Passions have subsided and a new government has been formed in Ukraine. The new fledged contours have become visible for reconsidering the new political space. How should Russia assess the “orange revolution” and what new prospects have opened up for Russia-Ukraine relations as a result of that dramatic event?
Only the most careless people failed to mock Russian policy and the work of Russia’s political technologists during the Ukrainian revolution. Only the most careless failed to point out Moscow’s awkward steps, nor mention Russia’s crushing defeat in the Ukrainian election, in which the Moscow was forced to defend its political line for the first time in its contemporary history. Perhaps this is the reason my assessment of what has transpired in Ukraine may sound rather outlandish.

The candidate of Ukraine’s eastern, Russian-speaking regions, Victor Yanukovich, lost the election, of course, but it appears that Russia nevertheless scored a victory on the strategic plane; and it occurred despite, not because of, steps taken by Moscow. There are several reasons why I believe this to be the case.

First, Yanukovich did not say anything fundamentally different from what the former presidential candidate Leonid Kuchma had said in 1994. He made the same promises about preserving the status of the Russian language and building close integration between Russia and Ukraine (Kuchma had also spoken about a special relationship with Russia and a special legal relationship between Kiev and the Crimea). In the past, each time a Russian-supported ‘candidate of the east’ was victorious over a ‘candidate of the west’ (Kravchuk’s victory over Chornovil, Kuchma’s victory over Kravchuk, Kuchma’s victory over a Communist candidate), we witnessed the strengthening of Ukrainian statehood and the country’s drift to more independence, greater economic engagement with the West, and closer political and military ties with NATO and individual Western countries.

In the past, we already savored the victories of eastern candidates over western candidates in Ukraine, with the specter of Russia looming large over the country. However, Russia failed to retain Sevastopol as the main base of its Black Sea Fleet, except for some meager leftovers of its naval infrastructure. Nor did it secure a real endorsement of the status of Russian as the second official language there. It failed to make serious integration or engagement with Ukraine in building more or less efficient structures within the framework of the Commonwealth of Independent States. What did transpire was the continuous siphoning of Russian natural gas from transit pipelines and the theft of Russian electricity. These things happened despite assurances about “close relations” and a “strategic partnership” in grandiose speeches that were void of any real political content.

It seems that a Yanukovich victory would have brought about a continuation of the same policy line. Ukraine would have continued to block Russian money and Russian businesses from entering its markets; it would have continued a drift toward NATO and the European Union; it would have continued to strengthen the foundations of its independence and statehood; it would have remained cautious toward CIS projects and attempts to set up tangible multinational mechanisms to control economic, military and political processes unfolding there.

Yanukovich’s electoral defeat thus does not mean Russia’s defeat. His loss in the election means Russia’s deliverance from its previous hazardous policy line that failed to deliver fruit and, at the same time, created the illusion of a Russian presence – an ephemeral influence and obscure achievements which only served to veil the reality.

This is the first conclusion that comes to mind after an impartial analysis of the events in Ukraine. In a similar vein, I recall something I heard ten years ago from Vitaly Portnikov, a Ukrainian journalist well-known in Russia and a savant of Ukraine’s internal politics. He told me there was no danger to Ukrainian integrity and statehood while the clans representing Dnepropetrovsk, Donetsk, and other eastern and southern regions of the country continued to come to power.

What is the second conclusion to be drawn from the Ukrainian events? It is that a candidate from western Ukraine has won the presidency for the first time in the 14 years of Ukraine’s independence. This has real global significance: the West won the race versus the East, and a shadow with Western contours was clearly visible behind the victory of western Ukraine. Those were the contours of NATO and the European Union that openly emerged during the mediation process. Polish President Alexander Kwasniewski, who is a friend of U.S. President George W. Bush, Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus, and the most expert man on international affairs, the EU’s de facto foreign and defense minister Javier Solana excelled in that area in particular.

This sets a totally new tune to the situation in Ukraine: responsibility for maintaining its territorial integrity and guiding national development now lays with the EU and NATO, that is, Brussels and Washington. The problem, however, is that the overemphasis on “democratic values,” which many  believe has turned Ukraine into a country drastically different from Russia since the ‘orange revolution,’ has produced the impression amongst the Ukrainian people that their post-revolutionary democratic country is now prepared for a rapid and painless integration into Western economic and defense organizations. Now the new authorities in Kiev, as well as the EU and NATO leaders, are scratching their heads about how to live up to the expectations that the public and political quarters in Ukraine have for their country’s swift integration into Western civilization. Whether this is going to happen or not will predetermine the answer to another question: has Ukraine acquired a new quality in the eyes of the West, which has made it essentially different from Russia? Ukrainian and Russian liberals insist it has.

 For the first time in years, these circumstances give Moscow a freedom of action. Now it can take a step back. Russia can take an advantageous political position and transfer relations with Kiev to an area of tough pragmatism where Russian economic and national interests would be duly heeded – without demonstrating direct engagement in Ukrainian affairs.

I find this extremely important now that we are witnessing – for the first time – a split in Ukraine that was not caused by Russia or Russian policy. This split has divided the country into the west-central regions, on the one hand, and the east-southern regions, on the other. The latest elections have exposed the fragility of Ukrainian statehood. It will yet have to stand the test of the victory of the West over the East. In previous years, when it seemed that the East was winning and that Russia was standing behind it, not a single prominent political force in the country called for turning Ukraine into a federation or push for separatism (the exception is the Crimea, which represents a special case. The Crimean crisis began during Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika and resulted in large part from the methods used to turn the peninsula over to Ukraine. The Crimean secessionist movement had different origins, which the southern and eastern regions of Ukraine did not share).

The problem of territorial fragmentation was off the list of tangible political factors and there were no signs of a threat to Ukrainian statehood, although politicians of different colors recognized the problem of regional fragmentation at a purely theoretical level. At a conference of regional leaders from eastern and southern Ukraine in Severodonetsk, it was obvious that the move toward autonomy and federalization was due to internal problems in the country rather than Moscow’s malicious designs.
How the new administration headed by Victor Yushchenko and Yulia Timoshenko will tackle these problems is far from clear. Add to it the problem of outdated factories in the east and the south, which still provide jobs to hundreds of thousands, or even millions, of people. The new Ukrainian government will inevitably bump into this glaring issue once they start a course of rapid reforms to accustom the Ukrainian economy to EU requirements. Industrial modernization will only serve to aggravate the tensions between the two parts of the country.

In other words, the presidential elections highlighted the vulnerability and internal disunity of Ukrainian statehood. This furnishes Russia with a good opportunity for maneuver as it chooses its political line on Ukraine; this stance will largely depend on how Kiev decides to cooperate with its northern neighbor.

The third conclusion of the Ukrainian election: never before did the West get involved in electoral processes on the post-Soviet territory to such a degree – not even in Georgia. This should not be surprising, however, since strategy-makers in the West and elsewhere have always voiced apprehensions that Ukraine might one day unite with Russia. Such an event would add a fundamentally new quality to Russia; even if it only united with the southern and eastern regions, the Russian Federation might get better geopolitical positions, an additional workforce of about 13 million educated and highly qualified people who share a cultural and linguistic identity with the Russians, and an extra potential in the economy, defense and technologies. And given Russia’s ongoing economic rise – against the background of numerous global conflicts which threaten to tear apart the world – Moscow might then secure a totally new position with regard to Brussels and Washington.

That is why I believe the West interfered with the elections on such a massive scale and with tremendous determination. The crux of the matter is bigger than the hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars in the form of grants and direct aid that the West poured via governmental and non-governmental institutions to nourish the orange revolution, not to mention the numerous groups organized by young people and political activists for the purpose.

Washington and Brussels interfered with a strong hand by warning Kuchma and Yanukovich against the use of force despite the fact that law and order had broken down on a massive scale: demonstrators prevented the government from performing its duties by blocking its administrative buildings.

This situation reminded me of the December 1990 summit in Malta, when President Bush squeezed out of Gorbachev a promise to refrain from using force in the former Soviet Baltic republics. That pressure encouraged the Baltic national movements and their leaders to freely stage mass actions aimed at seizing power. They were confident that Gorbachev would not risk using force on a massive scale, and that, if the army or official agencies made some sporadic moves, he would try to distance himself from them. That was exactly what happened in January 1991 during the events in Vilnius and Riga.

In Ukraine’s case, Kuchma and his associates preferred to succumb to the diktat from Washington and Brussels. Apart from that, however, there was one more notable event which I would like to mention. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage made a phone call to Yanukovich and strongly warned him that the Americans were against any separatism in Ukraine or its breakup. His comments came after the leaders of the eastern and southern regions had voiced the idea of a possible split of the country at the conference in Severodonetsk. Thus, outside pressure created a favorable internal and external setting for the victory of the orange revolution.

Certainly, the situation might have prompted Russia to engage in an open standoff with Brussels and Washington and stimulate the separation of eastern and southern Ukraine from Kiev and West Ukraine, but that would have meant a head-on collision with the U.S. and the European Union – something that Russia was not prepared for. Thankfully, the Kremlin acted as it did. It was doubtful the separation plan would be implemented in conditions where the east and the south had sporadically built a union against Kiev that later showed its institutional weakness.

Whatever the case may be, the current situation has many differences compared to Kuchma’s time. The Ukrainian scene is much clearer and understandable now and new opportunities have opened up that make it possible for Russia to formulate an appropriate line of conduct. It looks like Moscow has for the first time received an opportunity to influence the processes from the outside without direct involvement in them, thus allowing the Ukrainians to settle the basic problems of their statehood for themselves.

There is one more conclusion to be drawn. Yushchenko, as prime minister under Kuchma, prudently gave Russian capital much greater access to Ukraine than Yanukovich. Now, a candidate from western Ukraine, Yushchenko will have a freer hand in conducting his Russia policy without fearing accusations of selling out Ukrainian sovereignty and independence – fears that constantly loomed over Kravchuk and Kuchma. There was a similar experience during the Soviet-U.S. standoff, when the Republicans felt free to build a constructive policy toward the Soviet Union. They did not fear being accused of giving in to Communism and totalitarianism.
Finally, I would like to focus on two more issues pertaining to the future of Russian-Ukrainian relations. First, the situation has unveiled the major vectors of Ukraine’s policy. These are the maintenance of bilateral economic relations with Russia and neutralization of Russia, with a simultaneous drift toward integration into the European Union and NATO.

However, at a recent conference, which brought together representatives of the Ukrainian political elite, the EU and NATO, Western diplomats tried to cool down Ukraine’s passionate desire to immediately open talks on a program of accession rather than a program of cooperation, and to prepare all the necessary conditions for integration into the EU and NATO. Obviously, the structure of Ukraine’s economy, its economic development level, and the situation within the EU – which has recently assimilated ten new countries and is getting ready to admit Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia – make Ukraine’s accession to the EU scarcely conceivable in the near future. Ukraine’s state of affairs with NATO is quite the same, although Washington may want to get Ukraine into NATO before it joins the EU. Yet Kiev’s fast track to the North Atlantic bloc may bump into an internal obstacle.

The major political players in Ukraine have a consensus that states Ukraine cannot modernize its economy and society without the EU, and cannot maintain stability without Russia. This means the Ukrainian leaders will have much greater support if they revise their policy toward the CIS Common Economic Space in favor of a faster European integration, than if they set out to integrate with the West militarily. In the latter case, they will run into serious problems. Public opinion researchers say most Ukrainians do not support an engagement with NATO since it will be perceived as joining a military and political union against Russia. Ukrainian society is unprepared for such a step at the moment and does not want a divorce with Russia, especially considering that Ukraine will become a frontline state if embraced by NATO’s defense infrastructure.

It looks like a sizable part of the Ukrainian elite shows interest toward the country’s more rapid economic association with the EU. At the same time, ideas that Ukraine may have a special military and political status are emerging. A former proposal on NATO’s and Russia’s security guarantees, once made to the East European countries should they not seek accession to NATO,  may become acceptable to the majority of Ukrainian society and elite, including its liberal Ukrainian patriots. Important representatives of those circles have more than once spoken on this subject at international conferences and in public speeches.

Russia would apparently do a reasonable thing if it treats Ukraine’s rapid engagement with Europe and the European Union with less emotion and more understanding, even though such a move may entail a revision of the agreements on the Common Economic Space. Simultaneously, it would make sense to sound out the American – and especially French and German – considerations about a treaty that would help Ukraine receive NATO’s and Russia’s guarantees of its neutrality and security, and to draft it together with Ukrainian politicians. Ukraine might get the same status that Austria had after World War II under the 1955 treaty.
Second, it is important to refrain from a hasty elaboration of a new strategy and take a certain pause in relations with Ukraine. People in Russia and Ukraine must have time to digest the aftermath of the ‘orange revolution’ and to develop a clear understanding of what has happened in that country and how those events have affected Russia’s relations with Ukraine and with the West – especially as the process of reconsidering the political field has begun in Ukraine.

We must wait and see what happens to the ‘orange revolution’ coalition, identify the directions along which the new political forces – some of which have already begun a parliamentary election campaign – will be growing, and assess the degree to which the revolution leaders are really going to reform political power and shift its center to parliament and the Cabinet. Also, we must understand whether or not the new Ukrainian leaders are ready to make dramatic moves with regard to Moscow.

All of this requires serious consideration. Thankfully, the situation does not require Russia acting expeditiously or conducting a pre-emptive policy. The most advantageous position is to have the time to pause. This provides the freedom to maneuver in time and space so as to be able to react adequately to Kiev’s actions with a clear understanding of Ukraine’s political field. It will provide a sober moment to reflect on the guidelines for Ukraine’s development, along with its opportunities for, and limits to, integration into the European economic structures and international security organizations.