ANALYSIS: Ukraine's prime minister appears to break the ice in visit to Belarus (10/30/05)

ANALYSIS

Ukraine's prime minister appears to break the ice in visit to Belarus

by Jan Maksymiuk
RFE/RL Newsline

Ukrainian Prime Minister Yurii Yekhanurov on October 18 paid an official visit to Miensk, where he held talks with Belarusian President Alyaksander Lukashenka and Belarusian Prime Minister Syarhey Sidorski. The visit suggests that Ukrainian-Belarusian relations, which soured after President Viktor Yushchenko came to power in the Orange Revolution, are warming up.

Mr. Lukashenka could not have been pleased by Mr. Yushchenko's presidential victory. Like Russian President Vladimir Putin, President Lukashenka congratulated Ukrainian Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych on having won the presidential run-off with Mr. Yushchenko in November 2004 despite the lack of a final tally in that vote.

The ensuing mass protests in Ukraine and Mr. Yushchenko's triumph in the repeat run-off in December 2004 no doubt came as a nasty surprise to Mr. Lukashenka - who had only recently staged a dubious referendum that allows him to run for a third term as president in 2006.

The Orange Revolution in Ukraine has inevitably kindled hopes that deposing President Lukashenka through a similar, popular revolt in Belarus is not out of the question.

By January, before Mr. Yushchenko was even inaugurated, Mr. Lukashenka had publicly announced that "there will be no pink, orange, or banana revolutions in Belarus."

Mr. Lukashenka's irritation with Mr. Yushchenko in particular, and the Orange Revolution in general, was evidently increased by a statement that the latter signed in early April with U.S. President George W. Bush, pledging "to support the advance of freedom in countries such as Belarus and Cuba." Delivering his annual address to the Belarusian legislature later the same month, President Lukashenka slammed Ukraine for allegedly "forming camps" that were intended to train "revolutionaries" for Belarus.

A brief diplomatic squabble between Kyiv and Miensk followed in May, after Belarusian police arrested five young Ukrainians and 14 Russian youths who had come to Miensk to support their Belarusian colleagues during an anti-government rally. Miensk granted early release to the Russians, while the Ukrainians had to serve jail terms of 10 to 15 days in full and were subsequently deported and banned from re-entering Belarus for five years. President Yushchenko accused the Belarusian authorities of applying double standards to the Russian and Ukrainian demonstrators.

Afterwards, official Kyiv noticeably toned down its public statements regarding Belarus. Before the political crisis caused by the dismissal of Yulia Tymoshenko's Cabinet in September, Ukraine experienced a distressing gasoline crisis. Kyiv appealed for help in dealing with its gasoline shortage over the summer to Belarusian oil refineries. The issue of advancing freedom in Belarus appears to have lost its priority status for President Yushchenko; realpolitik appears to have gained the upper hand in Kyiv's relations with Miensk.

Ukraine is an important trade partner for Belarus. Both Messrs. Yekhanurov and Sidorski have declared that they intend to increase bilateral trade turnover to $2 billion this year, which would represent a 50 percent increase from 2004. Ukraine absorbed some 4 percent of Belarus's exports last year.

However, there is a lingering problem of an economic nature in relations between Miensk and Kyiv. Their governments cannot agree on the topic of Ukrainian debts to Belarus that date back to 1992. Ukraine (or Ukrainian entities) reportedly failed to pay for Belarusian commodities imported by Ukrainian firms in the early 1990s. Belarus subsequently made the ratification of a border treaty with Ukraine conditional on the repayment of those obligations.

Mr. Sidorski recalled during his meeting with Mr. Yekhanurov that both sides had signed an official protocol in 2003, fixing the outstanding debt figure at $134 million. Mr. Sidorski proposed that Kyiv repay the obligations through supplies of goods and electricity, while Mr. Yekhanurov called the proposal interesting but remained noncommittal. The Ukrainian prime minister stressed, however, that the debts were incurred by Ukrainian enterprises and cannot be regarded as a liability of the Ukrainian state.

Nevertheless, the Belarusian president was conspicuously pleased during his meeting with the Ukrainian premier. "I am ready to conduct a dialogue [with Ukraine] proceeding from what interests us," Mr. Lukashenka told Mr. Yekhanurov. "Taking into account the proximity of our countries and peoples, we have always made and will continue to make some concessions for the sake of the future, and we are ready to resolve problems on mutually beneficial terms."

Mr. Lukashenka's contentment is understandable. Mr. Yekhanurov's October 18 trip was only the second such senior official visit in Belarus this year. (Russian Prime Minister Mikhail Fradkov visited Miensk in September.)

President Lukashenka is a pariah in the international arena and only rarely travels abroad or receives foreign officials in Belarus. His international contacts are largely limited to receiving Russian governors in Miensk - no big deal for someone who dreamed of taking the helm of a united Russian and Belarusian state during the era of Russian President Boris Yeltsin.

This time, however, Mr. Lukashenka was doubly lucky: Prime Minister Yekhanurov brought along an invitation for President Lukashenka to meet with President Yushchenko in Kyiv.

Jan Maksymiuk is the Belarus and Ukraine specialist on the staff of RFE/RL Newsline.

| Home Page |