Taras Kuzio’s Blog

Tymoshenko Wants to Contain Russia

This week proved again that Washington is the centre of policy making to Ukraine. On Monday the U.S. State Department held a meeting with outside experts on Ukraine to discuss the Ukrainian crisis. On Wednesday, both Houses of the US Congress adopted a resolution on the Ukrainian crisis. On Thursday, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) held a joint session of its four working groups on politics, energy, Trans-Atlantic relations and relations with Russia to discuss proposals to be submitted by Zbigniew Brzezinski and European VIP’s in Berlin next month. On Friday the CSIS held a panel on the Ukrainian crisis with former Ambassador to Ukraine Steve Pifer, Dmitri Trenin (Carnegie, Moscow) and Taras Kuzio (www.voanews.com/ukrainian/2007-04-20-voa4.cfm).

And, the piece de resistance of the week was the publication of Yulia Tymoshenko’s ‘Containing Russia’ in Foreign Affairs journal (http://www.foreignaffairs.org/previews/8220/20070501faessay86307-p0/yuliya-tymoshenko/containing-russia.html). She is the first Ukrainian politician to have published here (it is surprising that President Viktor Yushchenko has never sought to publish in this prestigious and influential journal). Until now articles on Ukraine have largely been written by Western scholars. It is worth noting that it is not easy to publish in Foreign Affairs and usually the journal requests articles.

Russia was very unhappy at the title ‘Containing Russia’. The title was not the first choice of Tymoshenko’s American consultants and a more preferable title could have been that used in the excerpts published in the International Herald and Tribune on 16 April as ‘Demand a level playing field’ (http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/04/16/opinion/edtymoshenko.php).

According to Washington sources the article was written by Tymoshenko, whose knowledge of English is better than that of either Yushchenko or Viktor Yanukovych, with the assistance of her foreign policy advisers and her US-based Public Affairs consultant. The Russian conspiracy mindset that believes Vice President Dick Cheney’s office wrote the Foreign Affairs article is off base. The involvement of an American consultant is not unusual in assisting in publishing articles in the US media as this is part of the mandate of Public Affairs consultants. Opinion editorials by Yanukovych and Yushchenko in the Financial Times and Washington Post are written by Western Public Affairs companies working for them.

The American who assisted in preparing the article is not in the US government but the company of which he is a partner (TDI International) officially represents Tymoshenko in the US. The Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) requires American companies representing foreign governments to register at FARA but, as a major expose in 17 April Wall Street Journal on American PR companies working for Russian and Ukraine found out, thus far the only law abiding Ukrainian is Tymoshenko. American companies working for Yanukovych or Yushchenko are not registered at FARA.

It is indeed surprising that the president has never learnt English when he is married to an American. The major contrast between Ukrainians and Georgians at international events is that the Georgians all know English (such as Parliamentary Speaker Nina Burjanedze and President Mikheil Saakashvilli) which greatly assists them in networking and lobbying Georgia’s national interests. In Tymoshenko’s case we can thank her growing knowledge of English on my home region of Yorkshire which produced her rock n’roll son-in-law.

Tymoshenko’s article is not for the faint hearted. The published version was supposed to have appeared when she visited the USA (that is, in the March-April edition) but space prevented this. Its publication now coincides with the Ukrainian crisis and likely election campaign. The draft I read two months ago was toned down for publication.

Before the article appeared on line the Russian Foreign Ministry denounced it in unusually strong language (http://www.mid.ru/brp_4.nsf/0/0C641A2EB01FF23FC32572BF00537789). In the conspiratorial culture that dominates Vladimir Putin’s Russia the article is defined as an ‘anti-Russian manifesto’ and an attempt at rekindling the cold war. The Russian Foreign Ministry is convinced that ‘somebody’ is standing behind Tymoshenko and this person is allegedly Vice President Dick Cheney. Why? Because he gave a very critical speech of Russia at a meeting in Vilnius in May 2006, was known to be a strong advocate of an orange coalition that could pave the way for US support for Ukraine’s NATO membership and most importantly, Moscow is convinced that because Cheney met Tymoshenko on her US visit that they therefore coordinated the article. The US Vice President does not usually meet opposition leaders.

The Russian Foreign Ministry lumps Cheney and Tymoshenko together as Cold War Warriors while trying to convince us that Putin’s Munch speech was a ‘serious and frank dialogue’ that was made in a ‘direct and open fashion’. After Putin’s Munich speech it was the West which concluded that Russia had rekindled a new cold war.

Russian apologists in the West have always rushed to defend Russian policies. And, so I am eagerly awaiting New America Foundation Anatol Lieven’s response. He had already lambasted US policy to Russia and condemned US support for Ukrainian membership in NATO in the March edition of The American Conservative

(http://www.amconmag.com/2007/2007_03_26/cover.html). As an analyst in a conservative Washington think tank said to me last year after an earlier Russophile article, ‘Lieven! Someone who hates everything American and loves everything Russian’. Why British scholars like Lieven are so Russophile would require another lengthy blog.

Tymoshenko is in reality not ‘anti-Russian’. Her Foreign Affairs article is in depth critique of Russian neo-imperial policies, particularly in the field of energy that she knows and understands. If the article is really a ‘Cold War manifesto’ it would have included a discussion of NATO’s role but NATO is never once mentioned in the article. Tymoshenko is cautious towards Ukraine’s NATO membership because she, unlike President Yushchenko, has seriously worked towards obtaining voter support in eastern and southern Ukraine. In the 2006 elections the Tymoshenko bloc came second in these two regions outside the Donbas and Crimea (support for Yushchenko’s Our Ukraine was confined to Galicia and Trans-Carpathia).

Tymoshenko’s pragmatic, state nationalism is therefore different to Yushchenko’s ethno-cultural nationalism. Tymoshenko is second to none at rallying state nationalism against outside threats, such as Russia, as seen in when she recently successfully encouraged 420 parliamentary deputies to vote against privatization of the gas pipelines to prevent Russia’s joint control over them.

Does this vote mean that the Party of Regions, which voted in favour of this Tymoshenko motion, is also ‘anti-Russian’? It would seem that in Russian eyes Cheney, Tymoshenko, Yanukovych, Lukashenka, and me are all ‘anti-Russians’.