Ukraine: a new cold war

ORANGE REVOLUTION, ORIGINS AND OUTCOME

Le Monde diplomatique
January 2005

The victory of Viktor Yushchenko in the third round of presidential
elections in Ukraine does not necessarily mean that the country will
completely join the Euro-Atlantic camp, bringing a dowry of oil and gas
pipelines and overland access to Central Asian markets.

By Jean-Marie Chauvier

Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was once President Jimmy Carter’s national
security adviser, spent much of his career predicting and preparing
for the current rollback of Russian power, in which Ukraine is playing
a decisive role. In his latest book (1) Brzezinski argues that as the
Euro-Atlantic sphere of influence spreads east, it is vital to include
the new independent states, especially Ukraine, that were previously
part of the Soviet Union.

His forecasts are fast coming true, and the impending political
upheaval maybe the largest since the break-up of the USSR and of
Yugoslavia. It would bring into the Euro-Atlantic camp a country
larger than France, with a population of 48 million, a powerful
network of oil pipelines and another pipeline that carries 90% of the
Siberian gas supplied to Europe. The orange revolution in Ukraine’s
capital, Kiev, and in the west of the country, both of which rejected
massive fraud during the two rounds of the presidential election on 31
October and 21 November, and voted again on December 26, suggests that
the process is already happening.

Viktor Yushchenko, at the head of a nationalist free-market coalition,
has won the third round of the election, backed by a massive popular
uprising, the United States, the European Union and international
media. By mid-December the orange wave had even spread into eastern
and southern areas, traditionally the power base of Victor Yanukovich,
the former prime minister and the candidate backed by the regime in
power. Electors in the chiefly industrial, Russian-speaking and
eastward-looking part of Ukraine failed to mobilise in favour of their
candidate, discouraged by the climate of distrust surrounding a
notoriously corrupt regime. The Communist party, led by Piotr
Simonenko, still exerts a certain influence, but refused to side with
either faction. Many working people are convinced that both sides are
led by oligarchs who lined their pockets privatising state industry.

The solidarity of southern and eastern Ukraine reflects the interests
of working people, who are worried that radical free-market reform
will close mines and factories, rather than their actual support for
the regime. They also fear the nationalism of western Ukraine. Those
who intended to stay on the right side of the people in power prepared
for a Yushchenko victory.

But there are solid obstacles in the way of the Euro-Atlantic dynamic.
Russia still has plenty of leverage, through its gas exports and the
oil debts that Ukraine has run up. The eastern regions account for a
large share of Ukraine’s overall income. There is also the question of
Crimea, an autonomous region, and the Russian naval base at
Sebastopol. Yushchenko has realised that complete victory for him is
impossible.

To avert disaster

As a US study notes: “The Russian defeat in Ukraine is nearly
complete” (2). But the EU, subcontracted as a troubleshooter, does not
want political upheaval to jeopardise its supply of natural gas. It
has to find a compromise or run the risk of a disaster. The colourful
international television presentation of the election standoff, with
its pro-western good guy and pro-Russian baddie, so completely
disregarded the worst-case scenario – that Ukraine would split in two
– that the president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and
Development, Jacques Attali, felt obliged to warn Europe of another
disaster on its doorstep, resembling that in Yugoslavia (3).

For some, the orange revolution came at just the right time. The
Ukrainian state is disintegrating, the economy is in tatters and
emigration rampant. The cultural and social divide is steadily
widening and people are disgusted at the criminal behaviour so common,
as it is in Russia, over the distribution of property and power. The
current events are an ideal opportunity to destabilise Ukraine and
open the way for the US and Nato to the heart of Eurasia. There is no
time to be lost. The economy in Russia and Ukraine is beginning to
pick up and Moscow is again promoting a Eurasian common market.

The Bush administration in the US is thought to have spent $65m
supporting Yushchenko (4), but preparations for the orange revolution
started long ago; it was launched in Kiev on 17 February 2002. Under
the aegis of financier George Soros’s celebrated foundation (5), the
former US secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, called on
representatives of 280 Ukrainian NGOs to contest the regime and
supervise the parliamentary elections in March 2003. A similar
technique proved most effective in Georgia’s rose revolution. At the
Davos Forum on 30 January last year, Albright, speaking as the chair
of the National Democratic Institute, singled out Ukraine, Colombia,
Nigeria and Indonesia as four key democracies ripe for immediate
change.

Saving democracy

Back in Kiev on 21 February, she spoke of the prospect of Ukraine soon
joining the EU and Nato, and recalled a letter from President George
Bush in August 2003, pressing President Leonid Kuchma not to run for
the presidency or any other public office (6). In March she wrote in
the New York Times: “Already on the agenda is the Bush
administration’s plan for promoting democracy in the Middle
East. Saving democracy in Ukraine belongs on that agenda, too”
(7). She added: “If, however, the elections are fraudulent, Ukraine’s
leaders should know that . . . their own bank accounts and visa
privileges will be jeopardised.” Western media kept quiet about the
supervisory role of a huge network of US institutes and foundations,
only too happy to be “spreading democracy”.

Although the campaigners had picked their targets well – corrupt
regimes and their electoral abuses – their indignation was initially
selective. They did not trouble presidents Yeltsin, Putin,
Shevardnadze or Kuchma as long as they could be useful, as is still
the case with the authoritarian regime in Azerbaijan (which turns the
taps on the Caspian oil wells and pipelines of strategic interest to
the West) and in Turkmenistan, with its gas fields.

In September 2004 Albright and the former Czech president, Vaclav
Havel, called for a tougher line on Moscow, backed by personalities
across the political spectrum (8). But, strangely, they said nothing
about the war in Chechnya, although it was much in the news after the
Beslan hostage tragedy earlier that month. Instead they opted to raise
a new issue, highlighting the threatening attitude of Putin’s foreign
policy towards “Russia’s neighbours and Europe’s energy security”.

Reading between the lines, the true issues are clear. The crisis in
Ukraine coincides with other events that are weakening Russia and
impacting directly or indirectly on oil and gas pipelines. Western
firms are building energy corridors, notably the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan
pipeline (9), to deprive Russian networks of control over energy
exports. At the same time the West is increasing its military
influence in Azerbaijan and Georgia and stirring up trouble in the
Caucasus. Further north, in Chechnya, the Russian army is embroiled in
a worsening, barbaric conflict with radical terrorists. The Beslan
tragedy, in predominantly Christian Ossetia, adds a religious
dimension to existing problems. Neighbouring multi-ethnic Dagestan
may slide into chaos. To the south separatist conflicts are brewing in
Georgia (Abkhazia, South Ossetia) and in Azerbaijan, locked in dispute
with Armenia over the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave.

The stage is set for a new cold war’

Putin’s geopolitical defeats, coupled with Russia’s demographic and
social problems, have prompted some CIA analysts to predict that
Russia will disintegrate within 10 years (10). Brzezinski imagined a
similar outcome in a 1997 book (11), positing a tri-partite Russian
confederation – a European Russia, a republic in Siberia and another
in East Asia. Recently he suggested that this process might start with
the Caucasus, claiming that Nato might have to intervene to rescue the
northern republics of the Caucasus from Russian domination (12). In
the strategy imagined by the joint founder of the Trilateral
Commission (13), Europe would act as a bridgehead, the long-term aims
being to prevent Russia from becoming a world power again, to colonise
Siberia and gain control of its energy resources. The stage is set for
a new cold war, of which the Kosovo conflict was just a foretaste.

When the communist bloc collapsed in 1989-91, its former members
rejoined the capitalist system. But the whole world had changed:
markets were becoming global, with transnational companies in a
pivotal position, under the overall hegemony of the US and a dominant
neoliberal ideology. The role ordained for former eastern bloc
countries was all too clear: supplying low-cost labour, brainpower,
know-how and the remains of their aerospace industry. They would open
their markets to competitive foreign products, and, above all, extract
and transport energy to the US, Europe, Japan and China (14).

The countries that once made up the USSR were far from equal. Under
the leadership of Boris Yeltsin, Russia could draw on generous
reserves of exportable oil and gas, while commanding a degree of
respect as a nuclear power. It also displayed the greatest
determination to carry out free-market shock treatment and qualified
as a priority for western investors. Ukraine, under Leonid Kravchuk,
had none of these assets – having agreed to give up its nuclear
weapons – and was consequently neglected. In 1991 President George
Bush senior went so far as to caution it against “suicidal
nationalism”.

Only later did the West wake up to the potential benefits of a truly
independent Ukraine opposed to Russia. In strategic terms it offered
several major advantages. It could act as a corridor for energy
exports and, in the opposite direction, a highway to the markets of
southern Russia as far as the Black Sea, the Caucasus and the Caspian
basin.

The dislocation of the USSR benefited Russia, but it stripped Ukraine
bare. It could no longer purchase energy at Soviet prices, but had to
pay the going international rate for oil and gas. To pay off its
mounting debts, Ukraine soon had to give Russian investors a share in
its industry. But the two countries realised they needed to work
together to rebuild the industrial processes destroyed in
1990-91. After a decade of decay, during which Ukraine’s gross
domestic product dropped more than 50% and absolute poverty gripped
much of the population, growth and investment finally returned to
Ukraine, as they had to Russia.

So Moscow has both assets and allies in the present game, and its
Ukrainian friends are not mere vassals. In 2004 the government in Kiev
opted for joint Russian and Ukrainian management of the gas pipeline,
rather than allowing the Russians to appropriate it. During the latest
round of privatisations, Yanukovich turned down Russian and US offers,
giving priority to a group from Eastern Ukraine. Clans left over from
the Soviet period govern industrial relations. One controls the
Donbass (Donets Basin), another the Dnepropetrovsk (right bank of the
Dnieper), and the third Kiev. Nepotism and organised crime are just as
common as in the west but take different forms. Yushchenko, a former
banker, takes good care of western investors. His aide, Yuliya
Timoshenko, is suspected of personally benefiting from dealings in
Siberian gas. The new nuclear power stations in western Ukraine use
Russian technology. All the while a common economic space,
encompassing Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, has been taking
shape as an alternative to the EU. Russia has been more active since
1999, launching initiatives in industry, oil, arms and trade in an
effort to restore its power and counter US penetration of its former
domain.

Russia is regaining its strength

Putin’s Eurasian projects, the start of nuclear weapons programmes,
the taming of oil oligarchs, and the reappraisal of the “illegal”
privatisations of the 1990s are all signs that Russia is regaining
strength and is still a force to be reckoned with. The crisis in
Ukraine seemed a good opportunity to show Putin that he was going too
far. But he is not easily impressed. On a recent visit to New Delhi he
broke with the cautious attitude that he has adopted since Russia
became a strategic ally of the US after 9/11, to accuse it, in veiled
terms, of “dictatorship” in the international arena (15).

Anti-western ideologists such as Alexander Dugin, recommend the
Eurasian route for Russia. The cold war that some see as imminent
would not confront two opposing systems, as before. Rather it would
attempt to use Ukraine, which has so far made little progress along
the road to free market reform, to undermine Russia, before it settles
its differences with its neighbours and realises its full economic
potential.

As the orange revolution unfolded in Kiev, a Russian arts weekly
appeared with a photomontage on its front page showing a row of tiny
members of the European parliament attacking gigantic Red Army
soldiers, who were wearing uniforms of the Great Patriotic War
(1941-45). Page two featured a picture of demonstrators in eastern
Ukraine carrying a banner marked “No to Banderovchtchina” (16). The
underlying message was that the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany,
which Russia is preparing to celebrate on 9 May 2005, was being
denigrated in Europe, especially at the European parliament (17), and
in western Ukraine. Here was further evidence that the cause once
defended by Stepan Bandera (18) was still alive.

Russian and Ukrainian history books differ on several points. Soviet
historians maintain that Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalist (OUN)
combatants collaborated with Nazi forces and were a party to genocide.
In Ukraine they have been partly rehabilitated. Stepan Bandera and the
Ukrainian Insurgent Army count as patriots who fought both Hitler and
Stalin (19). In Galicia and Ivano-Frankivsk, revisionism has gone so
far that some people now pay tribute to the Galicia Waffen SS
division. Extremists have daubed swastikas and anti-semitic slogans
on the Russian cultural centre in Lviv, and denouncing moskali-Kike
(Jewish Moscow supporters) is back in fashion. Despite being backed by
several far-right parties, Yushchenko has distanced himself from the
most radical groups.

Under the Kuchma regime, Ukraine celebrated the victories of the Red
Army and reinstated its adversaries in the national liberation
movement, its opposition to the Stalinist regime fuelled by resentment
born of the famine-genocide of 1932-33. According to the Ukrainian
historian Taras Kuzio, the diaspora in the US and Canada has played an
essential role in the battle to restore national identity. Many of the
exiles come from Galicia and are much influenced by branches of the
OUN, which is heavily committed to the democratic cause (disregarding
extreme minority factions). After 1991 the work of the diaspora in
Ukraine focused mainly on education, the arts and media. It has proved
remarkably effective, particularly when compared with the ideological
vacuum of the former nomenklatura (20).

Attraction of the West

The rebirth of a Ukrainian ideal competes with the huge attraction
that the West has for Ukraine’s youth, which has turned its back on
both the USSR and Russia. Alexander Tsipko, a conservative Russian
nationalist writer (21), complains that people in eastern and southern
Ukraine have lost their sense of Russian history, but agrees that in
the centre and west a new political identity is emerging. Unlike
eastern Ukraine, a generation has grown up that knows nothing of the
Soviet community and does not interact with contemporary Russia. These
are the people who demonstrated in Kiev.

To win them back, Russia and eastern Ukraine would have to move closer
to the free market model. Neoliberals in Russia hope the orange
revolution will prove contagious. The Union of the Right party
suffered defeat at home in the general elections of December 2003, but
its leader Boris Nemstov visited Kiev soon after the elections to hail
the victory of its allies in Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine party. He
accused Russia of being a leading rogue state.

The battle is now on for the general elections in 2006. On 8 December
the Rada (upper assembly) finally passed the constitutional reform
advocated by Kuchma, but refused by orange activists and their US
sponsors. Yushchenko agreed to the law in exchange for guarantees on
the 26 December vote and his rival Yanukovich’s resignation as prime
minister. Decisive political realignment now seems inevitable, as the
reform is designed to replace the existing presidential regime with
parliamentary democracy. At the same time the debate on a federal
division of Ukraine has new impetus. Does this mean that the Ukraine
is breaking up, or will it continue on a new footing, plural but
undivided?

The crisis in Ukraine raises other questions. How would Europe and
Ukraine benefit from closer relations? Should either oppose Russia,
rather than working with it? What do they stand to gain from a cold
war concocted in Washington, with help from Prague, Riga and Warsaw?
Is the EU in a position to honour Albright’s promises of speedy
integration?

The Kremlin can expect further attempts at destabilisation. How much
longer will it allow the West to encroach on its preserves, as it begs
for a seat at the high table? And for the investments it needs to
sustain oil revenue? Ukraine runs the risk of division but this crisis
may also lead to serious upheaval in Moscow.

NOTES

(1) Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Choice: Global Domination or Global
Leadership, Basic Books, New York, 2004.

(2) Peter Zeihan, “Russia: After Ukraine”, Stratfor, 10 December 2004.

(3) Le Figaro, Paris, 7 December 2004.

(4) Mat Kelley, Associated Press, 11 December 2004.

(5) The International Renaissance Foundation reports $50m spending
between 1990-9.

(6) Zerkalo Nedeli, Kiev, 28 February- 2 March 2004.

(7) New York Times, 8 March 2004.

(8) An open letter to heads of state and government of the EU and Nato
signed by 100 leading figures, 30 September 2004.

(9) BTC: Baku (Azerbaijan), Tbilisi (Georgia) Ceyhan (Turkey) pipeline.

(10) The Independent, London, 30 April 2004.

(11) Brzezinski, Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic
Imperatives, Basic Books, New York, 1997.

(12) Brzezinski, The Choice, op cit.

(13) The Trilateral Commission was established in 1973. Its founder and
primary financial angel was financier David Rockefeller, inspired by a
proposal by Brzezinski to form an alliance between North America,
western Europe and Japan.

(14) “Quelle place pour la Russie dans le monde?”, in “Les guerres
antiterroristes”, Contradictions, Brussels, 2004.

(15) Itar-Tass news agency, 4 December 2004.

(16) Literaturnaïa Gazeta, 1-7 December 2004.

(17) Regnum news agency claimed some 90 MEPs signed a letter calling for
a boycott of the ceremonies in Moscow in response to an appeal by
Estonian MEP Tunne Kelam.

(18) Leader of the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists who inspired
the Ukrainian Insurgent Army from 1942.

(19) See Bruno Drweski: “L’Ukraine, une nation en chantier” in La
Nouvelle Alternative, n° 36, December 1994.

(20) See Taras Kuzio, Courrier des Pays de l’Est, n° 1002, Paris,
February 2000.

(21) A former communist party ideologist, Tsipko became a leading critic
at the end of the 1980s.

Translated by Harry Forster