You're reading: Sovereign Surrender

Without any public debate or transparency, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych is racing ahead to rapprochement with Russia.

Judging by the flurry of fast-track bilateral agreements and bold new proposals, Ukrainian and Russian leaders are ready to embrace each other again after five years of frosty relations.

But many see the rapprochement of the “brotherly Slavic nations” – ruled as one nation from Moscow for centuries – as heavily stacked in favor of the Kremlin.

Consequently, the deals ratified or under discussion could damage Ukraine’s ability to be a truly independent nation for decades to come, critics say.

With the ink barely dry from an historic pact that prolongs the stay of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Crimea until at least 2042, Ukrainian and Russian leaders announced far-reaching plans to reunify some of the nation’s most strategic and lucrative assets.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin appears to be aggressively trying to dominate Ukraine’s massive natural gas transport pipelines, which carry 80 percent of Russia’s supplies to Europe.

Also coveted by Putin and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev are Ukraine’s nuclear energy plants and other major assets, including its aviation industry. If the gambits work to Ukraine’s economic favor, most in the nation might accept greater Kremlin domination as an acceptable tradeoff.

But there are many signs that Ukraine’s leadership tandem of President Viktor Yanukovych and Prime Minister Mykola Azarov are not getting the best ends of the bargains economically.

And, aside from pure economics, Ukraine’s status as a truly independent nation is being called into question internationally. Moreover, issues important to many people in the nation are simply getting shelved by the Yanukovych-Azarov administration.

Former Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko’s attempt at NATO membership, the revival of the Ukrainian language and attempts to get international recognition of the 1932-1933 Holodomor famine, which killed millions of people, as genocide, are going nowhere under the new leadership.

“It appears that the Yanukovych administration has made a firm decision to tie Ukraine’s development to that of Russia, and to slow or reverse the pace of economic and cultural integration with the West,”said Keith Smith, a former U.S. ambassador to Lithuania who is now with the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Time will tell whether this strategy will improve the standard of living in Ukraine. Moscow’s strategy appears to be more one of expanding Russian influence and reducing that of the European Union than of building a dynamic society in Ukraine.”

– Keith Smith, a former U.S. ambassador to Lithuania who is now with the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Moreover, Ukraine’s political opposition is currently divided and enfeebled. There is talk that ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s era of political leadership may have passed.

Those who are trying to stand up to Yanukovych have not been able to block two constitutionally questionable initiatives. The first was the formation of a parliamentary majority by individual members, rather than political blocs, as specified by the Constitution.

The second occurred when this newly formed majority voted to let the Russian naval fleet stay for another quarter-century beyond its 2017 lease, also against the Constitution.

The courts under Yanukovych appear to have abdicated their role as an independent branch of government, and are merely rubber-stamping the administration’s major initiatives.

All the developments, when the dust settles, raise the question of how long the current Constitution will remain in force or how many of its other elements will be flouted by those in power.

Moreover, questions are being raised about whether Ukraine will ever have another truly democratic election or whether it is slipping back into the autocratic, dictatorial mode of the Kremlin – where elections are shams and the Russian State Duma rushes to legitimize all of the Medvedev-Putin administration’s decisions.

Thus far, the Yanukovych-Azarov administration has shown little interest in democratic debate or in explaining their decisions before they are made.

“They aren’t holding discussions or consultations with civil society. They aren’t holding consultations at all,” ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, defeated in the Feb. 7 presidential election, said. “They just cut everyone down at the knees, and one way of doing so is throwing people in jail. It’s the tried and true method of a dictator, and Yanukovych is using this method.”

Azarov sees things differently. For five years, in Azarov’s opinion, the pro-Western Yushchenko and his one-time Orange Revolution ally Tymoshenko brought nothing but gridlock and bad relations with Moscow. Now, according to Azarov and Yanukovych, things have been put right.

“There has been a positive breakthrough in Ukrainian-Russian relations,” Azarov told a government meeting on May 5, only days after holding talks with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Sochi on April 30.

“Now, we have full confidence that Ukraine, without delay, will begin to rejuvenate its economic potential, to raise the living standards of its people.”

– Mykola Azarov, Ukraine’s prime minister

Azarov dismissed the opposition led by Tymoshenko. “Having understood the irreversibility of the positive changes brought about by the restoration of cooperation with Russia, and feeling that they are losing their footing, the so-called opposition has turned to their usual lies and provocations,” Azarov said.

During the ratification vote of the Russian Black Sea Fleet lease extension in Ukraine’s parliament on April 27, world media delighted their audiences with scenes of Ukrainian lawmakers engaged in fistfights, practicing their chokeholds on each other, pelting Speaker Volodymyr Lytvyn with eggs and lighting off smoke bombs.

Although weakened, the political opposition is showing no signs of compromising on issues they regard as essential to maintaining national sovereignty and democracy.

“What Russia is offering us is good for them, not good for Ukraine,” said opposition lawmaker and former Defense Minister Anatoly Hrytsenko. “And if the Yanukovych government accepts these proposals, the consequences will be strategically dire. Investment, including that from Russia, is good, but not if it involves the imposition of a monopoly over an entire sector, with no transfer of technology or management techniques, such as other international investors would offer.”

Hrytsenko said the speed and undemocratic nature of the changes are troubling. “And if you add to this the fact that the Black Sea Fleet base agreement has been thrown in, the agreement takes on a political and even psychological dimension,” he said.

Pre-occupied with its own financial troubles, the West has been weak in its response to Ukraine’s return to Russia’s crushing embrace. Yanukovych on April 5 said the EU should be involved in any potential gas company merger talks.

But days earlier, Brussels distanced itself, with a top energy official describing the talks as an internal matter between Kyiv and Moscow. And U.S. President Barack Obama has sent early signals that his administration has bigger concerns than Ukraine’s democratic development.


Kyiv Post staff writer John Marone can be reached at [email protected]
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