After Abkhaz Failure, Spin Goes to Ukraine

By Simon Saradzhyan Staff Writer
Monday, October 18, 2004. Page 1.
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2004/10/18/003.html

Both are candidates from the party of power and have presidential aspirations. Both served as prime ministers and campaigned on a platform of strengthening ties with Russia. Both recruited Russian spin doctors and relied on images of meetings with President Vladimir Putin to bolster voter support.

The similarities between Abkhazia's Raul Khadzhimba and Ukraine's Viktor Yanukovych may end there. But Yanukovych and Putin should be scratching their heads over Khadzhimba's defeat despite an outpouring of support from the Kremlin.

The staggering failure in Abkhazia could serve as a wake-up call for Moscow to fine-tune its heavy-handed attempts to assist allies in neighboring regions or downscale its involvement in their domestic affairs, analysts said. If Moscow does neither, it risks seeing all its efforts blow up in its face.

Khadzhimba's campaign team -- which used Russian consultants and their brand of spin that has proven successful in Russia -- tried to capitalize on the pro-Russian sentiments of Abkhaz voters ahead of the separatist Georgian region's presidential election on Oct. 3. Many of the region's 340,000 people still remember Russia's tacit support during their war for secession from Georgia, and many hold Russian passports.

The Russian PR wizards clearly hoped that televised footage of Putin welcoming Khadzhimba to his vacation residence near Sochi in August would resonate positively with Abkhaz voters.
The meeting might well have helped Khadzhimba beat opposition candidate Sergei Bagapsh -- if Russia's support had ended there, analysts said.

But Abkhaz residents soon began to see billboards of Khadzhimba and Putin popping up on their streets. Russian state television, which reaches the region, carried generous coverage of Khadzhimba's campaign, and Russian celebrities and politicians flew into the region's capital, Batumi, to voice their support.

Among the visitors were crooner-turned-State Duma Deputy Iosif Kobzon and pop singer Oleg Gazmanov, both of whom held concerts. Gazmanov embarrassed himself and angered the audience by mixing up Abkhazia with another Georgian region and exclaiming from the stage, "Adzharia, vote for Khadzhimba!"

While the gaffe might have seemed like the low point of Moscow's assistance, rock bottom was only reached, arguably, when Vladimir Zhirinovsky, leader of the ultranationalist Liberal Democratic Party, told a rally of Abkhaz voters that Russia might withdraw its support of the region if Khadzhimba lost.

The threat could not help but hurt the national pride of Abkhaz residents, especially since it was made on Sept. 30, the holiday when the region celebrates its victory in the 1992-94 war against Georgia, according to the magazine Profil.

Two other factors were also working against Khadzhimba. Many Abkhaz voters were growing frustrated by incumbent President Vladislav Ardzinba's failure to pull them out of poverty while he and his retinue, including Khadzhimba, lived like kings, said Alexei Malashenko, a senior researcher with the Carnegie Moscow Center.

In addition, support for Bagapsh swelled when popular opposition candidate Alexander Ankvab threw his weight behind Bagapsh, and Amtsakhara, an influential group of 1992-94 veterans, also backed his candidacy.

In the end, Khadzhimba lost the region's first popular vote for president along with his post as prime minister. Ardzinba fired him as it was becoming clear that he had lost the vote.
Eleven members of Abkhazia's election commission agreed that Bagapsh had won with 50.08 percent of the vote, enough to avoid a runoff. Moreover, the commission's chairman declared Bagapsh the victor. Khadzhimba, with the incumbent president's backing, is challenging the results in the Abkhaz Supreme Court.

It remains unclear what caused Russia to take sides in the election. All five candidates were pro-Russia. They also reportedly hold Russian passports and know full well that Abkhazia's economy, if not security, hinges on Russia.

"This was an overwhelming failure of Russian PR experts and a strategy that was primitive and dumb," Malashenko said. "The pressure backfired."

Noting that the political spin that works in Russia does not necessarily transfer to other former Soviet republics, Malashenko said the outcome in Abkhazia sends a resounding warning to the spin doctors who are applying the same "primitive methods" in Ukraine.

So far, however, the Russian strategy ahead of Ukraine's Oct. 31 presidential election remains striking similar to the one used in Abkhazia.

Putin has met with Yanukovych, President Leonid Kuchma's heir apparent, several times, and Russian politicians have taken turns voicing their support. Russian state television is bombarding Ukrainian viewers with pro-Yanukovych coverage while criticizing his main rival, former Prime Minister Viktor Yushchenko. Ukrainians get the state channels as part of their standard television package.

The campaign for Yanukovych is not limited to voters in Ukraine. Billboards of Yanukovych have gone up along main streets in Moscow, and state television reporters recently visited a Moscow courtyard to cover a small pro-Yanukovych rally of Ukrainians who work here as yardkeepers and plumbers.

Yanukovych, who grew up in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, has the backing of Russian-speaking communities in eastern Ukraine and, thanks to Kuchma's tacit support, the voters who lean toward the party of power.

In an effort to secure more support from Russian-speaking communities, Yanukovych has promised to make Russian the country's second official language and has suggested suspending Kuchma's plans for Ukraine to apply for membership in the EU and NATO.

These ideas have been warmly welcomed by senior Russian policymakers. "Establishing Russian as the second official language ... shows foresight," said Andrei Kokoshin, chairman of the State Duma's CIS Affairs Committee.

Unlike Yanukovych, Yushchenko has strong support in western Ukraine, where nationalists dominate the political scene, and among liberal voters across the country. His bloc, Our Ukraine, holds about one-fourth of the seats in Ukraine's parliament. Yushchenko is not making overtures to Russia and is promising to improve relations with all neighboring countries by pursuing a foreign policy based on Ukraine's national interests rather than on alliances.

Recent opinion polls put Yushchenko and Yanukovych far ahead of the other contenders, but neither appears to have enough support to win the election outright. A runoff vote, if needed, will be held in the second half of November, and much of its outcome will depend on which candidate manages to win the support of the country's communist and socialist voters.

Yushchenko and Yanukovych have courted these voters in recent weeks. If history is any guide, Kuchma's party of power has been more successful in striking deals with communists and socialists than Yushchenko's liberal opposition.

Geographically, the battle in a runoff would be fought in central and southern Ukraine -- the very areas where overt support from Moscow could easily backfire, said Alexei Makarkin, an analyst at the Center for Political Technologies.

But no matter who wins, the next Ukrainian president is unlikely to anchor the country decisively to Russia or the West but rather continue a balancing act between the two powerful players, he said. As such, the Kremlin might have more at stake than Ukrainian voters.

Should Russia fail with Yanukovych like it did with Khadzhimba, serious doubt will be cast on its ability to influence affairs in what it considers its own backyard and where the United States and the European Union are playing increasingly active roles, Makarkin said.

A win by Yushchenko might even inspire opposition forces in other CIS countries such as Belarus, he said. Ukraine, after all, is an internationally recognized country, not just a separatist region like Abkhazia, he said.

"Russia would be dealt a much heavier blow if Yanukovych loses," he said.