based in Prague.

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