Kommersant, Russia
Aug 24 2005

The “Color” Democracies are Left in the Cold

// Russia sets priorities for the CIS members

Yesterday, the session of the foreign ministers council of the
Confederation of Independent States (CIS) took place in Moscow. This
session was called in before the opening of the Confederation Summit,
which will start its work in Kazan on Friday. This session, as well
as the summit, according to the Kremlin design, should become a
turning point for CIS. The former Soviet republics learned that those
who would want to stay within the orbit of Russian influence would
keep all their economic privileges, including the opportunity to buy
energy resources for low prices. However, for the countries that
prefer to lean closer to the West, it was proposed to calculate the
consequences of their orientation.
The new Kremlin line toward the CIS was born as a result of the
analysis of the outcomes of “color” revolutions. Moscow realized that
the countries within the Confederation went so far apart that the
organization will be doomed to exist. The bright illustration of such
mood in Moscow was Russian President Vladimir Putin’s statement in
March in Yerevan during his joint press conference with Armenian
President Robert Kocharyan. Putin called CIS “a kind of civilized
divorce” of former Soviet republics. “The main goal of CIS was to
part softly after the USSR dismantling,” the Russian President said
in that time. Kremlin does not want to speed up this “parting,” but
it thinks that the Confederation split for two camps – pro-Russian
and pro-Western and needs to be reformed. And, according to the
Kremlin’s analysts, those countries that keep their Russian
orientation need to be protected from the West.

According to their evaluation, the West effectively changed
leadership in Georgia and Ukraine, and also pulled to the Western
side Moldavian President Vladimir Voronin. And the West does not
intend to stop there. It will try to develop its success pulling the
countries out of the Russian zone of influence one after another. The
Kremlin worries that the next victims of the “color” revolutions
inspired by the West would be Kazakhstan and Byelorussia, where
elections are coming soon. Another weak link is Uzbekistan. According
to Kommersant’s information, the “siloviki” in
Russian leadership insist that the final goal of the West is to
change the regime in Russia. According to them, the West would be
using the North caucus as “a source of instability and disintegration
of the Russian Federation.” To protect Russia from such a scenario,
the Kremlin decided to make a drastic turn in Moscow’s policy towards
CIS countries. The idea of the plan is to turn the economic influence
of Russia in post-Soviet space into the political influence.

Yesterday, a high ranking source in the Kremlin directly said to the
correspondent of the RIA “Novosti” that Moscow intends to drastically
change its policy to the CIS countries. Russia does not want to
“re-establish the Soviet Empire,” he said. However, the source said
that “Russia is not happy with the situation where it in fact
subsidizes the economy of several countries, supplying them the
energy resources for the prices that mean net loss for the Russian
economy. In the same time, some leaders also get paid salaries
directly or covertly from Americans.” (It is a clear hint for the
Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili.) The Kremlin source let
clearly be understood that the threat to stop the “subsidies of the
economics of regimes unfriendly to Russia” is not blackmail. “The
goal is to bring the relationship of Moscow with Washington and
European structures on the territory of former USSR to a civilized
manner,” he noted. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov further
developed this idea yesterday in the session of the ministers. He
underlined that it is time for the CIS countries to build their
relationship “based on the world practice.” In translation from the
diplomatic language, it means that several countries have to get
ready for Russia to gradually cancel all their economic and other
privileges, which they are still enjoying.

The agenda of yesterday’s session and coming summit was discussed in
advance through diplomatic channels. And the Russian intentions
caused a lot of worries in some capitals. It was not accidental that
the head of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry Boris Tarasyuk was trying
to “dissolve” a little bit of the main agenda of both forums, when he
proposed to discuss issues of re-admission, borders demarcation,
creation of transport corridors for the energy resources, free trade
zones and measures of social protection for CIS citizens. However,
the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation rejected
the Ukrainian minister’s proposal on the grounds that the proposal
was submitted two weeks before the session and there is not enough
time to analyze that. Georgia also expressed some displeasure and
said that “it will participate only in discussion of some questions
and signing only some agreements.” In yesterday’s session Georgia was
represented by Deputy Foreign Minister, as well as some other
countries including Ukraine and Kazakhstan. In any case it was a
preliminary session. The main decisions would be made in Kazan.

Speaking about the results of yesterday’s session, Sergey Lavrov let
it be understood that there was no consensus of opinion reached on
the forum. According to him, Russia’s proposals to reform CIS “are
known for long time already, however nobody is talking in this case
about some collective decision product.” However, “nobody is totally
happy with what we have today.”

by Pavel Belov