Putin's Wars
Page 38
In the Russian war of nerves with Ukraine Kirill, the patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, also played an important role. From July 27 to August 5, 2009, Kirill visited Ukraine. His tour brought him not only to the pro-Russian eastern part, but equally to the western part of the country. One of his objectives was to suppress the pro-independence mood of the local church.[30] Kirill talked a lot about the “common heritage” and the “common destination” of Ukraine and Russia. However, his intervention went further than simply delivering a spiritual message. According to Pavel Korduban, “One of his [Kirill’s] chief ideologists, Andrey Kuraev, was more outspoken, threatening Ukraine with a civil war should a single church fully independent from Moscow ever be established.”[31] Olexandr Paliy, a historian at the Diplomatic Academy of the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry, commented: “We’ve seen more of a Russian state official than a religious figure. . . . The Church is being used as an instrument in the Kremlin’s game.”[32] Oleh Medvedev, adviser of Yulia Tymoshenko, then Ukrainian prime minister, was more outspoken. He described Kirill’s tour “as a visit of an imperialist who preached the neo-imperialist Russian World doctrine.”[33] When the archives of the KGB were opened after the demise of the Soviet Union, also a file on Kirill was found, indicating that he had worked for the KGB under the code name “Mikhailov.”[34] It is, therefore, no surprise that the patriarch is working hand in hand with the Kremlin. Under Putin the Russian Orthodox Church has acquired the status of a semiofficial state church and the relations between the hierarchy and the political leadership have become even closer than in tsarist times. How close the relationship between the Moscow patriarchate and the Kremlin has become was particularly evident when, immediately after his visit to Ukraine, Kirill went to the Kremlin to report to President Medvedev.
Kirill’s visit in the summer of 2009 was clearly part of a broader psychological and political offensive. Some weeks after Kirill’s visit President Medvedev published a video blog and an open letter to Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko on the Russian presidential website. On this video Medvedev was overlooking the Black Sea where one could see two frigates menacingly on the horizon. Medvedev was dressed in black. The Economist even spoke of an “ominous black.”[35] Being dressed intimidatingly in threatening black had become a part of the symbolism used by the Kremlin when it addressed—directly or indirectly—the Ukrainian leadership, as if to emphasize that between the two countries normal, civilized, diplomatic relations no longer existed. Some observers, such as Brzezinski, made comparisons with the black clothing of Mussolini.[36] Others made comparisons with the oprichniki, the secret police of Ivan the Terrible, who were also dressed in black. Medvedev’s open letter was a reaction to the expulsion by Ukraine of two Russian diplomats, accused of undermining activities. “We are more than just neighbors,” wrote Medvedev in his open letter, “our ties are those of brothers.”[37] He went on, citing Gogol, that “there are no bonds more sacred than the bonds of brotherhood.” After this declaration of brotherly love there followed a list of complaints concerning Ukraine’s support for Georgian President Saakashvili and the “overt distortion of complex and difficult episodes in our common history, the tragic events of the great famine in the Soviet Union, and an interpretation of the Great Patriotic War as some kind of confrontation between two totalitarian systems.”[38] Medvedev’s letter explicitly referred to Patriarch Kirill’s visit to Ukraine, which was considered “an event of great significance.” “I had a meeting with the Patriarch following the visit,” wrote Medvedev, “and he shared my impressions and said many cordial words. We both are of the same opinion that the two fraternal peoples may not be separated as they share [a] common historical and spiritual heritage.” Such a message from the Kremlin master that the two “fraternal peoples” may not be separated was not reassuring for worried Ukrainians, who shortly before had read articles in the Russian media, announcing Ukraine’s imminent “desovereignization.” Special attention should also be paid here to the language of Medvedev’s message. The use of fraternal and paternal metaphors has a long tradition in Russia. “We have a good idea of what Stalin has in mind,” wrote Richard Sennett, “when he declares ‘I am your father.’ He is going to force other people to do his bidding; he asserts his right to do so because he is the collective father. After a while people will habitually obey; the habit of obedience is discipline.”[39] Using the “brother” metaphor Medvedev spoke as the older brother to the smaller, younger brother, implicitly claiming authority over the other. As Sennett rightly observed: “Metaphors are put to oppressive uses.”[40]
Medvedev concluded his open letter with the words that “there can be no doubt that the multifaceted ties between Russia and Ukraine will resume on a fundamentally different level—that of strategic partnership—and this moment will not be long in coming.”[41] These words could be perceived by the Ukrainians as an unveiled threat, because the “strategic partnership” the Kremlin wanted to establish with Ukraine would certainly include a restriction of Ukraine’s freedom of choice over its security arrangements, a freedom that nevertheless figured prominently in the Founding Act of 1997. Since the election of the more Russia-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych in 2010 the Russian pressure on Ukraine has not subsided. On the contrary: Russian pressure on Ukraine to join the Customs Union and Eurasian Union has only increased. The Kremlin uses both carrot and stick. The carrot is represented by a Russian offer to sell its gas to Ukraine for $160 per cubic meter instead of $425—a discount of more than 62 percent![42] The stick consists of a potential restriction of the number of Ukrainian migrant workers in Russia, estimated at between two and three million per year.[43] The Russian authorities have already announced that from January 2015 citizens from the CIS countries need foreign passports to travel to Russia.[44] The Russian pressure, however, also takes the form of outright blackmail. An example of the latter is the so called “Yamal-Europe Two” project—a proposal, made on April 3, 2013, by Putin and Gazprom’s CEO Aleksey Miller to Poland, to build a new gas pipeline over Polish territory to Slovakia. This project, aimed “to demonstrate that Moscow can shift gas export volumes into new bypass pipelines, away from Ukraine’s gas transit system to Europe, eventually nullifying the system’s value.”[45] This proposal was experienced by the Ukrainians as a direct attack. Some weeks later, on April 25, 2013, Putin, in a televised phone-in session in Moscow, went so far as to issue a warning that if Ukraine did not join the Eurasian Union it faced the potential “de-industrialisation” of multiple sectors within its economy.”[46]
In the meantime negotiations between Ukraine and the European Union on an Association Agreement have reached a decisive phase. On March 30, 2012—after five years of intensive negotiations—the chief negotiators of the EU and Ukraine initialed the text of the Association Agreement, which included setting up a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA). The text was hailed by some as “the most extensive international legal document in the entire history of Ukraine and the most extensive international agreement with a third country ever concluded by the European Union.”[47] Unfortunately, however, due to election fraud and selective justice (the imprisonment of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko), the EU decided to delay the signing of the agreement. Although association with the EU would be in the long-term interest of Ukraine, eventually raising the prospect of EU membership, it is not certain that the Ukrainian government would make the necessary efforts to take up this opportunity. Russia, which does not formulate conditions of democratic governance or human rights, makes things much easier for Yanukovych. Moreover, the benefits (lower energy prices) are immediate. It is still an open question whether Ukraine will be able to resist the Russian pressure. On May 22, 2013, the Ukrainian government signed a memorandum applying for observer status in the Russia-dominated Customs Union.[48] Ukraine considers association with the EU compatible with a similar relationship with the Customs Union/Eurasian Union. However, this is not the case for Moscow. The Kremlin put enormous pr
essure on Viktor Yanukovych to shelve an Association Agreement with the EU, which the Ukrainian president planned to sign in Vilnius on November 28, 2013. The Kremlin’s blackmail was successful. Yanukovych refused to sign the agreement—the result of six years of hard, protracted negotiations—in exchange for the Kremlin’s offer of a $15 billion loan and a discount in the price of Russian gas. Yanukovych met with mass protests at home. The protesters were not reassured by his statement that a Ukrainian membership of the Eurasian Union was not (yet) on the agenda. It is clear, however, that most European governments, treating the relationship with Ukraine as a technocratic problem, have massively underestimated the important geopolitical implications of Ukraine’s choice. However, it is not sure that this is also the case for Moscow. If Ukraine were to opt for deeper integration into the European Union, a Georgian scenario could not be excluded, in which the Kremlin could provoke riots in Eastern Ukraine or the Crimea, where many Russian passport holders live. This would offer Russia a pretext for intervening in Ukraine in order “to protect its nationals” and dismember the country. Unfortunately, such a scenario cannot be excluded. It is a corollary of the five principles of Russian foreign policy, formulated by President Medvedev on August 31, 2008. The fourth principle he mentioned was “protecting the lives and dignity of our citizens, wherever they may be.”[49] It leaves the door open for military adventures throughout Russia’s “neighborhood.”
In 1992 Brzezinski warned: “The crucial issue here . . . is the future stability and independence of Ukraine.”[50] In 2012—twenty years later—in his book Strategic Vision, Brzezinski repeated this warning, writing: “It cannot be stressed enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire.”[51] Brzezinski’s warning is, more than ever, still relevant today. It is not without reason that Polish analysts especially, or analysts of Polish origin, warn about the dangers of Russia’s new imperialism.[52] Their country was, in the twentieth century (and in the centuries before), the main victim in Europe of the aggression from the imperialist powers, which dismembered and occupied the country. When the Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski was asked: “Can you imagine any kind of renewed geopolitical conflict to your west in your lifetime?” he answered “I have a vivid imagination, but no, I cannot imagine an armed conflict between us and Germany.”[53] When asked: “Does your imagination extend to the possibility of a future conflict to the east?” he answered: “Our relations with Russia, like yours [U.S.A.], are pragmatic but brittle. And unfortunately, after the war between Russia and Georgia, I’m afraid conflict in Europe is imaginable.”[54] Another East European politician, Czech President Vaclav Havel, expressed the same concern sixteen years earlier: “I have said it so often: if the West does not stabilize the East, the East will destabilize the West.”[55] This is a warning that should be taken seriously.
Notes
1. Kennan, “Russia: Seven Years Later,” in Memoirs 1925–1950, 519.
2. Alexander J. Motyl, “Empire Falls,” Foreign Affairs 85, no. 4 (July-August 2006).
3. Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture: Volume II: The Power of Identity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), 42.
4. Trenin, Post-Imperium: A Eurasian Story, 233.
5. Putin, “Novyy integratsionnyy proekt dlya Evrazii: budushchee kotoroe rozhdaetsya segodnya.”
6. “Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security between NATO and the Russian Federation.” http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_25468.htm.
7. Chrystia Freeland, “From Empire to Nation State,” Financial Times (July 10, 1997).
8. Freeland, “From Empire to Nation State.”
9. Freeland, “From Empire to Nation State.”
10. John Thornhill, “Russia Signs Union Treaty with Belarus,” Financial Times (April 4, 1997).
11. Grigory Yavlinsky criticized the Union Treaty with the following words: “You cannot talk about negotiating integration with a state where there is political repression and the conditions for the normal existence of the opposition are ruled out and the work of the media is restricted.” (Quoted in John Thornhill, “Belarus Link Alarms Russian Liberals,” Financial Times (April 2, 1997).)
12. Sophie Shihab, “M. Eltsine cherche à minimiser les conséquences de l’ “union” entre la Russie et la Biélorussie,” Le Monde (April 8, 1997).
13. Ronald D. Asmus, Opening NATO’s Doors: How the Alliance Remade Itself for a New Era (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 141.
14. Asmus, Opening NATO’s Doors, 141.
15. “L’avertissement biélorusse,” Le Monde (April 3, 1997).
16. Brzezinski, “The Premature Partnership,” 79.
17. Brzezinski, “The Premature Partnership,” 76.
18. Gaidar, Collapse of an Empire: Lessons for Modern Russia, 17.
19. Nargis Kassenova, Alexander Libman, and Jeremy Smith, “Discussing the Eurasian Customs Union and Its Impact on Central Asia,” Central Asia Policy Forum 4 (February 2013), 6. http://www.centralasiaprogram.org/images/Policy_Forum_4,_February_2013.pdf.
20. Kassenova et al., “Discussing the Eurasian Customs Union and Its Impact on Central Asia.”
21. Fyodor Lukyanov, “Imperiya Naoborot,” Gazeta.ru (November 17, 2011).
22. Lukyanov, “Imperiya Naoborot.”
23. Lukyanov, “Imperiya Naoborot.”
24. “What Precisely Vladimir Putin Said at Bucharest,” Zerkalo Nedeli (April 25, 2008). http://www.mw.ua/1000:1600/62750/.
25. Gleb Pavlovsky, “Will Ukraine Lose Its Sovereignty?” Russkiy Zhurnal (March 16, 2009). http://www.russ.ru.
26. “No One Needs Monsters: Desovereignization of Ukraine,” Interview with Sergey Karaganov, Russkiy Zhurnal (March 20, 2009). http://www.russ.ru.
27. “No One Needs Monsters: Desovereignization of Ukraine.”
28. Yuriy Shcherbak, “Ukraine as a Failed State: Myths and Reality,” The Weekly Digest 15, Kyiv (May 26, 2009).
29. Quoted in Nicu Popescu and Andrew Wilson, “The Limits of Enlargement-Lite: European and Russian Power in the Troubled Neighbourhood,” Policy paper (London: European Council on Foreign Relations, June 2009), 29.
30. Since 1992 there has existed in Ukraine, alongside the official Orthodox Church that recognizes the Patriarch of Moscow, a rival independent Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate (UPTs-KP), led by Patriarch Filaret.
31. Pavel Korduban, “Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill Visits Ukraine,” Eurasia Daily Monitor 6, no.155 (August 12, 2009), 5.
32. James Marson, “Faith or Politics? The Russian Patriarch Ends Ukraine Visit,” Time (August 4, 2009).
33. Korduban, “Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill Visits Ukraine.”
34. Cf. Hélène Blanc and Renata Lesnik, Les prédateurs du Kremlin [1917 –2009] (Paris: Seuil, 2009), 263.
35. “Dear Viktor, You’re Dead, Love Dmitry,” The Economist (August 22, 2009).
36. Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote: “Dressed all in black, including a black turtleneck sweater—a color scheme once favored by Benito Mussolini—the former KGB lieutenant colonel and now president, Vladimir Putin, addressed thousands of enthusiastic young supporters filling a Moscow sport stadium on November 21, 2007.” (Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Putin’s Choice,” The Washington Quarterly 31, no. 2 (Spring 2008), 95.)