Short-lived love

This writer clearly noticed in late August that the official Russian media that strictly follow the Moscow leadership’s line began to show a new tonality. But let us recall the beginning. In the spring and summer of last year, just after Viktor Yanukovych had assumed office, Russian television screens and newspaper pages would lavish enormous praises on the new president of Ukraine. What is more, every TV presenter and newspaper columnist tried to set off, as much as possible, the new president against his predecessor Viktor Yushchenko, even resorting to overt attempts to set different parts of society in a neighboring sovereign state at loggerheads.

“Yushchenko was bad, Yanukovych is good.” This simple, if not primitive, principle formed the basis of the information supplied to the Russian general public. But what did not fit this rigid propagandistic cliche was just not said to my compatriots. A good example of “democracy” and “freedom of access to information” indeed!

One more example – what just came into my mind, so to speak. The broad masses of the Russians who do not use the Internet and do not read foreign press never learned that as long ago as at his press conference on the first 100 days of his presidency Yanukovych said, among other things, that Ukraine would not recognize independent Abkhazia and South Ossetia because this runs counter to international law. So what, you may ask. It is clear to every sound-minded person that it is the right way to respond to Russia’s attempts to “recognize” some parts of the sovereign Georgian state, which were in fact seized from the latter. And not only Ukraine, – as is known, none of the CIS states has recognized these self-proclaimed republics as independent.

But the Moscow leadership is taking an entire different stand. And, for example, a significant, albeit not a decisive, factor that caused a major conflict between Moscow and the Republic of Belarus was unwillingness of President Aleksandr Lukashenko to breach international law and recognize the undisguised Russian satellites which wield no clout at all in the world community. As for Ukraine, the official Russian media did not even conceal that President Yanukovych was expected to take a step like this notorious recognition. But he “failed to come up to their expectations,” you see… In other words, let us say it again, he acted like a sound-minded politician, and that’s all.

But there was so much discontent on this occasion in the circles of Moscow political scientists! But they clenched their teeth and remained silent, as they did in a number of other instances, when Yanukovych behaved like the normal president of a sovereign state (as he was supposed to) rather than a Moscow “viceroy” of sorts. But no sooner had Kyiv raised in no uncertain terms the question of revising the absolutely unacceptable prices for Russian natural gas [our newspaper reported this in one of the latest issues. – Ed.] than the Russian propaganda machine blew the gasket, so to speak. You could hear a “steel” tone in Russian TV news about Ukraine throughout a week in late August. And when Prime Minister Mykola Azarov announced – again, exercising the absolutely legitimate right of any sovereign state – plans to cut the consumption of Russian gas threefold in the next five years and gradually switch to Ukrainian coal, all the Moscow “gloss” over the neighboring state vanished into thin air in a matter of two days or so.

“Yanukovych more and more looks like Yushchenko!” was the leitmotif of a primetime program the Russia-1 state-run channel showed Recently. And the next day the First Channel announced, as if passing a judicial sentence: “Relations between the two countries are worsening right before our eyes!” And now the pro-governmental propagandists got even with President Yanukovych for all that they had kept silent about for almost six months: that Ukraine has opted for European integration as the main vector of its foreign policy (as if somebody had kept it secret before), that Ukrainian still remains the official language of Ukraine (I wonder what other language must be the one?), that Ukraine is not exactly bursting to join the Customs Union (on unfavorable conditions!), and that a US cruiser took part in a joint naval exercise together with Ukrainian ships (and has Russia stopped taking part in joint exercises – also with US warships?). In a word, Moscow no longer loves Yanukovych, as much as it did Yushchenko before him. A short-lived love, as they put it.

As a matter of fact, no special conclusions are needed here, for everything is clear to any sound-minded person. The only thing that astonishes, catches your eye, or, to be more exact, strikes your nostrils, is that this story, as well as the whole system of Russia’s relations with its nearest CIS neighbors, strongly smells of gas – both literally and figuratively. To be still more exact, it smells of the gas-derived billions of dollars, which seems to be the only factor that shapes Moscow’s current foreign policy. But can one consider a state a “great” or simply reliable partner if this state forms its whole system of values and relations with what it calls “strategic partners” exclusively on the basis of gas revenues? This kind of partner, if I may say so, “loves” you today but suddenly falls out of love tomorrow.

Oleg Cherkovets is a Moscow-based Doctor of Sciences (Economics)