Moscow and Kiev start active reanimation of their ‘critically damaged’ diplomatic ties
After a heated presidential election at home and five years of Kiev’s near-fatally roller-coaster relations with Moscow under his errant West-leaning predecessor, Viktor Yanukovich, the new Ukrainian president, made it clear during his first visit to the Kremlin on March 5 that he was ready to completely rebuild the perilously strained bilateral ties with Russia, which he has called Kiev’s historical neighbor and strategic partner.
Specifically, the new president has promised to put an emphasis on finding mutually beneficial solutions to all the thorny issues that had hamstrung and/or seriously dented Kiev’s relations with Moscow as he seeks ways to open a totally new chapter of cordial bilateral relationships with the Kremlin.
The list of issues and problems begging for urgent positive resolutions includes, but is not limited, to the former presidential administration’s maniacal yearning for an accelerated NATO membership against the will of the majority of the population, the official status of the Russian language and the fate of the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet in its last years of its current base contract agreement in the Crimean peninsular. All these and other issues of bilateral relevance to both former Soviet states are now on both presidents’ agenda.
The two leaders are now looking for ways to jumpstart the ‘comatose bilateral relationships’ that were further downgraded on the diplomatic scale to the lowest level 19 months ago after Kiev’s alleged implication in arming Georgia prior to and during its week-long catastrophic odyssey in South Ossetia in 2008 and the ties were finally practically frozen in late 2009 after Kremlin demonstratively refused to send a new ambassador to Kiev as a replacement for its retired former envoy to Ukraine.
A pledge of U-turn in Russian-Ukrainian relations
Thus, having fully understood the unprecedented enormity of the negative legacies created by his predecessor’s myopic foreign policies, evident in his open confrontations in its relations with the Kremlin, Yanukovich has made it crystal clear that he will pursue a totally different foreign policy agenda on Russia. “At the presidential election, the Ukrainians in voting for me made it clear that they wanted real and fundamental changes in both our domestic and foreign policies,” Yanukovich said. “This is why I see my mission as making an acute U-turn in our policies on Russian-Ukrainian relations, which will enable both countries to realize their citizens’ dream aspirations for a peaceful and friendly coexistence between our two nations.”
“The new president in his striving to open a new charter on relations with Moscow has promised to put an emphasis on finding mutually beneficial solutions to all the thorny issues that had seriously dented Kiev’s relations with Moscow under his predecessor.”
Responding to his visitor’s promise for a sharp U-turn policy on Russia, President Dmitry Medvedev said Russia was not, meekly speaking, indifferent to the final outcome of the Ukrainian presidential election as its results will have long-term impacts on the bilateral ties between Moscow and Kiev. “Naturally, we see this result of the election as a positive signal for the further development of our bilateral ties. This is the unambiguous message sent by the millions of the electorate that participated in the presidential election. These people voted specifically for significant improvements in the current level of relations between Russia and Ukraine.”
However, Medvedev specially noted that a lot needs to be done to restore the gravely damaged ties between Moscow and Kiev to a normal and friendly bilateral diplomatic level as they were almost completely destroyed by ex-President Viktor Yuschshenko, seen in Moscow mainly as a ‘western puppet’ that was pathologically bent on offering Russia and its strategic interests at every available opportunity as sacrificial lambs to its political masters in Brussels and Washington, even if such policies were against Kiev’s core national interests. “Unfortunately, the relations between our countries in the past five years were not only in complete stagnation, but even degraded. This is why today we are not talking about improvement, but how to completely rebuild new ties from scratch and resuscitate the seriously damaged existing relations with the aid of very strong and highly effective measures,” he added. “To achieve this goal, we need to comprehensively overhaul and activate all aspects of Russian-Ukrainian cooperation in all directions and spheres of bilateral diplomacy.”
Indeed, the former Ukrainian president and his political ally-turned-foe, Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko, had so damaged the bilateral ties with the Kremlin by their incoherent foreign policies and other highly controversial diplomatic measures that the new president really needs to completely rebuild its ties with Moscow, beginning from the perennial gas transit issue, the fate of Russian language that was under threat of a complete ban in Ukraine under the previous administration and the future of continuing location of the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet in the Crimean peninsular after the expiration of the current basement agreement in 2017.
Other thorny policy issues include Yuschshenko policy of ‘heroization’ of Ukrainian nationalists, notably Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevich, who had fought on the side of the Nazi’s notorious SS troops that were responsible for cold-blooded murdering of thousands of innocent civilians in the WWII, Kiev’s illicit support of Tbilisi during the South Ossetia war in 2008 and other thorny issues of significant bilateral importance to both countries.
An outline of new policy strategies to address thorny issues
As expected, Yanukovich promised to review, and if necessary, revoke if not all, at least, most of the questionable policy decisions on Russian-Ukrainian ties that were taken by his predecessor as well as accelerate the adoptions of other strategically vital mutually beneficial decisions on key issues, such as the fate of the Black Sea Fleet and the official status of the Russian language, which were also intentionally blocked by the previous administration.
The obstruction of a positive resolution on the Black Sea Fleet’s fate, and, indeed, like all other stalemated issues on the Moscow-Kiev bilateral agenda, had served a much wider geopolitical agenda drawn up by anti-Russia hawkish strategists in Washington, Brussels and other EU capitals, who over the past five years had regularly used Yuschshenko and his short-sighted vision on global politics and poor understanding of the multiplication effects of positive synergies in multilateral strategic partnerships in modern politics as golden opportunities to pursue their self-centered geopolitical interests in the former Soviet state at the expense of Moscow, and in certain circumstances, even those of Kiev.
Thus, speaking specifically on the fate of the Black Sea Fleet, Yanukovich noted that the multifaceted nature and the strong historical implications and unique specificities of the issue. “This is why presidents of both countries had always reached mutually beneficial agreements on this issue in the past, and so shall it be under my watch,” he said. “Both Ukrainians and Russians understand this, and Medvedev and I also fully understand the scope of the difficulties involved in finding the appropriate resolution to this issue, just as we also equally understand the increasing time pressure to find this solution very soon,” he added. “Now, a joint intergovernmental commission is already working on this issue, and I think we can find such a solution that will equally satisfy both Kiev and Moscow’s interests on this issue soon.”
Commenting on the ‘heroization’ of the pro-Nazi Ukrainian nationalists, notably the conferment of the state’s state orders on Bandera and Shukhevich, Yanukovich promised to review and annul such honors, which he said had ‘resonated negatively’ both within and outside Ukraine. This refers notably to the EU states, notably, Poland, as well as Russia and the United States, which had vehemently condemned Yuschshenko’s questionable policy of honoring local pro-Nazi WWII leaders against vocal outcries from home and abroad in the last days of his presidency. “These honor decisions caused social resonance in Ukraine and around the globe and it was not accidental that the European Parliament adopted a special resolution condemning the policy,” Yanukovich noted. “In our country, there are special political procedures and legal processes to follow on readdressing such issues and we are currently passing through these processes. But a final decision will certainly be taken before the May 9 Victory Day commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the end of WWII.” The WWII is more popularly known in the former Soviet states as the ‘Great Patriotic War.’
Hitch-free gas transit, language and social issues top agenda
Speaking on the gas issues, the new president promised to ensure a hitch-free transit of gas supplies via Ukrainian territory to its European consumers under his watch, a policy that will finally end the perennial disruptions of contracted gas supplies via Ukraine in the past several years at the peak of winter coldness to its final consumers on the continent. Both leaders have even pledged to broaden their countries’ bilateral economic cooperation beyond the gas market to the much wider energy industry, where both nations can fully tap the traditional synergies in their economies reminiscent of the Soviet era.
“The two leaders are looking for ways to jumpstart the ‘comatose relationships’ that were further downgraded to the lowest diplomatic level in 2009 after the Kremlin demonstratively refused to send a replacement for its retired ambassador to Kiev during the Yuschchenko presidency.”
Speaking on the Russian language issue, the main lingua franca spoken by almost all Ukrainians that has so been deprived of ‘an official state language status’ – unlike the Ukrainian language, the only official language recognized by the former administration, Yanukovich noted that his administration plans to create comfortable conditions for protecting all nationalities and their basic rights in Ukraine, including the lion’s share of the local population that speaks Russian language.
Finding compromise solutions to the Russian language status and other issues of peaceful ethnic coexistence among different nationalities in Ukraine were key parts of the new president’s election promises. And, going by his statements at the Kremlin press conference, Yanukovich intends to solve these issues in the early period of his presidency. “Ukraine has ratified the European Charter which envisages, amongst others, the protection of all nationalities and their rights. However, the laws to enforce these requirements had not been adopted since the ratification. My administration will adopt all the necessary laws – and this was one of the key issues on election manifesto. Consequently, this problem will definitely be solved soon.”
Going by the promises and friendly atmosphere at the final press conference after the Kremlin talks, it will be right to imply that the presidents have established the grounds necessary for moving their relations from the their current comatose state to a thriving level. It is only time that will tell whether or not these two leaders can positively solve all the issues on their bilateral agenda.
But the very fact of Russian and Ukrainian political leaders reestablishing direct communication links, relating in good faith to each other and drafting long-term plans of joint actions that are directed at resolving all the accumulated differences between Kiev and Moscow and deepening the present level of their bilateral cooperation really indicates the final dawn of the long-awaited end of the five-year dark period in the relationships between these two Slavic nations and closest and biggest neighbors in the CIS region.
Web design,