Ukrainiana

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Cold Breeze in Crimea, Unease in Kyiv

Amid an interregnum caused by foundering coalition talks in Kyiv, swarms of Crimean protesters are celebrating a petty victory over Euroatlantic imperialism. Over the past two weeks, the hornet’s nest of Russophilic rednecks has successfully targeted preparations for the US-Ukrainian naval exercise Sea Breeze 2006 scheduled for July-August. Following the evacuation of the US Army reservists, who came there to set up the infrastructure, the toll continues to rise. Due to increasing political turbulence, the British-Ukrainian airborne exercise Tight Knot 2006 planned for June 14 in the neighboring oblast of Mykolayiv, has been postponed.

On closer examination, such well-coordinated effort goes way beyond the framework of knee-jerk Yankee-bashing carnivals so commonplace in Southeast Ukraine. Heavily Russified by tsars and the Soviets, Southerners never approved of the multinational exercises held in the Black Sea since 1997. Nor did they ever obstruct them to any significant degree. What accounts for the sudden buildup is the protracted power struggle in Kyiv over cabinet seats.

Ten weeks into gestation, the tripartite Orange coalition has became a sore spot even for the most resilient grassroots supporters. But as the Orange ones negotiate their way through egomania, the Blue ones, aka the Regionalists, were stuck with maniac depression, desperately trying to repaint the coalition their way. Their last-ditch takeover strategy aims to seduce whoever they can into playing the surrogate mother they need in order to produce a coalition.

Last week, negotiations in the Orange camp ground to a halt, with the final bone of contention being the Speaker’s seat. The Socialists (SPU) booked the country’s third-highest post for their leader, Oleksander Moroz. Craving control over the legislature, they threatened to pursue the opposition track unless their demand is fulfilled. The cravings represented in this ultimatum case are also embedded in nostalgia, something of a call of nature for Mr. Moroz, Speaker of the Rada, 1994-98.

Nasha Ukraina (NU), which fell from fame in the March election, but still came ahead of the SPU, has refused to pamper the Socialists. In fact, the NU talent pool is teeming with midcap tycoons willing to accept Spartan, if not doggy-style, accommodations from the Regions Party (PRU). Rumors persist that members of Yushchenko’s inner circle have strongly advocated for an NU-PRU alliance, despite an obvious death knell for Yushchenko’s reelection chances stemming from this alliance. (If only that could save them from the gender thing about Tymonatrix.)

Of course, the likelihood of defection remains largely academic. Still, in the event of either player swinging to the other side, an open-arms reception from the PRU is guaranteed. And if he is lucky, the defector will even qualify for a few crumbs off the Cabinet’s table. Needless to say, draconian scenarios of the above kind would leave Yuliya Tymoshenko, the matron of the would-be coalition, in severe distress.

Against this background, the ‘Crimean Carnival’ appears to be part of a publicity campaign designed to stoke the PRU brand, prominently displaying Yanukovych as the ‘doer’ type of leader capable of uniting Ukraine and keeping it safe from harm. To establish follow-up rapport with their voters, the bourgeois Regionalists and their Communist and Progressive Socialist alter egos, featuring this election’s unsung diva Nataliya Vitrenko, went on a media rampage. They aptly tossed the Crimea into the nationwide cauldron of public opinion and stirred it with Cold War agitprop leftovers.

From the days Greek and Roman colonies spread along the coastline to the chronicles of the Crimean War, the Nazi atrocities and the Yalta Conference, the Crimea’s relations with Western civilization span millennia. By banking on the bloody chapters and the legitimate sentiment they evoke in the audience, the Regionalists exploited the Crimea for their own benefit.

The sizzling reports of ‘Southern hospitality’ that resulted from the Regionalist rampage conveniently resonate with the ‘Uncle Sam lovers’ in the Kremlin. Indirectly, they help rock the deadlocked negotiation boat, until, driven off the edge by the greedy companions, somebody feels free to board the back of the Regionalist bus. Upon achievement of this objective, the Regionalists would banquet in the Kremlin and take further instruction.

Poor babushkas. Little did they know that their gods have been cheating them left and right, hiring American PR talent by the ton. Now what would these elderly ladies think of them who badmouth Uncle Sum on Tuesday if they received a tip that these very guys had bought from Uncle Sam on Monday? And by the way, up until their leader’s ouster in 2004, the Rada Regionalists had never hesitated in putting their stamp of approval on Ukraine-NATO military exercises.

Ukrainian officials clearly goofed when they ‘forgot’ to obtain the Rada’s permit, but the NATO lobby is not the only party who took a beating. The kiss off episode involving USS Advantage, whose cargo of materiel and munitions remained port-bound, under the tight surveillance of anti-NATO activists, boomeranged on the local denizens financially. Unless it was a calculated risk, they simply let themselves be taken advantage of by the cause they espouse.
Like all Black Sea resorts, Theodosia hugely depends on tourist revenue. Based on this fact of life, it turns out those patriots waving Russian tricolors are in the business of buzzsawing the branch they’re sitting on. One can only guess at the revenues lost to the town’s budget due to the hysteria, as Yankees went home with their money unspent and Russkies did a great job of siphoning customers away to Black Sea resorts of their own.

Despite the whole syndicated show the Regionalists made out of providing protective status to the Russian language — in regions where it is spoken by an overwhelming majority — communications gaps have not ceased to exist. When you tell them in Russian that Moscow’s liaison with NATO surpasses Kyiv’s both in scale and scope, they’re not listening.

True, the majority of Ukrainians still do not approve of NATO membership. Whatever their views, nationals of Ukraine have the right to peaceful assembly. But this right does not apply to foreign nationals, namely Russian activists, who customarily pull sneak attacks on the Crimea.

Their voyages to Ukraine obviously do not pass the reciprocity test. Should a group of Ukrainian activists break camp near a Russian naval base on the Kamchatka peninsula, protesting against a Sino-Russian military exercise, how would the Russian authorities react? Would they ever make it past the Russian border?

Thankfully, the Ukrainian authorities have finally learned to say no. Persona non grata status has been awarded to Russian Duma MP Konstantin Zatulin and Vice Speaker Vladimir Zhirinovsky. These Kremlin-appointed missionaries to Ukraine, known by their venomous verbiage and utmost disrespect for things Ukrainian, deserve no other treatment. Now they can save on airfare and make do with videoconferencing.

One, two, Puttie's coming for you; three four better lock your door; five six, grab your crucifix… The comic dimension of Moscow’s ‘good neighbor’ policy knows no boundaries.

Saturday, June 10, 2006

Dispelling Putin’s Gas Rhetoric

Lecturing the Western media, President Putin found himself in one of those rhetorical roller-coaster loops where he managed to put a brave face on a grisly case. The Kremlin’s highly articulate Tarzan thumped his chest, taking credit for years of subsidizing the Ukrainian economy.

He also shamed the West for not being cooperative as Russia struggled hard to get the monkey off its back. (Now see this! Ukraine piggy-backed by Russia — fantasy meets hardcore, eh?)

The moment Ukraine checked out of Putin’s paradise, the West should have taken the poor crittur under its wing, so his argument went. After all, having welcomed the Orange Revolution, the West should now shoulder the burden. It should not shun helping Ukraine pay its way to the EU. And that includes the energy bills. Why in the world should the Russian heartbreak hotel pay for it?

On the face of it, Putin’s mounts a no-nonsense defense of the Russian taxpayers’ money. However, a casual perusal of a history textbook would reveal that the subsidy portion of his argument may not be as solid as it seems.
For over three hundred years Ukraine had been a colony of Russia. A waste of imperial resources? The tsar’s treasurers had had enough of a time frame to determine whether Ukraine added any value.

Thousands of Ukrainian Cossacks left their bones in the marshlands from which St. Petersburg, Putin’s native city, sprang. By that time Ukraine was called the breadbasket of Europe.

In the 1930s, Stalin carried out his business plan of industrialization and collectivization. Some 7 million Ukrainian farmers lost their lives ‘cross-subsidizing’ it.

Back in the 60s, when Puttie was a pioneer, the Soviet equivalent of a boyscout, Ukraine supplied a good share of the coal and gas within the country whose Communist ideals he worshipped. And he worshipped them with a devotion so intense that he couldn’t resist a career with the KGB. The Soviet Union’s deadliest line of ICBMs, including the SS-18 'Satan,' was made by Yuzhmash, the Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine-based aerospace powerhouse. That’s where Putin's eager beaver buddy Kuchma bossed around. Any Freudian interpretations?

In the 70s and 80s, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic dispatched its human capital to the newly discovered oil fields in Siberia, a region where the Gulag relocation program had already placed millions of Ukrainians. Almost 3 million Ukrainians, most of them with college degrees, are now living in Russia, according to the 2002 census. Any schools where their kids can learn Ukrainian? One or two in the entire Russian Federation.

Following Ukraine's independence, Russia had indeed supplied Ukraine with oil and natural gas at discount prices. Still, there's something Putin failed to mention.

First, transit fees for Russian gas, 80 percent of which is exported to Europe via Ukrainian pipelines, had conveyed equal generosity.

Second, common Ukrainians were not the only ones who cashed in on the energy subsidies Putin talked about. With the steel boom that took off at the turn of the millenium, Ukraine's already privatized yet energy-guzzling industry accounted for the bulk of the energy consumed in the country. The profits went straight to offshore companies run by Moscow-friendly uber-oligarchs like Pinchuk and Akhmetov, the driving force behind Yanukovych. Mr. Putin had campaigned for this candidate on Ukrainian national television and even prematurely congratulated him.

Third, once the 'Energizer Bunny 2004' was gone with the Orange Revolution, Putin and his Kremlin strategists dove into a state of watchful hibernation. They resurfaced on New Year's Day and sent shock waves throughout the world with their second shot at Ukraine. Nothing could be more favorable for the 'big one' they held in store than the monthlong Orange ordeal raging on in Ukraine, so they thought. In Ukraine's parliamentary campaign they set out to inflate Yanukovych with the gas issue so as to land him in the high-stakes PM seat. Starting with Jan. 1, 2006, a constitutional amendment trimmed the powers of the President while empowering the Prime Minister.

Somehow, Yanukovych fell short of gaining a majority in the election. As soon as the Orange coalition gets hammered out, he will helm the opposition.
Unfortunately, Russia's commitment to market pricing does not extend to the Crimea. For an annual price that resembles the revenues of a soccer stadium, Russia rents a naval base there the size of a city.

Without the shadow of a doubt, Ukraine has outstayed its welcome on Russia’s energy welfare rolls. Despite that, through a panoply of proxy parties operating in Ukraine the Kremlin keeps coming back propositioning. The deal boils down to this: gas in exchange for freedom.

May there come a day when the Ukrainians will live in a neighborhood where they won't have to wear gas masks. And if their government keeps its breath free of gas, the Russians will be better off too.

Monday, May 29, 2006

Will a Revamped GUAM Offset Russia’s ‘Grand Slam?’

With the recent summit in Kyiv, a counter-CIS caucus that owes its acronym to Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova finally seems to have ventured past the beta stage. Started in 1997 and initially called the GUUAM, this quasi-organization has lied dormant most of the time, convening annually in the spirit of ‘all talk and no action.’ Kuchma simply kept the GUUAM handy in his ‘multivector’ foreign policy portfolio just in case Russia gave him a rougher ride than his ego could tolerate.

But as the winds of democracy grew stronger, propelling the peaceful retirement of Shevarnadze and Kuchma himself, Islom Karimov of Uzbekistan became all the more estranged. In the fifteen years of his tenure, the Central Asian fiefdom of 27 million, known as the world’s second-largest producer of cotton, has hardly consumed any democratic calories. To muffle criticism of its medieval human rights record, Tashkent had eagerly hosted a US airbase, once Washington had plunged into the war on terror. However, Karimov’s hospitality did not interfere with his loyalty to the Tashkent Pact, the cornerstone CIS agreement on security.
Last year, when Uzbek authorities brutally suppressed an Islamist opposition rally in Andijan, Ukraine joined the West in condemning the massacre. By that time Uzbekistan had already announced its complete withdrawal from the GUUAM.

After Uzbekistan had sailed back for a safe harbor in Russia’s orbit, the name sharpened to the GUAM. A sharper brand name certainly communicates a sharper sense of purpose. Among pundits, the GUAM creates a strong association with Guam, a major US military base in the Pacific. The GUAM summits have customarily enjoyed participation by US and EU representatives. In this regard, they provide a nexus for the pro-Western administrations in Ukraine and Georgia in their pursuit of NATO and EU membership.

The Kremlin, unable to control its allergic reaction to the ‘colored’ revolutions in these countries, slapped them with a flu of self-styled sanctions. Ukraine, for instance, swallowed a steep increase in natural gas prices plus a ban on its meat and diary products in Russia. As for Georgia, this tiny state encountered gas supply disruptions and has had its beverage exports wiped out from the Russian market.

Moldova and Azerbaijan, albeit untouched by ‘colored’ revolutions, still can’t escape having frictions with Russia.

Moldova’s soft Communist regime wrangles with Russia over the breakaway region of Transdniesteria, to which Russia funnels support. As the Kremlin stirs ferment in Moldova’s backyard, cratefuls of Moldovan wine get bulldozed in front of the cameras during hatemongering binges in Moscow. So goes the archetypal two-in-one approach popular in the Kremlin’s geopolitical distillery.

Azerbaijan’s authoritarian oligarchy may not want to risk its oil business in another bloody territorial dispute with pro-Russian Armenia. But that sort of live-and-let-live axiom doesn’t save the Azeri community in Russia from being the subject and victim of bigoted campaign ads and violent xenophobic attacks.

In fact, Armenian immigrants hardly fare any better.

Carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders, the four presidents met in Kyiv to ease their regional burdens by giving the GUAM another try. They set out to upgrade it to a full-time organization called the Organization for Democracy and Economic Development. The counter-CIS concept dwells on one simple idea: leverage. That’s exactly what the Kyiv quartet looks forward to — building an organization that will provide the leverage needed to prevent Russia from imposing its will on weaker neighbors.

Shortly after arriving in Kyiv, Georgian President Saakashvili, a graduate of the School of International Law at Kyiv State University, moved into position. He rushed to the Georgian Winefest, where he drew crowds in a heartfelt endorsement for his country’s key industry. Russia, which used to be Georgia’s major market, claims that the ban aims to stop the flood of counterfeit shipments from Georgia. While accepting some of the blame, Georgia insists that most of the counterfeit shipments originate from outside Georgia and that the ban has little to do with trade practices in the first place.

Now that Georgia hemorrhages red wine in a cold war with the Kremlin, the Wine of Liberty, as the Georgian marketers brand it, may become the hottest issue among politically savvy connoisseurs. Saakashvili reassured Ukrainian wine producers that Georgia poses no competitive threat to their business, obviously alluding to the higher price points commanded by Georgian brands. The most virulent critic of Russia and the most vivacious communicator, he epitomizes the kind of leader who walks the walk. The only of the four presidents to have studied on both sides of the Atlantic — and perhaps the only foreign leader to think of Kyiv as his stamping ground — Saakashvili arguably has Eurointegration even higher on his radar screen than Yushchenko.

Speaking at a press conference, Moldovan President Voronin welcomed soon-to-be EU members Rumania and Bulgaria to join the club. It was he who suggested rebranding the ‘GUAM’ to the ‘Organization for Democracy and Economic Development,’ in a bid to bolster enlargement.

Unwilling to further strain relations with Russia, Azeri President Aliev glossed over the ODED not being an anti-Russian organization. Still, he stated that his country had reviewed its energy policy for a more favorable outlook toward the ODED. Such equilibristic assertiveness may indicate that Azerbaijan, with its vast Caspian oil reserves and the backing of Western oil companies, positions itself to fill a niche in the European market. At a time when oil reaches record high prices and Russia raises reliability concerns, Azerbaijan could shake the rust off the Odessa-Brody pipeline.

President Yushchenko, who, compared to Saakashivili, remained more of a dove on the CIS, stressed the idea of a free trade zone within the ODED. What remains to be seen is whether the ODED will live beyond the bureaucracy. Will it become just another toothless paper tiger of nothing more than confetti value? Or will it become a vehicle for advancing common interests of real counter-CIS value?

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Cheney Chews out Energy Empire

Vice President Dick Cheney grabbed the Russian bear by the balls, in what sounds like the most vicious and delicious diatribe ever from the Bush administration’s Russian cuisine. As a guest speaker at a geopolitical get-together in Vilnius, Lithuania, Cheney made headlines by dishing out hot potatoes on the Kremlin’s conduct of foreign policy. Describing Russia’s current state of affairs, he used the words backsliding and blackmail.

Cheney, who has a background in the energy sector, elaborated on Russia’s decreasing democracy coupled with its increasing role as a global energy supplier. That the vestiges of the evil empire keep protruding themselves in Russia’s self-proclaimed vision of an energy empire breaks no news. Many of the Black and Baltic Sea leaders who assembled in Vilnius had long solicited Washington’s concurrence on their diagnosis of Moscow’s condition. The forum attracted not-so-big countries with not-so-small problems. Indeed, counties like Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine seek prosperity through preserving the fruits of democracy from the fungi of Russian despotism.

Vice President Cheney became the third top-level conservative to speak openly against Russia’s blackmail-thy-neighbor behavior. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice holds the lead for having vented her view on Moscow’s gasmanship. Senator John McCain has repeatedly reflected on the Russian issue and has urged President Bush to boycott the July G8 summit in St. Petersburg. Experts believe both Rice and McCain will run for the Republican nomination for president in 2008.

Dick Cheney, a controversial figure loathed by liberals, still deserves respect from a purely Ukrainian point of view. In the late 80s, then-Congressman Cheney visited Chernobyl. He avidly supported Ukraine’s independence when the USSR could no longer support itself. As Secretary of Defense in the Senior Bush administration and a major hawk, he helped a chicken Kiev gourmet Bush see the forest for the trees.

The Kremlin and the conservative camp seem all the more at odds. In the gung-ho days of the GOP’s rodeo on terror, Bush and Putin used to ride together. We all remember that Kodak moment when Dubya looked into Puttie’s eyes and got a sense of his soul. It was a wedding ceremony where Condi, a distinguished Sovietologist and then-NSC adviser, played the maid of honor. With the honeymoon in full swing, Moscow made no big fuss when Washington withdrew from the ABM treaty.

Being Bush’s staunch ally supplied Putin with the geopolitical currency needed to buy Washington’s silent stamp of approval on Moscow’s imperial designs in the near abroad. One version has it that, while the US went after the axis of evil, the Kremlin framed the Kuchma regime to put Ukraine into its wheel cart. Much to Putin’s gastronomic advantage, on the eve of Operation Shock and Awe, the Kolchuha scandal set off shock waves on both sides of the Atlantic, portraying Kuchma as Hussein’s accomplice and casting Ukraine into monthlong isolation.

Thanks to the relatively low US Army casualties, lack of trophy evidence of the Kolchuha transfer, and the dispatch of 1,600 Ukrainian troops to Iraq, Kuchma redeemed some of his political value. That didn’t help his successor strategy, though. The rest is history — and something Russia can’t reconcile with.

In addition to Ukraine, Russia’s hit list also includes Georgia and Moldova. Russia has banned wine imports from these countries, apparently trying to strangle their chief source of earnings. Meanwhile, Russia continues catering to the separatist enclaves in these countries. Georgia’s Abkhazia, Adzharia, and South Ossetia, as well as Moldova’s Transdniesteria, operate as Russia’s pet geopolitical subsidiaries.

Whether it’s American crusaders or Russian regionalists, the tug-of-war between Washington and Moscow has not ceased. The Bush administration is credited with record budget deficits and tax cuts for the rich. America often behaves like a bull in a China shop. Likewise, Cheney is no saint, but when it comes to Russia he calls a spade a spade. Ukraine stands to benefit from the balance-of-power effects that stem from the Cold War instincts of his cohort.

Babysitting fledgling democracies requires no troop deployments. As the West counters Russia’s predatory posture diplomatically, it will help Russia reinvent itself and become a reliable partner.

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Chernobyl Check: Is FOX News into Fahrenheit 9/11?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,191721,00.html

Your editorial on Chernobyl simply attempts to swing the scales of history in your favor. Marketed as an attempt to redress the balance, it pokes fun at the fiction just as it fools around with the fact. By recycling research on a faraway country you hardly know — in a one-sided fashion and through the prism of your domestic debate — you treat your audience to a distorted view.

So what’s the big deal?
With its biased “X-ray scan,” your editorial effectively puts a clean bill of health on a festering wound of a disaster, a disaster that has affected thousands of lives in ways unmatched by your exposure to it.

By showcasing a catalogue of overblown projections of Chernobyl’s global impact, produced by Western academia and activists, your op-ed sidetracks the issue of Chernobyl’s local legacy. Does it offer interviews with the victims and their families? Does it address the scope of day-to-day problems experienced by contaminated communities in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia? Unfortunately, no. The article lacks a first-hand field-trip dimension.

Staying on guard against The Guardian and UN-lie-teralism
Instead the article provides an introduction to self-compromising freakonomics practiced by Ukrainian officials. Their ballpark estimates ring a nasty bell, don’t they? Bottom line: Perceived as a mouthpiece of Greenpeace, Ukraine immediately qualifies for “most-unfavored-nation” status in the eyes of Americans. One can only guess at the number of conservative Americans influenced by word of mouth. Except for the countless Ukrainian Americans among them. They may have a better grasp of things.

Capitalizing on The Guardian as an intellectually impeccable guide on Ukraine may lead you up another blind alley. This well-established stronghold of the anti-American media has repeatedly traced the Orange Revolution to CIA payrolls. If you accept their side of the story at face value, please tell Director Goss that I want my $10,000 paycheck now, interest included — lol.

Your op-ed proudly quotes a UN report that portrays Chernobyl as something to be taken down a peg in the hall of self-martyrdom. Of course, the prong of your argument is invested in an organization that boasts so much credibility on the Activist Street. However gladly embraced by the media, that intimate relationship does not guarantee instant gratification in terms of foolproof fact-finding.

Do you believe that a bunch of fly-by-night UN bureaucrats, with vast resources and vague responsibilities, made a good faith effort to read my country? These guys, who drive around in caravans of tinted-window SUVs, talk about a “dependency culture.” Dependency on what? Monthly disability benefits of 60 bucks? Well, on Ukraine’s cost-of-living calculator, that doesn’t even cover the bare necessities, let alone medical bills, of which there are many. Alas, UN personnel salaries run a hundred times over what they assume to be dependency-generating. If there were an award for “Best Bureaucracy with Reverse Clientitis,” the UN would get it.

The strategy behind the UN calculus
Casualty-cutting meets cost-cutting, as simple as that. The 50 adults/9 children death toll produces a mixed reaction among stakeholders. It strikes a high note with the haves on the East River, who only heard about Chernobyl on the news and would hate to be on the “rip-off” list. In contrast, it strikes a low note with the have-nots on the Prypyat River, who bore the brunt of Chernobyl and would hate to be on the “write-off” list. Since the plant’s shutdown in 2000, the international community has repeatedly softpedaled its pledge of financial support for the badly needed sarcophagus changeover.

Let there be no doubt: Keeping a tight lid on Chernobyl’s nuclear powder barrel concerns all humanity. That’s why keeping tabs on its status presents the worst of occasions for the UN to be open to political bias.

How do Ukrainians feel about it? Emotionally speaking, the UN report amounts to claiming that only a hundred people died in the September 11 attacks, and the rest were cured. Rationally speaking, it raises a lot of technical questions.

Background: In the wake of the accident, clean-up crews had been called up from all over the USSR. Questions: Did the UN report follow the life of every “volunteer” who had shoveled the hellishly radioactive debris off the reactor’s roof so the wind could not carry it all over the world? How many are still alive? Since the USSR no longer exists, is there a real-time cross-country database of all children and adults who have died of leukemia, thyroid cancer, and related illnesses since April 26, 1986? This may sound tactless, but does it include Raisa Gorbachev, who died of thyroid cancer in 2000? How many are struggling for their lives?

Lessons learned
Chernobyl is not a case study of Greenpeace gone bad. It’s a case study of Gulag gone bad. From the Kremlin’s point of view, building a four-reactor power plant within eighty miles of the third-largest city was a good idea. In a country where life was a cheap commodity, management’s disregard for safety was the hallmark of corporate culture.

Ironically, Gorby’s failure to go public right after the accident — to keep the folks off the streets in the midst of May Day celebrations — would accelerate the glasnost-perestroika movement to the point of no return. Along with the war in Afghanistan and the earthquake in Armenia, Chernobyl counts among those moments of truth of the 80s that consigned the mammoth of Soviet bureaucracy to the dustbin of history.

Despite the quest for renewables, urged by President Bush in his State of the Union address, humanity will hardly get by without nuclear energy in the near term.

That’s why safety and accountability matter so much. Nuclear energy has no failsafe future in a world that fails to confront the past. Suppose the Ukrainian government put the 30-kilometer area surrounding Chernobyl, with its majestic forests and wildlife, on eBay for $1. How many BillionairesForBush.com would send their kids and grandkids here on summer vacation? How many CommunistsForKerry.com would come over here to play golf?

One cannot blow the mask off self-serving liberalism with the winds of self-serving conservatism, and vice versa.

At the end of the day, America’s irritation-infatuation with Greenpeace can hardly compare to Ukraine’s involvement with Chernobyl. While the liberals and conservatives of America keep pointing fingers at each other, we the people of Ukraine are left holding the bag.

Thank you, VOA, RFE/RL, BBC
You guys did a great job. You operated the kind of scaremongering machine that scared Big Brother into extinction.

While out of town on weekends, many Soviet folks tuned their radios to these channels, jammed as they were by the KGB. With their ears sharp and cutting through all the noise, these freedom-seeking folks flocked for a dose of freedom of information. That’s how they learned about Chernobyl and the health hazards it posed. They learned it from the US and British governments, run by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher.

I do hope that Fox News has more than a dose of freedom of information to offer twenty years since then. And I do believe that America’s freedom gene has not mutated.

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

We’re Almost There: Fishing for a Coalition Nears Completion

As they grapple with the election results that spell a dramatic seesaw of power between them, the “Orange Orchestra” finally seem to be getting their act together. To discuss the shape of things to come, the leaders of all five incoming parliamentary factions met with President Yushchenko in his executive suite on Bankova Street. Afterwards, they moved outdoors and issued statements, the most notable of which was Yuliya Tymoshenko’s. The Lady of Maidan unveiled her vision of a tripartite BYT-NSNU-SPU coalition, whose launch she estimated to be a matter of days. She minced no words when she added that the opposition could expect to chair several Rada committees and the Oversight Board. Trying to maintain an air of self-confidence, yet scrambling for words, Yanukovych expressed his readiness to assume an opposition role.

Three weeks have passed since the Ukrainians took to the polls to decide which parties best represent their interests in legislatures of all levels. When handed four separate ballot sheets — populated by more than thirty parties apiece — voters had their attention span strained as never before. The forces of democratic Darwinism unleashed by these papyruses have spared only five chariots at the national level. Known by their Ukrainian acronyms, they scored as follows:

PRU — 32.14, or 186 seats
BYT — 22.29, or 129 seats
NSNU — 13.95, or 81 seats
CPU — 5.69, or 33 seats
KPU — 3.66, or 21 seats

They will be proud entrants into the pyramid of Ukrainian parliamentarism. As for the also-rans, few of them will experience a political afterlife. With all due respect, or lack of it, as the case may be, outparliament mummification will be their most likely lot.

No matter how vocal the claims of fraud and demands for vote recounts, the litmus test for the Ukrainian democracy came out pretty clean. Even the Kremlin alchemists found themselves undersupplied on the public relations clout with which to attack the results. After all, their coachee has carried the Rust and Sun Belts, chalking up a plurality of votes nationwide.

Ironically, NSNU, the core party behind the Orange Revolution, which had given Ukraine the wings of democracy, made a belly landing in this election. Caught in the turbulence of scandals that shook its reputation, NSNU lost millions of voters, who switched to BYT, making it the most powerful Orange party. No wonder, with a meager 13.95 percent of the vote, compared to BYT’s 22.29 percent, NSNU top brass called in sick for a few days. In this shameful boost-bust scene, Tymoshenko starred as the centerfold of the election, while Yushchenko posed as the emperor with no clothes.

In what appears to be a clear-cut case of “you’re OK, I’m not OK,” NSNU did the most backpedaling, providing a major reason why the “Orange Orchestra” has failed to dovetail, thus far. The BYT-NSNU-SPU coalition went off to a series of false starts. Each side claimed being taken advantage of. Sensing the situation, the Regionalists started giving NU the glad eye, despite the oceans of bad blood between them.

Rumors of marriage by arrangement between PRU and NSNU sent shock waves among grassroots Yushchenko supporters. For Yushchenko, the lofty ambition of “uniting” Ukraine would hardly yield any political dividends in the Rust and Sun Belts. But it would definitely amount to a harakiri in the Grain and Brain Belts, NSNU’s home base. Terrified by the prospect of such bloody bedfellowship, which would condemn her to the outskirts of the parliamentary powerstruggle, the desperate amazon moved into action. She bearded the lion in his den with a revelation-packed bombing campaign, attempting to beat him into coalition.
It worked. By now it appears that NSNU has turned down a back vocals gig in the "Blue Band" and turned its face toward the "Orange Orchestra." The coveted PM post remains the main bone of contention in the coalition talks, though. Tymoshenko, who would take a backseat to no one, has insisted on the “first-come, first-served” mandate. She argues that her claim on the PM post mirrors the voting results, as she came first of all three would-be coalition partners. Unlike the SPU, who raised no objections, NSNU counteroffered with a “first-goals, then-roles” philosophy.

Yushchenko calls for a straight talk on goals. To avoid a repeat of dysfunctional debris, the team should hold a jamming session and make sure they see eye to eye on the economy.

Of course, this approach to coalition fishing will not discharge Tymoshenko from casting her net over the PM post. No coalition will come into being without her being the PM. But once she gets appointed, she must read the signs. She must vaccinate herself with the awareness that they are in the same boat. And in her capacity as conductor, she must always exercise her baton to help the "Orange Orchestra" wrap their talents around team play. She must carry an awareness-tuning fork with which to keep them on the same wavelength.

It’s never OK to have no conflicts. All successful teams run into conflicts. But rather than duck and stockpile them — until they explode — successful teams confront and resolve them.

The "Orange Orchestra" are on a mission to strike the right chords with this country. It means netting a better GDP without letting democracy and the social contract slip away.

Yanukovych rates your coalition as short-lived. If he turns out to be right, he’ll storm you off stage before you know it. Don’t let him be right.

Monday, April 10, 2006

European Commission Unmoved by Europarliament’s Suggestion of Associate Membership for Ukraine

Impressed by Ukraine’s stride for democracy, the Europarliament has petitioned the European Commission to open talks with Ukraine on associate membership. To no avail, so far: The European Commission nixed the initiative.

The counties of the so-called New Europe, Poland and the Baltics especially, have been the most enthusiastic observers of Ukraine’s ideological exodus from Putinese Russia. They have witnessed the difference democracy makes on the other side of the EU curtain. Alas, their ugly duckling neighbor Ukraine equips itself with checks-and-balances avionics and takes wing as a benchmark democracy in the non-EU airspace of the former Soviet Union.

That’s why the rookies in the Europarliament have been steadfast in cheerleading for Ukraine. They never stopped persuading the European Commission, dominated by apparatchiks from the Old Europe, to keep the door open on Ukraine. Undoubtedly, Ukraine deserves a little bonus for its “Le Bourget act,” not the blind eye it has been getting from the European Commission. A little change of heart from countries like France and Germany — the heart of the Old Europe — would mean a lot.

Now that Schroeder has shriveled out of sight and Berlusconi bombed out, Putin’s “Old Europosse” will no longer dog Ukraine with the knee-jerk intensity they used to. Prodi hardly counts among the fans of Ukraine, but he no longer presides over the European Commission. And his intellectual capacity leaves room for hope. Is there a disconnect between the Ukrainian Dream and the European value system? Not really, if we scan the younger cohorts. When it comes to the social contract, French youths never hesitate to stage their own version of Maidan.

Europe has a vast array of burning issues: the welfare state, immigration, demographics, etc. Of course, it will take years for the EU to absorb new members and for Ukraine to be considered for full membership. Still, the Old Europe should not confuse Ukraine’s “values voyage” with a mere “vacation.” We’ve come a long way and we’re in for the long haul. So please don’t try to leave us out in the cold. Don’t “good neighbor” us. Let’s build a Europe that is not embalmed with Euro-euphemisms.

Friday, March 24, 2006

Belated Belarus: When Will Europe’s Last Dictatorship Graduate to Democracy?

Long live Lukashenka, Belarus’ president-elect, whose “re-election” for a third term highlights his dictatorial lifestyle. According to election authorities, Alyaksander Lukashenka championed a whopping 82 percent of the vote while opposition leaders Alyaksander Milinkevich never made it past single digits. These democratically maladaptive voting patterns characterize a dependent, closed-circuit culture unable to defuse the cause of its mental condition.

Never in their wildest dreams had Belarusians imagined that Lukashenka would be here for a haul that long. A collective farm manager, he had harvested the 1994 election amid an ideological famine caused by the socioeconomic turbulence of the early days of the post-Soviet era. Struggling to find the answers to a mounting avalanche of bread-and-butter problems, common folks raided their mental closets for mothballed Soviet mantras.

Lukashenka seemed to read their minds. But the Soviet mantras on his inventory never made him a masterful manager. Also known as “бацька” (bah-ts-kah), or father, he has spent all these years shaping his country’s future with an anachronistic mindset. His strategy: Keep Belarus in Russia’s orbit in exchange for discount energy supplies. Eventual reunification seems to be part of the deal, but this commitment has been punctuated with intense bureaucratic turf battles between Minsk and Moscow. Bottom line: A poor and paternalistic society, lost in space and time, shunned by the rest of the international community, much like a mental institution.

Cheap energy supplies from Russia — the lifeblood of the Lukashenka regime — have nourished the Belarusian welfare state. Its modest blessings account for the backbone of his grass-roots support. Traditionally, Lukashenka has drawn support from older, Sovietized Belarusians. These people have a chronic crush on the communist past, a past that covered their bare necessities and held the promise of a “bright future.”

On closer examination, Russia’s feeding tube has all the proportions of a geopolitical control chord. This symbiotic arrangement offers a perfect “gastrointestinal” scope into the innards of both countries’ politico-economic models. What makes Belarus different is its cloistered and cathetered quasi-communism, as opposed to Russia’s crony and commodity capitalism of 33 Forbes-rated billionaires. On all other counts, Belarus’ serves as a magnifying lens for everything that’s wrong with Russia. Identity crisis. Big Brother. Obsolete economy. Addiction to paternalism.

No wonder, younger Belarusians do not subscribe to Lukashenka’s business plan. They challenge their country’s father-knows-best culture. True, their Jeans Revolution has failed to ignite the jaded masses. In a country of almost zero interest group dynamics and a tightened KGB grip, the opposition fell badly short on financial, organizational, and media support. Many kids will end up in jail. But this is not the end. It’s just the beginning. When they go home, they should set their hearts and minds to winning the hearts and minds of others.

There’s no agent of change like youth. Enlightened youth activists should spread their vision of a free and modernized Belarus. Big Brother must go. The Belarus Brainpower brand should retire him. The generation gap should serve as a creative destruction tool with which to bridge the gap between the Belarus of yesterday and tomorrow.

They should embark on door-to-door Promethean politics, raising awareness, inspiring people to believe in themselves, and thus rekindling the fire in Belarus’ belly. To shake the tyranny off its back, Belarus must stop crawling and learn to walk. Isolating Belarus won’t melt the ice. Using a flexible combination of sticks and carrots, the West should engage the regime in ways that would let the warm breeze of freedom slip through the cracks.

It took four years for Ukraine to move from “Ukraine without Kuchma” sit-ins to the Orange Revolution. On the eve of the parliamentary election Ukraine has a choice, something Belarus hasn’t experienced for more than a decade. Going the distance from ugly duckling to swan — from dictatorship to democracy — will not be an easy journey. As Belarus moves along, Ukraine will have its own political storms to weather. And when it does, Ukraine should ruffle its feathers and act as a role model for Belarus.

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Ukraine-Russia Relations
Letter 9

Certainly, not all Americans should brace themselves for bilinguality. But immigrants who seek American citizenship should. And as R. Smith noted, people interested in expanding their horizons or reviving their roots would be welcome, too. Shevchenko, the Langston Hughes of Ukrainian poetry, may be a tough nut to crack for English-speaking students of Ukrainian.

Unfortunately, throughout the 15 years of Ukraine’s independence, its academia has been cash-strapped and in a state of atrophy. It has failed to produce popular online engines or quality self-help manuals for English speakers eager to learn Ukrainian. Anyway, explore these links:

http://www.ukma.kiev.ua/pub/courses/UFL/
http://www.mylanguageexchange.com/Learn/Ukrainian.asp

And if anybody knows Yushchenko’s CIA controllers, ask them to share:)

Shevchenko became a cornerstone of Ukrainian culture for his insightful and inspirational rhymes such as, “І чужому навчайтесь, і свого не цурайтесь.” (Always learn from others, never unlearn what’s yours.) Unfortunately, millions of Ukrainians in Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union had a different values system scripted for them: “Learn what’s mine, lose what’s yours.” Geopolitical corollary: “What’s mine is mine, what’s yours is mine.”

With a mammoth PR budget at its disposal thanks to the big brother media, the Kremlin employs regional “escort services” in a bid to keep its ideological “adware” alive. After the Orange Revolution had run a devastating virus scan, they thought they could never plant it again. But the orange guys left too many things unpatched. And now comes another chance for the Kremlin to run its vampiric program. Breaking news: What does it mean for the grass-root donors? Among other things, it means being coopted as people with learning disabilities, disposable the day after the election — like an empty box of chocolates. Does a non-binding referendum guarantee Russian as a second official language? Not really. To amend Ukraine’s Constitution, the blue belt would have to muster a total of 300 votes in the newly-elected Rada. Tall order, isn’t it?

That’s how it goes. That’s why Ukrainization rings like a marketable bugaboo in Ukraine, while Russification doesn’t ring in Russia at all — it’s a bizarre notion. And what it all comes down to? Ukrainization probably holds the record for the longest run at number #1 on the Kremlin’s CIS agitprop charts. Whenever an election comes up in Ukraine, there it is — raving mad, from station to station, all across the nation. Dear Russian speakers, somebody wants to play you like a tune. Would you enjoy every minute of it?

More on the double standard. The Russian leadership propagates linguistic liberties everywhere except its own domain. Take Tatarstan, for one. Populated by a Turkic-speaking people, this oil-rich autonomous republic requested a switch from Cyrillic to Latin. Guess what the Kremlin said to the largest minority in the Russian Federation.

http://www.unpo.org/news_detail.php?arg=51&par=1239

In Ukraine, the previous administrations would keep Ukrainian on the backburner while touting Russian to snag a few extra votes. President Kravchuk (1991-94), who craves reincarnation in this parliamentary election, campaigns for Russian as a second official language. President Kuchma (1994-04), who shuns the world of politics, had exploited Russian as a publicity scratch pad in the 1994 campaign. Once elected, he would quietly abandon it. Did his confidence trick signal a tsunami of Ukrainization to be unleashed on the Russian community? No. In fact, under the chameleon and colonial karma of these leaders, many Ukrainians would still consider themselves culturally lower-caste.

They would have their self-image probed on a regular basis. In the 90s, if one spoke Ukrainian to an urban Russophone, she could get a response that would amount to something like “Get your black ass out of here, you cotton field nigger.” Now that the melting pot of the Soviet Union had fallen apart, the Ukrainians expected cultural recovery. It didn’t happen. Not only did the Russians, whose language the Ukrainians had learned, refuse to return the courtesy, but in southeastern Ukraine they would also despise them. Thus, folks who strongly identified themselves with Ukrainian culture would often navigate their own country as islands unto themselves.

Ukraine did not buy into Communism Inc via a mail-order catalogue. CEO Vladimir Lenin had to dispatch his sales reps. Armed to the teeth and well-organized, they called themselves the Red Army. And they had to kill millions of prospects literary (1917-21, 1932-33) before ringing the sale and going bankrupt in 1991. On December 1, 1991, 90 percent voted yes to an independent Ukraine. Turnout was 84 percent. More than you would normally expect from a “deeply divided” country.

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-30090

The Ukrainization of the 20s and 30s was a pet policy from the world’s most oppressive regime designed to increase popularity and ensure self-prolongation. The sticks that followed vastly outnumbered the carrots:

“Starting from the early 1930s, the Ukrainization policies were abruptly and bloodily reversed. ‘Ukrainian bourgeois nationalism’ was declared to be the primary problem in Ukraine. Ukrainianized newspapers, publications, and schools were switched to Russian. The vast majority of leading scholars and cultural leaders of Ukraine were imprisoned, deported, or shot, as were the ‘Ukrainianized’ and ‘Ukrainianizing’ portions of the Communist party. The so-called Great Terror in Ukraine reached its climax in 1933, presaging the Soviet Great Purge of 1937–38. Soviet Ukraine's political autonomy was completely destroyed. See Ukrainian language#Persecution and russification.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainization

The bitter turf war between the Ukrainians and Poles during WW II witnessed atrocities committed on both sides. The Jews indeed were caught in the crossfire, as centuries of hatred accumulated against them translated into a series of terrible pogroms. Still, not all Ukrainians felt the same way about Jews. Many would risk their lives to saves Jews. Ukraine ranks fourth on the list of Righteous Gentiles among nations.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Righteous_Gentile
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/pages/ShArt.jhtml?itemNo=632512&contrassID=19

Propelled by the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Russian troops stormed into Galicia as peacemakers. They also excelled as widowmakers. When it came to the art of genocide, Stalin could coach Hitler.

http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-30084?hook=404629
http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1960/1796011.shtml
http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/2002/300201.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lviv#World_War_II
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katyn_Massacre

Members of all sides in this conflict with a heart for history have attempted reconciliation. But the Russian leadership often resists such attempts. Recently, the Chief Military Prosecutor’s Office found no evidence of genocide in the Katyn massacre.

http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/03/11/katynfiles.shtml
http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/03/06/katynpoland.shtml

Ukraine is neither a confederation nor a federation. This distinguishing characteristic sets Ukraine apart from Switzerland, Canada, and Russia. If all Canadians spoke two languages, Quebec would never feel uncomfortable. (Still, in that case, Celine Dion would have probably launched her career in English, killing the very cultural ingredient that makes her special.) If all citizens of Switzerland spoke four languages, it could pass for a unitary state. If Russia promoted regional languages on a scale it promotes Russian in Ukraine, some 3 million Ukrainian Russians, the second-largest minority, would be free to practice their language. Some 8 million Russian Ukrainians have always been free to practice theirs.

Once destigmatized, the Ukrainian Russians would open a few more schools in Russia to discover their ancestors’ language. Once dechauvinized, the Russian Ukrainians would open their minds to Ukrainian while staying true to their roots. A healthy cultural diet neither stems from the inferiority complex nor does it flourish on the superiority complex.

Color me utopian, but when the Golden Rule rules, no one gets ruined.

http://www.jcu.edu/philosophy/gensler/goldrule.htm

And in our case, the Golden Rule would outrule the need for fraud, referendums, and “Abu Graib-Ukraine” mythology. The guy below would have saved himself the trouble of feigning ethnographic amorality.

http://english.pravda.ru/russia/politics/03-10-2003/3828-language-0

He mounts a vocal defense of the use of Russian in Ukraine. But when it comes to the use of Ukrainian in Russia, he says the Ukrainians never uttered a word. What a nice “silence-of-the-lambs” argument. Well, Anne Frank, the Jewish girl who kept a diary, was quiet too. She never asked for Hebrew lessons when the Germans came to town. And Bubba, the African American character in “Forrest Gump,” had used to ride at the back of the bus, with his lips sealed tight. But then one day, Rosa Parks begged to differ, inspiring the Civil Rights movement.

By applying transactional analysis and drawing sharp historical parallels, you unmask the hypocrisy and help your neighbor become a better person.

In 1989, the last Soviet census took place. We discussed this event in school. I still remember one of my teachers raising her eyebrows and gasping in surprise the moment I reported Ukrainian as the language my family spoke. An otherwise intelligent teacher, she was enslaved by Soviet stereotypes, assuming that that Ukrophones didn’t measure up to Russophones.

The Soviet system is history now. I harbor no Soviet stereotypes, although I went to a Russian school from day one to graduation. No kidding. I took the best and left the rest. Did I forget Ukrainian? No. Did I forget Russian? No. That’s why I believe that Russian speakers who plan on being productive citizens of Ukraine should have no fear in learning Ukrainian.

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Ukraine-Russia Relations
Letter 8

Lalulu,

Ukrainian citizenship does imply rights and responsibilities. Ditto for Russian or US citizenship, for that matter. We don’t need the double standard, do we?

For more than a century, millions of Ukrainians have mastered Russian and English to become productive citizens of their host countries. If I were a member of the largest minority in Russia or America, would I be able to get a decent job without speaking the language of my host country?

Kuchma’s claim to fame started in a village where hardly a person spoke Russian. He quickly absorbed Russian in college and later on would trace himself as Russian. He rediscovered his Ukrainian roots only when he became Prime Minister. And he barely spoke Ukrainian at the time. But motivation moves mountains. He relearned Ukrainian and, in the twilight of his presidency, begot an international bestseller in Ukrainian:)

That’s why I just don’t believe that mastering Ukrainian, a Slavic language that has so much in common with Russian, creates a linguistic challenge for goodwilling Russians. The 2001 census did show a slightly stronger standing for the Ukrainians. Still, it was not a distant cry from the 1989 Soviet census to validate suspicions of rampant Ukrainization. In the good old Soviet times, many Ukrainians would dress themselves as Russians. What was the trick? Once they buried their ethnic identity and couched their credentials in the language of cultural superiority, they could gain access to better jobs. That’s how millions of Ukrainians unlearned their mother tongue. I doubt that the Russians would entertain the sort of cultural transition experienced by millions of Ukrainians.

In fact, learning Ukrainian never implied unlearning Russian. When Ukraine became independent, the Ukrainians did not retaliate by stigmatizing the Russians culturally. Had they done so, the Russians would have either walked away en masse or crammed themselves with Ukrainian. If all-out Ukrainization happens to be the case, then why do they have just a couple of Ukrainian schools in the entire Crimea and in Donetsk?

Ukraine does vote along ethno-geographic lines to a high degree. But other patterns also come into play. In December of 1991, the Ukrainians were not alone in voting for Ukraine’s independence. In July of 1994, the Russians living in Ukraine were not alone in voting for a pro-Russian Kuchma. In October and December of 2004, large numbers of Russian-speaking intelligentsia voted Yushchenko. And Yushchenko defeated Yanukovych in a total of two rounds — round 1 and 3. The March 26 parliamentary election does not promise a landslide victory for any single party.

I reject nazism in any form. I’m not a fan of KUN/UNSO extremist escapades, and I don’t think they are as active in Ukraine as skinheads are in Russia. At the end of the day, actions speak louder than words: On March 6, an elderly Cuban was murdered in Moscow.

http://www.mosnews.com/news/2006/03/06/cubaman.shtml

Can anybody recall a single Russian slain in the streets of Lviv by Ukrainian nationalists, given the fact that Russian troops slaughtered and deported their fellow people by the tens of thousands? It’s still the other way around. A famous Ukrainian songwriter was slain in Lviv by a Russian who didn’t like Ukrainian songs.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,393658,00.html

Can anybody imagine a Ukrainian who would demand that a famous Russian songwriter stop singing Russian songs in a Moscow café, let alone assault him? What would be the consequences for the Ukrainian community? No Russians were killed in revenge, and that makes the Ukrainians different.

Kyiv rejects the idea of a referendum in the Crimea for exactly the same reasons why Moscow would reject one in Kaliningrad. Neither Ukraine nor Russia exhibits much interest in promoting separatism on its own soil.

More than 8 million Russians live in major Ukrainian cities: Kharkiv, Odessa, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, Luhansk, Kyiv, Lviv. Almost 3 million Ukrainians live all across Russia: St. Petersburg, Moscow, Kursk, Stavropol, Khantymansiysk, Komsomlsk. Have all the Ukrainians living in Russia mastered Russian? Yes. Have all the Ukrainians living in Ukraine mastered Russian? Yes. Have all the Russians, or at least younger people, living in Ukraine mastered Ukrainian? As of today, the answer is no.

http://www.ukrcensus.gov.ua/results/general/nationality
http://www.perepis2002.ru/ct/html/TOM_04_01.htm

The best way to promote unity and uniqueness is to treat people as linguistically capable and responsible individuals. It means individuals who are neither forced to forget their mother tongue nor are loathe to learn the mother tongue of their host country.

Monday, March 13, 2006

Ukraine-Russia Relations
Letter 7

Dan,

Building an orange coalition in pre-election mode was like herding cats. Building an orange-blue coalition in post-election mode would be like cross-breeding cats and dogs — their voters watching in disgust.

This parliamentary election features too many variables to arrive at a precise forecast of the new Rada’s makeup.

Echelon 1. The Big Three: RoU, NSNU, BYT. The combined firepower of NSNU and BYT matches that of RoU. These elite echelons will set the tone.

Echelon 2. The Small Two: the Socialists and Communists. Equal firepower. The Socialists will join us. The Communists won’t. Each of these players boasts a guaranteed-entry ticket.

Echelon 3: The Do-or-Die Ones: Ne Tak, pro-blue; Vitrenko, pro-blue; Plyushch-Kostenko, pro-orange; Pora-PRP, pro-orange; Lytvyn, neutral; Vitche, neutral. The last echelon in Ukraine’s electoral matrix is the most enigmatic. Whoever makes it past the 3 percent magic mark, their affiliation will count. They might have a balance-altering capacity.

Absent a Gallup-caliber polling service in Ukraine, poll credibility remains a sticky issue. Different strokes from different services. The numbers they post keep dancing a statistical salsa, with variances as wide as the Gulf of Mexico. Experts treat these phenomena as smoking gun evidence that some parties simply stick to their “hired guns.” In summary, until all the votes are in, all bets are off.

Amid hopes of a reasonably fraud-free election a “whistleblowing war” already rages on. Both sides claim that mass fraud is in the making. Both zero in on the southeastern region. The blue ones charge the orange ones with translating the Russian name registries into Ukrainian. What does it look like? Кузнец (Russian) > Коваль (Ukrainian). Linguistic nonsense? Absolutely. In fact, representatives of the Central Electoral Commission have confirmed such incidents. But the Regions are reading more into it. Performed accidentally on purpose, this “registry revolution,” they say, is intended to plant a bureaucratic booby trap aimed at preventing the blue folks from voting blue. Some even go as far as to declare that entire housing projects have been purged from the registry.

The orange ones refute the allegation and charge the blue ones with “dead soul” mining and chain voting. What’s the trick? Re-enfranchising an army of deceased persons and having them vote your way. Vote of mass destruction. NSNU maintains that the local electoral panels are dangerously “understaffed” with their members.

Who’s responsible? The blue ones fault the local police and administrations appointed by the orange “carpet baggers.” The orange ones slam the local legislatures run by the local chapter of the “KKK.”

Interesting 19th-century America analogy, if you dig into it. Hopefully, Ukraine won’t have to wait another hundred years to have its surrogate “Jim Crow” ways abolished. In the meantime, both parties have urged their voters to check their registry records before coming to the polls on March 26.

Last Friday, a poll was taken on Svoboda Slova, the exiled talk show with Savik Schuster, the Russian freedom of speech guru. Q: “Do you believe that an orange comeback coalition will contribute to a stable in Ukraine?” Surprisingly, 59 percent answered yes, while 41 percent answered no. All of it on ICTV, a channel allegedly controlled by Kuchma’s son-in-law, Viktor Pinchuk, the #2 man in Forbes’ Ukraine section. Hadn’t he had his toy trophy Kryvorizhstal removed from him last fall by Yushchenko? That said, Savik insisted that the audience does represent the overall population. An independent polling service does selection, he said. Can anybody imagine such a rich media smorgasbord served under Yanukovych the chef?

Could it be that the KP outsourced their HR function to Donetsk? Joking aside, Donetsk probably did outsource their campaign management to GOP talent. (They say Paul Manafort is in town.) Next, they picked on the Clintonesque “It’s the economy stupid!”, injected some hyperbole, and shaped it into something of a drag queen. An anti-American party tapping into American talent. Or did I get it wrong?

Ukraine has become a fishing pond for PR wizards of all creeds — and a funny convergence point for libs and cons. Now see this: Guys who quietly support federalism and plutocracy trying to get us hooked on demand-side economics and equal opportunity.

Of course, some sort of bipartisan consensus will emerge from time to time. Short of these contingencies, a blue-orange coalition would be rejected viscerally by the grass roots. If attempted, it would result in transplant failure — loathed by both sides. The North and South, the East and West will never come to terms as long as cheating remains the norm. March 26 will be another litmus test for this country.

Lalulu,

For the sake of our “open-book” financial and political management, I think we should walk the extra mile. As a native speaker of Ukrainian and Russian living in Kyiv since 1980, I’ve been a voracious consumer of the local media. If need be, I can enrich Dan’s account by several degrees of magnitude. So, at the risk of posing as a fig leaf for the anatomy of Yushchenko’s pre- and post-Revolution failures, let me unearth a few more geological layers.

Let’s go back to 1992-94. Who was who when hyperinflation hit Ukraine? Kravchuk: President, 1991-94. Kuchma: Prime Minster, 1992-93. Zvyahilsky: Acting Prime Minister, 1993-94. Yushchenko: Governor of the National Bank, 1993-99. Notice Yushchenko’s undercapitalization in terms of time horizons.

Kuchma came to office as a man with no plan. His famous parliamentary address quote: “Tell me what to build, and I’ll build it.” However, his lack of vision did not prevent him from enjoying Goliath-like powers. His decrees became the law of the land the moment he inked them. In this prolific role, he churned off a score of loophole-laden ones that, experts believe, contributed to a saga of bigtime Ponzi schemes of the mid 90s.

After Zvyahilsky had stepped down, he spent some time in Israel as charges of embezzlement were filed against him in Ukraine. Surprisingly, on his return, the prosecution dropped the charges. He has been a member of the Regions Party for the last couple of years and is running for reelection.

When the summer 1994 presidential campaign arrived, Kuchma tanned himself as a pro-Russian, Soviet-style exec struggling to rescue the Ukrainian economy from the throes of stagflation and isolation from Russia. Despite his less-than-stellar track record as Prime Minister, he made a home run, because the incumbent-intellectualizer Kravchuk just couldn’t help himself. His immortal quote: “We only have what we have.” In the current episode, Kravchuk is on a mission to get his parliamentary groove back–as the anti-NATOrange face of the guerilla brand Ne Tak. Chances of success? Modest.

Should these veteran policymakers be taken into account, Yushchenko’s financial footprint would pale by comparison. In those early days of Kuchma’s officialdom, covering budget deficits by printing money was considered a panacea. And the money-printing machine was not entirely Yushchenko’s business.

Yushchenko would keep a low profile all the while. By the end of 1994, hyperinflation had been harnessed. On September 2, 1996, the hryvnia went into circulation. Initially equal to the Deutsche mark, it became a store of value with unparalleled staying power throughout Ukraine’s independence. All of a sudden, the Russians, who had long poked fun at our hyperinflated karbovanets, had the tables turned on them. The ruble no longer ruled in Ukraine. And when Russia defaulted in 1998, Ukraine experienced a softer blow.
Do the math:

Ruble: 27,0 (1999), 20,65 (1998), 5.960=5960 (1997), 5.121=5121 (1996)
Hryvnia: 5,44 (1999); 3,9264 (1998); 2,0385 (1997); 1,848 (1996).

http://www.trud.org/guide/rossia.htm
http://www.trud.org/guide/ukraina.htm

Besides internal failure, a new dimension came to light in that crisis. Yeltsin’s Russia reached out into the world economy only to have its stock market crash — a year after the Asian contagion had erupted. In contrast, Kuchma’s Ukraine carried on a more cocooned existence and had no stock market to start with.

But as Governor of the NBU, Yushchenko made the right call, keeping away from the money-printing machine. At the end of the day, it saved Ukraine a lot of grief.
God bless the hryvnia, the ruble, the euro, and the almighty dollar.
P.S. Of those polled in the 2001 census, 67 percent considered Ukrainian their mother tongue. A total of 78 percent considered themselves Ukrainian. The Ukrainians are a majority of the population everywhere except for the Crimea.

Virtually every Ukrainian speaks Russian, while only a fraction of Russians speak Ukrainian. Many of them have been living here for decades. It appears that in this mall we call Ukraine a lot of Russians prefer shopping for Russian, while boycotting Ukrainian. I have every reason to doubt that Russian Americans could command the same kind of privileges in America, let alone Ukrainian Russians in Russia.

Therefore, I still have a dream that one day Russian Ukrainians will enjoy their linguistic rights without eschewing their responsibilities.

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Ukraine-Russia Relations
Letter 6

DLW,

Thanks for your cordial and longstanding support. No, I'm not Taras Kuzio. Taras is my real name, though, and I’d been using it long before I realized the association. Yes, I tried posting on Blogger, but it didn't work out. The Internet offers a wealth of reputable sources on neo-Nazism and Stalinism. Assuming your request concerned English-speaking sources, here’s my selection:

Neo-Nazism

Stalinism

Please do not consider this a pure act of grandstanding or a striptease show of Russia’s flaws. By confronting their past and present, Ukraine and Russia will open the road to a better future.

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Ukraine-Russia Relations
Letter 5

A dollar collapse would mean a lot more people losing their job — billions, probably. Russia and the US would not stand alone in this apocalypse. There’s nothing intellectually unique about the Russian policymakers, as one can hardly find a major Asian currency divorced from US debt.

Nor does the Blue metallurgic sector portray the proletariat alone. Rinat Akhmetov, one of the front runners on the Regions ticket, remains Ukraine’s richest man, according to Forbes magazine.

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Ukraine-Russia Relations
Letter 4

In the world of professional debate, people base their arguments on issues, not people. Rule of thumb: Every time you label a person you’re arguing with, you lose the argument. It’s called argumentum an ad hominem and belongs in the counter-culture of debate. Yes, I know I sound condescending but the facts of life will be here to stay.

No, I’m not a Russophobe. I have never experienced panic attacks while speaking Russian, my co-native language. And I do not recall having called you a Russophile either. Please be more attentive interpreting my editorials.

Ukraine and Russia have a right to live without fear of being blackmailed, annexed, or partitioned in any way. Do you agree with me? What makes them different is transactional analysis. Ukrainian troops never ventured into Russian territory. Ukraine never ruled Russia. Ukraine never breached agreements with Russia. It was always the other way around.

Good neighbors are always welcome. Bad neighbors are not. What does it take to be a good neighbor? Just a little common sense and good will. Creating a mutually beneficial modus vivendi based on a level playing field. Laying to rest the paradigms of the past. Searching for win-win solutions and a place under the sun in the 21st century. Master-slave relationships mean retardation for both.

What would be a win-win solution for the crisis at hand?

1. Trans-Dniester businesses register in Moldova.
2. Moldova does not burden them with double taxation.

That’s it. Trans-Dniester has been a de facto autonomy for more than a decade. Unless the conflict escalates out of control, it will maintain the status quo indefinitely.

Both China and Taiwan have prospered from free trade. Of course, Taiwan businesses do not have to register with mainland authorities. That said, China would not tolerate a hornet’s nest of smuggling near its shores.

For most countries, the one-China policy does not preclude economic relations with Taiwan.
If China opts for non-peaceful reunification measures, it will lose. If Taiwan rocks the boat, it will lose. In a sense, the same applies to Moldova and Trans-Dniester.

Michael, I have to disappoint you. I’m not the real McCoy:) I’m an independent label under my original name.

Saturday, March 04, 2006

Ukraine-Russia Relations
Letter 3

Lalulu,

Flaming seldom creates fireproof arguments. I did not intend to make you feel insecure. I did not mean to patronize you. And I'm not afraid to put in an extra effort to keep this debate professional and forward-looking. Could we keep it that way?

Back to the substance, I think the "blockade" decision, which involves the Ukrainians on the other side, does have its rough edges. Speaking in Cold War terms, I would say that Ukraine has made a tough call in order to contain the Kremlin’s “divide-and-conquer” policy.

Whenever the Kremlin fuels kingsize separatist ambitions, the price is always paid by common folks. In fact, as you know, Moldova (former Moldavia) had become a fully-fledged Soviet republic overnight — with a stroke of Stalin’s pen. Ukraine never had a quarrel with Moldova, except for a minor border fracas in 2004. Moldova’s major quarrel came from within, but the Kremlin did pull a few strings.

That’s why managing potentially disastrous ambitions — to prevent a repeat of the 1992 bloodbath — is worth the effort. When your backyard becomes a hotbed of geopolitical activity, fence-sitting doesn’t always work. However, great care and flexibility should be exercised in resolving this crisis.

Finally, no liberals posed as firestarters in the 1992 episode. And I do remember a refugee girl who came to our class when the Cold War had already ended and a hot war began there.

Thursday, March 02, 2006

Ukraine-Russia Relations
Letter 2

Lalulu,

If a hypothetical rent re-evaluation carried no upside potential for Ukraine, then why would Russia resort to stonewalling? Why would the Russian Federation employ the border clause as the last line of defense? I think the jury is still out on the question of whether Ukraine has been shortchanged. In my previous post, I tried my best to pave the way for this question via a historical kaleidoscope based on extreme reductio ad absurdum. Anyway, thanks for calling me a dude/weirdo:) I really appreciate the title. When A applies ad hominem treatment to B in absentia — and in a conversation with C — that sequence may speak volumes to the audience. It might have broken someone’s heart to see the Russian tricolor go that pale — to the point of passing for a white flag:)

Now that we’ve traded shots, can we tackle the substance? Of course, neither Kaliningrad nor the Crimea will ever be on the geopolitical “swap market” again. The Molotov-Ribbentrop transaction cost humanity dearly and must not be repeated in any form. Immanuel Kant, a native of Konigsberg, would definitely have supported this categorical imperative if he had seen all the German soldiers who had met their death in the Crimea. Ditto for the Russians and Ukrainians they had killed; and the Crimean Tartars whom Uncle Joe had brutally banished as scapegoats.

Neither Moscow nor Tbilisi will bid to compensate Gulag and Holodomor graduates for the tortuous odyssey of their lives, directed by the mustached genius of genocide. Still, Moscow would clearly have an edge in this tender, in terms of bona fide qualifications and related experience. To keep the qualifications, Moscow should continue playing gaStalin/gasPutin to Georgia or whatever former Soviet republic it may pick for a playmate.

But as for the whole of Russia, the game of reinventing itself would push it much further up the learning curve. After all, Russia is more than just a clique of KGBremlins from the Kremlin and their business partners. More than a hundred million Russians do not run a single oil or gas well. They have to make a living other than pocketing the lion’s share of the country’s exports revenue.

If you put all Russians living outside major cities, struggling to make both ends meet, on the balance sheet, you will discover that the Kremlin’s imperial ambitions add no value to them. What does add value is the human capital of millions of Ukrainians who have contributed to upgrading the “evil empire” to the “energy empire” it is today. For centuries, the Ukrainians have been among the pioneers of Russia. How many Ukrainian schools do they have in Russia?
That’s why adopting a modernization strategy with a realpolitik component will add more value to Russia than carrying the torch of a retardation strategy with a hardline component.
Do I love Jewish ways? I love German ways! The Germans made no effort to disown their ways. They assumed responsibility for crimes against humanity committed by their fellow men. And they are making a good faith effort to help the victims and their relatives. Eleven countries have laws against denying the Holocaust. Ask David Irving, the British historian who is appealing his 3-year jail sentence in Austria, Hitler’s native land. Moreover, Austria, annexed by Germany in 1938, is looking forward to contributing its share of the compensation payments.

Of course, one might argue that rich countries simply can afford this type of noblesse oblige. In contrast, Russia, which prides itself on being a G8 member, cannot afford to do so. Good point. Despite sustained growth, Russia’s GDP per capita trails the rest of the G8 by a wide margin. Confession may open the floodgates of compensation claims that may dampen growth.
Where did things go wrong? In 1990, Yeltsin had set out to make the Russian Federation a prosperous democracy respected by the international community. By the end of 1999, all he left was a poor kleptocracy fighting a bloody war in Chechnya. His alcohol-powered, blowout privatization policy, along with its scorched-earth income distribution patterns, had led to the demise of the Russian Dream in its embryo. With the wrong pilots at the helm, transition from a paternalistic, command-and-control state eventuated in the birth of a socially Darwinist, crony capitalist monster — with a cavernous income gap and a values vacuum.

Not exactly. Russia’s identity crisis became fertile ground for Nazi–inspired hardliners. Sixty years after the victory in the Great Patriotic War, Der Fuehrer has established himself as a popular, customizable political brand around Moscow. In the streets of Moscow, Mein Kampf is sold as a souvenir; Africans, Asians, and Jews are assaulted on a regular basis.

Why does this keep happening in a country where every family had lost someone dear in the war? In a country that used to sponsor liberation movements in Africa, Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America and welcomed students from these faraway places? How could a country with galaxy of the world’s finest scientists, writers, and composers have its lights turned off?
Uncle Boris’ two terms of office left Russia poor and messed up; Uncle Vlad’s have done little to make it right, except making use of skyrocketing energy prices. Has the value of life appreciated accordingly? Kursk the submarine, 2000. Dubrovka the theater, 2002. Beslan the school, 2004. These benchmark episodes offer bloodchilling evidence to the contrary.

Oligarchs are as much of a problem for Russians as they are for Ukrainians. In this regard, these nations are brothers in distress. What makes the Russian oligarchs different? They are bigger and badder. They need more space. That’s why Ukraine has become part of their habitat. True, many of the top oligarchs are of Jewish origin. Scattered all over the Roman Empire and Christendom for centuries, the Jews always stuck together in order to survive. Wherever they found themselves, their business skills and goal-orientedness always came to prominence. Once successful, they would set up nepotistic networks probably in the same manner the locals did. These networks created reverse discrimination, amplified existing economic tensions, and brought the sociocultural climate to the boiling point. Branded as the “murderers of Jesus,” members of this tightly knit, geographically mobile, and highly visible ethnic group had their social sins stereotyped unlike any other nation on earth.

What’s right about Israel? After WW II, the Jews have pulled themselves together from all over the world and built Israel from scratch. How many Israelites spoke Hebrew at that time? How many freshly-minted Israelis would despise learning Hebrew in the 21st century? Israel and the Arab Street have been fighting a turf war since biblical times. For decades, America has locked itself in a close relationship with Israel, its longtime client state and, more recently, ally in the woebegone war on terror. Most Arabs view it as a tandem to be destroyed when in fact it’s often the case of the tail wagging the dog. What’s wrong about Israel? There will be no peace until the Israelis find a way to help the Palestinians produce something of economic value to hold on to — other than AK-47s and explosives.

As for the Jewish Russian oligarchs, a good many of them are having the “best of the two worlds.” Keeping their “hard-earned” billions in offshore banks, they cruise the world’s best resorts. Some bluntly admit to plotting to put Puttie out of business, and are willing to put their money where their mouth is. Others are in the British soccer business. Their lifestyle sparks outrage among millions of common folks left behind and cheated out of their future.
That’s why thousands of younger Russians have embraced Hitler, while millions of older Russians can’t let go of Stalin. The gruesome twosome who had slaughtered their fellow men by the tens of millions made a comeback. They are fighting the battle for their hearts and minds of Russia. Can anybody imagine a Jew praising Mein Kampf or an African American sporting a KKK white robe and hood?

As for me, I love being able to know my ways and the ways of others, without falling into the trap of self-serving bias. What are our ways? Crony capitalists and convicted criminals must go. They have no right to run the Ukrainian government — nor any other government, for that matter. That’s why we made it to Maidan, and still haven’t received those CIA paychecks. No anti-Russian folks showed up with us, pro-Ukrainian folks only. Amongst the myriad banners waving out there, one could spot a quite few Russian tricolors. The folks waving them spoke with a strong Moscow accent. Guess how many of them had their banners burned.

With all the ups and downs, we have not come to the end of the road. While convicted criminals have been held at bay, crony capitalists refused to go away. Sad to say, we became the laughingstock of our opponents and supporters because some of the crony capitalists looked orange. That was our fault. We should have worked harder. We should have sworn them to “off-duty mode.”

As we have our values challenged, they become more clear to us. We gain valuable foresights into the challenges lying ahead. One of the them is not losing what we’ve gained. Democracy. Freedom of speech. A better social contract. Convicted criminals riding their Trojan horse in this parliamentary race do not share these values. In 2005, the year the oranges “killed the economy,” it grew at a modest 2.4 percent while earnings rose 20 percent and the budget surged 63 percent. Ukraine received more value for a single state-owned enterprise than the combined value of all past privatization proceedings. If James Carville were to comment on the numbers, he’d probably come out with “It’s the shadowy economy, stupid.”

Finally, how does the WTO come into play? Ukraine is heading for the WTO’s door. And so is Russia. The assumption that the Kremlin sold out to the West makes little sense. Russia’s accession to the WTO will not be a zero-sum game. The Kremlin expects to improve its fortunes and keeps negotiating to get the best deal it can. Neither Ukraine nor Russia should crave jamming fingers in the doorway to extract some first-mover advantages. Synchronized accession could solve that problem.

The Ukrainian economy will not be sold for scrap. It’s the Ukrainian steel makers who will no longer have their sales scrapped by antidumping laws. And most of those steel makers are non-orange. Long-term benefits do outweigh short-term losses. Minimizing the latter and maximizing the former should be the goal. Free trade works better than free aid. Ask China. Of course, the “freer” the trade the better the aid.

That’s why Ukraine and Russia should keep their eyes wide open. And may neither one have its arms twisted — nor its mirrors.

Tuesday, June 20, 2006

Saturday, June 10, 2006

Monday, May 29, 2006

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Monday, April 10, 2006

Friday, March 24, 2006

Tuesday, March 21, 2006

Thursday, March 16, 2006

Monday, March 13, 2006

Saturday, March 11, 2006

Thursday, March 09, 2006

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Saturday, March 04, 2006

Thursday, March 02, 2006

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