For years, Westerners have chastised Ukraine for not doing enough to attract foreign investors. Their own businessmen, justifiably scared off by greedy bureaucrats and thuggish local partners who have a habit of turning into rivals, have preferred to stash their cash elsewhere. So now comes a bevy of industrialists eager to spend a fraction of their fortunes on life support for the dinosaurs of Ukraine's heavy industry. And instead of cheering, Westerners are worrying. The reason is that the troop of tycoons marched in from Moscow. And now the cry hanging over Ukraine's capital is that old Cold War warning: 'The Russians are coming.'
This was bound to happen. Now that Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic have been anointed with NATO membership over the Kremlin's objections, the West no longer needs Ukraine quite so badly to be a thorn in the Russian bear's side. Credits and aid once handed over to profligate Ukrainian governments with no questions asked now increasingly arrive (when they arrive at all) with tough conditions attached. By now, of course Kyiv has elections rather than reforms on its feverish mind. And cognizant of the fact that Eurobonds at 16 percent interest won't get it through next fall's presidential vote, it has started batting its eyelashes at new sugar daddies. Hello, Boris. Hello, Messrs. Berezovsky, Gusovsky and Potanin. Where have you been all these years? The thought of the Ukrainian government stacking the deck in favor of Russian robber barons is not a happy one. But that possibility is actually an improvement over its penchant of rigging the game solely for the benefit of its own pet profiteers.
America's neurotic obsession with limiting Russian influence in the former Soviet republics notwithstanding, Moscow is the most pluralistic polity bar the Balts to have emerged from the unhappy Soviet nursery. It may have bred its own Rockfellers and J.P. Morgans, but at least there are enough of them around to butt heads, air each other's dirty laundry and, maybe, eventually, assure competition. By contrast, Ukraine appears to be big enough for just one business clan at a time – whichever one is backing the government.
Which isn't to say that Westerners should keep quiet. They should, to the best of their ability, try to ensure that this market is open to all comers and that the Russian investors who do arrive are doing the bidding of Mammon and not the Kremlin. But it is whimsical to suppose that a once-and-future superpower like Russia can forever be denied a measure of influence in the affairs of its smaller southern neighbor.
Besides, Kyiv is learning a useful lesson by being forced to hand over its assets to the people it shunned not so long ago. It is discovering that bills, even old gas bills, must eventually be paid.
