In 1994 the EU Ambassadors had a meeting in Moscow at which they opined on the then reforms under President Yeltsin. The Belgian Ambassador grumbled that Russia was just too big, too communist and too “Asian” to change its ways and adopt modern pluralism: “Russia will always be on the edge of Europe”. The wily German ambassador replied that this was the wrong way to look at it: “Europe will always be on the edge of Russia”.
They were both right. And once again Ukraine finds itself unhappily divided on that tense civilisational borderline.
Ukraine is part of the vast geographic flatness that stretches from the North Sea over to the Urals. For centuries Ukrainian-speakers have found themselves squeezed between Russian power to the East, and Polish or German power to the West. Ukraine had no independent existence as a state until the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991. So whereas in Poland a national memory of independence between the World Wars helped drive resistance to Soviet communism, until 1991 no one in Ukraine had experienced anything other than rule from Moscow.
When the USSR dissolved, Ukraine struggled to get moving as a new state. The fact that up to 30 per cent of Ukrainians spoke Russian gave Moscow considerable weight in Ukrainian politics. Many of the smartest Ukrainians stayed in Moscow and took on Russian citizenship. At one negotiation in the early 1990s between Russia and Ukraine over the decaying Black Sea Fleet, there were more Ukrainian-speakers on the Russian side of the table than on Ukraine’s.
In the two decades since communism ended the Ukrainians have seen Poland and other former communist Slavic countries start to move ahead fast and join first Nato than the European Union. This has given Ukrainians a new existential choice. Are they first and foremost Europeans and part of the democratic tradition to their West? Or are they rather part of a Russia-led Slav community of peoples that shares some features of European pluralism but takes its lead dutifully from Moscow? Above all, who decides?
In 2004 the “Orange Revolution” saw the first big Ukrainian convulsion over this question after huge popular protests against clumsily rigged elections. European Union leaders helped broker a political deal that brought supposedly reformist President Yushchenko to power. Polish negotiators who took part told me that they had been struck at how the process had been nothing but a cynical power-play between different groups of impossibly rich Ukrainian oligarchs.
The European Union is now offering Ukraine an “Association Agreement”. This is far short of any process involving Ukraine actually joining the European Union. But it requires Ukraine to sign up in principle and later in substance to a wide range of trading and other norms. These cut across the laboured efforts made by Moscow since 1991 to set up a separate trading space under the auspices of the Commonwealth of Independent States (ie former Soviet republics). Russia has leant hard – and successfully – on the Ukrainian leadership to force them to step back from this.
Thus the new mass demonstrations in Kiev, a show of popular defiance against Moscow’s vision of Ukraine as part of the post-Soviet “near abroad”. It is far from clear how far if at all they represent Ukrainian popular feelings as a whole. Plus the real problem for the demonstrators in trying to work out what to do with all this popular energy is that the European Union cares less about Ukraine than it says it does, whereas Moscow cares a lot.
Years ago when he first took power Vladimir Putin gave an interview in which he defined in bold terms his basic objective for Russian policy: “To keep what’s ours”. Putin’s Moscow these days has generous definitions of what is theirs, including all the former Soviet republics, any sizeable Russian-speaking communities beyond Russia’s borders, and any Slav/Orthodox nations such as Serbia or Montenegro that have yet to join the EU or Nato. Russian influence is also strong in Bulgaria, even though Bulgaria has joined the European Union.
The European Union and its member states know this, but don’t know what to do about it. They are of course ready to give plenty of declaratory support to pro-European tendencies in Ukraine as well as fund all sorts of slow but steady reform programmes. However, they are not willing to contemplate accelerating Ukraine’s EU membership, or to pour into Ukraine billions of euros to help offset any losses that a vengeful Putin might impose on Ukraine’s economy if the country moves any further towards joining the “European” camp.
In the years (or more likely decades) to come Ukraine will start to join fully in European institutional integration. Russia is far too weak to stop that general trend, even if under current management the Kremlin can do a lot to slow and spoil it.
In the meantime, Ukraine will have no choice but to go through these periodic political upheavals that look and are impressive, but don’t lead to any significant change quickly.
Source: telegraph.co.uk
