Petersburg Priorities
“It is no accident that we have gathered here in Saint Petersburg because many of those now living in what used to be the USSR and those present today in this hall have many things that link them with Saint Petersburg. This is a unifying element.” Thus, in a nostalgic and somewhat advertising note, President Vladimir Putin of Russia opened an informal CIS summit on May 30, clearly showing who exactly will be implementing these “unifying elements.” The CIS summit was just a fraction of the overall VIP program as part of Petersburg’s 300th anniversary celebration, with the foreign press focusing its attention on the visits of US President George Bush and EU leaders who, shortly after the Petersburg pageant, discuss more worldwide problems with Mr. Putin at the G8 summit in the French spa of Evian. On the same day, Messrs. Putin and Bush exchanged the ratification instruments of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty. The prevailing feeling is that Mr. Putin is being given an early opportunity to feel he is “an equal among equals,” while other post-Soviet leaders enjoyed the status of guests. The CIS leaders negotiated onboard the cruising liner Silver Whisper, registered in the Bahamas.
President Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine, chairman of the CIS Council, said participants in this informal, but “very tempestuous and productive,” meet agreed that the official Commonwealth summit, to be held at Yalta in September, would finally solve the problem of establishing the first stage of a free trade zone. The decision proves that the CIS as a whole is productive and effective because the problem of a free trade zone was in fact raised at the time the CIS was conceived. According to the president of Ukraine, the free trade agreement does not in fact work today, and trade regulations often run counter to one another. “The Yalta summit is supposed to draw the final line and enable us to assess the tangible results of our common efforts,” Interfax-Ukraine quotes Mr. Kuchma as saying. The president of Ukraine also noted “it is out of the question to form a CIS-based separate self-sufficient entity. Closer cooperation within the Commonwealth should not rob our countries of a wider opportunity to integrate into the world economic system on an equitable and nondiscriminatory basis.” There are problems here as well. While Ukraine, supporting the establishment of a single economic space, insists that it should observe WTO rules, Moscow still does not seem to share this view. Instead, we hear the well-worn record about the “synchronized movement” of the two countries toward the WTO. It is not in the interests of Ukraine, which is a step closer than Russia to the WTO, to slow down.
Among other achievements of the summit is a consensus that anti-Iraqi sanctions be lifted and the UN and other international organizations increase their role in Iraq’s postwar reconstruction. Still, there are some nuances here. Ukraine, Azerbaijan, and Georgia have expressed readiness to send their military units to the international stabilization force in Iraq.
Russia has not been invited. The Russian Lukoil company has been denied contracts for the exploitation of Iraq’s Qurna oil field. US officials have repeatedly hinted that participation of a company in Iraq reconstruction contracts would largely depend on whether this company’s country was part of the anti-Saddam coalition.
This alone makes it difficult for CIS states to pursue the same Iraq policy. All they have to do is talk about an increased UN role. Incidentally, analysts claim that the past two years’ facts clearly indicate that Russia is no longer the only creator of strategic Eurasian projects — and this must also be prompting Moscow to seek the new ways and means of retaining its traditional influence.
Mr. Putin has never concealed the fact that he views contacts with his Western counterparts in Petersburg as demonstration of his intention to pursue a policy of rapprochement with the West, the EU, and the United States. This looks at least less illusory than achieving a kind of true partnership with, say, China. Moreover, while denying Russia the right to be called a superpower, the West still treats it as a politically equal partner, which is indeed a plus for President Putin. And one should always remember that, unlike Ukraine, Russia has never declared an aspiration for strategic partnership with Ukraine. Never have presidential addresses or comprehensive documents regarded relations with Ukraine as something self-sufficient that stands outside the context of the post-Soviet theater of operations.
