Washington Post Correspondent shares his perceptions of Ukraine
by Yaro Bihun
WASHINGTON - James Rupert, The Washington Post's correspondent in Kyiv, sees Ukraine as being in a very fortunate position. "It is now moving towards stability - the elusive post-Soviet stability that all the former republics of the Soviet Union should be seeking - but with a better chance of achieving it than most," he noted.
Mr. Rupert shared his perceptions about Ukraine, its relationship with Russia and the West, the "good news" and the "bad news" in its effort to secure political and economic security during a "Friday Evening Forum" on January 19, sponsored jointly by the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies and The Washington Group, an association of Ukrainian American professionals.
With reporting experience in Uzbekistan and other parts of the former Soviet Union, as well as in South Asia, James Rupert arrived in Kyiv in November 1994, when, as he recalled, Ukraine was being painted in the West as "perhaps a non-viable state," a view that was "enshrined" in the U.S. intelligence estimate he now says was "far too pessimistic." But that gloomy estimate, which hinted at the possible dismemberment of Ukraine, he added, helped convince the Washington Post to open its bureau in Kyiv, he added.
Until recently, the Western press, academia and governments were forced to look at Ukraine through Moscow's "lens" or "filter," which tended to present a "much more negative" view of Ukraine than what he found by living there, Mr. Rupert said.
Not all of the blame, however, should be placed on the Moscow "filter," he added. There was a serious drift during President Kravchuk's administration, which did not make a serious effort in initiating economic reforms or in defining a security structure for Ukraine.
Since then, The Post correspondent added, "In both of these areas, I think, the Kuchma administration has gotten to grips with the essential tasks in ways that the previous administration did not seem to have done."
That's not to say that President Leonid Kuchma reforms have succeeded he said "They're having an immense amount of trouble. But the point is, they're working, the grindstone is turning and grinding away at the features of the Soviet command economy, and so, progress can be made."
"I have now a much more optimistic view of Ukraine and where it's headed than when I went there," Mr. Rupert said, observing that Ukraine has "most, if not perhaps all, of the basic essential building blocks of viable, independent statehood."
He pointed out that Ukrainians have a strong sense of national identity, a "much more cohesive sense" for the kind of state that they would like to create than most other republics of the former Soviet Union. The idea of an independent Ukrainian state is not new to them, and they feel very much a part of Europe, he said.
"They want investment from Europe, they want to be able to travel to Europe, they want their country to look like and work like European countries work. That's not something you can say about Russia, or Belarus, or Tajikistan, or Uzbekistan."
Mr. Rupert also noted that while different people interpret "democracy" in different ways, there's much more consensus among Ukrainians that they want "something called democracy" than in most other parts of the former Soviet Union.
Also on the "good news" side of the ledger, Mr. Rupert noted that Ukraine has had four years of independence without any serious political violence, unlike the civil wars that have plagued Russia and other newly independent states. Despite all of the dire predictions about what was going to happen in the Crimea and about the split coming between eastern and western Ukraine, political violence has been so rare, he said, that only two cases come to mind: some rioting in the Crimea after a mafia shooting of Tatars and the "immensely lamentable" affair at St. Sophia's Cathedral during the burial of Patriarch Volodymyr.
"The idea of violence in politics and extremism in politics is much more anathema in Kyiv than it is in Moscow, and that's shaped the histories of these two countries in the short time they've parted after the Soviet collapse," he pointed out.
Mr. Rupert said he's intrigued by this difference in the two political cultures. "My sense is that it goes back to the difference between being the exercisers and the subjects of empire. There is no Ukrainian idea of a 'great derzhava,' a great state with great ambitions that by some natural, God-given right ought to be ruling all the way down to the Bosphorus. And yet, you can find people who dream these dreams with their eyes open in Russia and a lot of people. It's a part of the political culture."
In the "bad news" category, Mr. Rupert noted Ukraine's total dependence on Russia as its supplier of energy, the slow pace of privatization and the still-unresolved constitutional power-sharing arrangement between the president and the Parliament.
The lack of a reliable energy supply, Mr. Rupert said, "is Ukraine's Achilles' heal." Ukraine remains "horrendously dependent" on Russia as the source and transmitter of its energy supplies. He sees the establishment of Ukraine's energy independence as one of the most important, and least fulfilled, tasks of the Ukrainian government.
On the privatization front, the State Property Fund is months behind its targets in privatizing businesses, and the selling off of land is even further behind, he said. The resistance to reform by oblast and raion-level bureaucracies is fueling a political battle in Kyiv, where President Kuchma is fighting to get control over the reins of power, including direct authority over the administrative structures at the provincial level. The battle now is being fought over the new constitution, he said, but even if the president wins, it's not clear that a new constitution will settle the issue.
Mr. Rupert said he feels the president "eventually will manage to get enough power in hand to force through the essentials of his reform program in a way that they will become irreversible." After three years of economic depression, the Ukrainian people are receptive to change, he said, and there is no clearly articulated alternative to Kuchma's reform plan. In addition to President Kuchma, Prime Minister Yevhen Marchuk has begun to show his reformist credentials, especially during and after his Washington visit last September, he added.
In answer to a question, Mr. Rupert said he sees no immediate, short-term danger for Ukraine from the communist gains in the recent Russian elections. He said he found the purging of democrats and economic reformers from the Yeltsin Cabinet more damaging, in a general sense. Visiting Moscow on assignments, Mr. Rupert finds that Russians, in general, still find it hard to accept the idea of Ukraine being independent of Russia. And the recent election results show that the idea of a Slavic union is still very powerful in Russia, he said.
It is a popular view, it's a street-level view of Ukraine, and it's also a view which is held within the halls of power in Russia." While not everyone holds to this view, he added, "it's still an important player in the Russian political mind."
"I think Ukraine's independent statehood is established," he said, and it cannot be undone except through something as drastic as a world war or a conflagration like in Yugoslavia. And even among those in Russia loath to accept Ukraine's independence - except for extremists like Zhirinovsky - no one thinks that Ukraine can be brought back into the fold by force.
"They can't even subdue Chechnya, for Pete's sake," he pointed out. "That's been a sobering lesson to the Russians. And so, any idea of a forceful reintegration of Ukraine, I think, died in the streets of Grozny within the first days of the assault on Chechnya."
What could happen, however, is the development of a Ukraine so dependent on Russia - for energy and other things - that it would be unable to pursue the interests of its own people, he said. But unlike Belarus, Ukraine is moving in a direction that tends to reduce the danger of this happening.
Mr. Rupert said he found Ukrainians receptive to the idea of privatization and willing to participate in this process, which they did not fully understand. They appear to welcome Western investment, and are less xenophobic about it than are some Russians, he added. They also welcome Russian investment, although not in some strategic sectors like oil and gas pipelines.
As for the Commonwealth of Independent States, Mr. Rupert said he seen an ongoing fight between those, on the one hand, who want to have the CIS perform a legitimate coordinating role between the economies of the newly independent states, and, on the other hand, Russia which would like to make it a tool of its foreign policy as was made clear in a policy document from President Boris Yeltsin's office made public a few months ago.
Why did Ukraine so readily give up its nuclear weapons? As the Washington Post correspondent sees it "'The Ukrainian military did its math and concluded that it could not afford these weapons." And as for Ukraine's perceived hesitation, it "was in part, because Ukraine wanted to get something in return for giving up those missiles."
Asked to assess Western media coverage of Ukraine, Mr. Rupert said that it is not receiving the attention it warrants, being "a real linchpin for that entire region." Unfortunately, as he tells his colleagues in Kyiv, the collapse of the Soviet Union did not coincide with an increase in the budgets of the Western press, and it's difficult do a job well on a shoestring.
He described the Western news operation in Ukraine:
"It's far too little attention for a country of 55 million people, whose fate has immensely important implications for the stability of the region as a whole," he said "We need to do a lot better."
Mr. Rupert, who recently returned with his wife to Washington for the birth their daughter, found living in Kyiv better than in Moscow or Tashkent. There is crime, he said, "But I find that I'm no more concerned in walking around in Kyiv at night than I was when I lived here in Washington - which is to say I'm concerned but not panicked."
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, February 4, 1996, No. 5, Vol. LXIV
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