Window on Eurasia: Kremlin Urged to Push for Federalized Ukraine

Paul Goble

Tartu, November 29 - A leading Russian nationalist foreign policy analyst has urged the Russian government to look past the Ukrainian presidential elections -- which he says Viktor Yushchenko would have won if there had not been massive fraud -- and to push for a federalized Ukraine to preserve both the unity of that country and Moscow's influence there.

In articles posted on the Agency of Political News website on November 24 and 26 (http://www.apn.ru), Stanislav Belkovskiy,the president of the Moscow Institute of National Strategy, argued that even people in the entourage of Viktor Yanukovich, the pro-Moscow prime minister, not admit that their candidate would have lost the reported vote by five to six percent had there not been massive fraud.

Belkovskiy said that all the experts with whom he had spoken believe that pro-Yanukovich officials had falsified some 2.5 million ballots, or nine percent of those cast, to give him an apparent victory. Those in Kyiv and Moscow who thought that the reported vote would end the matter were and are wrong, Belkovskiy continued.

But he argued that even if everyone agrees that Yushchenko won and that he is able to take office, that does not solve the problems for Ukraine and for the Russian Federation that the election simultaneously highlighted and exacerbated. In fact, he said, Moscow played a "destructive" role in this process.

The election showed that Ukraine is deeply divided, not simply between east and west, as most analysts would have it, but even more fragmented. Belkovskiy argued that the election showed there are many Ukraines. Unless something is done, he added, this multiplicity could tearplace apart to the detriment of both Ukrainians and Russians.

Without providing a source, Belkovskiy invokes no less a figure than the late Ukrainian leader Vyacheslav Chornovyl, who the Russian analyst says, believed that there exist "approximately nine political-mental clusters in Ukraine" and that "without a taking into account of the differences among them any campaign would be impossible."

According to Belkovskiy, not only a campaign but the governance of Ukraine requires a recognition of this reality. And he urges that Moscow work with Ukrainians to push for a radical reform of the Ukrainian state because "even the coming to power of Yushchenko will not change the problem of the interrelationships of these various parts" of that country.

Belkovskiy calls for a thoroughgoing federalization of Ukraine, with the regions enjoying extensive autonomy including on cultural and linguistic questions. Under his scheme, the regions would have the right to elect their governors and to send representatives to the upper house of a new bicameral legislature.

Such moves would reduce tensions and help both Ukraine and Russia recover from the recent vote, the Russian analyst suggested. Belkovskiy's ideas have been supported to a greater or lesser degree by other Moscow writers, including Valeriy Fedorov on the "Russkiy zhurnal" site (http://www.russ.ru/culture/20041126_fed.html), Aleksandr Khramchikhin on the Prognosis site (http://www.prognosis.ru?print.html?id=2572), and Boris Mezhuev on the APN site as well.

It is unlikely that Ukrainians would ever agree to Belkovskiy's plan. Yushchenko, for example, said on November 28 that Ukraine must not be split into two parts, Interfax-Ukraine reported. Such a move would leave their country too obviously weakened to future Russian involvement. But it is perhaps worth noting its existence as an idea circulating within the Moscow elite and possibly contributing to the formation of a Russian negotiating position on Ukraine.

After all, Moscow has pushed hard for radical federalization in Georgia and Moldova as a way of taking care of its clients in both places, and the Russian government has found at least some understanding for its position in the West.

But there is one great irony in Belkovskiy's plan and its possible use by Moscow now: His plan calls for Ukrainian regions to have all the autonomy and political authority that President Vladimir Putin is working to deprive the regions within the Russian Federation.

That is an irony that Ukrainians who want to see the orange revolution succeed may not yet have noticed, but it is certainly an irony that they would be quick to use.