Ukraine Yanukovych turns toward Russia

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych has been working hard to bolster the nation’s flagging relationship with Russia, perhaps ironically in the week surrounding Ukraine’s Independence Day. Yanukovych, meeting Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin in Sochi on Saturday, said he hoped Ukraine would expand cooperation with Russia on aviation, engineering and shipbuilding, and asked for Russia’s support for a Ukrainian bid to become an observer in the Shanghai Cooperation Council. Notably, Yanukovych also said Ukraine “would like to slightly alter our position” in negotiations with Russian on gas imports, but did not publicly elaborate further. By comparison, Yanukovych’s rhetoric toward Europe has been far more standoffish. In his Independence Day address, he issued a stern warning against European meddling. He said, “…we will never accept [European] integration at any cost – through the loss of independence, economic or territorial concessions, and intervention in internal affairs.”

Brad Wells: Though in the same speech, Yanukovych reiterated Ukraine’s inviolable “European choice,” his actions and words appear to signal a strong shift toward deepening relations with Russia. This is reorientation is certainly part reactionary – Europe has been a louder critic of late of the government’s prosecution of opposition politicians and the lack of shared “European values”, while Russia has signaled a willingness to step in (though clearly not in the form of free handouts), without similar political baggage. So far, there does not appear to be any tangible movement by the government to address mainstream European concerns, which means Ukraine is likely to find itself increasingly isolated from the West. Though, this is certainly not the case of Ukraine running into Russia’s awaiting embrace – at least at this point, there is not an avalanche of deals in the offing. Rather, we see Ukrainian-Russian relations deepening slowly but steadily on a pragmatic basis in the coming months and years. At the same time, there is a short-term motive at work too: Yanukovych needs foreign friends to boost his image and that of his party at home ahead of a key parliamentary election in late October, particularly in Russia, with whom his electorate in neighboring Eastern and Southern Ukraine closely identifies with.