Ukraine’s Trojan Horse

Yanukovych’s election victory will mean closer ties with Russia, but it could also lead to reform across the region.

Some people think that Russian politics have become predictably boring, especially compared to politics in Ukraine, where Viktor Yanukovych recently won a close-fought presidential election. As the analyst Evgeny Kiselyov told the New York Times, it’s like comparing a “cemetery” with a “madhouse.”

While I respectfully disagree – there could be nothing more dramatic than watching the rapid rise or fall of clans and political kingmakers, the cruel and sudden fates of political prisoners, and the general reading of the tea leaves that is Kremlinology – Yanukovych’s victory raises an interesting question: Will the current “madhouse” turn into a similar “cemetery,” now that the new Moscow-influenced president has legitimately won what we can call a relatively free and fair electoral contest? Will Yanukovych usher in a new era of Ukrainology, where we watch for the signs of hidden movements by businessmen and nomenklatura to replace the democratic, although often messy, process introduced by the Orange Revolution?

That question will naturally depend on whether the democratic values that have survived the incapacitating government infighting over the past number of years will continue to be observed under a Yanukovych presidency – and that will depend in no small part to the perceptions and expectations of Ukraine’s allies, partners, creditors, and the international community at large.

The first thing to understand is that we cannot place much trust in neat and tidy dualities that seek to explain Ukrainian politics. This isn’t just the clash of angelic pro-Western democrats fighting for a breath of fresh air against the specter of Putinism 2.0. And it’s much more than pro-NATO or anti-NATO politics, which has been the obsession of many navel-gazing American observers.

That being said, there has been significant fallout from both Europe and the United States giving up on Kiev. The two were evidently exhausted by the challenges posed by Ukraine’s slow progress toward reform, with the final coffin nail being driven in by the “reset” policy of the Obama Administration that saw a warming towards Moscow.

One would have to imagine that at some point in the early summer of 2009, ambassadors were sent around to deliver the bad news to Poland, the Czech Republic, Ukraine, and the other countries comprising the former Soviet sphere: “Sorry, but you are on your own now. We are leaving you to Russia’s whims and devices because we think they will help us with Iran and sign a few easy treaties.”

Whether or not we go with this hypothesis, there has certainly been a de-Americanization within Ukrainian politics. Candidates are now sorting themselves either toward the EU or Russia. The Viktor Yanukovych of 2004 did not win the 2010 election, and the Yulia Tymoshenko of the Orange Revolution did not lose it. Both candidates have since reinvented themselves, with Yanukovych hiring John McCain’s campaign advisers to make him look a little less Putin-ish, while Tymoshenko warmed up to working with Russia and seemed to forget the strong declarations she made in a 2007 article in Foreign Affairs about the need to contain Moscow.

Yet it’s also not a complete triumph for the authoritarians to the east. The supreme irony of the Yanukovych victory is that there are many good reasons why this outcome is bad for Putin and Medvedev while creating opportunities for the reformers .

Firstly, having a stoutly obedient Kremlin ally in a key neighbouring country diminishes Putin’s ability to push his narrative of “Russia as the besieged fortress,” surrounded by hostile forces. This has long been part of his justification for his seizure of power and diminishing the individual rights of Russians. In this respect, the colour revolutions were actually very good for Putinism.

Secondly, the problem of Ukraine being a democratic example still remains. This is the third election in a row that Yanukovych and his party have won in relatively competitive races (this has turned out to be a much more successful strategy than simple electoral fraud, such as that in 2004). These free and fair elections put pressure on Russia to improve their own democratic deficit. The next time they do another power swap masked by a mockery of voting, it will be all the more obvious. If Ukraine can hold real elections, why can’t Russia? And here’s a radical idea to follow that: how about Russians be allowed to directly elect their own governors instead of having them appointed by Putin?

It is, of course, much too early for anyone to say whether Yanukovych will take Ukraine backwards in terms of democratic rights and process, or if he will live up to his campaign promises to stand up for Ukrainian sovereignty before Russia. I do however believe that some of Nina Khrushcheva’s observations of the new president’s personality must be taken into account before he is unequivocally embraced by the international community.

The new president and the Ukrainian people should be congratulated for undertaking a genuinely admirable process under difficult economic circumstances, but the new government must understand that they still have a lot to prove.