Kyiv is Listening to Advice

The young independent country Ukraine is being advised with whom to create alliances and with whom - God forbid. There are advisors aplenty in Moscow and Minsk and listeners in Kyiv and far beyond its borders.

The advice given by the capitals of our brotherly countries is all the same: Ukraine has to join the Russia-Belarus union and one day form a united Slavic country. During his stay in Kyiv, Russian State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznev voiced this very opinion, which undoubtedly is not his alone. And he had every right to take the stage as a real master in the Ukrainian capital since it was Ukraine's president who looked to Moscow for advice and support and not the other way around. The people of Ukraine have elected a parliament, half of which does not need (at least in words) a country, let alone an independent one. Ukraine has borrowed a great deal from Russia and has nothing with which to pay off its debt. And if the country itself (or its top officials) does not respect itself, why, then, should Seleznev behave any other way in Kyiv, i.e., why doesn't he link the Friendship and Partnership treaty with Ukraine with its intense Kyiv-NATO contacts and need to establish a union?

And why do Lukashenka and Belarus' Prime Minister Ling not have the right to use this Ukrainian weakness and drive home the point that the agreement on state borders cannot be ratified unless Ukraine joins the union?

Both Seleznev and Lukashenka used nothing more than a few public statements by Ukrainian politicians and top officials on the need for overcoming the crisis together and strengthening relations with Russia because as our strategic partner, we can do nothing without it. Never mind that Russia today has little to offer except its own crisis and a government program resembling Stalin's Short Course on the History of the Communist Party. It does not matter that Belarus has singlehandedly driven itself to international isolation. It does not matter that under such conditions, Ukraine is their last hope.

Common political logic alone tells Ukrainian leaders to quit catering to Moscow and immediately start fulfilling the preconditions which will allow it later to begin negotiations on entering the European Union. The same common logic says that if anyone will help Ukraine out of its current crisis, it will be Ukraine itself, not the West and definitely not Russia. And the same logic foresees that Ukraine is on the verge of not being taken seriously, for everyone is treated as they allow others to treat them.