“The spoon is dear when lunchtime is near.” – Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych
“Everything depends on the goodwill of Russians – we’re like serfs.” – Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov
Both statements, from Ukraine’s two top leaders this week, are illustrative of the foolhardy leadership that the nation will likely suffer as long as the Viktor Yanukovych-Mykola Azarov team is in charge.
Aside from the president’s large girth, suggesting he knows how to wield a spoon at mealtime, Yanukovych’s use of the above proverb is emblematic of the shortsighted approach that Ukraine’s leaders took in clinching a deal with their Russian counterparts, announced in Kharkiv on April 21.
On the surface, the agreement looks great. For the next decade, Ukraine supposedly gets a 30 percent discount on the price of its natural gas imports from Russia – allowing affordable energy prices that feed the nation’s mighty and gas-guzzling industries, steel among them. Yanukovych says the deal will bring savings of $40 billion to Ukraine this decade. In return, Russia gets to keep its Black Sea naval fleet where it has been for centuries – on the Crimean coast of Ukraine.
Upon closer examination, the deal is terrible in both respects. Russia has been overcharging Ukraine for natural gas – mainly because it didn’t like ex-President Viktor Yushchenko’s leadership. The so-called 30 percent discount, as energy expert Edward Chow notes on the next opinion page, actually only brings the import price closer to its true market value.
So, if Ukraine had simply bargained properly, it could have won a fairer price without making such a horrendous and unconstitutional concession: allowing the Russian fleet to stay put on sovereign Ukrainian territory until at least 2042. Ukraine’s previous leader, Yushchenko, wisely sought to have Russia ejected when its long-term lease expired in 2017. Article 17 of Ukraine’s Constitution is clear: “Foreign military bases shall not be permitted on the territory of Ukraine.” But this is an administration that could care less about the Constitution. Before this, the contempt was on display in forming a parliamentary majority by wooing individual deputies elected on the basis of party memberships and, therefore, constitutionally prohibited from abandoning the political blocs that got them elected into office.
This short-term expediency of haggling for a low gas price has damaging long-term consequences for Ukraine’s sovereignty and ability to be taken seriously internationally. By allowing Russia to keep a permanent military presence in Ukraine for decades to come, the nation will be seen as semi-sovereign, at best, or as a “vassal state” of Russia, at worst, as Azarov’s “serf” comment suggests.
The Russian price “discount” only mitigates the pressure to hike prices on household utilities, a necessary step to ending the nation’s atrociously wasteful energy consumption. The supposed $40 billion in savings are a mirage. If anything, this “discount” only gives shady gas-trading intermediaries fatter profit margins along the change from import to end consumer; the industrial-baron oligarchs are sure to benefit in all this murkiness.
Ukraine – the “energy junkie” – keeps getting its unhealthy fixes from a Kremlin leadership that revels in keeping Ukraine weak and subservient.
Yanukovych portrays the presence of Russia’s Black Sea fleet as part of a European security guarantee. From whom? The only threat to Ukraine’s territorial integrity comes from Russia – specifically, from Kremlin leaders who pine for the days of the Soviet Union, and would love nothing more than to keep Ukraine divided and weak. This agreement — a sellout of Ukraine’s long-term interests and territorial integrity – helps Russian leaders in this unholy endeavor.
