(Big) Brother’s Watching...
Russia’s foreign minister Sergei Lavrov cautioned his German counterpart Joschka Fischer against interfering in the internal affairs of Ukraine and the escalation of tensions there. At the same time, one of the participants in the Kyiv talks, Russia’s State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov, issued a statement-a rather explicit one coming from a mediator-that the current situation in Ukraine “is leading either to a split or to bloodshed.” “I see no other course of events,” he told journalists. Ukraine’s foreign ministry in turn urged the Embassy of Russia to dissuade Russian politicians from making statements about the elections in this country. Interfax quotes foreign ministry deputy spokesman Dmytro Svistov as saying that Russian embassy counselor Anatoly Korsun was summoned to the ministry and told, “Public figures, including those from Russia, should refrain from making statements about the elections in Ukraine, especially ones that can aggravate the situation in this country and be used to spark separatist sentiments.” The foreign ministry issued this warning in the wake of political speculations about Ukraine’s territorial division. As reported earlier, Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov and Mr. Korsun attended the “All-Ukrainian Congress of People’s Deputies and Deputies of All Levels” on November 28 in Severodonetsk, Luhansk oblast, which raised the question of establishing a southeastern autonomy.
COMMENTARIES
Yevgeny PRIMAKOV, chair, Trade and Industrial Chamber, Russian Federation; ex-prime minister of Russia (in a BBC interview):
“It seems to me that eastern Ukraine is striving to issue its own statements because people who are portraying themselves as seekers of justice, so to speak, are absolutely refusing to heed the opinion of the regions that account for more than 70% of the GDP. I think this is an ill-considered position that the West is supporting, unfortunately. There are grounds to believe that the West is not just backing but in fact standing behind many of these events. I don’t think they understand what this can lead to. This can not only split Ukraine. This can have a most negative effect on Russia, too. It is crystal clear that many people in our country will start thinking: let’s tighten the screws, so that the same thing doesn’t happen in Russia. Differences between Russia and the West are now deepening. I don’t know who stands to gain from this.”
Vadym KARASIOV, director, Institute of Global Strategies:
“No matter what the winner’s name is, the Ukrainian presidential elections signal Russia’s geopolitical defeat. The second birth of a nation in Ukraine, partly caused by pressure exerted by the administrative resource and those officials whom Russia supports, is creating a radically new cultural and political Ukrainian reality for which Russia is not yet prepared. A new elite, a new society, and a new country — all this is cutting off the traditional channels of interaction and Russia’s impact on Ukrainian policies. In turn, the increasingly obvious internationalization of the Ukrainian crisis is aggravating a crisis in the relations between Russia and the European Union, and Russia and the US, and is creating a negative image of the Russian position in the eyes of the world. What may come next is Russia’s loss of its international positions and ensuing inability to implement its projects in the post-Soviet space.
“As for the political and technical side of Russia’s position on the Ukrainian elections, Russia banked on a candidate, not on Ukrainian society. In fact Russia underestimated the emergence of a civil society in Ukraine. Therefore, even if the person whom Russia supported publicly, openly, and technologically becomes president of Ukraine, Russia will have gained its candidate for president but will have lost Ukrainian society.
“Russian political scientists and technologists were working according to an outdated scheme of Ukrainian elections and electoral geography. Actually, in these elections Russian and some Ukrainian political technologists were working according to the 1994 scheme that focused on Ukraine’s division along east-west lines. In the second part of the election campaign, not least owing to the advice proffered by Russian political technologists, emphasis was placed on an electoral split and the ‘Russification’ of Viktor Yanukovych’s campaign. Obviously, the east-west electoral scheme was prompted by a simple arithmetic calculation whereby the advantage that Yanukovych would enjoy in Ukraine’s eastern regions would ensure his runoff victory under any circumstances. But in reality, what became the main line of rivalry and conflict in these elections was not the division of Ukraine into west and east but the opposition between a new society and an old government.
“The Russification of Yanukovych’s campaign also somewhat shocked a number of Ukraine’s centrist political elites because it entailed very serious risks for Ukraine’s foreign political attitudes.
“Strong pressure on the government’s part, especially in the period between the first and second rounds, resulted in deep ‘administrative cracks.’ There is a Hollywood blockbuster called Vertical Limit. In these elections we saw that there is a limit to vertical administrative pressure and vertical mobilization. Society and individuals, including those in the eastern part of Ukraine, saw through the excesses of this administrative mobilization and began defending their electoral and political rights more resolutely.
“Russia failed to take into account the key role played in these elections by the middle entrepreneurial strata, and new institutions and infrastructures of a civil society, such as law firms, corporate businesses, the banking and financial sectors, and other managerial and entrepreneurial elements in the middle-sized and large cities of Ukraine, including those in the east. It was the middle-class infrastructure (the legal, transportation, telecommunications, computer, and cell phone sectors), which at a decisive moment became the source of protest against vote rigging and administrative pressure, the source of civil activity. This new middle class of Ukraine is oriented not so much to geopolitical vectors, foreign policy preferences, and doctrines as to the expectation of greater economic freedoms, better entrepreneurial conditions, business development, increased capitalization, etc. But Russian politicians, parliamentarians, and political technologists continue to think according to old schemes and geographical divisions of Ukraine, while the middle class, the massive middle entrepreneurial strata, are defying regional differences, thus ensuring a high level of mass support and the new social stance in both eastern and western Ukraine.
“While Russia was closely watching all the dramatic and breathtaking turns of the Ukrainian election campaign, especially prior to and after the presidential runoff, it missed a unique chance to become an exclusive guarantor of Ukraine’s electoral and post-electoral stability. Putin rushed to congratulate Yanukovych on his victory without waiting for the official election results or hearing the viewpoint of the current president of Ukraine, which apparently put Leonid Kuchma in an awkward position.”
