Ukraine key to Russia’s resurgence

Russian President Vladimir Putin is taking every possible opportunity to thumb his nose at the United States. First it was the unconditional support of Syria’s tyrant President Bashar al-Assad; then came the sheltering of former American intelligence operative and whistle-blower Edward Snowden.

But there is lot more to the changing relationship than these headline events. Under pressure at home from an increasingly strident opposition movement which believes he is returning Russia to a Soviet-style authoritarian state, Putin is using foreign policy – and in particular the mixture of fear and envy that Russians feel for the US – to shore up his position.

At the same time he is taking deliberate steps to revive, if not the old Soviet empire, certainly its sphere of influence. While there is no hope of drawing the old Warsaw Pact allies in Central Europe back into the fold, countries that were once directly ruled from Moscow are softer targets.

Little Georgia was roughed up and firmly put in its place during the five-day conflict in 2008 in which Moscow backed separatist movements in the Georgian province of South Ossetia.

Belarus is less of a problem with its president, Alexander Lukashenko, adopting Soviet-era tactics of manipulating elections and violently supressing dissent. As a result Lukashenko leans heavily towards Russia where there is much less concern over his repressive policies than in Western capitals.

Putin has also pursued a ruthless campaign to supress breakaway movements in the Caucasus and elsewhere in the vast Russian Federation. Now he is using a mixture of charm and coercion to pull Ukraine back into Moscow’s orbit. 

For a while it seemed that Ukraine was destined to embrace the West and Western democratic values. The so-called Orange Revolution which propelled the pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko to the presidency appeared to herald a new era in which country was heading towards membership of both NATO and the European Union. However, disillusionment soon set in when Yushchenko failed to produce the reforms or curb endemic corruption, and he was replaced in the 2010 presidential poll by the pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych.

Since then Yanukovych has consolidated his position by using many Soviet-era tactics such as the curbing the freedom of the press and harassment of political opponents, including former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko who he jailed. A delighted Putin has welcomed what he calls a “big improvement” in relations with Ukraine under Yanukovych’s presidency.

Yanukovych claims to be as enthusiastic as his predecessor about EU membership, (although NATO is firmly on the backburner). In fact, he is being far more receptive to Putin’s call for Ukraine to “look east” and ‘come home” to the embrace of Mother Russia.

How this plays out over the next few months will be an indication of the success or otherwise of Russia’s new, aggressive foreign policy.