Taras Kuzio’s Blog

Why Should We be Surprised That Luzhkov Does It Again?

Ukraine and Russia are again at loggerheads over a visit last week by Moscow Mayor Yuriy Luzhkov to the Crimea. Acting chairman of the Security Service Valentyn Nalyvaichenko complained about Luzhkov’s inappropriate and undiplomatic comments in three areas. First, his criticism of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev’s transfer of the Crimea to Ukraine in 1954. Second, thanking Crimean’s for opposing Ukraine’s cooperation with NATO. Third, promising support to Crimea’s ethnic Russian population.

We should be all surprised at how the Ukrainian authorities are surprised at Luzhkov’s remarks. My book entitled Ukraine-Crimea-Russia: Triangle of Conflict will be published in spring of this year. Luzhkov is prominently featured in the book as a member of the Russian elite who has persistently challenged Ukraine’s sovereignty in the Crimea and Sevastopol. Each occasion when Luzhkov has visited the Crimea, including this month, he has used similar language that infringes on Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.

Why is he then allowed to continue to visit the Crimea? Should there not be a permanent banning order on Luzhkov?
I know what such banning orders mean in real life. In April 1990 I was expelled from the USSR after flying to Moscow en route to Kyiv to attend the first congress of the Ukrainian Republican Party. At Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport I was illegally searched and sent back to Warsaw. I found out from the Soviet press that I was on a KGB ‘black list’ for my ‘bourgeois nationalist’ activities. I eventually was able to travel to the USSR for the first time a month after the failed hard line August 1991 coup.

It is not just totalitarian states, such as the USSR, which have banning lists. Democratic states also have a right to prevent individuals entering it if these persons are considered a threat to its national security. Over the last fifteen years, Luzhkov has encouraged separatism in the Crimea and intervened in Ukraine’s internal affairs, both of which constitute a national security threat. Could you imagine the US permitting the Mayor of Mexico city to persistently visit Texas and be permitted to encourage Hispanic separatists by decrying the transfer of the territory from Mexico to the US?

Luzhkov is no ordinary Russian official as he has always held a senior place in President Vladimir Putin’s Unified Russia. This party of power was officially registered on 18 December 2001 on the basis of the former Unity party and Moscow Mayor Luzhkov’s Fatherland movement. Luzhkov is not therefore an independent actor but both a city mayor and a senior member of Putin’s ruling party.
Will placing Luzhkov on a banning order be easy? Not if the Party of Regions has its way. You might recall that Viktor Yanukovych invited Luzhkov to his own separatist congress in Severdonetsk on 28 November 2004. None of the organizers of this threat to Ukraine’s territorial integrity were ever criminally charged.

The Party of Regions also worked with Luzhkov and Crimean extremist groups to organize anti-NATO and anti-US demonstrations in the Crimea in 2005-2006. These prevented the holding of annual exercises with NATO that had taken place in Ukraine since 1997. Yanukovych likes to claim that he is ‘consistent’ but the Party of Regions has changed its position three times in four years on NATO from support for membership (2002-2004), opposition to anything to do with NATO (2005) to support for cooperation, but not membership (2006-2007).

A country that does not respect itself has no right to expect others to respect it. I vote for Luzhkov to be permanently barred from ever again entering Ukraine.