A Smarting Bear

TOL ^ | 29 November 2004 | Sergei Borisov

[Tailgunner Joe]

How smart has Russia's Ukraine policy been? Moscow doesn't know, but it knows it has a problem.

ULYANOVSK, Russia--It seems it's not just Ukraine that's in turmoil. Russia's political elite has been left reeling by the size of opposition demonstrations in Ukraine and the possibility that its preferred candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, might lose out.

Consider President Vladimir Putin's statements. Putin immediately congratulated Yanukovych on his victory after the elections on 21 November, but then on 24 November said it was necessary to wait for official results.

Then, on 25 November, at a summit with the EU, Putin declared that he did not think "any nation should acknowledge or not acknowledge the results of elections in Ukraine."

"This is the Ukrainian people's affair," Putin said, although observers believe that repeated praise for Yanukovych and visits to Kiev were clearly intended to support Yanukovych’s bid to move up from the post of prime minister of Ukraine to president.

NEFARIOUS POLAND

Russia's role in the elections went far beyond that, particularly in the form of vast sums provided by the state-controlled energy giant Gazprom and political advice.

The man at the heart of that operation is generally seen in the Russian media as being Gleb Pavlovsky, the head of the Moscow-based Foundation for Effective Politics. Considered to be a Kremlin spin doctor, Pavlovsky seems reluctant to acknowledge any role in what is widely seen as a failure of Russian policy in Ukraine.

He acknowledges that Russian PR men were operating in Ukraine but claims he himself was not involved and that some Russians were working for the opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko.

Pavlovsky, who sees the root of the crisis in Ukraine as a deep-seated failure of outgoing President Leonid Kuchma's regime, believes outside forces brought the crisis to a head.

Pavlovsky has not said who those outside forces are, but Sergei Markov, director of the Political Studies Institute, felt confident enough on 25 November to point the finger at Poland. The crisis in Ukraine "was in fact a Polish conspiracy aimed at imposing Polish patronage over Ukraine and thus raising Polish influence within the European Union," Markov reportedly told Newsru.com.

Markov, though, was willing to trace the conspiracy even further, to the Polish diaspora and an influential figure in Washington. "Yushchenko's electoral campaign has been developed within the Polish diaspora abroad," Markov said. "Its ideological basis was prepared by former U.S. National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and his two sons."

In line with the findings of Russian election monitors, Pavlovsky insists the Ukrainian elections were free and fair and that Yanukovych is the legitimate president. He has dismissed the opposition's demonstrations as a "revolution that has the color of children's diarrhea"--a reference to Yushchenko's orange campaign color--and seemed to try to pooh-pooh Yushchenko's power by claiming that Yulia Tymoshenko, one of Yushchenko's strongest allies, would rule instead of Yushchenko if he won. Still, part of his argument for Tymoshenko's role plays on a question that many are asking: He is convinced that Yushchenko is "a sick man," a conclusion easy to reach when one sees the radical transformation of Yushchenko's face from healthy, handsome, and youthful to colorless, old, and covered with lesions. The source of Yushchenko's health problems remains unclear, but he himself believes he was poisoned.

Asked by the news agency RIA-Novosti how he sees the crisis playing itself out, Pavlovsky said the "protest's control center is outside Kiev, so the outcome is hard to predict."

But he believes there is a possibility that Yanukovych could suffer the fate of Salvador Allende, the president of Chile who died during a coup in 1973.

Eastern Ukraine could also, he suggested, "proclaim broad autonomy or even independence if Yushchenko wins," adding that the vast majority of Ukraine's economic wealth is in this Russian-speaking region.

But what happens next depends on whether Yanukovych "can put up resistance" and not enter talks with the opposition, the ubiquitous Pavlovsky told NTV. Speaking on a television program unfortunately named Orange Juice (the program was called that long before Yushchenko's orange-clad supporters took to the streets), Pavlovsky said he felt Yanukovych should be taking a tougher line with the opposition. However, his confidence in Yanukovych appears low. Judging by Yanukovych's performance so far, Pavlovsky said he doubted that the prime minister could hit back properly. He also questioned the prime minister's "leadership."

Still, even if Yanukovych does not follow his advice, Pavlovsky entertains some hope that "bad clashes" can be averted thanks to what he calls Ukraine's "rather vague" political style.

'EVERY CONCEIVABLE MISTAKE'

But is this "vagueness" an indirect admission that Moscow is unable to read clearly the state of affairs in Ukraine?

Sergei Karaganov, chairman of the State Duma's Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, told RIA-Novosti that Russia had "the right to prefer one of the candidates," but said "we made almost every conceivable mistake."

He particularly criticized Russia's campaigning on Yanukovych's behalf as "a brazen commercial operation" that was bound "to irritate even Russia's supporters in Ukraine."

"Political consultants managed to involve in their games even the top Russian leaders, who took a stand and hence weakened their long-term ability to influence the situation in Ukraine," he added.

Some in the media are also criticizing Russia's role in the post-election period. Nezavisimaya Gazeta compared Russia’s response unfavorably with what it felt was the swift and unified response of the European Union. In its view, "many observers saw in" Boris Gryzlov, the man dispatched to roundtable talks in Kiev, "neither an authoritative figure nor a professional in solving crises, but only the Kremlin's advocate of Yanukovych."

It argued that diplomats should have been more active than Gryzlov, who is the speaker of the Russian parliament and chairman of the pro-Kremlin United Russia party. Since Russian diplomats were absent, "it will be harder for Moscow to predict the next move by its competitor, the European Union, in Ukraine and the nearest abroad as a whole," it concluded.

Markov, though, believes the main beneficiary of a Yushchenko victory would be not the European Union but the United States, as Germany and France, perceived as allies of Russia particularly since the war in Iraq, would be weakened on the world stage.

SPETSNAZ IN KIEV?

The more immediate question, though, is how Russia will play its cards in the days and weeks ahead, a question made all the sharper by allegations that Russian elite troops had arrived in Kiev. According to Tymoshenko and Yushchenko's campaign chairman, Oleksandr Zinchenko, "two Russian aircraft landed at Kiev International Boryspil airport carrying approximately 1,000 members of the Vityaz special forces unit" on 23 November.

The claim has become more than just a Ukrainian-Russian affair: According to the Ukrainian news agency UNIAN, the EU's head of foreign policy, Javier Solana, brought the subject up in with Russian officials when he visited Kiev on 26 November.

Moscow has vehemently denied the claims. In a response more relaxed than that of other officials, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov dismissed the allegations, saying, "If you follow the latest rumors, special units from the Russian GRU [the armed forces' Main Intelligence Department] have acted in Iraq, Georgia, and have now landed near Kiev."

He suggested that such rumors have been spread deliberately "to provoke the two friendly nations into a conflict."

That position was echoed by Russia's ambassador in Kiev, Viktor Chernomyrdin, who served as prime minister under President Boris Yeltsin. The aim of this "obvious provocation," he said, was to "stir up anti-Russian feeling."

There are already reports of anti-Russian feeling, with supporters picketing Russia's consulate in the western city of Lviv.

While it is unclear what role Moscow might play over the coming weeks, it is clear that Russia has been deeply shaken.

Some see the events in Ukraine as a harbinger of unrest in Russia. Speaking on television, Dmitry Rogozin, leader of the Motherland faction in the Duma, warned that if there were doubts about the veracity of results in parliamentary elections in 2007, the Russian opposition would "go out onto the streets."

Coming from a strong supporter of President Putin, this statement was presumably intended to play on Russian fears of chaos, a fear sharpened by the social crisis of the 1990s. But for Russia's emaciated opposition, now without a seat in the Duma, it must have come as something as a surprise.

Still, some commentators believe there is a lesson for the opposition. Novaya Gazeta, which views Yushchenko as corrupt, wrote that a victory for Yushchenko "will answer the question whether, in a Slavic country, a democratic opposition, which used to be part of the elite and made huge fortunes through corruption, can win elections and take power with the support of the enraged masses."

[Snapple]

Not smart. Putin has old thinking.

[GSlob]

"Putin has old thinking."
It is not thinking, just old vampirial reflexes, similar to knee-jerk. And the word "smart" is not applicable to reflexes.

[Owl558]

Don't agree with what old Putin is doing, but I can understand why the Russians might want to have a client state on their western border. I mean, how many times have Germans and French invaded Russia? NATO has come into what was previously their front yard and is peering in their windows.

Let freedom ring!

[nw_arizona_granny]

Bump