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In Dmitry Medvedev’s Aug. 11 video blog, pundit John O’Sullivan wrote in the National Review that the Russian president “looked every inch the Moscow mafioso out on a hot date.” AP Foreign media are full of stories about Ukrainian-Russian relations after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s open letter to his Ukrainian counterpart turned out to be a public relations windfall for Ukraine; Gas war fears ease as international organizations come to the rescue.

Siding with Ukraine

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s open letter and Aug. 11 video blog attacking Ukrainian President Victor Yushchenko turned out to be a PR windfall for Ukraine, judging from international reaction.

Medvedev blamed Yushchenko for numerous problems in the bilateral relationship. Medvedev accused his Ukrainian counterpart of taking an “anti-Russian” stand in the 2008 Russia-Georgia war, obstructing the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s operations in Sevastopol, ousting the Russian language from Ukrainian life, distorting history and bypassing Russia in gas deals with the European Union. He closed the video blog presumptuously with hope that “the new leadership of Ukraine” after the Jan. 17 presidential election – in which Yushchenko is a candidate for re-election – will be ready to improve ties.

Many outside of Russia – and some within -- sided with Ukraine and Yushchenko. "The language [of Medvedev] was reminiscent of [former Soviet leader] Leonid Brezhnev in its detachment from reality,” wrote Anders Aslund, author of “How Ukraine Became A Market Economy and Democracy,” in an Aug. 17 opinion piece published by the Financial Times. “The Kremlin’s misunderstanding of Ukrainian politics is based on the fact that, unlike Russia, Ukraine is a democracy … The broader problem for Russian foreign policy is that the country’s rulers do not know how to deal with their post-Soviet neighbors. Their policy objectives are mixed. Gazprom wants to monopolize gas supply, transportation and sales. Private businessmen aspire to expand their corporations. Agricultural interests block imports. Russian nationalists persist in neo-imperialism and populist politicians try to win domestic support by attacking their neighbors.”

Political analyst Yevgeny Kiselyov wrote in the Aug. 14 Moscow Times: “All of the problems the president mentioned do exist, but they first appeared long ago and most had arisen even before Yushchenko took office.” Kiselyov speculated that the Kremlin wants to see Yushchenko re-elected because they see him as weak. "...if Medvedev’s strategy is successful, we might see an amazing, come-from-behind victory for Yushchenko in January’s presidential vote,” he wrote.

John O’Sullivan wrote in the Sept. 7 National Review: “Medvedev’s bullying tone, list of grievances and veiled threats were all too redolent of the world of the 1930s.” O’Sullivan doubted whether realism would work with the Kremlin since “Russia is a gangster state. And such a state is unpredictable.”

Boris Nemtsov, co-chairman of the Solidarity movement in Russia and a former aide to Yushchenko, told Ekho Moskvy radio station on Aug. 18 that Medvedev’s message did the Ukrainian president “a great service. Ukrainians suddenly realized that they were being attacked and offended, albeit verbally, and they were forced to team up behind Yushchenko, whom they don’t like, seeing him in this particular case not as an unpopular politician but as a symbol of Ukraine as a sovereign country.”

And Russian defense analyst Pavel Felgenhauer, reacting to the widespread speculation that Russian leaders might militarily attack Ukraine, wrote in the Jamestown Foundation on Aug 13: “Russia needs at least three more years of radical military modernization and some rearmament before it may contemplate a Crimea and Ukraine mission. Now a new bitter gas war with Kyiv is on the horizon, which might once more cut supplies to Europe. While further Russian attempts to influence domestic politics in Ukraine continue, the military threat will linger in the background.”


Gas war fears eased

International loans to Ukraine “have diminished considerably” the chances of another gas war like the one that shut off natural gas supplies from Russia to Europe through Ukraine for two weeks in January. This is according to Business Monitor International’s Emerging Europe Oil and Gas Insights report dated Sept. 1.

The report cites the International Monetary Fund’s $3.3 billion loan and another $1.7 billion offered by the World Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and the European Investment Bank. The loans are contingent on enhancing the transparency of the notoriously opaque state-owned Naftogaz and raising domestic prices by 20 percent each quarter on gas prices to consumers.

“Although this is likely to cause short-term pain to consumers, particularly in light of the current economic downturn, in the longer term the benefits of industry reform far outweigh the short-term problems,” BMI wrote. “Furthermore, if Tymoshenko is perceived by the public to have averted a recurrence of the so-called ‘gas war’ with Russia, this could earn her valuable political capital in the 2010 elections.”