ANALYSIS: Russia and the West compete over Kyiv's foreign orientation in the post-Kuchma era (04/07/02)

ANALYSIS

Russia and the West compete over Kyiv's foreign orientation in the post-Kuchma era

by Nigel Pemberton
RFE/RL Newsline

The holding of Ukraine's third parliamentary elections on March 31 was only the prelude to presidential elections to be held in two and a half years when President Leonid Kuchma will step down after his second term ends. Russia and the West already have their respective favorite candidates, with Russia preferring Viktor Medvedchuk, head of the Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (United), and the West favoring Viktor Yushchenko, leader of Our Ukraine. Both candidates are in their 40s and the election of either will represent a changing of the guard from the older generation that has ruled Soviet and independent Ukraine to this point.

Russia is backing Mr. Medvedchuk because, of all the oligarchic parties, only the SDPU is able to enter Ukraine's elections as an independent force and still win more than the party of power, For a United Ukraine (FUU), which is composed of five parties. The SDPU is also the only oligarchic party with a recognizable leader who has presidential ambitions, and has strong ties to Russia through its heavy involvement in Ukraine's energy market. Ironically, the SDPU includes former President Leonid Kravchuk in its top ranks - someone who has always been disliked in Moscow.

Russia is strongly supporting Mr. Medvedchuk through Gleb Pavlovskii's Fund for Effective Politics. (Mr. Pavlovskii is Russian President Vladimir Putin's image-maker.). The fund aims to depict Mr. Medvedchuk as a "statesman" and in a softer light, and has launched an image campaign depicting a casual Mr. Medvedchuk, sans tie and wearing a sweater, in an attempt to overcome his image as a cold leader who is distant from the public.

The use of Russian public relations experts in Ukraine began in the 1999 presidential elections, and they are likely to play an increasingly active role in the 2004 presidential elections. The difference between their activities and those of Western organizations and countries who have provided funds for Ukraine's civil society, media and election monitoring is that Russian involvement is non-transparent, never openly discussed and unaccountable.

Ukrainian pro-presidential election blocs - the main customers of Russian image-makers - therefore, have double standards when they accuse only the West of interference in Ukraine's affairs. (The only pro-presidential bloc to use a Western PR company is the Greens.)

Western assistance to Ukraine's elections was characterized in an interview in Holos Ukrainy by the head of FUU, Volodymyr Lytvyn, as "international administrative resources." Mr. Lytvyn was trying to evade the question of FUU monopolization of "domestic administrative resources" in the elections. U.S. Helsinki Commission members have ridiculed this as harking back to the Soviet era, when Western criticism of human rights abuses was condemned by the Soviet Union as "interference in internal affairs."

Oligarchic parties such as the SDPU and FUU are fanning anti-Western sentiment on television stations they control by accusing the United States of interference in Ukraine's internal affairs and of being behind a so-called "Brzezinski Plan" to replace Mr. Kuchma with Mr. Yushchenko. Rossiiskaya Gazeta argued that Western assistance to the Ukrainian elections is merely a cover to support Our Ukraine and obtain a pro-U.S. Parliament that "would drive a wedge between Moscow and Kyiv."

Such was the theme of the film "PiAr" aired on ICTV and directed by Charles Clover, a former Kyiv correspondent for the Financial Times. In his coverage for the Financial Times, which has since been disavowed by the daily, Mr. Clover had accused Mr. Yushchenko of financial malpractice while serving as chairman of the National Bank of Ukraine.

Russian officials have yet to overcome their penchant for intervening in the internal affairs of CIS states, as evidenced by Viktor Chernomyrdin. The Russian ambassador to Ukraine acts more like a regional governor than an ambassador when he complains about U.S. resolutions on the Ukrainian elections - clearly an area that is normally the preserve of the domestic Foreign Affairs Ministry, not a foreign ambassador.

Russia would like to see Ukraine continue its tilt toward Russia that began even prior to the "Kuchmagate" scandal in 2000. In the last two years, Presidents Kuchma and Putin have met a record 18 times. Russian - not Western - capital is becoming increasingly active in the Ukrainian economy, and by 2005 it will influence the production of 70 percent of the goods manufactured in Ukraine.

In the current elections, Russian officials have openly declared their hostility to Mr. Yushchenko's Our Ukraine as an anti-Russian, pro-Western and nationalist bloc.

Dmitrii Rogozin, the head of the Russian State Duma's International Relations Committee, has used Soviet-era rhetoric to reintroduce allegations that "Ukrainian nationalists" who are members of Our Ukraine were involved in "criminal activities" during and after World War II.

Russia's open support for the Communist Party of Ukraine (CPU) and oligarchic/pro-presidential parties in the 2002 elections is due to its prioritization of geopolitical issues in the Commonwealth of Independent States, as witnessed by its support for Sovietophile and authoritarian regimes in Belarus and communist Moldova. Russian presidential administration chief Aleksandr Voloshin has admitted that Moscow backs FUU, the SDPU, and the CPU, and is hostile to Our Ukraine.

The 2002 parliamentary elections therefore, have laid out the framework for the presidential elections in two years' time. As Russia's concern is only geopolitical, it supported two of the three political groups in Ukraine - the Communists and the oligarchs. In contrast, the West has an interest in both geopolitical and reformist issues in Ukraine and thus backed the reformist camp, that is, Mr. Yushchenko and Our Ukraine.

The first political group that Russia supports in the CIS is made up of communists and Sovietophiles; as is the case in Belarus and Moldova. However, this option is unlikely to be successful in Ukraine. Therefore, Russia is lending its support also to the second oligarch camp, which has been implicated in corruption, prefers a non-transparent economic and political system and can envision Ukraine's return to Europe only "together with Russia." Russia's favored presidential candidate from this second political group is the SDPU's Mr. Medvedchuk, who heads Ukraine's most vilified oligarchic group.

Neither the Communists nor the oligarchs are favored by U.S. and Western organizations such as the European Union, and the West is left only with the reformers represented by Mr. Yushchenko and Our Ukraine. In contrast to Mr. Medvedchuk, Mr. Yushchenko has no corrupt past, supports a transparent reform process that the West has long asked Ukraine to implement, and backs Ukraine's integration into the EU and NATO independent of Russia.

All three of Ukraine's political groups (Communists, oligarchs and reformers) support Ukraine's membership in the EU. Nevertheless, only the reformist Our Ukraine camp is willing to undertake the necessary domestic policies that would replace rhetoric with real reform.

Over the next two years, both the West's favorite Mr. Yushchenko, and especially Russia's favorite, Mr. Medvedchuk, will attempt to ingratiate themselves with President Kuchma to obtain his blessing as his successor. As with former Russian President Boris Yeltsin and his appointed successor President Putin, President Kuchma's price for his blessing will be immunity from prosecution, something that Mr. Medvedchuk will more easily be able to grant than Mr. Yushchenko would.

Nigel Pemberton is a Toronto-based specialist in post-Soviet affairs.

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