если бы Украина вела себя по отношению к России так же
как Россия уже ведёт себя по отношению к Украине:
Украина требует, чтобы Россия не экспортировала оружие в Беларусь.
Украина вмешивается в политику национальной безопасности России.
Украина настаивает, что Москва должна советоваться с Киевом по всем вопросам российской энергетики.
Украина настаивает, что украинцам в России необходимо предоставить в полном объёме те же права национального меньшинства, какими пользуются русские в Украине.
Украина настаивает, что территории, отошедшие к России в межвоенный период, переданы "незаконно", и активно поддерживает сепаратизм в бывшем украинском регионе -- Кубани. Киев настаивает на том, что Краснодар отошёл к России противозаконно.
Ющенко объясняет западным лидерам, что Россия -- "искусственное государство", которое неизбежно развалится.
Ющенко осуждает возвеличивание сталинизма в России.
из статьи Тараса Кузьо,
Poor Russian-Ukrainian relations: Who is to blame? (статья под катом)
а вообще вариантов немеряно, чего Украина может делать в том же ключе, что и Россия. например, для начала заслать к ним Поплавского.
Poor Russian-Ukrainian relations: Who is to blame?
Taras Kuzio
President Dmitri Medvedev's open letter to his Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yushchenko, less than a week after Russian orthodox Patriarch Kyrill's ten-day visit to Ukraine, would have created a flurry of diplomatic activity between two "normal" neighbours, but, alas, Russia and Ukraine are not normal neighbours. The Kyrill visit and Medvedev letter should be seen as two parts of the same Russian geopolitical strategy towards Ukraine that verges on the paranoia. In Moscow's eyes, Ukraine is slowly being "lost" to Russia and there is therefore an urgent need to rectify this divorce not of a neighbor but of "brotherly peoples", in Russian parlance.
After Russia's disastrous and illegal intervention into Ukrainian internal affairs during the 2004 presidential elections many thought that Russia had learned its lessons but the Medvedev letter shows that this not to be the case. Russia has learned nothing from 2004 and will continue to seek to intervene in Ukrainian affairs even when -- as on every occasion -- it so obviously backfires.
Medvedev's Five Gripes
NATO
The charge that Yushchenko is pushing Ukraine into NATO is the opposite of what Moscow claims. Ukraine had an opportune chance to enter NATO in 2006 but it failed to receive a Membership Action Plan (MAP) in Riga because the president believed his strategic priority should be not Ukraine's national security but preventing Yulia Tymoshenko from returning as prime minister after the March parliamentary elections. If Ukraine had established an orange coalition and government after the 2006 elections Kyiv would have received a MAP in Riga; it did not receive a MAP because Viktor Yanukovych unexpectedly returned as prime minister that summer and immediately stated that Ukraine was disinterested in a MAP.
Russia's association of NATO with Yushchenko is therefore out of place, as it is for another historical reason. The first president to declare Ukraine's intention of seeking NATO membership was Leonid Kuchma in 2002, a declaration of intent that was transformed into, and included within, the 2003 law on national security passed in parliament with the support of the Party of Regions.
This is not the only occasion where events are the opposite to what they should be. It was after all the "pro-Russian" Yanukovych and Kuchma who sent Ukrainian troops to Iraq and the "pro-Western" President Yushchenko who brought them home. Yushchenko's report on his alleged fulfillment of his 2004 election programme, which is available on the presidents web site, includes the withdrawal from Iraq as an example of the fulfillment of one of his pledges to Ukrainian voters.
Russia's paranoia is also misplaced because pro-NATO politicians have traditionally not included any mention of NATO in their election programmes. Each of the Our Ukraine bloc programmes from the last three elections as well as Yushchenko's 2004 programme never once mentioned the word "NATO".
Georgia
Medvedev's accusations of Ukrainian arms supplies to Georgia have been followed by accusations that Ukrainians fought alongside Georgians against South Ossetians in August 2008. Ukraine began supplying arms to Georgia in the Kuchma era and has continued to do so in a completely legal manner: there is no international arms embargo against Georgia.
Ukrainians did indeed fight in Georgia and Chechnya in the first half of the 1990s, primarily from the extreme right UNA-UNSO (Ukrainian National Assembly-Ukrainian Peoples Self Defence). But, UNA-UNSO disintegrated in the late 1990s and today no longer exists.
One UNA-UNSO leader -- Andriy Shkil -- is a Tymoshenko bloc deputy. Another - Dmytro Korchynsky - heads the Bratstvo organization that is a member of the Eurasian movement, reinforcing long-held suspicions of his links to Russian intelligence (Eurasian ideologist Aleksandr Dugin is close to the Russian leadership). UNA-UNSO could not have fought last year in South Ossetia as it no longer exists except in the minds of Russian paranoid leaders. In the 2004 elections "Ukrainian nationalist groups" that paraded in Kyiv in "support" of Yushchenko were funded by the Kuchma authorities in order to discredit Yushchenko as a "fascist" and "nationalist". If any "UNA-UNSO" members were in Georgia they were likely to be on the FSB payroll.
A final point should be made that Russia overlooks; namely, that Ukraine has a strategic interest in Georgia over the question of separatism. Three out of the four original GUAM (Georgia-Ukraine-Azerbaijan-Moldova) members have Russian-backed frozen conflicts and a fourth (Ukraine) has Russian-backed separatism. Russia's increasingly aggressive stance on the Crimea and Sevastopol and its de facto annexation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia are naturally seen by Kyiv as part of a new Russian neo-imperial strategy towards its neighbours.
Moscow fails to recognize the duplicity of its policies and how they have undermined relations with all of its neighbours, including with once pro-Russian Belarus. Russia is one of the declared nuclear powers which gave Ukraine security assurances in 1994 in return for Kuchma agreeing to Ukraine's de-nuclearisation. Russia though, poses a territorial threat to Ukraine. Why Ukraine is silent on this question remains unclear: what is clear is that Kuchma gave up the world's third largest nuclear weapons arsenal in return for empty words.
The situation is indeed fraught and increasingly recognised by the outside world as dangerous. As The Economist (22 August) wrote, "full-blown military conflict with Ukraine seems unlikely but is no longer unthinkable". The Economist wrote that aggression towards its neighbours has become a way of life for Russia. As seen in 2008 in Georgia, the EU and NATO will not intervene in the event of a Russian invasion of the Crimea.
Black Sea Fleet
The issue of Sevastopol and the Black Sea Fleet have become more acute as of late because of Russian - not Ukrainian actions. Although Russia de jure recognized Sevastopol as a Ukrainian city in the 1997 inter-state treaty de facto Moscow has never regarded Sevastopol as sovereign Ukrainian territory, acting instead as if it remained its owner. Russian politicians add to this air of instability through regular forays into the peninsula where they claim that Sevastopol was "illegally" transferred to Ukraine in 1954.
During the Yushchenko presidency the Ukrainian side has become more assertive in nipping in the bud separatist groups, banning the entry of Russian extremist politicians, halting illegal actions by the Black Sea Fleet (such as transporting missiles without permission in urban areas) and expelling Russian spies involved in subversive activities. Such stern action is long overdue as Kuchma permitted Russia and the Black Sea Fleet to act as lords of the (Crimean) manor. As Sevastopol Mayor Sergei Kunitsyn told The New York Times (28 August), "Ukraine has become more demanding, and has a right to do that".
A final factor that should be raised is Russia's disrespect for the Ukrainian constitution which rules out foreign bases on Ukrainian territory. The Black Sea Fleet is "temporarily" based for twenty years in Sevastopol and should have left the port by 2017. Russian politicians repeatedly speculate over the question of extending the Black Sea Fleet lease indefinitely assuming that a "pro-Russian" politician, such as Yanukovych, would become president and facilitate this step.
This ignores the fact that "pro-Russian forces" would never be in a position to command a two thirds majority of the Ukrainian parliament that is required to change the constitution. Even if the constitution is somehow changed to permit Ukraine to host foreign bases then why could pro-Western politicians not demand that NATO also have a military base? In supporting Russia's demands on extending the Black Sea Fleet base beyond 2017 the Party of Regions undermines its own anti-NATO platform through seeking Ukraine's neutrality.
Gas Pipelines
Russia has been a staunch critic of Prime Minister Tymoshenko's March deal with the EU to modernise its pipelines because this undermines Russia's long-term strategy of seeking to take control over them, as Moscow has successfully done in Belarus and Moldova. Kuchma, Yanukovych and Arseniy Yatseniuk have to varying degrees supported a gas consortium with Russia while Tymoshenko and to a lesser extent Yushchenko have ruled this out. It was Tymoshenko, Russia has seemingly forgotten -- not Yushchenko -- who organized a 430 vote in February 2007 for a law that ruled out the privatization or lease of Ukraine's gas pipelines. And, it was Tymoshenko that signed the EU deal.
History and Language
The revival of Ukrainian national history did not begin under Yushchenko, nor was he the first Ukrainian leader to declare the 1933 famine an act of "genocide". Ukraine's Russophile history under the USSR began to be debunked in the late Soviet era and the process has continued throughout the next two decades until the present.
Kuchma first raised the issue of the famine as "genocide" in 2003 on its 70th anniversary; Yushchenko merely expanded the scope of the campaign and took it to heart. No Ukrainian president will change the direction of the teaching of Ukrainian national history back to a Russophile orientation (as Alyaksandr Lukashenka did after coming to power in Belarus in 1994)Â or move to the Russian position of rehabilitating Stalinism.
Russia continually raises the red herring of language and how Yushchenko is allegedly repressing the Russian language. Moscow ignores the fact that it was under Kuchma in 1996 that the Ukrainian language was constitutionally codified as the only state language. Moscow and the Party of Regions, whose leader -- Yanukovych -- will campaign again in the January 2010 presidential elections on a platform of making Russian a second state language, also ignores two other factors.
Firstly, Russian is not being squeezed out of Ukraine. Any cursory look inside a newspaper kiosk in Kyiv will tell you that the Russian language dominates the private newspaper and magazine sector. All of the magazines catering for the new Ukrainian middle class are in Russian.
Secondly, in sternly demanding rights for Russian speakers in Ukraine, Moscow is at the same time rejecting any rights for the second largest national minority in Russia -- Ukrainians. The Russian authorities argue that Ukrainians and Russians are very close people and therefore there is no need for Ukrainian language schools in Russia. If the same argument were to be made in Ukraine all Russian language schools would be closed.
Conclusion
Neither side in any conflict is one hundred percent innocent. Nevertheless, the Ukrainian side of the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, President Yushchenko, has pursued policies that were in the main begun under Kuchma. Ekho Moskvy talk show host and political commentator Yevgeny Kiselyov wrote in the Moscow Times (14 August) that "All of the problems the president (Medvedev) mentioned do exist, but they first appeared long ago and most had arisen even before Yushchenko took office". In addition, Kiselyov believes that Medvedev, "inflated the importance of these problems. They hardly justify the president of one country leveling such scathing statements at the president of a neighboring country".
What have changed are not Ukrainian policies but the current Russian leadership compared to the 1990s under Borys Yeltsin. This factor is coupled with the movement from democracy and retreat from empire in Russia towards nationalism, xenophobia and neo-imperialism under Medvedev-Putin.
What if Ukraine Pursued the Same Kind of Policies towards Russia?
Ukraine demands that Russia should not export arms to Belarus.
Ukraine intervenes in Russian national security policies.
Ukraine insists that Moscow consult with Kyiv about all Russian energy questions.
Ukraine insists that the Ukrainian minority in Russia be granted full minority rights as Russian speakers receive in Ukraine.
Ukraine insists that territorial exchanges in favour of Russia in the inter-war period are "illegal" and begins to support separatism in the former Ukrainian Cossack region of the Kuban. Kyiv insists that Krasnodar was illegally transferred to Russia.
Yushchenko tells Western leaders that Russia is an "artificial state" that will break up.
Yushchenko condemns the glorification of Stalinism in Russia.
Украина требует, чтобы Россия не экспортировала оружие в Беларусь.
Украина вмешивается в политику национальной безопасности России.
Украина настаивает, что Москва должна советоваться с Киевом по всем вопросам российской энергетики.
Украина настаивает, что украинцам в России необходимо предоставить в полном объёме те же права национального меньшинства, какими пользуются русские в Украине.
Украина настаивает, что территории, отошедшие к России в межвоенный период, переданы "незаконно", и активно поддерживает сепаратизм в бывшем украинском регионе -- Кубани. Киев настаивает на том, что Краснодар отошёл к России противозаконно.
Ющенко объясняет западным лидерам, что Россия -- "искусственное государство", которое неизбежно развалится.
Ющенко осуждает возвеличивание сталинизма в России.
из статьи Тараса Кузьо,
Poor Russian-Ukrainian relations: Who is to blame? (статья под катом)
а вообще вариантов немеряно, чего Украина может делать в том же ключе, что и Россия. например, для начала заслать к ним Поплавского.
Poor Russian-Ukrainian relations: Who is to blame?
Taras Kuzio
President Dmitri Medvedev's open letter to his Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yushchenko, less than a week after Russian orthodox Patriarch Kyrill's ten-day visit to Ukraine, would have created a flurry of diplomatic activity between two "normal" neighbours, but, alas, Russia and Ukraine are not normal neighbours. The Kyrill visit and Medvedev letter should be seen as two parts of the same Russian geopolitical strategy towards Ukraine that verges on the paranoia. In Moscow's eyes, Ukraine is slowly being "lost" to Russia and there is therefore an urgent need to rectify this divorce not of a neighbor but of "brotherly peoples", in Russian parlance.
After Russia's disastrous and illegal intervention into Ukrainian internal affairs during the 2004 presidential elections many thought that Russia had learned its lessons but the Medvedev letter shows that this not to be the case. Russia has learned nothing from 2004 and will continue to seek to intervene in Ukrainian affairs even when -- as on every occasion -- it so obviously backfires.
Medvedev's Five Gripes
NATO
The charge that Yushchenko is pushing Ukraine into NATO is the opposite of what Moscow claims. Ukraine had an opportune chance to enter NATO in 2006 but it failed to receive a Membership Action Plan (MAP) in Riga because the president believed his strategic priority should be not Ukraine's national security but preventing Yulia Tymoshenko from returning as prime minister after the March parliamentary elections. If Ukraine had established an orange coalition and government after the 2006 elections Kyiv would have received a MAP in Riga; it did not receive a MAP because Viktor Yanukovych unexpectedly returned as prime minister that summer and immediately stated that Ukraine was disinterested in a MAP.
Russia's association of NATO with Yushchenko is therefore out of place, as it is for another historical reason. The first president to declare Ukraine's intention of seeking NATO membership was Leonid Kuchma in 2002, a declaration of intent that was transformed into, and included within, the 2003 law on national security passed in parliament with the support of the Party of Regions.
This is not the only occasion where events are the opposite to what they should be. It was after all the "pro-Russian" Yanukovych and Kuchma who sent Ukrainian troops to Iraq and the "pro-Western" President Yushchenko who brought them home. Yushchenko's report on his alleged fulfillment of his 2004 election programme, which is available on the presidents web site, includes the withdrawal from Iraq as an example of the fulfillment of one of his pledges to Ukrainian voters.
Russia's paranoia is also misplaced because pro-NATO politicians have traditionally not included any mention of NATO in their election programmes. Each of the Our Ukraine bloc programmes from the last three elections as well as Yushchenko's 2004 programme never once mentioned the word "NATO".
Georgia
Medvedev's accusations of Ukrainian arms supplies to Georgia have been followed by accusations that Ukrainians fought alongside Georgians against South Ossetians in August 2008. Ukraine began supplying arms to Georgia in the Kuchma era and has continued to do so in a completely legal manner: there is no international arms embargo against Georgia.
Ukrainians did indeed fight in Georgia and Chechnya in the first half of the 1990s, primarily from the extreme right UNA-UNSO (Ukrainian National Assembly-Ukrainian Peoples Self Defence). But, UNA-UNSO disintegrated in the late 1990s and today no longer exists.
One UNA-UNSO leader -- Andriy Shkil -- is a Tymoshenko bloc deputy. Another - Dmytro Korchynsky - heads the Bratstvo organization that is a member of the Eurasian movement, reinforcing long-held suspicions of his links to Russian intelligence (Eurasian ideologist Aleksandr Dugin is close to the Russian leadership). UNA-UNSO could not have fought last year in South Ossetia as it no longer exists except in the minds of Russian paranoid leaders. In the 2004 elections "Ukrainian nationalist groups" that paraded in Kyiv in "support" of Yushchenko were funded by the Kuchma authorities in order to discredit Yushchenko as a "fascist" and "nationalist". If any "UNA-UNSO" members were in Georgia they were likely to be on the FSB payroll.
A final point should be made that Russia overlooks; namely, that Ukraine has a strategic interest in Georgia over the question of separatism. Three out of the four original GUAM (Georgia-Ukraine-Azerbaijan-Moldova) members have Russian-backed frozen conflicts and a fourth (Ukraine) has Russian-backed separatism. Russia's increasingly aggressive stance on the Crimea and Sevastopol and its de facto annexation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia are naturally seen by Kyiv as part of a new Russian neo-imperial strategy towards its neighbours.
Moscow fails to recognize the duplicity of its policies and how they have undermined relations with all of its neighbours, including with once pro-Russian Belarus. Russia is one of the declared nuclear powers which gave Ukraine security assurances in 1994 in return for Kuchma agreeing to Ukraine's de-nuclearisation. Russia though, poses a territorial threat to Ukraine. Why Ukraine is silent on this question remains unclear: what is clear is that Kuchma gave up the world's third largest nuclear weapons arsenal in return for empty words.
The situation is indeed fraught and increasingly recognised by the outside world as dangerous. As The Economist (22 August) wrote, "full-blown military conflict with Ukraine seems unlikely but is no longer unthinkable". The Economist wrote that aggression towards its neighbours has become a way of life for Russia. As seen in 2008 in Georgia, the EU and NATO will not intervene in the event of a Russian invasion of the Crimea.
Black Sea Fleet
The issue of Sevastopol and the Black Sea Fleet have become more acute as of late because of Russian - not Ukrainian actions. Although Russia de jure recognized Sevastopol as a Ukrainian city in the 1997 inter-state treaty de facto Moscow has never regarded Sevastopol as sovereign Ukrainian territory, acting instead as if it remained its owner. Russian politicians add to this air of instability through regular forays into the peninsula where they claim that Sevastopol was "illegally" transferred to Ukraine in 1954.
During the Yushchenko presidency the Ukrainian side has become more assertive in nipping in the bud separatist groups, banning the entry of Russian extremist politicians, halting illegal actions by the Black Sea Fleet (such as transporting missiles without permission in urban areas) and expelling Russian spies involved in subversive activities. Such stern action is long overdue as Kuchma permitted Russia and the Black Sea Fleet to act as lords of the (Crimean) manor. As Sevastopol Mayor Sergei Kunitsyn told The New York Times (28 August), "Ukraine has become more demanding, and has a right to do that".
A final factor that should be raised is Russia's disrespect for the Ukrainian constitution which rules out foreign bases on Ukrainian territory. The Black Sea Fleet is "temporarily" based for twenty years in Sevastopol and should have left the port by 2017. Russian politicians repeatedly speculate over the question of extending the Black Sea Fleet lease indefinitely assuming that a "pro-Russian" politician, such as Yanukovych, would become president and facilitate this step.
This ignores the fact that "pro-Russian forces" would never be in a position to command a two thirds majority of the Ukrainian parliament that is required to change the constitution. Even if the constitution is somehow changed to permit Ukraine to host foreign bases then why could pro-Western politicians not demand that NATO also have a military base? In supporting Russia's demands on extending the Black Sea Fleet base beyond 2017 the Party of Regions undermines its own anti-NATO platform through seeking Ukraine's neutrality.
Gas Pipelines
Russia has been a staunch critic of Prime Minister Tymoshenko's March deal with the EU to modernise its pipelines because this undermines Russia's long-term strategy of seeking to take control over them, as Moscow has successfully done in Belarus and Moldova. Kuchma, Yanukovych and Arseniy Yatseniuk have to varying degrees supported a gas consortium with Russia while Tymoshenko and to a lesser extent Yushchenko have ruled this out. It was Tymoshenko, Russia has seemingly forgotten -- not Yushchenko -- who organized a 430 vote in February 2007 for a law that ruled out the privatization or lease of Ukraine's gas pipelines. And, it was Tymoshenko that signed the EU deal.
History and Language
The revival of Ukrainian national history did not begin under Yushchenko, nor was he the first Ukrainian leader to declare the 1933 famine an act of "genocide". Ukraine's Russophile history under the USSR began to be debunked in the late Soviet era and the process has continued throughout the next two decades until the present.
Kuchma first raised the issue of the famine as "genocide" in 2003 on its 70th anniversary; Yushchenko merely expanded the scope of the campaign and took it to heart. No Ukrainian president will change the direction of the teaching of Ukrainian national history back to a Russophile orientation (as Alyaksandr Lukashenka did after coming to power in Belarus in 1994)Â or move to the Russian position of rehabilitating Stalinism.
Russia continually raises the red herring of language and how Yushchenko is allegedly repressing the Russian language. Moscow ignores the fact that it was under Kuchma in 1996 that the Ukrainian language was constitutionally codified as the only state language. Moscow and the Party of Regions, whose leader -- Yanukovych -- will campaign again in the January 2010 presidential elections on a platform of making Russian a second state language, also ignores two other factors.
Firstly, Russian is not being squeezed out of Ukraine. Any cursory look inside a newspaper kiosk in Kyiv will tell you that the Russian language dominates the private newspaper and magazine sector. All of the magazines catering for the new Ukrainian middle class are in Russian.
Secondly, in sternly demanding rights for Russian speakers in Ukraine, Moscow is at the same time rejecting any rights for the second largest national minority in Russia -- Ukrainians. The Russian authorities argue that Ukrainians and Russians are very close people and therefore there is no need for Ukrainian language schools in Russia. If the same argument were to be made in Ukraine all Russian language schools would be closed.
Conclusion
Neither side in any conflict is one hundred percent innocent. Nevertheless, the Ukrainian side of the Ukrainian-Russian conflict, President Yushchenko, has pursued policies that were in the main begun under Kuchma. Ekho Moskvy talk show host and political commentator Yevgeny Kiselyov wrote in the Moscow Times (14 August) that "All of the problems the president (Medvedev) mentioned do exist, but they first appeared long ago and most had arisen even before Yushchenko took office". In addition, Kiselyov believes that Medvedev, "inflated the importance of these problems. They hardly justify the president of one country leveling such scathing statements at the president of a neighboring country".
What have changed are not Ukrainian policies but the current Russian leadership compared to the 1990s under Borys Yeltsin. This factor is coupled with the movement from democracy and retreat from empire in Russia towards nationalism, xenophobia and neo-imperialism under Medvedev-Putin.
What if Ukraine Pursued the Same Kind of Policies towards Russia?
Ukraine demands that Russia should not export arms to Belarus.
Ukraine intervenes in Russian national security policies.
Ukraine insists that Moscow consult with Kyiv about all Russian energy questions.
Ukraine insists that the Ukrainian minority in Russia be granted full minority rights as Russian speakers receive in Ukraine.
Ukraine insists that territorial exchanges in favour of Russia in the inter-war period are "illegal" and begins to support separatism in the former Ukrainian Cossack region of the Kuban. Kyiv insists that Krasnodar was illegally transferred to Russia.
Yushchenko tells Western leaders that Russia is an "artificial state" that will break up.
Yushchenko condemns the glorification of Stalinism in Russia.