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Analysis

Ukraine Caught between the EU and Russia

By Uwe Klussmann

The Orange Revolution has left a deep rift in Ukraine, with one half facing the EU and the other looking to Russia. Neither, though, seems to be able to help the country itself.

Leon Trotsky, the creator of the theory of "permanent revolution" hailed from the small Ukrainian village of Yanovka, not far from Odessa. In 1917 the well-brought-up landowner's son helped drag Ukraine and Russia into a bloody revolution and civil war.

Trotsky, killed by a Russian agent while in exile in Mexico, may have been dead for 67 years but the curse of his permanent revolution has returned to his native land.

Almost two and a half years after mass demonstrations on the streets of Kiev led to the Orange Revolution -- one that was supposed to bring more democracy to the country -- Ukraine's 47 million inhabitants are once again divided between competing demonstrations for and against that "revolution."

From economic boom to dual power

The decision by Ukrainian president and Orange Revolution figurehead Viktor Yushchenko to dissolve parliament and call new elections for May 27 has caused great unrest in Ukraine. The parliamentary majority and the government are refusing to obey the head of state and are supporting Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. The beefy patriarch, who enjoys strong backing in the Russian-speaking East of the country, has threatened to "oppose any attempt, to proceed with the Orange turmoil."

The country has been left with two competing centers of power, each working against the other. And Yushchenko's willingness to compromise seems to have been exhausted. In September 2005, he fired the flamboyant Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko after she had only been in office for 10 months and replaced that icon of the Orange Revolution with a gray technocrat.

Her record as head of government had been far from impressive: economic growth in this steel-exporting country had dropped back from 12 percent to 4 percent. Her threats to reverse the dubious privatization of state companies scared away investors. The "Gas Princess," who got rich in the 90s through energy deals with Gazprom, flourished once back in opposition.

Revolution in only half the country

The intrigues and rivalries between Tymoshenko supporters and Yushchenko hangers on for jobs and influence within Kiev's power structure led to a lack of attention to that half the country where the "revolution" had failed to take hold. The Russian-speaking East and South, from Kharkov to Sevastapol on the Crimea Peninsula remained skeptical about Kiev and loyal to their idol Yanukovych. Not unlike his Russian colleague Vladimir Putin, Yushchenko simply appointed loyal governors to the provinces and there was never a serious discussion about federalism or limited autonomy based on language and culture. A centralization of power was their goal. Those who spoke in favor of autonomy for eastern Ukraine were immediately labelled "separatists" and investigated by the public prosecutors.

The specter of separatism, though, only existed in the minds of Kiev centralists and among those in Moscow intent on expanding Russian power. And it soon began to dawn on Muscovites that Yanukovych was not remotely interested in a reunification of Ukraine and Russia. Rather, as US strategists had quickly understood, policy for Yanukovych was negotiable. The US urged Yushchenko, married to a former employee of the US state department, to work with Yanukovych and in August 2006 the president appointed his arch rival as prime minister.

That experiment failed, largely because the burly eastern Ukrainian was increasingly trying to encroach upon the president's authority. Yushchenko and his "Our Ukraine" party, financed by the hard-nosed "chocolate king" Petro Poroshenko, have since lost the trust of the voters. According to the latest polls, the president's party would only gain between 5 and 9 percent of the vote in an election, while Tymoshenko's party would come in at 23 percent, the same as the last elections.

Like castaways on a desert island

Yushchenkco, Tymoshenko and Yankovych are like three castaways on a desert island: They can abuse or amuse each other in alternating formations, but their situation won't get any better. The hostile factions in a divided Ukraine are jammed between Russia and the European Union: the EU displays no inclination to take in another 47 million Ukrainians after the entry of Bulgaria and Romania this year. And there is no consensus on closer ties with a booming Russia. Ukraine is caught in the gray zone between the two -- the sick man on the Dnieper River.

Moscow is now torn between schadenfreude over the fiasco of the Orange Revolution and concern about the destablization of one of its biggest neighbors. The pro-Kremlin newspaper Kosomolskaya Pravda recently ran the headline: "Is this the start of civil war in Ukraine?" Careful diplomats like Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has offered the message, via intermediaries, that Kiev can't govern without the Kremlin.

Neo-imperialist hardliners, like Mikhail Leontyev, the leading commentator on Russian state television, are already dreaming of a Ukraine breakup. According to Leontyev, the country is only "a geographic term and no longer a state." The "pro-Russian part of Ukraine," he says, "will merge with us. That is unavoidable. We are one people." In Moscow Leontyev is known to be President Putin's favorite commentator.