Russia is trying to concentrate

Hardly anyone can stay indifferent to the subtlties of Ukrainian-Russian relations. It seems that the contemporary Ukrainian state itself has formed in the conditions of permanent polemics with Russia. In spite of the acute controversies on the level of the government and business circles, on the high level there always existed a possibility to make urgent decisions able to suppress controversies or postpone the vexed questions till better times.

On the eve of the Russian president’s visit to Kyiv (January 23-24) many expressed cautious hopes that it will make it possible to understand to what extent Russia’s leadership is prepared to take seriously the relations with the neighbor country and its “sister nation.”

However, too little was said from Russia’s side during the visit about the essence of bilateral relations. President Putin passed over in silence or spoke vaguely on a number of unsolved or postponed problems in the bilateral relations, as well as on Tuzla. One could conclude that Moscow still replaces concerned approach to developing mutually advantageous relations with empty rhetoric about the so-called strategic partnership.

In general, president Putin’s visit created an impression of a purely protocol event. However, one can judge the accents of the visit by the three document signed during it: the Intergovernmental Protocol on the Volumes of Goods Deliveries within the Framework of Industrial Cooperation in 2004, the Agreement on the Volumes of Deliveries of Galvanized Rolling from Ukraine to Russia, and the Agreement on Cooperation in 2004 between Ukraine’s Enerhoatom National Company and Russia’s TVEL Public Corporation, dealing mainly with nuclear fuel deliveries for Ukraine’s nuclear power plants.

In addition, it was announced at the January 23 press conference that the long-awaited Russian-Ukrainian-Germany meeting on creating the gas-transport consortium is scheduled for February. The Ukrainian side has long insisted on this, being interested in holding this meeting on the eve of the postponed intergovernmental consultations on a high level. The Russian side previously attempted by all means delay involving the German capital into the consortium. However, now the Kremlin was compelled to draw back its objections, since a consortium with no investment is only nonsense.

In course of the visit a long-term agreement on oil transit through Ukraine’s territory was not signed, as supposed earlier. Instead, the Russian side believes Ukrainian government’s consent to reverse the Odesa-Brody pipeline an unofficial condition for signing such agreement. Russian mass media warn that unofficial motivation for the reverse could be preserving control over the pipeline until the completion of the Baku- Ceyhan pipeline, as well as purchasing property rights for the oil terminal at the Pivdenny seaport (Odesa). Under such a scenario Russian companies will be able to frustrate any prospects for Ukraine’s energy independence and obtaining oil from alternative sources.

Commenting on the results of Russian president’s visit, most experts agree that no fundamental decisions on bilateral relations, consultations on political issues included, will be taken before the presidential elections in Russia. One reason for this is that until the elections the US Administration and leaders of the EU countries will treat Kremlin in a rather neutral and delicate way. However, many in the West, for instance, George Soros, already claim that the Russian economy has no prospects, referring to its leadership as an authoritarian semi-dictatorship.

Speaking about president Putin himself, only after the Russian elections he will be able to get a more precise idea about his international chances and Russia’s prospects in the modern world. This will probably allow him to formulate a more clear attitude toward problems of Ukrainian politics.

However, demanding economic concessions from Ukraine and giving it nothing in exchange, the Russian leadership makes direct and very considerable influence upon the political processes in Ukraine with its “politics of faits accompli.”