06.06.2008 Russia. The CIS informal summit and XII International Economic Forum. President of Russia Dmitry Medvedev, right, and President of Ukraine Victor Jushchenko, left, before a session of a forum in Konstantinovsky palace.
Photo: Alexander Miridonov
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Unfriendly Partnership Treaty
It was not that difficult to predict that neither Russia nor Ukraine would head towards breaking off the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership.
To Kiev, the document is most valuable because it contains the main legal confirmation of Russia’s recognition of Ukraine’s territorial integrity. This fact alone is enough for both an advocate of political independence as such and a businessman, who has learnt to take advantage of sovereignty to promote his/her interests.
There is, however, a general factor which should not be overlooked. The big political treaty with Russia fully complies with Ukraine’s basic foreign policy concept suiting even Victor Yushchenko. Ukraine is no Baltic state. Moving in the western direction, it has never aimed to break up with Russia. Because, among other things, Ukraine can’t take advantage of the conflict without a clear-cut NATO and EU outlook. It even tries to preserve in the East everything that does not challenge the European integration priority. It seeks to win Berlin and Brussels’ trust with its prospect to effectively interact with Russia.
Curiously, it is pragmatic Yuliya Tymoshenko that wrote a popular article “Russia’s Containment” a few years ago. Today consensus in the Ukrainian foreign policy can be considered to be restored. Moscow makes believe it doesn’t remember that episode either.
Russia, too, would rather not rock the boat. Revocation of its previous recognition of the Crimea as a Ukrainian territory shortly after the conflict with Georgia would mean new complications in its relations with the West. And Kiev would not have to convince the West of its peacefulness and the neighbor’s aggressiveness. Despite the lack of the joint stance, no one knows how Europe would react.
The issue of the Black Sea Fleet deployment in Sevastopol would acquire a new tinge. Although there is no formal legal connection, it is generally known that the Black Sea Fleet agreements Russia wanted so badly ended up traded for the big agreement. Russia’s withdrawal could be viewed as a dramatic change of the situation, which Ukraine could used as grounds for denunciation of the whole legal framework of the Fleets presence in the Crimea, which could have the most disastrous consequences.
Finally, Moscow now has no need to use the agreement as a tool to prevent Ukraine’s NATO accession. That country’s politicians have done enough harm to have lost their chance of joining the Membership Access Plan at least before the presidential elections.
This said, both parties’ lines are rational. Still, the name of the treaty has hardly anything to do with the current state of affairs in the Russia-Ukrainian relations. There will be little friendship and partnership in them. In the short run, at least.
Arkady Moshes, Russian Program Director with the Finnish Institute of International Affairs
All the Article in Russian as of Sep. 23, 2008
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