Agency WPS
DEFENSE and SECURITY (Russia)
June 17, 2005, Friday
UKRAINE AIMS AT ARMENIA
SOURCE: Voyenno-Promyshlenny Kurier, No 21, June 15 – 21, 2005, p. 3
by Samvel Martirosjan
UKRAINIAN MILITARY IS PREPARED TO BECOME PEACEKEEPERS IN THE KARABAKH
CONFLICT AREA
Kyiv aspires for the role of a serious player in the Caucasus.
Lieutenant General Valery Frolov, Senior Second-in-Command of the
Ukrainian Ground Forces, said the other day that the Ukrainian
Defense Ministry could send peacekeepers to Nagorno-Karabakh after
two months’ worth of training provided the Rada authorized it. Pyotr
Poroshenko, Secretary of the National Security and Defense Council,
does not rule out the possibility of deployment of Ukrainian
peacekeepers in the conflict area with the consent of all involved
parties. Poroshenko is convinced that the peacekeeping mission in the
region – just like in all other latent conflict areas – will boost
the image of Ukraine as a national leader. Ukraine merely needs trust
of both warring sides and it will certainly become the regional
guarantor of peace.
It does not seem, however, that Ukraine itself is unanimous on the
matter. Georgy Kryuchkov, Chairman of the Rada Committee of National
Security and Defense, was extremely critical of the statements on the
possibility of peacekeeping deployment. He said that it would not
have hurt to know what the Rada thought on the matter before making
statements like that.
Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh took the offer of Ukrainian peacekeepers
without enthusiasm. Masis Mailjan, Deputy Foreign Minister of
Nagorno-Karabakh, said that it was not time yet to talk of
peacekeepers. Mailjan is convinced that the truce on the
Azerbaijani-Karabakh front this last 11 years has been maintained
only through preservation of parity. The diplomat added that the
composition of peacekeepers must be run by all involved parties
including Stepanakert, the capital of Nagorno-Karabakh, in any case.
“According to the decision of the 1994 OSCE Budapest summit,
deployment of international peacekeeping contingent in the Karabakh
conflict area requires a political agreement signed by all warring
sides,” he said.
Foreign Minister of Armenia, Vardan Oskanjan, also called Kyiv’s
statement untimely. “It may become necessary when the conflict is
over, but statements like that are certainly untimely at this point,”
he said.
Despite what Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia might be thinking on the
matter, there is more to the statement on the agreement of all
involved parties than meets the eye. Ukraine cannot be neutral in the
Karabakh conflict. It does not even matter that a great deal of
Ukrainian mercenaries fought on the side of Azerbaijan in the war
over Nagorno-Karabakh (detachments of mercenaries were formed under
the aegis of UNA-UNSO or the so called Kyiv Patriarchate). Along with
everything else, Ukraine was major supplier of arms for Azerbaijan in
the war. In 1993, official Kyiv confessed to the UN Conventional Arms
Roster the delivery of 100 tanks and 110 helicopters to Azerbaijan.
Information on larger quantities of munitions, artillery pieces,
armored vehicles, aircraft, and spare parts delivered to Azerbaijan
from Ukraine appeared both before and after that document.
What with its practically direct involvement in the Karabakh conflict
in the past, Kyiv’s aspirations for the role of peacekeeper in the
area look certainly quaint. Moreover, Ukraine’s ambitions in the
Caucasus are not even restricted to that. Practically simultaneously
with the offer of Ukrainian peacekeepers for the Karabakh conflict
area, Kyiv invited Armenia to join GUAM. Addressing journalists in
the wake of the meeting of GUAM Parliamentary Assembly in Yalta, Rada
Chairman, Vladimir Litvin, said that countries like Russia,
Kazakhstan, Turkey, and Armenia could join the organization in
future. According to Litvin, every country should aspire for
membership in international structures for the purpose of advancing
its interests, provided interests of other countries are taken into
account too. “This is what processes of globalization demand. Unless
one is present, others will make decisions for him,” Litvin said.
Oskanjan responded to Litvin’s words the following day. Speaking on
behalf of official Yerevan, he denied any knowledge of offers of this
sort. “Whenever one joins some organization, he must have faith in
its principles and goals,” Oskanjan said. “GUAM itself as an
organization is revising its goals and programs at this point…”
As a matter of fact, Kyiv seems to have succeeded in persuading the
Armenian authorities at least on one matter. The matter concerns
transit of Iranian gas via Armenia to Georgia, Ukraine, and on to
Europe. This is one of the worst problems that mar the
Russian-Armenian relations at this point. Moscow is doing what it can
to prevent this turn of events, suggesting that Armenia be content
with getting Iranian gas exclusively for its own needs.
In short, all of a sudden Kyiv grew extremely interested in Armenia.
>>From the political point of view, Ukraine’s actions look clumsy. The
impression is that official Kyiv is trying to elbow its way into some
niches in the region by driving Russia out. How independent the
Ukrainian leadership is in the matter is impossible to say. It is
clear, however, that the statements with far-reaching implications
are made in haste which is why their effect sort of falls flat. If
Kyiv’s advances to Armenia are clumsy from the political point of
view, then it can be certainly relied on to be better prepared in the
sphere of economic relations. Anything to elbow Moscow out.
ORIGINAL-LANGUAGE: RUSSIAN