KIEV, 5 January 2006 — By putting pressure on Ukraine, whose pro-Western approach it dislikes, Russia is actually pushing Kiev more firmly into the arms of the West, particularly into those of NATO, observers in the Ukranian capital said yesterday.
Kiev’s row with Moscow over Russia’s decision to more than quadruple gas prices to its neighbor “will strengthen the pro-NATO thrust of Ukraine’s foreign policy,” predicted political analyst Vadim Karassiov.
For weeks Ukraine and Russia have been locked in a ferocious dispute that came to a head on Sunday when Russian gas giant Gazprom cut off supplies to Ukraine over Kiev’s refusal to accept the dramatic price rise. The row worsened still further when Gazprom accused Kiev of illegally siphoning off gas that transits Ukraine on its way to major clients in Europe. While Moscow insists the row is purely financial, several analysts say there is an obvious political side to the dispute. They view it as yet another sign of the deterioration in relations with Kiev since Ukraine’s Orange Revolution a year ago.
Russia suffered a humiliating defeat during the highly charged Ukranian presidential election that sparked the revolution when the pro-Moscow candidate it openly backed was roundly ousted by pro-Western rival Victor Yushchenko. Once in power Yushchenko announced he wanted to take Ukraine into the European Union and NATO.
While Gazprom fires off accusations that Ukraine is stealing gas destined for key Western markets — a charge Kiev roundly rejects — some analysts and politicians allege Moscow is embarking on a media offensive to undermine its neighbor’s relations with the West. Anton Buteyko, Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister and a leading member of the nationalist Ukranian Popular Party, alleged in a televised interview that Moscow was seeking “to halt the close cooperation that has developed between Ukraine, the EU and NATO.”
Analyst Vira Nanivska said she believed Russia was trying to portray Ukraine to the West as an “unreliable partner,” while simultaneously putting pressure on Kiev to rejoin Moscow’s fold. But Moscow was pushing too hard and its efforts are likely to have the opposite effect, at least in Ukraine itself, she predicted.
Support for this theory came at the end of December when President Yushchenko issued a decree, in the midst of the gas row with Russia, creating a permanent body to prepare Ukraine’s entry into NATO.
Indeed it is possible that Kiev could suddenly intensify talks with NATO and make an official request for membership, forecast analyst Andriy Ermolayev from the Ukrainian Center for Social Research, Sofia.
Currently predictions are that Ukraine will join the trans-Atlantic military alliance some time between 2008 and 2011 but Vadim Karassiov, who works at the Institute for Global Strategies in Kiev, believes the souring of relations with Moscow could lead Kiev to seek membership of the bloc within the next two years. The gas row with Moscow, which is opposed to its neighbor joining NATO, could stoke nationalist sentiment in Ukraine and boost public support for membership of the Western military alliance, analysts say. At the moment, more than half the Ukrainian population opposes the idea, which is stalling the government’s Euro-Atlantic ambitions.
“The more Russia is perceived as an enemy — and recent developments have certainly created this image in the eyes of the Ukranian population — the more the Ukrainians will be inclined to see protection from a third party,” Karassiov forecast.
