Анджела Стент - Putin's World - Russia Against the West and with the Rest

In July 2004, Putin effectively endorsed Yanukovych in a meeting with Kuchma. Indeed, during a visit with Putin in May, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was introduced to Yanukovych and the implication was clear: the Russian leader was communicating that he had the power to choose the next Ukrainian leader. 33Shortly thereafter, Gleb Pavlovsky, a Kremlin-connected “political technologist” established a “Russian club” in Kyiv aimed at promoting Yanukovych and denigrating Yushchenko through aggressive media tactics. The Kremlin also offered a series of economic and political concessions to convince the Ukrainian people of the importance of cooperation with Russia. 34

The US government, by contrast, did not endorse either candidate but stressed the importance of a fair, free, transparent election. Nevertheless, US NGOs, in cooperation with European civil society groups, were involved in training Ukrainian groups in activities such as parallel vote counting and election monitoring. Many US officials and democracy-promotion organizations saw the Ukraine election as a test case for political transformation in the post-Soviet space, and the Kremlin understood this as a direct challenge to its influence in this neighborhood. The Soros Foundation contributed $1.3 million to Ukrainian NGOs, and USAID gave $1.4 million for election-related activities, including training the Central Election Commission. 35Russian commentators—betraying a profound misunderstanding of how the US system worked—later conflated Soros and George Bush as jointly promoting regime change in Ukraine, apparently not realizing that in 2004 Soros was spending large sums of money in the US to defeat Bush in the upcoming US election. But US public relations firms were also working to burnish Yanukovych’s credentials. Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager in 2016, who resigned after his Ukrainian and Russian connections were exposed and was subsequently jailed as part of the Mueller investigations into the 2016 US election, was hired by Yanukovych in 2004 to assist in his election campaign. 36

The results of the first round of elections were inconclusive. During the interim between the first and second round, Putin personally campaigned for Yanukovych. The day after the second round, on November 22, 2004, Putin congratulated Yanukovych on his win—before the results were announced. He was duly proclaimed the winner. But all the exit polls and NGO parallel vote counting pointed to a rigged vote count, indicating that the real victor was indeed Yushchenko. Thousands of Ukrainians began congregating in sub-zero temperatures in Kyiv’s snow-covered central Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), demanding a rerun of the election. Protestors blocked access to government buildings, effectively shutting down the government for weeks. The stalemate ended when US secretary of state Colin Powell chose sides for the West and announced, “We cannot accept the Ukraine election as legitimate.” 37Thereafter, Polish president Alexander Kwasniewski and Lithuanian president Valdas Adamkus led a mediation process that resulted in a rerun of the election and Yushchenko’s victory. Four months after his installation as president, he visited Washington, spoke to a joint session of Congress, and received a standing ovation.

Moscow’s candidate had lost and Washington’s had won—at least that is how the Kremlin saw the Orange Revolution. Putin had invested personal and political capital in backing Yanukovych but had not prevailed. For Putin, Ukraine now represented a double challenge—to Russian foreign policy interests and to the survival of the regime itself. Yushchenko’s desire to move toward the West threatened Russia’s political and economic ties with and influence over its most important neighbor. But equally threatening was the specter of the Ukrainian people protesting against a corrupt, repressive government and bringing it down. Hence it was convenient to blame the United States for pursuing regime change in Ukraine. For example, Sergei Markov, one of the Kremlin’s “political technologists,” told an international audience in May 2005, “The CIA paid every demonstrator on the Maidan ten dollars a day to protest.” 38The Kremlin made similar comments a decade later when the next major Maidan upheaval occurred. As Putin told the friendly American filmmaker Oliver Stone, after the Orange Revolution, “We saw the West expanding their political power and influence in those territories, which we considered sensitive and important for us to ensure our global strategic security.” 39

Putin’s relationship with Yushchenko and Yushchenko’s one-time ally and then opponent Yulia Tymoshenko remained tense for the next five years. The battle of historical narratives between Russia and Ukraine resurfaced, challenging the legitimacy of Russia’s claims. The new government revived all the arguments about Ukrainian historical identity, introducing a far more critical stance toward Russia’s role. The Holodomor—Stalin’s man-made famine in the early 1930s—was commemorated as a Soviet genocide against the Ukrainian people. Stepan Bandera, the wartime Nazi collaborator, was posthumously and controversially designated a “Hero of Ukraine.” Yushchenko spent much of his time traveling to Europe, seeking assistance from the EU and NATO, and promising economic and legal reforms. His conflicts with Prime Minister Tymoshenko ultimately led to a stalemated reform agenda and increasing Ukrainian and Western frustration with his government. Meanwhile, many of the old ties between Russian and Ukrainian oligarchs and security service personnel remained. Ukrainians who had flocked to the Maidan became disillusioned with the Orange government because its leaders spent more time abroad or quarreling with each other than implementing real reforms. When Yushchenko came into office, Ukraine rated 122nd on Transparency International’s corruption perception index. When he left office, it was ranked at 146th, on a par with Zimbabwe. 40

Throughout this period, Russia retained a major source of leverage over Ukraine: the gas trade. After Yushchenko’s election, Gazprom engaged in tough negotiations with Kyiv over the price it would pay for Russian gas. Ukraine has one of the least energy-efficient economies in the developed world. Gas from Russia was heavily subsidized, and Kyiv paid one-third the price for Russian gas as Europe. As Putin said in 2005, if Ukraine wanted to join the West, why should Russia subsidize its energy? As the December 31, 2005, deadline for agreeing on a new price approached, the Ukrainians refused Gazprom’s latest offer. On January 1, 2006, Gazprom turned off the gas tap to Ukraine without informing its customers in Europe, leaving many along the pipeline route without heat in freezing temperatures. But the Kremlin miscalculated. Ukraine siphoned off supplies destined for Europe, and the Europeans blamed Russia for their shortages. Three years later, in 2009, Gazprom repeated the cutoff after another price dispute, but Europe was better prepared this time, having stored gas reserves. Nevertheless, Russia’s energy leverage over Ukraine continued to limit Kyiv’s freedom to maneuver throughout the Yushchenko presidency.

In January 2010, Ukraine went to the polls in a presidential election viewed as a referendum on the Orange Revolution. Tymoshenko and Yanukovych were the main contenders, and Yanukovych emerged victorious after the second round. With the Obama administration pursuing its reset with Russia, Washington had no desire to have Ukraine as a contentious issue in US-Russia relations and decided to try to work with the new Yanukovych government. The Kremlin, needless to say, welcomed Yanukovych’s election, particularly since he said that his first priority was to improve ties to Russia and that Ukraine would not seek NATO membership. During his first months in office, he reversed Yushchenko-era policies that angered Moscow, such as the designation of Holodomor as a genocide, the praise for Bandera and his colleagues, and the de-emphasis on the Russian language. From Putin’s point of view, Russia now had an opportunity to reassert its influence over Ukraine.