This
between-a-rock and a-hard-place scenario is not new. Historically, and to its
own detriment, Europe has not favoured Ukraine. This time it needs to be wiser.
In 1919, as new European
nations were being born Ukraine was determined to be one of them. It’s
independence, however, was negated. Britain’s Prime Minister Lloyd George,
unfamiliar with the Slavic world, gave Galicia to Poland and the rest to Russia
rather than grant those “who are they if they’re neither Poles nor Russians”
independence. The Treaty of Versailles led to atrocities never seen before nor
after, World War II and its bloodlands with some 14 million– primarily Ukrainians—dead.
Russia-controlled USSR and the Cold War followed.
The post-Soviet era has not
treated Ukraine fairly either. At its expense, the West’s Russo-centrism
allowed Russia to reap unwarranted rewards. It became the inheritor of the vast
Soviet nuclear arsenal, a G-8 member, and received a de facto carte blanche
to dominate in its near abroad. Russia has yet to atone for its reigns of
terror, starvations, the Gulag, national genocides: all its crimes against humanity
and hopes to continue getting away with murder; and why not?
Despite all this deference,
Russia has failed to join the company of democracies. (Many believe the
initiative to destroy Syria’s chemical warfare capability is but another
stalling tactic on behalf of the Assad regime.) Instead, its grandiose notion
of empire building led Poland and Sweden, in 2009, to propose a counterweight
by launching the Eastern Partnership for Ukraine
and five other former Soviet states. By fulfilling political and economic
requirements of the EU’s free trade Association Agreement, the countries would
become ready for eventual full membership.
So far Yanukovych has
not made it easy for them. Despite meeting some of
the 19 benchmarks required for the Agreement to go forward he has failed
to end selective justice, a euphemism for the incarceration of the key
opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko and other opposition leaders. Her freedom is
the most visible and controversial requirement; the litmus test. Without her
release it is unlikely the Agreement will go ahead especially since the
European Court of Human Rights determined that her rights were violated by the
state.
Russia, meanwhile, is pressing relentlessly for
Ukraine’s membership in its own free trade zone. Recently, it restricted entry
of food products, one of Ukraine’s leading export there. There have been nasty
exchanges over military fly-bys in Ukraine’s air-space and last week brought a
surprising accusation from President Yanukovych: the Kremlin had negotiated the
Kharkiv agreements —lower energy prices in exchange for the rent of the
Sevastopol naval base to it’s Black Sea Fleet— in bad faith. At the same time,
Ukraine’s pro-Russia Communist Party is organizing a national referendum hoping
to win the hearts and minds of the some 30% of the undecided for a pro-Russia
choice.
At present, it looks like the president prefers
the EU option. He understands that joining Russia’s Custom’s Union means
double-trouble: subservience to the more powerful neighbour and targeting by
the West of oligarch wealth sequestered offshore. But politics is fluid.
Friends favouring Ukraine’s European integration must move quickly. For
instance, Eugene Czolij, president of the World Congress of Ukrainians, has
asked EU members to find a solution for claims by Yanukovych that
no mechanism exists to free Tymoshenko. This sort of thinking shifts the
onus from him onto the EU and buys him more wiggle room. Then there’s the Syria
situation. The new cooperation between the US and Russia might have
implications for Ukraine.
It falls upon friends like Sweden and Poland who started the
move towards the Association Agreement to have it end quickly and well. This
means convincing the president to let Tymoshenko go. All democratic
governments need to do likewise in the two months that are left. They must make
sure mistakes of the past aren’t repeated and that Ukraine is not thrown into
Russia’s jaws. Were this to happen the consequences for Europe, indeed the free
world, will be highly problematic.
Oksana Bashuk Hepburn is a founding member of
the Canadian Group for Democracy in Ukraine.
