Window on Eurasia: Ukraine Needs a Russia that is a Country like Any
Other - and so Do the Russians, Kyiv Analyst Says

Paul Goble

            New York, March 26, 2010 - Both in the course of the Ukrainian
elections and following the victory of Viktor Yanukovich, Russian
commentators have discussed what kind of a Ukraine Russia needs,
commentaries that have not only implied that only Ukraine needs to
change but also have defined how many analysts elsewhere see the issue.

            But in an essay posted online yesterday, Olesya Yakhno, a
commentator for the Ukrainian portal Glavred, argues that this is the
wrong or at least not the only question. And she insists that an equally
or even more important issue for Ukrainians and Russians alike is "what
kind of Russia does Ukraine need?"
(glavred.info/archive/2010/03/25/185832-7.html).

            Her answer is that both need Russia to become for Ukraine a
country like any other rather than revisionist state which seeks to
dominate or even absorb its neighbors, thus threatening not only more
conflicts in the future but rendering it almost impossible for Russia
itself to make the transition to a modern, free and democratic country.

            Since Yanukovich's victory, she notes, "Russia has hurried
to make a number of acts of obeisance of a public character toward the
new Ukrainian leadership" in order to show that "the period of
Russian-Ukrainian alienation is in the past," that these past
difficulties were the fault of President Viktor Yushchenko, and that
"life is becoming better, life is becoming happier." 

            At the same time, she notes, Russian commentators have
hurried to specify "what kind of a Ukraine Russia needs," arguing that
Moscow needs a Ukraine which is "predictable" both at home and abroad,
"semi-authoritarian" for whom "'stability' is a euphemism for reform,
and which makes Russian the second state language and the Moscow
Patriarchate the main church.

            Moreover, these Russian commentators have said, Russia needs
a Ukraine which will not join NATO but will allow Russia's fleet to
remain in Crimea after 2017 and will meet the "business needs" of the
Russian political elite, needs, which remain largely "outside of the
framework of public discussions."

 

            And at the most general level, the Glavred commentator says,
Russians "consider (or give the impression they do) that for effective
cooperation and the conduct of a friendly policy between Russia and
Ukraine, the preeminent factor is the level of loyalty of the Ukrainian
president to Moscow."

 

            But in all these discussion, Yakhno continues, one question
is missing: "what kind of Russia does Ukraine need?"  And behind that
question, for which Russian commentators have failed to provide any
answer, is "another question," one that if anything is more fateful:
"What kind of Russia does Russia itself need?"

 

            It is clear, the Glavred writer says, that "the format of
bilateral Russian-Ukrainian relations depends more on Russia than it
does on Ukraine," something that is not a source for optimism because
"even with friendly countries" like Belarus and Kazakhstan,  Russia has
difficulties maintaining close ties.

 

            The situation with Ukraine in this regard is especially
important, she says.  While relations between Russia and Ukraine under
Yushchenko were not especially good, "however paradoxical it may sound,
his presidency despite all the anti-Yushchenko rhetoric of Russian
politicians, had its benefits for the ruling Russian tandem."

 

            Ukraine, second only to Georgia, played the chief "anti-hero
in the Russian public space." And the existence of that image obviated
the need for "real policy" and even "allowed the Russian powers that be
to hide Russia's lack of a serious strategy relative to the CIS
countries in general and Ukraine in particular."

 

            In fact, Yakhno continues, it allowed Moscow the chance to
"project Russia on a blank screen as a giant of geopolitics." 

 

            There is no doubt that relations between Moscow and Kyiv
will improve now that Yanukovich is president. But "in order that
cooperation bear a real and not exclusively declarative character, it is
obvious that there will have to developed an integral and internally
consistent philosophy of these relations," a challenge above all for
Russia.

 

            That is because, Yakhno suggests, "the position of Ukraine
through the period of independence was and is unchanged."  Yanukovich
has "reaffirmed that the strategic goal of the foreign policy of Ukraine
is European integration, alongside effective cooperation with Russia and
the US."

 

            Given that "multi-vector approach," she writes, "where
Europe is conceived of as a political partner and model of the future,
and Russia as above all an economic counter-agent and 'reliable rear,'
inherited from the past," Kyiv's choice will remain with the future, and
"therefore, there will not be a cardinal turn of Ukraine toward the
Russian Federation."

 

            And what that means, Yakhno says, is that "the real test for
Russian-Ukrainian relations did not end with the departure of Yushchenko
but only began with the installation of Yanukovich in office" because
Moscow can no longer avoid facing the need to develop a real policy
toward Kyiv rather than hide behind denunciations of the Orange
Revolution.

 

            Whether Moscow is up to that task is unclear, she writes.
Not only does Russia face a broad range of economic and political
problems at home, but the regime itself is divided about what it wants
and will do next. President Dmitry Medvedev clearly wants to see some
kind of modernization, although "today few people in modernization
Kremlin-style."

 

            As for Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Yakhno continues, he
has talked about three "possible variants of the development of the
political system on the post-Soviet space:"

Ukrainianization, which Russians understand to mean "political
instability and a lack of control," "harsh authoritarianism"
(Turkmenistan), and semi-authoritarian Putinism as in Russia.

 

            Putin clearly wants the third to continue in Russia, "even
if this directly contradicts modernization," as it almost certainly
does.  That is because, Yakhno insists, "modernization is possible only
under conditions of 'Ukrainianization' or 'authoritarianism," the one
allowing messy competition and the other marching forward under tight
control.

 

            The tension between the requirements of modernization and
the needs of the members of the current set of powers that be in Moscow
to remain in office, the Ukrainian analyst continues, are creating
conditions for the rise of "subjectivism in politics," a term taken from
the Khrushchev period.

 

            It refers, Yakhno says, to an approach which rejects
"institutional forms of control" and thus opens the way for actions
"which do not take into account the objective patterns of history and
the real circumstances of the contemporary development of the country."
In short, it leads to decisions "based on faith in the all powerful
nature of administrative and force decisions."

 

            Such an approach, now very much in evidence in Moscow, does
not create the kind of Russia that Ukraine needs, Yakhno says.  She then
gives a list of six qualities that she argues Russia needs to develop if
it is to have good relations with its neighbors and to develop and
modernize at home.

 

            First, she writes, Ukraine needs a Russia "which clearly
understands its place in the contemporary world: a major, economically
powerful and rich country with enormous natural resources and human
potential but not a global or even a regional power."

 

            Second, Ukraine needs a Russia which "is not an empire but a
contemporary nation state." Third, it needs a Russia which "at least
approximately believes in what it officially proclaims." Fourth, it
needs a Russia "which thinks in the categories of politics and not
business camouflaged as politics.

 

            Fifth, it needs a Russia which "decides above all its state
tasks and not the tasks of big business." And sixth, it needs a Russia
"which can once and for all formulate an exhaustive list of its
expectations from Ukraine," thus allowing Kyiv to respond positively to
those it agrees with and negatively to those it does not.

 

            In sum, Yakhno says, "Ukraine needs a Russia will simply be
another country, important and strong to be sure, but one of the other
countries and not the boss, not the elder brother, and what is the most
important thing, not an eternal factor in Ukrainian domestic politics."

 

            That will benefit both countries because "when the policy of
Ukraine in the Russian direction finally becomes a foreign and not a
domestic manner, then will take place the psychological liberation of
Ukraine and its elite from Russia, and Ukraine finally will acquire its
independence."