You're reading: Back Into The Gray Zone

Why is President Viktor Yanukovych fumbling integration with the European Union - supposedly his top foreign policy priority?

The president did not fly to Brussels.

After President Viktor Yanukovych refused to back down to Western demands to release jailed former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko last week, the European Union postponed his Oct. 20 visit to its capital indefinitely – until, officials said, democratic conditions in Ukraine improve.

The snub raises fears that Ukraine’s European integration is now at risk, leaving the country alone in the face of increasingly loud demands from Russia, its former Soviet master.

The reason for the EU’s wrath is the seven-year prison sentence given to Tymoshenko on Oct. 11 after what many in the West regard as a show trial. Brussels had pressed Yanukovych to find a way to release his main political rival, but the president indicated to a group of Western journalists on Oct. 17 that this was not in the cards.

The EU’s tough response puts Yanukovych on the spot over his attempts to combine European integration with a crackdown on opponents that some critics have compared to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s style of rule.

“What kind of signal would this give society?” Yanukovych said. “That to be able to commit crimes one should be a member of the opposition?”

The president also talked up new criminal charges against the charismatic opposition leader, accusing her of attempting to embezzle $405 million from the state while she headed a gas company in the 1990s.

The EU’s tough response puts Yanukovych on the spot over his attempts to combine European integration with a crackdown on opponents that some critics have compared to Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s style of rule.

Brussels has told Yanukovych to strengthen the rule of law and independence of the judiciary if he wants to be welcome in the EU.

Not doing so could put an end to Kyiv’s attempts to seal a political association and free-trade agreement with the EU. On Oct. 20, the EU announced that the details of the free trade deal had been agreed, but said implementation relied on Ukraine creating the right “political conditions.”

So far, these demands have fallen on deaf ears.

“The imprisonment of a political rival was put on a par with concluding of the strategic agreement with the EU,” said Oleksandr Sushko, an analyst at the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation. “And the president chose the first option, showing that his real priority was autocratic power.”

Yanukovych upped the stakes on Oct. 19, saying in a televised interview that he may not sign the association agreement if it doesn’t contain a clear path to EU membership for Ukraine.

“There is an impression that we are like beggars asking in, but they are not letting us in. I don’t want this,” he said.

Meanwhile, officials in Kyiv have warned that the EU’s tough stance could push them to listen closer to Russia’s offers of closer cooperation, sweetened by offers of cheaper gas.

“If we receive an absolutely clear ‘no’ signal from the European Union, the possibility of our changing direction toward the customs union is quite large,” Deputy Prime Minister Sergiy Tigipko told the Den newspaper.

On that same day, Russia and Ukraine signed a free-trade deal with six other post-Soviet states. Moscow’s main aim, however, is to pull Kyiv into its customs union with Belarus and Kazakhstan.

Analysts said Yanukovych is trying to play a clever strategic game, seeking to get the best deal possible from both sides.

But he may end up losing it all, said Olga Shumylo-Tapiola, an analyst at the Carnegie Europe in Brussels. “He may be remembered as just another dictator in the gray zone between the EU and Russia; a chess player who mistakenly checkmated himself by engaging in a complicated game on
three boards simultaneously, with no understanding of the rules and no strategy.” Shumyulo-Tapiola wrote.

After taking office on Feb. 25, 2010, Yanukovych made his first visit to Brussels. He said joining the EU is a strategic goal for Ukraine. He also set about repairing relations with Moscow, which had frayed under his predecessor.

But the president balked at Russian attempts to pull Ukraine into the customs union, as this would contradict the country’s membership in the World Trade Organization and plans for free trade with the EU.

Yanukovych has tried to negotiate energy contracts with Russia, which has demanded closer ties in return for cheaper gas. Yet analysts say Ukraine is unlikely to turn completely toward Russia, as Yanukovych doesn’t want to hand over economic control to Moscow.

“Ukraine can’t say goodbye neither to Europe, nor to Russia and is doomed to sit in two seats at the same time,” said Mykhailo Pogrebinsky, a political analyst and former adviser to ex-President Leonid Kuchma, who was famous for his “multi-vector” policy.

But Shumylo-Tapiola said Yanukovych “is not as smart as Kuchma to balance Russia and the EU,” while his strategy of “trying to milk two cows” is obvious to EU officials. “The majority of people in Brussels think this is a game Yanukovych is playing,” she said.

Sushko said Yanukovych had no economic resources to play those geopolitical games and had just “narrowed the space for maneuver” in talks with Russia by suggesting he would accept a pause in EU integration.

Others questioned whether Ukraine’s rulers had any intention of playing by democratic rules. “Our politicians and businessmen do not have statehood in their souls,” said Alexander Paskhaver, president of the Center for Economic Development in Kyiv. “They think about themselves, not about the future.”

Dmytro Marunych, head of the Kyiv-based Energy Research Institute, said billionaire Dmytro Firtash, a longtime partner of Russia’s Gazprom in the supply of gas to Ukraine and Tymoshenko’s enemy – “has won. For Firtash, Tymoshenko’s coming back to power would be the end of all business and influence in Ukraine.”

Oleh Voloshyn, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, said Ukraine is still expecting to sign the association agreement with the EU at the bilateral summit on Dec. 19.

But Shumylo-Tapiola said the feeling in Brussels is that the EU would “find it very difficult to sign and ratify this agreement, and even to hold the summit,” if Tymoshenko is not set free and allowed to take part in elections.

The EU snub could also hurt Yanukovych at home. A recent poll by the Razumkov Center shows that most Ukrainians support EU integration.

Amid protests over the government’s economic and social policies, a group of 100 protesters gathered outside parliament on Oct. 20 against the policies of Yanukovych. “We want to live by European laws. We don’t need a new iron curtain,” Evgeniy Ikhelzon, one of the protest’s organizers, wrote on his blog.

Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected]. Vlad Lavrov and Yuriy Onyshkiv contributed to this report.