Ukraine
Role of the gas war in the run-up to presidential election
Nadezhda Ivanitskaya, Denis Malkov
Participants in the Russian-Ukrainian gas conflict admitted its policy-induced nature. Members of the Ukrainian President's team believe that Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko has sided with Moscow, and the conflict is playing into her hands.
It was openly admitted yesterday that the gas conflict with Ukraine is playing a major role in the Yushchenko-Tymoshenko confrontation. According to Roman Bessmertny, head of the Ukrainian President's secretariat, Tymoshenko will put the blame for the consequences of the gas dispute on Yushchenko "in order to get additional bonuses". Bessmertny notes that Tymoshenko has intentionally demonstrated her "apathy", pretending that nothing is happening "so as not to unnerve [Prime Minister Vladimir] Putin, her colleague and covert patron.
"Our Prime Minister is behaving like a Kremlin partner," Bessmertny said.
Kurt Volker, US Ambassador to NATO, also said that the suspension of gas supplies had a political connotation.
"This is surely an economic dispute, but we have become hostages to internal political problems in Ukraine," said Vladimir Putin yesterday while in Germany. He reminded the audience of the forthcoming presidential election in Ukraine (to be held in late 2009 or early 2010).
Russian representatives emphasise that Yushchenko himself is hampering the talks: Putin spoke about this in an interview given to Western journalists on January 3, and Sergei Kupriyanov, an official spokesman for Gazprom, said the same thing later at a meeting with Putin.
Who is fighting who is Ukraine's internal affair, but Gazprom's reputation and consumers' rights must not suffer, Dmitry Peskov, the Russian Prime Minister's press secretary, told Vedomosti. Yushchenko himself gave the command to suspend negotiations on New Year's Eve, Peskov added.
At a press conference on January 9, Tymoshenko said that she was ready to "conduct constructive talks with Russia and achieve a compromise" on the basis of the agreements reached between her and Putin in October.
Moscow has assured Tymoshenko of its support at the presidential election, says a businessman close to Gazprom. In return, he says, Gazprom should obtain control over Ukraine's gas transportation system.
According to Vadim Karasev, a Ukrainian political scientist, the Russian leadership is sparing no effort to prevent Yushchenko from being re-elected, at the very least. The ultimate goal is his earlier resignation through impeachment.
When speaking about the need for preterm elections Friday, Nikolai Tomenko, Deputy Speaker of the Supreme Rada of Ukraine and Deputy Head of the Yulia Tymoshenko bloc, said that a legal framework for impeachment was nearly ready and the Rada would discuss the law on provisional investigation commissions next week. Tymoshenko, who has managed, independently from the Government, to seize control over Parliament where a pro-Prime Minister coalition has been formed, will be able to keep in check the pro-Western course vigorously promoted by Yushchenko, Karasev says. During the elections, Moscow, which has learned from past experience not to "put all its eggs in one basket" will stake on both Viktor Yanukovych, leader of the Party of Regions, and Tymoshenko, for both of them retain fairly high ratings: 18% and 16%, respectively, against Yushchenko's 5% (the data was presented by the FOM-Ukraine public opinion fund).
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Dmitry Medvedev's opinion
At his meeting with Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller, President Dmitry Medvedev said that in 2008, when Russia sold gas to Ukraine at $179.5 per 1,000 cubic metres, the Ukrainian consumers paid as much as $320 for it. "The entire margin went into the pockets of agencies unknown to us" and was used "to achieve some political goals," he said.