AND I WANT TO, AND NATO

CIS DEAD ENDS

The leader of the Orange Revolution has not yet won an election. But Yanukovych can win only by a miracle, and there are no miracles in modern politics. Left without a significant share of the administrative resource, having lost its monopoly on ...

The leader of the Orange Revolution has not yet won an election. But Yanukovych can win only by a miracle, and there are no miracles in modern politics. Left without a significant share of the administrative resource, having lost his monopoly on media support, Yanukovych, abandoned by Kuchma, can only compete today for a worthy loss that would allow him to remain in big politics as a representative of his native region.

Yushchenko's task is much larger. Maidan will not only support the new president, it will invisibly put pressure on him, demanding from him a systemic transformation of Ukraine. Only if the reforms are successful, a revolution will really take place in Ukraine. In the meantime, we are talking about prelude, nothing more.

The public declaration of millions of their readiness to support the transformation is a lot. But, as experience shows, without political will, skill, dedication and honesty of leaders, the popularity of an idea is nothing more than a chance.

Parliament

Yushchenko has a maximum of a year to launch the transformation process. In September 2005 or January 2006, depending on some details of legislative activity, Ukraine will become a parliamentary-presidential republic. The powers of the head of state will be sharply limited. The President will not turn into the Queen of England, but will lose the right to nominate the Prime Minister and, therefore, will not be able to influence the work of the Cabinet of Ministers in the same way as before. In March 2006 parliamentary elections will be held in Ukraine. The new Rada will be elected on party lists with a three percent barrier to entry, which will allow all interested oligarchic groups to maintain their representation in parliament and, if necessary, sabotage the work of both the Rada and the government. Convinced supporters of Yushchenko will be in the minority in this parliament, if only because the left-wing voters will oblige their representatives to stand outside his team.

From a tactical point of view, Yushchenko faces a triune internal political task for the coming year. First, he must learn to get along with the current Rada, because otherwise the next, stronger parliament will not initially be aimed at cooperating with the president. Secondly, he needs to find a common language with the oligarchs. The administration will immediately lose an open war with all the economic magnates of Ukraine, and attempts to choose favorites among the eastern clans are fraught with unpredictable changes in the balance of power. Thirdly, the new government should do everything to prevent a deepening of the split between the "newly populated" Ukraine, that is, the south and east, and its historical core - the center and the west.

From a strategic point of view, however, all these compromises should not be achieved at the expense of the main goal of reform and progress. Otherwise, Yushchenko runs the risk of gradually turning into Kuchma, who quite successfully maintained internal stability at all levels, but was unable to create prospects for a qualitative breakthrough for Ukraine.

Oligarchs and nomenklatura

It is still impossible to unequivocally answer the question of Yushchenko's ability to combine tactical expediency with a strategic imperative. On the one hand, there are a number of prerequisites for an agreement. There is no antagonism between Yushchenko and the majority of the Nenets elites. Otherwise, he would not have received such support in Kyiv, where members of the families of the high nomenklatura voted for him, and the “effectiveness” of administrative intervention in favor of Yanukovych throughout the country would have been much higher. Otherwise, so many yesterday's representatives of the pro-government majority in the Rada would not have run to Yushchenko, Serhiy Tigipko, from Dnepropetrovsk, would not have left the post of head of Yanukovych's headquarters, obviously not without consultations with his business partners.

Apparently, the oligarchs are also ready to make contact. Yushchenko is not going to deprive them of business. Yushchenko will ask the oligarchs to pay extra for property acquired through various opaque schemes, but in return he will offer them state aid to promote exports, easier access to the European market as relations with the EU improve, and most importantly, the absence of disproportionate scrutiny from law enforcement agencies. The alternative would be conflict with the state. Even the Donetsk people would think twice before rejecting such a deal.

The population of the eastern regions today is mainly concerned with two things - wages, as “under Yanukovych”, and the preservation of the role of the Russian language in the cultural, educational, and to some extent, the political space of Ukraine and in everyday life. The solution to the first question is a derivative of the agreement with the oligarchs. As for the second, it is unlikely that Yushchenko, taking into account the current situation, would come up with the idea of ​​pursuing a policy of accelerated Ukrainization in the east. Gradually, as the generation educated in a Ukrainian-language school enters into life, the acuteness of the perception of the language issue will decrease.

On the other hand, today's nomenklatura - and he has no other managers - is not too interested in changing the system. She does not oppose Yushchenko as long as he does not encroach on the privileges of officials, does not start the fight against corruption. His own team is not united, intrigues are inevitable in it in the struggle for influence on the leader, opposition to radical and more balanced approaches, liberals and national democrats.

Worst of all, if Yushchenko's moneybags think that their time has come, and still try to redistribute property in their favor, threatening agreements with eastern groups. It is not clear how Yushchenko's relationship with his prime minister will develop, nor even the name of this person. And after all, the improvement of relations between the prime minister and parliament is no less, but more important for the continuity of the economic course after 2006 than between the Rada and the president.

Meeting with Putin

Official Moscow, in all likelihood, will try to complicate Yushchenko's life. Even if we do not take into account the psychological moment (imagine after everything that happened, the Putin-Yushchenko summit and his description in the press) - the recognition of Yushchenko as a “normal” leader would cast doubt on the “correctness” of the model of succession of power throughout the post-Soviet space, and the success of reforms in Ukraine would threaten the real drawing of the borders of political Europe between Chernigov and Bryansk, Lugansk and Rostov. In addition, the bilateral agenda will become more complicated indeed. Yushchenko, in agreement with the leaders of Ukrainian business, will seek the formation of a free trade zone, generally not beneficial to Russia, but already outside of any context of a single economic space, for the political integration content of which Moscow was ready to pay.

If Kyiv applies to join NATO, the question of Sevastopol will arise. And there is also the delimitation of maritime spaces, the demarcation of the border, the Odessa-Brody pipeline and a host of other issues where it will be more difficult to negotiate with Yushchenko than with Kuchma.

For Yushchenko, on the contrary, Moscow may well become the first priority, because for him dialogue with Russia is a means of cementing the country, getting closer to the eastern regions. Therefore, one should not be surprised if the President Yushchenko wants to make his first foreign visit to Moscow. I would like it to be accepted, since a return to conflict relations with Ukraine cannot serve Russian interests.

USA and Europe

Ukraine has become fashionable in Europe today. Even the tabloids write about the “oranges”. However, as people leave the Maidan, the factors that predetermined the perception by European bureaucrats of Ukraine as a country with no chance of joining the EU come to the fore again. Brussels confirms that it sees Ukraine as a neighbor, friend, but not a member of the Union. Ukraine is not very important for the EU economically, and he does not really want to quarrel with Russia once again, while the digestion of new members and the inclusion of such giants as Turkey are on the agenda. Brussels is afraid of Yushchenko in its own way, because if the reforms in Ukraine go ahead, it will become impossible to insist on granting the prospect of membership to Turkey or Albania and at the same time deny it to Ukraine. That is why Europe has never directly supported the Power of the People coalition in elections. Whether Yushchenko will be able to force the EU to change the current approach of "reform first - then we'll see" to "reform first - then membership" remains to be seen.

In the US, Yushchenko is more popular, and therefore the chances of Ukraine joining NATO, and before the elections are serious, have increased even more. However, raising the issue today would do more harm than good to Yushchenko. Membership in the alliance is popular among a minority of the population, it is unacceptable for the eastern regions and even for some members of his coalition, for example, the same Yulia Tymoshenko.

In addition, relations between Kiev and Washington may cool if Yushchenko decides to withdraw the Ukrainian military contingent from Iraq, which is quite likely. However, it is possible that it is precisely in the process of bargaining around the presence in Iraq that Kiev will be able to find those points from which NATO's, and then the Western policy in general, towards Ukraine will be repelled.

Ukraine, its internal and external political situation cannot change overnight. And yet, after the Maidan, it is impossible to deny that there is a strong desire to achieve change in the country. And, perhaps, it will become a source of energy for the new leader of Ukraine, sufficient to overcome the challenges that he will face.

The author is the head of the Russia-EU Program at the Finnish Institute of International Relations.