Moscow Encourages Beijing to Invest in the North Caucasus

By Valery Dzutsev

From June 8-9, the Russian company OJSC “North Caucasus Resort” and a delegation from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) visited ski tourism sites in China. Chinese Dalian Wanda Group and North Caucasus Resort OJSC signed a preliminary agreement about possible Chinese investments into the North Caucasus tourism cluster totaling up to $3 billion. In addition, the state tourism agencies of Russia and China signed a separate agreement, aimed at increasing the tourism flow between the two countries by 30 percent. Chinese investment is predestined mostly for Dagestan, where there are prospects for a free economic zone opening, Sochi and Arkhyz in Karachaevo-Cherkessia (http://kommersant.ru/doc/1940516).

Potential investors from China clearly selected the most prospective sites in the North Caucasus. Sochi is booming following multibillion financial injections by the Russian government in preparation for the Olympics in 2014. Arkhyz in Karachaevo-Cherkessia is not only located in one of the more stable republics of the North Caucasus, but it also has a relatively developed infrastructure as well. In Dagestan, if Russia allows Beijing to develop a free economic zone there, prospects for Chinese imports will abound, given Dagestan’s coastline along the Caspian Sea, and its vicinity to Iran, Azerbaijan and Central Asia.

However, stringent visa rules in Russia, coupled with additional restrictions on foreigners’ movements in the North Caucasus are so hard to cope with that tourists will not come to the region, warned international tourism experts at the Saint Petersburg International Economic Forum that took place on June 21-23. President Vladimir Putin recognized the systemic issues caused by the inaccessibility of Russia for foreign travelers.  For example, the board chair of the North Caucasus Resort OJSC, Ahmed Bilalov derided current Russian visa rules, stating that: “as of today Russia is one of the least accessible countries in the world from the standpoint of visa and immigration rules. To the foreigners who travel to Russia, many procedures look like rudiments of the cold war, absurd and humiliating” (http://www.ncrc.ru/r/news/index.php?id_4=628).

Tourism development in the North Caucasus and isolation imposed on the region by Moscow, as well as the wider problem of Russian visas, clearly comes into contradiction. Outsourcing development of the North Caucasus resorts to the Chinese investors may seem to be a shrewd solution to the Russian government, since the Chinese government is unlikely to raise human rights issues with Russia or infiltrate the North Caucasus with pro-democracy ideas.  However, if Moscow opens up the region to Chinese businesses, they will hardly be able to keep it closed to everyone else.  But to make this change happen will require a major shift in Russian policy in the North Caucasus, signs of which we yet have to see.

Iran’s Rising Influence in Dagestan

By Valery Dzutsev

Well-known Dagestani journalist and analyst Akhmednabi Akhednabiev published a surprise article on the creeping influence of Iran in Dagestan. Akhmednabiev alleged that the members of the Iranian delegation from Gilyan province, who visited the republic earlier in the April 2012, bribed local officials with “tens of millions dollars” to allow the Iranians to build a large Shia mosque in the republic. The Iranians also carved out several other important concessions, such as a right for free distribution of Shia literature. “Anyone who passes through the Azeri-Iranian border today may notice ornate announcements in Russian in large script: “We are inviting young people from Russia and CIS countries for study in religious centers in Iran. Board, meals and a stipend are provided,” the expert said and decried the absence of a government reaction to Shia proselytizing (http://www.ndelo.ru/one_stat.php?id=6990, June 3).

Dagestan’s population is majority Sunni Muslim, but it has a Shia minority that is mainly spread out in the south of the republic among ethnic Azeris who traditionally live in the city of Derbent. Though little noticed, economic cooperation between Dagestan and Iran was worth $180 million in 2011, and plans are underway to expand trade further. In April 2012, Magomedsalam Magomedov accepted an invitation from Gilyan province’s governor to visit the Iranian province at his earliest opportunity. Gilyan and Dagestan both enjoy access to the Caspian Sea via large ports on their respective territories (http://president.e-dag.ru/novosti/?tx_ttnews%5Btt_news%5D=7937&cHash=7167425fe4, April 12).

The Dagestani author raises fears that Iran has long-standing strategic goals in the republic. Akhednabiev even contends that a possible Russian-Iranian scheme exists to suppress foreign Sunni organizations while backing the Shia organizations in Dagestan. It is indeed unlikely that Iran’s activities in the North Caucasus were not explicitly sanctioned by Moscow. However, it would be hard to imagine that Moscow decided to use Iranian Shiism to counterbalance militant Sunni Islam in the North Caucasus. Most likely, the reason Moscow has allowed Iranian officials to visit the region is linked to Russia’s foreign policy goals and its ongoing maneuvers involving the West and Iran. At the same time the suspicions of the Dagestani analyst, or those standing behind him, indicate some potential for conflict to emerge between different Islamic teachings in the republic.

Terrorist Bombings in Ukraine Resolved, but Are Likely to Continue to Grow

By Taras Kuzio

Four perpetrators of the April 27 bombings in Dnipropetrovsk that wounded 30 people were arrested on June 1. They had demanded $4.5 million to prevent a repetition of their attacks (see Security Service [SBU] surveillance and arrest here: http://www.pravda.com.ua/photo-video/2012/06/2/6965888/).

The timing of the bombings immediately came under suspicion. It was suggested they were an attempt to distract public attention from imprisoned opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko after bruises on her body, allegedly inflicted by prison guards, were widely publicized in Ukraine and internationally. A mass opposition protest had also been planned in Dnipropetrovsk on April 27.

Prime Minister Nikolai Azarov rebuked the opposition’s theories, claiming the Dnipropetrovsk bombings were undertaken by those interested in destabilizing Ukraine, who had a “the worse things get, the better for us” attitude and wanted to blame the authorities. These forces are seeking “chaos and instability, which we, together with you, witnessed a few years ago,” Azarov claimed, in a swipe at political instability under former President Viktor Yushchenko (Ukrayinska Pravda, April 27). “The worse things get, the better for us” was also an apt description of the rationale behind the Party of Regions’ tactics of blocking the Tymoshenko government’s 2008-2009 anti-crisis policies in parliament.

Ukrainian authorities had sought to arrest the terrorists before the Euro 2012 soccer championships – co-hosted this summer by Ukraine and Poland – began on June 8. The European Union of Football Associations (EUFA) had raised the issue of transferring the championship from Ukraine if the bombings were a harbinger of further insecurity to fans travelling to Ukraine. “If the situation becomes more insecure then the championship will not take place [in Ukraine],” EUFA spokesman Martin Kallen said (Ukrayinska Pravda, April 30). Germany and Italy had offered to co-host Euro 2012 (with Poland) if it was moved from Ukraine.

Terrorist bombings have grown since Yanukovych was elected president two years ago. Batkivshchina deputy Serhiy Pashynsky pointed out, “Before Yanukovych came to power, this country had been absolutely free from terrorism” (Kyiv Post, April 28). IHS Global Insight added, “Ukraine has seen a number of small terrorist attacks in recent years but nothing major was carried out by any unknown militant group” (http://www.kyivpost.com/news/opinion/op_ed/detail/126784/).

The following is a list of the main terrorist incidents:

June 28, 2010: a bomb exploded outside the doors of a Church belonging to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church (Moscow Patriarch) in Zaporizhzhia. Nine were wounded and an 80-year-old nun was killed.

September 30, 2010: a Lexus-brand automobile belonging to the leader of the regional branch of the Front for Change party was blown up without causing serious injuries to its passengers.

October 22, 2010: three bombs went off in Kirovohrad outside the oblast prosecutor-general’s office, appeals court and Interior Ministry on the eve of a visit by President Yanukovych (see EDM, October 26, 2010).

January 20, 2011: two explosions rocked the city of Makiyivka, Donetsk oblast after a demand for money by organized crime members was not met.

October 21, 2011: an explosion occurred inside the Silpo supermarket in Zaporzhzhia following a demand for 5 million euros.

November 16, 2011: a bomb explosion occurred in Dnipropetrovsk, killing a young businessman.

March, 20, 2012: in Kyiv, the deputy head of the Soyuz Bank and founder of the scandal-ridden Rodovid Bank, Serhiy Dyadechko, was the target of an assassination attempt but survived. Rodovid was one of the biggest bank collapses in Eastern Europe and Eurasia, with losses of up to 35 billion hryvnia (nearly $4.5 billion) that had to be covered by the Ukrainian state when the bank was recapitalized.

Temporary bank administrator Serhiy Shcherbyn was sentenced for the Rodovid failure even though he joined after the bank went bankrupt. Former Rodovid bank president and Olympic champion, Serhiy Bubka, and bank founder Denys Horbunenko, who lives in London, have never been questioned. The key witness in the case, Hennadiy Piskun, suspiciously fell out of a 7th floor Donetsk apartment window on October 29, 2011, while allegedly attempting to fix the air conditioning unit. Piskun’s death has never been properly investigated. The head of the bank’s legal department, Olekshandr Ivakhnenko, “slipped in the bath” and received serious head injuries.

April 15, 2012: oligarch Hennadiy Akselrod was assassinated in Dnipropetrovsk. An attempt to blow him up with another local oligarch, Hennadiy Korban, on September 17, 2010, only wounded them.

Terrorist bombings are a reflection of growing criminality in Ukraine (see EDM, February 17). First deputy head of the Parliamentary Committee on Fighting Organized Crime and Corruption, Hennadiy Moskal, who was Deputy Interior Minister under currently-imprisoned former Interior Minister Yuriy Lutsenko, claims organized crime gangs are operating more freely than under previous Ukrainian presidents. Moskal said, “Some oblasts are fully controlled by crime bosses and criminal groups...and today, it is complete paradise for them as they have complete freedom” (http://www.radiosvoboda.org/content/article/24547796.html). Moskal revealed that in Ukraine there are entire regions (he named as examples Sumy, Zaporizhzhia, and Mykolayiv) where organized crime bosses control governors, mayors and local council leaders.

Moskal said “this has never happened before in the 20 years of independence of Ukraine. [...] There is no political will amongst the higher leadership of the government to fight organized crime and corruption.”

Political consultant Oleh Medvedev explains how Ukraine’s business elite was formed primarily from two social groups – organized crime gangsters and former Komsomol (Communist Youth League) activists. This translated into the “hard gangster style of Donetsk, and the softer style of the Dnipropetrovsk Komsomol.” The “Dnipropetrovsk mafia” had run Soviet Ukraine and the USSR under Leonid Brezhnev but, with the election of Yanukovych in 2010, the “Donetsk mafia” took control of Ukraine for the first time in its history (http://blogs.pravda.com.ua/authors/medvedev/4f9164e802016/).

Medvedev writes: “The first [Donetsk group], were brutal and feral street children from mining town suburbs who rose to the top without any regard for rules or the remnants of Soviet morality under the sound of the crossfire of Kalashnikovs. The second [Dnipropetrovsk group], came from intelligent families that became cultured working inside the [Communist] Party. Their origin and education meant they did not dispose of their competitors by blowing them up inside soccer stadiums. It is no surprise which of these two subcultures won out in Ukraine.”

Medvedvev explains the relevance of this for today: “Now they are not only successfully dividing up amongst themselves the remains of state-owned property in the style of the 1990s, but are also dealing with former business rivals and current political rivals in the same manner.” As Sergei Zhuk points out in his masterful Rock and Roll in the Rocket City: The West, Identity, and Ideology in Soviet Dniepropetrovsk, 1960-1985 (Johns Hopkins University Press 2010) Tymoshenko’s origins are in the Dnipropetrovsk Komsomol, within which she emerged as a businesswoman in the 1980s.

Terrorist attacks are likely to continue and grow for two reasons:

The first, as analyzed above, is because of the growing power of organized crime and increased corporate raiding. The second is because of the political opposition (see EDM, November 18, 2011). Our Ukraine-Peoples’ Self Defense deputy Yaroslav Kendzior’s threat to blow up parliament if the draft law on languages was again debated is a sign of how divisive policies are inflaming regional divisions to the point of violence (Ukrayinska Pravda, May 29). On May 24, when parliament first debated the draft language law that makes Russian a de facto state language, there was a riot and bloodshed in parliament (see video and photos at www.pravda.com.ua/news/2012/05/25/6965354/; www.news.nationalpost.com/2012/05/24/parliamentary-brawl-in-ukraine-photos/).

Former US President John F. Kennedy’s warning is apt for Ukraine: “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

European Boycott of Yalta 2012 Summit Sparks Germanophobia in Ukraine

By Taras Kuzio

In November 2002, President Leonid Kuchma was advised not to attend NATO’s Prague summit, but he ignored the advice and went. NATO changed the language used to allocate seats for countries, using French not English, and thereby ensured Kuchma would not sit next to UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W. Bush. Kuchma had become an international pariah following the Kuchmagate and Kolchugagate scandals that revealed his alleged involvement in the disappearance and murder of journalist Georgi Gongadze and the sale of military equipment to Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.

In May 2012 the 18^th summit of Central European leaders in Yalta was cancelled – to be rescheduled for a future date – after 13 of 20 invited leaders planned to boycott it. The 17^th summit held in Warsaw in May 2011 had been attended by twenty heads of state and US President Barrack Obama.

Poland’s leaders opposed the boycott although the opposition supported it (http://www.kyivpost.com/news/politics/detail/127101/; http://www.kyivpost.com/news/nation/detail/126986/). Warsaw was unable to encourage other Central European countries to attend except for Lithuania. Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, Moldova and Serbia also planned to attend, making a total of only seven countries.

Thirteen other countries boycotted the summit planned for the Livadia Palace in Yalta where three allied leaders met in 1945 to carve up post-Nazi Europe. Of the thirteen, the country now leading the rhetoric in Europe against the Yanukovych regime is Germany (see below). The remaining twelve included Austria, Italy, Croatia, Slovenia, Albania, Montenegro, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Estonia, Latvia, Bulgaria, Hungary and the Czech Republic (which has granted two Ukrainian oppositionists asylum, including Tymoshenko’s husband Oleksandr).

The cancellation of the Central European leaders summit is the biggest diplomatic embarrassment for Ukraine since Kuchma’s snub at the 2002 NATO summit. A similar European boycott is crystallizing around the Euro 2012 soccer championship co-hosted by Poland and Ukraine, which is set to begin next month. A growing number of European and EU leaders have stated their intention to only attend soccer games played in Poland and to boycott games played in Kyiv, Donetsk and especially Kharkiv, the city where opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko is incarcerated.

The momentum for the double boycotts of the Yalta summit and Euro-2012 began to gain ground following an international outcry over the use of force by prison guards against Tymoshenko, the authorities’ refusal to permit her to travel abroad for medical treatment and additional criminal charges launched against her, including murder. Photographs of bruises on Tymoshenko’s body received widespread international coverage as did the launch of her 19 day hunger strike (http://www.pravda.com.ua/articles/2012/04/27/6963597/).

Germany’s leadership of the European boycott of Yalta and Euro 2012 has fomented xenophobia in the insecure and paranoid Yanukovych administration. In 2000-2005, Kuchma’s and Yanukovych’s xenophobia was directed against the US, which was accused of being behind the illicit taping of Kuchma’s office, orchestrating the Kuchmagate crisis, and conspiring in the organization of the Orange Revolution to install Viktor Yushchenko to power. In 2004, the Yanukovych election campaign fomented the biggest anti-American campaign in Ukraine since the pre-détente Cold War (see EDM, October 7, 2004).

Kyiv policy makers have long complained of German opposition to Ukraine’s admission into NATO and the EU. Yushchenko blamed Berlin for opposing NATO membership while Yanukovych has blamed Germany for blocking the EU from giving Ukraine a future membership perspective. In 2009, former National Security and Defense Council Secretary Volodymyr Horbulin, who was then Director of the Institute of
National Security Issues, told US Ambassador William Taylor, “there are two Russian embassies in Kyiv; only one speaks German” (http://wikileaks.org/cable/2009/03/09KYIV465.html).

Political consultant Kost Bondarenko, who worked closely with Deputy Prime Minister Serhiy Tihipko’s Strong Ukraine party until it merged in March with the Party of Regions, has been a leading articulator of officially sanctioned Germanophobia. Writing in the Kyiv Post, Bondarenko believes there is a German conspiracy against Ukraine and that Germans see Ukraine as an “American creation” (http://www.kyivpost.com/news/opinion/op_ed/detail/118004/). Bondarenko and the Party of Regions hold a neo-Soviet conspiratorial mind-set that is coupled with traditional eastern Slavic inferiority complexes vis-à-vis the West (see my reply to Bondarenko at http://www.kyivpost.com/news/opinion/op_ed/detail/118912/).

Segodnya, one of Ukraine’s best-selling newspapers owned by Donetsk oligarch Rinat Akhmetov, who has been close to Yanukovych since the mid 1990s, published a scathing editorial of Germany last Friday (http://www.segodnya.ua/blogs/korotkovblog/14371476.html). “Germany again wants to dictate its will over Europe,” Segodnya wrote and, “They have taken off their masks and it really is the case that the Berlin of 2012 is in no way different from the Berlin of the 1940s.” "Germany has not changed in the past 70 years, and we are not just talking about the geopolitical ambitions of [Chancellor Angela] Merkel and [Foreign Minister Guido] Westerwelle.”

"In 1941,” the Segodnya editorial continued, “the German administration forced naked Ukrainian girls into goods wagons bound for Germany. In the 21^st century, German customs officials strip Ukrainian workers naked and take their things away.” “Then, they destroyed countries with armies, and now they ruin their economy. The calls for a boycott are a call to leave hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians without work,” adding, “1945 taught them nothing.”

“Germany wants to establish its rules and dictate its will on today’s Ukraine. Even the European Union counts for nothing if we are to be seen as sub-humans, as in the New Europe of [Adolf] Hitler.” “We did not vote for independence [from the Soviet Union] in 1991 to be under Merkel’s heel,” Segodnya proclaimed.

Germany was always lukewarm toward the Eastern Partnership (EaP). The program’s main supporters were Poland, Sweden, Great Britain and the three Baltic states, who saw the Association Agreements (and enlargement-lite) as eventually leading to EU membership for at least some of the EaP’s member countries (Belarus, Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan). EU members opposed to European enlargement for Turkey or Ukraine – such as Germany – now lead Europe’s rhetoric on human rights abuses in Ukraine. The icy rhetoric has frozen the signing and ratification of the EU’s Association Agreement with Ukraine. But, the primary responsibility lies with Yanukovych (not Germany) for rolling back democracy and giving enlargement-lite critics such as Germany ammunition to derail Ukraine’s Association Agreement. Chancellor Merkel personally distrusts Yanukovych who did not fulfill two promises he made to her that he would back de-criminalization of articles used to sentence Tymoshenko.

Ukraine’s international position is the weakest it has ever been since it achieved independence in 1991. It took Kuchma eight years into his second term in office for Ukraine to become internationally isolated while Yanukovych has accomplished this in only two years. The country’s international isolation will grow further if the October parliamentary elections are not recognized as “democratic” by the OSCE and the Council of Europe. But the elections will not be judged as “democratic” if Ukrainian opposition leaders remain in jail, which is highly likely (see EDM, November 4, 2011).

Europe’s “Ukraine problem” will grow in 2013 when there will be growing vocal US and European demands for punishment against Ukraine’s authorities in the form of further boycotts, sanctions and visa denials. These will ironically take place during the same year that Ukraine holds the rotating chairmanship of the OSCE.

Yulia Tymoshenko Defies the Authorities – From Jail

By Taras Kuzio

Ukraine’s relations with the West have been dropping below freezing in the last few weeks. Yulia Tymoshenko”s claim that she was “beaten” as she was forcibly taken to a Ukrainian clinic have led her to announce she is on a hunger strike. The authorities claimed this was all play acting and showed a video of her allegedly walking around her prison cell. Her lawyer claims the video is a fake (see video: http://www.pravda.com.ua/photo-video/2012/04/24/6963358/.

The EU and US have demanded action from the Ukrainian authorities to end her abuse; the German, Austrian and Czech presidents have refused an invitation to attend a summit of central European leaders in Ukraine (http://www.kyivpost.com/news/politics/detail/126642/); and the opposition has blockaded parliament with the large placard “Yanukovych do not kill Yulia” for five days, preventing it from functioning (http://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2012/04/ukrainian-politics. See photos and video: http://www.pravda.com.ua/photo-video/2012/04/26/6963506/).

If this were not enough, from jail, Tymoshenko continues to be a thorn in President Viktor Yanukovych’s side, and if the authorities thought they could silence her by imprisoning her they obviously under-estimated “Yulia.” As Der Spiegel wrote: “Tymoshenko, who is only 1.60 meters (5 feet 3 inches) tall but who is admiringly dubbed, even by her adversaries, as ‘the only man in Ukrainian politics,’ remains a thorn in his side” (http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,826417,00.html). The Kyiv Post’s editor, Brian Bonner, adds: “Even in prison while flat on her back, Yulia Tymoshenko can inflict damage on a Ukrainian president. The woman who has helped demolish two presidents politically – Leonid Kuchma and Viktor Yushchenko – is on her way to politically destroying a third one – Viktor Yanukovych.
The frail ex-Prime Minister is a human wrecking ball for all who get in her way, despite prison guards and bars” (http://www.kyivpost.com/news/opinion/op_ed/detail/126680/).

Therefore, her long interview in Ukraine’s premier weekly merits a closer look (http://dt.ua/POLITICS/yuliya_timoshenko_z_hvoroyu_spinoyu,__ale_z_mitsnim_hrebtom-100889.html). Tymoshenko is obviously well informed about current Ukrainian affairs and knows what is going on outside her prison cell. She fully supports the unification of opposition forces for the October elections in light of the threats facing Ukraine that she believes are worse than at any time in Ukraine’s last two decades. The authorities, she states, are making Ukrainians into “losers without historical memory, without national pride, without positive economic perspectives and [without] a European future.”

Tymoshenko does not believe the unification of four opposition forces (the Batkivshchina party that she leads, Front for Change led by Arseniy Yatseniuk, Rukh and Reforms and the Order party) will lead to their absorption by her party and she supports each creating its own faction and joining a parliamentary coalition. This strategy is a fundamentally different approach to that of the Party of Regions, which was created from a merger of five parties in 2001 and has absorbed five political parties since, the most recent being Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Tigipko’s Silna Ukrayina party. In parliament, the Party of Regions acts as a disciplined and united party whereas “orange” forces have been fractured and discipline has been very weak. Although Tymoshenko’s approach is more democratic than Yanukovych’s monopolism, at the same time it has not proven successful in establishing stable “orange” coalitions. The nine parties elected in 2007 in Our Ukraine-People’s Self Defense, ballooned to fourteen parties by this year.

Tymoshenko laments that two parties are fighting the elections independently – the nationalist Svoboda and UDAR (Ukrainian Democratic Alliance for Reform) led by international boxing champion Vitaliy Klychko. Both parties believe they can independently cross the five percent threshold to enter parliament, especially UDAR.

In calling for Svoboda to join the united democratic election list, Tymoshenko is ignoring calls for the nationalist party to be excluded from the opposition Committee Against Dictatorship. An open letter by Ukrainian and Western intellectuals called for the democratic opposition to distance itself from Svoboda (http://www.kyivpost.com/news/opinion/op_ed/detail/125818/), which cooperates with extreme right forces in Europe (see Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok’s congratulations to the French National Front on its performance in the April French elections: http://blogs.pravda.com.ua/authors/tiahnybok/4f9528f14bbca/). Despite disagreements with UDAR, Tymoshenko said the united opposition will support Klychko’s candidacy in upcoming Kyiv mayoral elections.

The weakest aspect of Tymoshenko’s interview, as more generally with the opposition, is intellectual and programmatic. A US Embassy cable from Kyiv reported ahead of the 2007 pre-term elections that “Personalities, not programs, Differentiate Three Main Parties” (http://wikileaks.org/cable/2007/09/07KYIV2204.html). Little has changed in the last five years. Tymoshenko, like President Viktor Yushchenko, did not listen to Western election and political consultants – including AKPD, used by Barrack Obama in the 2008 elections, who were hired by her for the 2010 Ukrainian presidential elections.

Tymoshenko waffles through her answer to a question about whether she supports a presidential or parliamentary constitution for Ukraine – a structural political issue of fundamental importance for any state. Tymoshenko has supported both in the past – like all Ukrainian politicians. Tymoshenko does not provide concrete policy ideas for the united opposition and, as is typical for Tymoshenko, focuses nearly entirely on what she is against - not what she supports.

Tymoshenko talks tough, which is of course her style, although as The Economist writes, “The damsel-in-distress tone, coming from someone who for years was a tough player in the corrupt world of Ukrainian politics and business, can sometimes grate” (http://www.economist.com/blogs/easternapproaches/2012/04/ukrainian-politics). Tymoshenko states categorically that, “I will never permit anybody to transform Ukraine into a dark fatherland for the Cosa Nostra” but only outlines two ways in which to prevent this. The first is victory by the opposition in the October elections; the second is the outcome of two reviews by the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) of Yuriy Lutsenko, (see http://jamestownfoundation.blogspot.ca/2012/02/another-ukrainian-opposition-leader.html) who was imprisoned in February, and her own case.

It is incredulous that Tymoshenko remains so optimistic from her prison cell. From outside her cell it is obvious that the authorities will ignore the ECHR (ironically on the eve of Ukraine taking over the rotating Chairpersonship of the OSCE in 2013). Deputy head of the Party of Regions parliamentary faction Vadym Kolesnychenko said the ECHR did not have the ability to change court verdicts. “Its task is only to point out a violation of human rights, which it believes was committed. However, it is not a directive for Ukrainian courts” (http://gorshenin.eu/weekly/91_issue_15_84.html).

They will also never permit the opposition to win the elections, in the sense of controlling a parliamentary majority. National Security and Defense Council (NRBO) Secretary Andriy Kluyev is to head the Party of Regions 2012 election campaign, ensuring the NRBO provides state-administrative resources for the authorities. Free elections and Yanukovych are like borsch and horseradish in that they do not agree with each other. Since Yanukovych entered politics in 1997 he has presided over five election frauds as Donetsk Governor (1998, 1999, 2002), Prime Minister (2004), and president (2010).

Why should he change his life-long habits now?

Leonid Kuchma Tells It Like It Is

By Taras Kuzio

Leonid Kuchma, Ukraine’s longest serving president (1994-2004), published some, at times, rambling memoirs entitled, Posle Maydana. Zapysky prezydenta 2005-2006 (After the Maidan: The President’s Writings 2005-2006) (Vremya, Moscow and Dovira, Kyiv, 2007). Although datelined after he left office, the 700-page book deals with the last two decades of Ukrainian history.

In his book, Kuchma barely touches the contentious issues surrounding his presidency, such as massive high level corruption and the murder of journalist Georgi Gongadze. He continues to claim the Kuchmagate scandal was a Western (i.e. US) backed conspiracy to replace him with Yushchenko, which he believes came to fruition in 2004 (p. 684).

Kuchma claims that by the last year of his presidency, relations between business and politics had become “normal.” Capital that previously fled abroad had begun to return and work for the Ukrainian economy, and big business had begun to pay taxes and desire a transparent and stable system (pp. 192-193). He replies to the accusation of building an “oligarch country” by claiming that “another type of regime, other than the nomenklatura-oligarch system, could not have come into existence” in the 1990s (p. 221). “Ukraine is not the Baltics. It did not feel itself to be occupied territory or a colony. There were still strong pro-Soviet feelings” in 1991, Kuchma pointed out (p. 291), meaning the pro-Western opposition could not have won the presidential elections.

Besides serving as a defense to the criticisms leveled against Kuchma’s presidency, the memoirs reveal the ideological differences between Kuchma and his successors, Presidents Viktor Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovych.

Firstly, on national democrats and Yushchenko:

• Kuchma praises former political prisoner Vyacheslav Chornovil who was leader of Rukh and died in a car accident in 1999 as somebody “[i]ntelligent, respected [a]nd communicative” who was “without hatred in his soul.” None of the “Orange” leaders came close to his stature, Kuchma writes. He rejected accusations that he was murdered in a staged accident as he was not a threat to the authorities by 1999 (pp. 290-291).
  
• Kuchma appointed Yushchenko prime minister in 1999 when the country was nearly bankrupt because with a liberal image he was best suited to talk to the IMF in “one voice” as “Ukraine needed money” after the 1998 crisis (p. 681).
  
• Kuchma is dismissive of Yushchenko’s 2000-2001 government claiming credit for re-launching economic growth. Growth was a product of reforms, Yushchenko never undertook steps “without consulting with myself,” Kuchma writes, and his government program was copied from Kuchma’s 1999 presidential election program (p. 683). Kuchma points out: “Therefore, people have a normal question to ask: namely, if he saved Ukraine when he was prime minister then why did ‘he not doing anything’ when he became president?” (p. 265).
  
• Yushchenko is psychologically a “national-patriot,” but Kuchma personally claims in his memoirs that he is more of a nationalist. “If you want to know who is a real Ukrainian nationalist then it is I, former ‘red director’ Kuchma!” (p. 635). Kuchma’s nationalism, he believes, was more serious as it is under-pinned by “national capital.”
  
• Kuchma portrays Yushchenko as weak, indecisive and a cynic. During a conversation in the 2004 elections, Kuchma asked Yushchenko why during his election campaign speeches he condemned the “criminal regime,” shouted “Kuchma out!” and demanded that “bandits” go to jail.  Yushchenko replied that he should not take these election slogans seriously because, “This is politics, Leonid Danylovych.” Yushchenko used “revolutionary demagogy” in a “cynical manner,” Kuchma believes (p. 684) and after once shouting “Away with this regime!” Yushchenko apologized, Kuchma recalls (p. 342).
  
• Kuchma points out that no “bandits” went to jail and Orange Revolution protestors, therefore, stood in the winter cold for 17 days for nothing. In September 2005, Yushchenko dismissed Tymoshenko’s government two weeks after describing it as the best Ukraine ever had. And following the crisis, Yushchenko signed a “memorandum of non-aggression” with Yanukovych (p. 376).

Although both are Russophones and were elected by eastern Ukrainians, Kuchma outlines numerous positions that differentiate him from Yanukovych.

• Kuchma told the Prosecutor-General’s office they were “Idiotyy!” when he heard of the February 2001 arrest of then-Deputy Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and described the criminal charges against her as “Absolute idiotism!” (pp. 167-168). Tymoshenko spent three weeks in jail before being released.
  
• Kuchma recalls Russian President Boris Yeltsin with warm affection (see below), while noting, “Yeltsin had a lot of real power, but he was not feared. His opponents and enemies (protyvnyky)” fought against him (p. 417), a problem that Yanukovych or Vladimir Putin do not have. One of the main purposes of Tymoshenko’s imprisonment was demonstrative to show how Yanukovych could deal with any member of the elites (see interview with Arseniy Avakov, a Tymoshenko loyalist who recently sought political asylum in Italy).
• Kuchma promised to “strive to give [the Russian language] official status,” but could not make the Russian language a state language because this is within the competence of parliament. Nevertheless, under Kuchma, Russian was never treated as a “foreign language” and “in most instances, [Russian] de facto was a second state language.” More importantly, Kuchma believes that making Russian a state language, as Yanukovych has promised, “would mean the de facto split of the country” (pp. 531-532).
  
• In 2003, Kuchma launched an international campaign to have the 1933 Holodmor recognized as “genocide,” but Russian Ambassador Viktor Chernomyrdin refused to apologize. Kuchma retorts that Russia, as the Soviet successor state, took on Soviet assets and debts – but not responsibility for the Holodomor (p. 415). Yanukovych, on the other hand, has adopted Russia’s position on the Holodomor.
  
• As a centrist, Kuchma desired normal relations with Russia but without poking the bear in the eye, like Yushchenko, or betraying Ukrainian interests and being blasé about Russian threats, like Yanukovych.  Kuchma understood Russia is a threat to Ukraine and that, “The threat of russification is a real danger [to Ukraine]” (p. 285).
  
• Kuchma cites a July 2004 opinion poll where two thirds of Ukrainians voiced their opposition to electing a president with criminal convictions (a reference to Yanukovych who spent two terms in prison for violent robbery) (p. 507). In 2010, Ukrainians elected him.
  
• Kuchma reveals that Moscow began issuing Russian passports to Crimean residents as early as 1994, but after he protested to Yeltsin the process was halted (p. 416).
  
• Kuchma goes into detail about the dispute with Russia in fall 2003 over Tuzla Island lying to the east of the Crimea. Kuchma recalls saying, “We will defend our territory as it is stated and outlined in our constitution” and mobilizing the military and other security forces to repulse Russian forces if they crossed Ukraine’s maritime border (pp. 399-402).
  
• Kuchma is skeptical about the 1994 “security assurances” given after Ukraine joined the NPT and agreed to give up nuclear weapons. One reason is because Russia, as seen in the Tuzla case, is one of those “assuring” Ukraine. During the Tuzla crisis, Ukraine was rebuffed by four nuclear powers (under the security assurances) and NATO (under the 1997 Charter) when Kyiv sought to discuss the security threat. Of the nuclear powers “assuring” Ukraine, only China supported the country’s territorial integrity. Kuchma believes that “any security support from the West will never materialize” (p. 405).
  
• Kuchma praises extensive cooperation with NATO and reveals that all members of the National Security and Defense Council (NRBO) voted for the July 2002 resolution that became a presidential decree outlining Ukraine’s goal of NATO membership. Unlike Russia, Kuchma says his policies strove to break down negative stereotypes of NATO (pp. 460-463).
  
• Kuchma warned President Mikheil Saakashvili during a 2006 visit to Georgia that the Ossetian problem lies ahead and advised him when negotiating with Russia to do so from the principle of upholding Georgia’s territorial integrity (pp. 188 and 234; see EDM, April 17).
• Yeltsin was a democrat in “his soul,” and Kuchma recalls that at every meeting with him he was ready to “capitulate and reverse his position” (p. 472). The memoirs reveal how different Yeltsin was to Putin (and Kuchma to Yanukovych).

Kuchma’s centrist position between Yushchenko and Yanukovych could very well turn out historically to have been the best strategy for Ukraine’s national consolidation and Euro-Atlantic integration.

All Ethnicities Are Equal in Russia, but Some Want to Be More Equal Than Others

By Valery Dzutsev

The speaker of Tatarstan’s parliament, Farid Mukhametshin, welcomed Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s refusal to change the preamble of the Russian constitution to emphasize ethnic Russians as the main ethnicity in the country. Observers, however, pointed out that Tatarstan’s own constitution accentuates the Tatar people as opposed to the “multinational people of Tatarstan” and still holds onto important articles, albeit symbolic, that support Tatarstan’s aspirations for political autonomy from Moscow, such as notions of Tatarstan’s sovereignty and even separate citizenship (http://regnum.ru/news/polit/1520767.html, April 13).

In his 2012 election campaign, Vladimir Putin yielded to the long-held Russian nationalist demand to admit the ethnic Russians’ role as the “state-forming people” of Russia (http://www.ng.ru/politics/2012-01-23/1_national.html, January 23). Putin, however, in the usual Soviet tradition, did not want to designate his declaration into law. Just as in the Soviet times, when the rules of politics were informally obeyed but rarely specified in the laws, contemporary Russian leadership may share the Russian nationalists’ views but tries to avoid specifying them in the legislation.

A new round of the struggles between Moscow and Tatarstan is looming ahead as Russia is bracing for the reintroduction of regional governors’ elections in fall 2012.  Tatarstan’s constitution still contains a few articles that Moscow has been fiercely opposed to, but so far has been unsuccessful in changing. In its preamble, the republican constitution recognizes, for example, the “universally accepted right of all people for self-determination” (http://constitution.garant.ru/region/cons_tatar/chapter/1/#100000). Pro-Russian Tatar experts, in the meantime, warn that centrifugal trends in this republic will grow as Moscow appears to be increasingly impotent in addressing pressing issues such as corruption (apn.ru, April 12). Tatarstan may well again become the champion of greater rights for the Russian regions, a stance that would contribute to Russia’s decentralization and democratization.