RUSSIA AND THE CIS

RUSSIA'S NON-STRATEGY FOR RELATIONS WITH UKRAINE

SOURCE. Tor Bukkvoll, Off the Cuff Politics: Explaining Russia's Lack of a Ukraine Strategy, Europe-Asia Studies, Vol. 53, No. 8, December 2001, pp. 1141-1157.

Tor Bukkvoll (Norwegian Defence Research Establishment) seeks to explain Russia's failure over the last decade to develop "a coordinated political strategy for the conduct of relations" with Ukraine. His explanation has three strands:

1. Russia's political establishment has not truly come to terms with the existence of an independent Ukraine.

Ukraine's independence from Russia is still widely regarded as an anomalous and temporary phenomenon. It may be felt that having an explicit policy on Ukraine means admitting that Ukraine is there to stay.

2. Russia has realized that her resources for influencing Ukraine are limited. The author demonstrates this by considering three ways in which Russia might influence Ukraine:

a. By exploiting Ukraine's dependence on Russia for oil and gas

This method has been used to extract concessions on several occasions. An example was the 1993 Massandra summit, when President Kravchuk agreed to give up the Black Sea Fleet in order to keep the gas flowing -- until domestic political pressure forced him to back out.

However, Russia's ability to exploit this factor is constrained by the fact that the major part of its oil and gas exports to the West pass through Ukraine. (The situation will change to some extent when the alternative route through Belarus is in operation.) Squabbles within the Russian elite also prevent consistent and purposive exploitation of Ukraine's oil and gas dependence.

b. By using informal political and business networks

Close connections have developed over the past 3-4 years between some Russian and Ukrainian businessmen, especially in the energy and metallurgical sectors. Some of these businessmen also have close ties with their political establishments. President Kuchma's political adviser Oleksandr Volkov is a good example.

Russia does not seem to have made use of these networks to bring political influence to bear on Ukraine. It is not clear that Russian businessmen would be willing to jeopardize their economic interests by cooperating in such an effort.

c. By manipulating the Russian minority in Ukraine

Russia has not supported or promoted ethnic separatism in Crimea or Eastern Ukraine as a means of exerting pressure on Kiev, fearing that to do so would create uncontrollable instability and upheaval. In any case, the predominant Russian aspiration has been to reunite with the whole of Ukraine, not to revise borders.

3. The institutional structure of Russia's relations with CIS countries militates against the making of coherent foreign policy.

Russia's foreign ministry, created as it was out of the Soviet foreign ministry, remains poorly equipped to handle relations with countries that used to be part of the USSR. In 1994 a special Ministry for Cooperation with CIS Countries was formed, but it was given few resources and little policy-making authority and was finally disbanded in May 2000. No body in Moscow concerns itself with maintaining relations with Ukraine on a day-to-day or even a month-to-month basis.

Russian foreign (like domestic) policy emerges from the personal interaction of important players rather than from any formal bureaucratic process. "Yeltsin's style was to take advice from the persons he trusted most at the time, regardless of their formal position." Most such advisers most of the time had little interest in Ukraine. Hardly any were well informed about Ukrainian affairs. In 1997 a journalist discovered that even officials and Duma deputies involved in foreign policy did not know who was Ukraine's current prime minister.

The personal "chemistry" between the Russian and Ukrainian presidents has always been a major factor in Russian-Ukrainian relations. Kravchuk never had good rapport with Yeltsin, and neither did Kuchma for the first two years after his election in 1994. But in 1996 Yeltsin and Kuchma "found one another," facilitating resolution of the longstanding dispute over the Black Sea Fleet and the signing of the Friendship and Cooperation Treaty (May 1997). At the end of 1997, a Strategic Group on Russian-Ukrainian Cooperation was set up, and it was agreed that the officials on both sides who were its members would remain in frequent telephone contact. Continuing laments about lack of communication suggest that this arrangement was not very effective.

Consistent policymaking on relations with CIS countries is obstructed by infighting among Russian officials, who often do not share key documents or tell one another what they are doing (as was the case when the 1997 Russia-Belarus Union treaty was under negotiation). Another problem is that Ukrainian issues are exploited for domestic political purposes, as when Luzhkov took a provocative public stance on Crimea to demonstrate his patriotism.

What difference does Putin's advent make to Russia's policy on Ukraine? The author argues that Putin is more inclined than Yeltsin to use the stick -- in particular, the oil and gas weapon -- and less inclined to hold out carrots. (Russia cut off oil supplies to Ukraine in the winter of 1999-2000: it is not clear to what purpose.) Putin's attitude toward Ukrainian sovereignty is indicated by the fact that on his first visit to Ukraine he asked Kuchma to remove foreign minister Boris Tarasyuk, whom he regarded as too pro-Western.

Kuchma has tried to establish a close personal relationship with Putin. It does not appear that he has succeeded. This may not matter too much, because Putin prefers a less informal style of negotiation than did Yeltsin. The appointment in May 2001 of such a "heavyweight" figure as former prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin as Russian ambassador to Kiev also suggests that Putin does not feel the need to exert close personal control over policy regarding Ukraine.