Leonid Kuchma made a difficult choice between West and East.
Photo: Ilya Pitalev
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The First Blitz
// A Short Meeting with Vladimir Putin Transforms Leonid Kuchma
The Crisis in Ukraine
Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma tried to launch a counterattack yesterday. He flatly rejected European mediators' proposals to repeat the runoff vote and demanded immediate passage of a political reform law by parliament. The Ukrainian president's harsh tone became evident after his unexpected flying visit to Moscow.
Yesterday evening, Leonid Kuchma convened an emergency meeting at his country residence near Kiev. Not all the cabinet was present; apparently only the most trusted people from the government were there. The president made an important announcement: the way out of the crisis lay in holding new presidential elections and carrying out political reform as soon as possible. The government of Ukraine would resign only “after passage of a political reform law”. The reform proposes transforming Ukraine into a parliamentary republic, where the prime minister will hold the key post and the president will become a mainly ceremonial figure.
In effect, this means a breakdown in talks with the opposition under international mediation and a move towards confrontation with the West. That was how the opposition assessed the president's actions in speaking of a breakdown in the negotiation process. It was the first time in the Ukrainian confrontation that Mr. Kuchma had spoken so strongly. This new note preceded his flying visit to Moscow.
In actual fact, Leonid Kuchma did not get to Moscow. His talks with Vladimir Putin took place yesterday evening at the government airport Vnukovo-2 just before the Russian president left for India. And this was not the only unusual aspect of Mr. Kuchma's flying visit, which was entirely dedicated to the postelection crisis in Ukraine. Russian state television channels broadcast the conversation of the two presidents for nearly ten minutes. This shows that both sides not only attached special significance to the meeting, but also wanted it to be a kind of signal to the West: the Ukrainian crisis must be resolved primarily in Kiev, but Russia will not remain on the sidelines.
Both sides felt a need for such a signal. The Ukrainian government headed by Leonid Kuchma was under strong pressure from the West, which had forced Kiev to acknowledge its role as principal mediator in the Ukrainian crisis. Just before Mr. Kuchma's departure for Moscow, the European Parliament passed a special resolution on Ukraine calling on the government in Kiev to “annul the results of the runoff vote in the presidential elections and to hold a revote before the end of the year with the participation of international observers”. The resolution also called on the EU to impose sanctions on Ukraine if the authorities used force “against a peaceful democratic process”. The EU took a similar stand. The US had already partially imposed sanctions by placing a number of Ukrainian politicians on black lists of personae non grata, which included the president's son-in-law Viktor Pinchuk. Thus, the West in effect supported the opposition, whose leader, Viktor Yushchenko declared again yesterday that he would not take part in the negotiations if there was talk of new presidential elections.
Moscow is displeased not only because its favorite, Viktor Yanukovich, whom Vladimir Putin has already congratulated twice on his election victory, has not become president of Ukraine, but also because it has been effectively excluded from the process of resolving the Ukrainian crisis. Konstantin Kosachev, the head of the State Duma's international affairs committeeopenly acknowledged this yesterday. “Ukraine is a member of authoritative associations such as the CIS, the Collective Security Agreement (Ukraine has never been a part of this agreement – Kommersant), and the Single Economic Zone, but representatives of organizations of which Ukraine is not a member are suddenly acting as mediators in an internal Ukrainian conflict,” Mr. Kosachev complained.
Therefore, yesterday the presidents of the two countries primarily supported Russia's participation in a Ukrainian settlement. “Without Russia's efforts to find a way out of the political crisis, it will be impossible to end it without loss of face for Ukraine,” Mr. Kuchma stately flatly. “There will be no new runoff, since this will be a plebiscite. I don't know of a single country with such a legal norm as a revote,” the Ukrainian president warned. The Russian president was in complete agreement with him, saying that he was “surprised by these proposals”. And he added: “This will yield nothing. A revote could be conducted a third, fourth, 25th time until one side gets the results it needs”.
Finally, Mr. Kuchma tried to paint a sinister picture of what had appeared in Ukraine as a result of the opposition's actions. “The Ukraine that was before the elections no longer exists. It has been divided,” the Ukrainian president intoned tragically. “What is more, one side does not consider the opinion of the other side. This policy is being made by forceful, revolutionary means, but in so doing the economic consequences are not being considered”. Leonid Kuchma complained that, “yesterday it seemed as though a solution that would make it possible to settle the conflict in the political and legal field had been found; everyone shook hands and squeezed each other, but the blockade of government buildings has to be lifted”, but the opposition was not doing this. After this, the president of Ukraine warned: “The government will not be the one to blame for the processes that are going on”.
Mr. Kuchma did not explain what in particular he meant; however, his statement was very frightening. And since he made it in the presence of the Russian president, Leonid Kuchma thus indirectly made Moscow responsible for the subsequent actions of the Ukrainian authorities.
Speaking in front of his supporters in Independence Square yesterday evening, Viktor Yushchenko said that, “the use of force was and remains the main option” for Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yanukovich.
However, the support the Ukrainian president received yesterday in Moscow was almost immediately neutralized. US President George Bush used his meeting in Washington with Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo to make a pivotal statement on Ukraine. Mr. Bush warned: “A new election (if it is held) ought to be free from any foreign influence”.
In addition, an alliance between Moscow and Kiev risks losing the support of even close allies in the CIS. At a press conference in Tashkent yesterday, President Islam Karimov, who like the Russian president had earlier congratulated Viktor Yanukovich on his victory, declared that, “Russia's excessive display of its desire to see decisive results of the vote is doing more harm than good”.
Gennady Sysoev
All the Article in Russian as of Dec. 03, 2004
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