A third of Ukraine's residents cannot decide who to vote for in the presidential elections.
An intrigue will start in Ukraine in the end of this week. Apparently its outcome will become clear on the eve of the presidential elections. On November 19-20 Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko will receive his Georgian counterpart Mikheil Saakashvili in Kiev. Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko will go to Yalta for talks with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, while Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pyotr Poroshenko will discuss Ukraine's future with representatives of the European Union (EU) in Brussels.
The aim of Saakashvili's visit is unclear. The media reported that he will open a new Georgian Embassy building in Kiev, talk with his Ukrainian counterpart and take part in the "Ready to Answer" talk show, during which he will express his opinion on the situation in the Caucasus after Russia's recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia's independence. A number of Ukrainian analysts believe that Saakashvili will also discuss arms supplies by Ukraine to Georgia after the presidential elections. Earlier this month the participants of the GUAM (Organization for Democracy and Economic Development) Parliamentary Assembly meeting in Tbilisi discussed Russia's mounting military threat and ways of countering it by concerted effort.
Indicatively, immediately after the meeting the local media carried an interview with Boris Berezovsky, who accused the West of being silent on Russia's military aggression in the Caucasus. He said: "If this continues like that, Russia will try to seize Sevastopol and the rest of the Crimea militarily, if not politically or economically." Berezovksky openly supported Yushchenko as the only presidential candidate who is capable of resisting the Russian threat. Saakashvili will come to Kiev to back up Yushchenko and the main stake in this campaign will be placed on "the Russiafactor" as the common foreign threat. This conclusion was made by a member of Verkhovnaya Rada's International Committee Taras Chernovil.
Experts are convinced that the United States is also placing its bets in this game, if only because it suggested that Ukraine and Georgia should both join NATO. In late September NATO Secretary-General Anders Rasmussen said that Ukraine and Georgia are not ready to enter NATO, and expressed the hope that this will change in the future. However, at the regular meeting of the Ukraine-NATO Military Committee in Brussels on November 12 its members discussed a plan on involving Ukraine's armed forces in NATO's Quick Reaction Force. Members of the Ukrainian delegation maintained that this amounts to Ukraine's de facto entry into the alliance but without legal formalities.
The issue of energy security is the second subject on which Washington has placed its stake since the revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia. Employees of Yushchenko's Secretariat reported the other day that Georgia is planning to host a summit on energy security in the beginning of next January, one week before the presidential elections. Experts assume that yet another gas conflict between Russia and Ukraine at that time will play into his hands.
Yushchenko's envoy on international energy security issues, Bogdan Sokolovsky, does not see a link between a potential gas conflict and the forthcoming elections. He repeated recently that the foundation of future conflicts was laid by the gas agreements signed last January by Putin and Tymoshenko. He explained that the agreements provide for such quantities of gas, "which Ukraine is unable to buy during the economic crisis." "As a result, we have bought much less. Under the agreements, we may be fined for almost $8 billion. In other words, this year we paid for gas almost half of what we may be fined for. Moreover, we borrowed half of the funds which we spent on gas," Sokolovsky explained.
Tymoshenko's supporters are convinced that the presidential entourage is deliberately stoking up tensions in order to provoke a scandal with Gazprom on the eve of the elections and reduce the prime minister's rating. Andrey Shkil from the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc (BYuT) believes that "Yushchenko hopes that Putin will make Tymoshenko pay the fine," although this would shake not only the government's position but the country's entire economy.
Last weekend, Tymoshenko refuted the allegations of Yushchenko's supporters about the threat of fines: "I can say that there is a firm agreement with the Russian prime minister (on renouncing sanctions for failure to purchase the contracted amount of gas - NG). He (Putin - NG) did not let me down a single time, when we agreed on something." Tymoshenko explained that by the end of the year Gazprom and Naftogaz are planning to sign a document on the actual amount of gas supplies and payment for them. "There will be no fines," Tymoshenko said. She confirmed that gas issues will be high on the agenda at the Yalta meeting. In particular, the two sides will discuss the price of gas and terms of its supply in 2010. However, Tymoshenko warned that Ukraine's political independence, about which Yushchenko is so concerned, implies a market price on gas. "However, we will discuss how to optimise not only a price on gas but our entire relations," she said.
Concerned about this issue, the EU is planning to hold a summit with Ukraine in Kiev in early December. In the end of this week Poroshenko will visit Brussels in order to prepare for this summit with his EU colleagues.
Experts differ on how these international factors will influence the course of the election campaign in Ukraine, but the majority believes that they will not play a decisive role. Political analyst Konstantin Bondarenko shares this opinion. He is convinced that Tymoshenko and Viktor Yanukovich will be the main candidates for the presidency. Experts observe that all of Ukraine's foreign policy partners have disassociated themselves from pressure on the election campaign. It makes no difference for Russia, whichof the two main candidates will be elected president, whereas the West, being disappointed in Yushchenko, is cautious about both Yanukovich and Tymoshenko. Under the circumstances, the choice will have to be made by Ukrainian voters who are getting lost in the flow of reciprocal accusations by political leaders. This year Ukraine has a record 30% of people who have not yet decided who to vote for.
Tatyana Ivzhenko