ANALYSIS:Russia is once again clasping Ukraine close to its bosom
RUSSIA IS loudly celebrating the restoration of fraternal ties with Ukraine, but many people in a country long dominated by the Kremlin fear a tightening of its embrace.
The two countries signed a deal this week under which Ukraine will receive a 30 per cent discount on Russian gas imports, in return for Moscow being allowed to retain a key naval base on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast until at least 2042.
These issues were major irritants in relations between the neighbouring states after pro-western leaders took power in Ukraine in early 2005, and sought to lead the country out of Russia’s sphere of influence and towards membership of the European Union and Nato.
Those leaders have now been replaced by long-standing friends of Moscow, in the shape of President Viktor Yanukovich and a government whose power base is eastern and southern Ukraine, where Russian language and culture dominate and people see the Kremlin as a protector rather than a threat.
In western Ukraine, however, most people are not hailing the election of Yanukovich and the rapprochement with Russia, but instead warning that their country’s very independence is endangered by a power-hungry Kremlin and the puppet leader that it controls in Kiev.
For supporters of his main critics, former president Viktor Yushchenko and ex-prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko, Yanukovich’s decision to allow the Russian Black Sea fleet to remain in Ukraine well beyond the end of its current lease in 2017 is something close to treason.
Russia has always held great influence in Ukraine, but the main hope of the Orange Revolution that ousted a pro-Moscow old guard in 2004-2005 was that it would herald real independence for a country of 46 million people that had for too long been controlled by Moscow.
The election victory of Yanukovich over Tymoshenko in February killed those hopes for millions of people in western Ukraine, who see the former’s decision on the base at Sevastopol as proof that he is ready to trade genuine Ukrainian sovereignty for warmer relations with Russia.
These, sceptics suggest, will easily be parlayed into lucrative business deals for the tycoons in Yanukovich’s circle.
Supporters of the president say pure economics justify the deal. Ukraine’s finances are in a parlous state, and the global recession brought the country’s industry to its knees. Cheaper gas will not only lower overheads for Ukraine’s factories, but prevent a rise in heating bills for cash-strapped domestic customers.
Details of the deal have yet to be released, but Tymoshenko claims that it will not actually save Ukraine any money because the lower gas payments to Russia will be cancelled out by lower rent payments from Moscow for the naval base at Sevastopol.
She is demanding an extraordinary session of parliament this weekend to discuss the agreement, and is urging people to mass outside the building to show their disdain for a deal that she says breaches the constitution exemplifies what she calls Yanukovichs “anti-Ukrainian” policies.
“This step of Yanukovich’s shows that Ukraine does not have a president,” she said after the pact was agreed. “This is not just betrayal, it is the start of the systematic destruction of the independence of our state.”
Yanukovich has been in power for less than two months, but has already confirmed the fears of his detractors.
Though internationally praised for pledging to give up Ukraine’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium, Tymoshenko and her allies criticised him for robbing the country’s medical and scientific researchers of a vital substance, and thereby increasing their reliance on Russia.
Russia is also now negotiating to take a stake in the strategically important Ukrainian pipeline network – which transports one-fifth of the gas used by the EU – and to build a civil nuclear reactor in the country, strengthening its stranglehold on the energy sector.
In the major western city of Lviv, thousands of people protested against an education minister in the pro-Yanukovich government who is seen as a Moscow lackey hostile to Ukrainian traditions and who supports the promotion of Russian as an official state language. Yanukovich, who hails from a mostly Russian-speaking area and struggles with the Ukrainian language, could face a showdown with his detractors in the west in the coming weeks.
After taking office, he was lauded in Russia for pledging to strip posthumous state honours from two second World War partisan leaders who are widely seen as heroes in western Ukraine but are depicted as bloodthirsty Nazi collaborators in Russian history books.
Yanukovich said he would reverse the awards granted by Yushchenko before May 9th, when much of the former Soviet Union celebrates its defeat of Nazi Germany.
The stage is set for confrontation. Nationalist groups have vowed to mount street protests if Yanukovich dishonours their heroes with a gesture that would be celebrated in Moscow. But to fail to fulfil a signal promise of his early presidency would be construed as a sign of weakness, by his enemies and his allies both at home and abroad.
Dan McLaughlin is based in Budapest and reports for The Irish Timeson eastern and central Europe, Russia and the Caucuses