Ukraine News: Time, AP,WoE,NYTs, KP

Time Magazine

http://www.time.com/time/

Putin to the West: Hands Off Ukraine

By James Marson / Kiev

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s Prime Minister and former President, is not renowned for his love of literature. But on Sunday he gave Russian journalists an unexpected reading tip: the diaries of Anton Denikin, a commander in the White Army that fought the Bolsheviks after the Revolution in 1917.

“He has a discussion there about Big Russia and Little Russia — Ukraine,” Russian newswires quoted Putin as saying after laying a wreath in Moscow at the grave of Denikin, who is now portrayed as a Russian patriot. “He says that no one should be allowed to interfere in relations between us; they have always been the business of Russia itself.”

Putin’s words are seen as the latest in an ongoing volley of pointed warnings to the West not to meddle in Ukraine, a country with such close historical and cultural ties to Russia that the Kremlin considers it firmly within its sphere of interests.

“The Russian leadership is very apprehensive about what it sees as Western moves designed to tear Ukraine away from Russia,” says Dmitry Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, an independent think tank in Moscow. “Their central foreign-policy goal is to create a power center around Russia. Any move by the West towards the former Soviet republics is seen as damaging Russia’s interests.”

Moscow has reacted angrily to Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko’s attempts in recent years to gain NATO membership, and to a recent agreement in March for the European Union to help modernize Ukraine’s aging gas-transport system. “This agreement is Exhibit A in Moscow’s collection [of complaints],” says Trenin. “It’s evidence that Europe is concluding bilateral deals with Ukraine that undermine Russia’s interests.”

Russian leaders have also expressed concerns about the E.U.’s Eastern Partnership program, unveiled earlier this month, which aims to deepen economic and political ties with six former Soviet states, including Ukraine. At the E.U.-Russia summit in Khabarovsk over the weekend, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said E.U. officials had “failed to persuade” him that it was not harmful to Russian interests. “What confuses me is that some states… see this partnership as a partnership against Russia,” he said.

Putin’s reference on Sunday to “Little Russia” — a term used during the Russian Empire to describe parts of modern-day Ukraine that came under Tsarist rule — has raised hackles in Ukraine, where many consider it demeaning and offensive.

“These comments by Putin should be taken very seriously,” says Olexandr Paliy, a political analyst with the Institute of Foreign Policy at the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ Diplomatic Academy. “Russia is engaged in a propaganda war against Ukraine, designed to convince the West not to support Ukraine. Russia doesn’t understand cooperation with equals, only with subordinates.”

Putin is not known for his tact when speaking of Russia’s western neighbor, which declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. In April 2008, a source told Russia’s Kommersant newspaper how Putin described Ukraine to George Bush at a NATO meeting in Bucharest: “You don’t understand, George, that Ukraine is not even a state. What is Ukraine? Part of its territories is Eastern Europe, but the greater part is a gift from us.”

Such rhetoric led to fears that after its army’s foray into South Ossetia in August, Russia would turn its attention to Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula, which has a predominantly ethnic Russian population and is home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. In an article in Ukraine’s Den newspaper on Thursday, Yuriy Shcherbak, Ukraine’s former ambassador to the U.S., wrote political analysts close to the Russian leadership were keen to portray Ukraine, which has huge economic woes and a political élite riven by infighting, as a “failed state.”

“Aggressive conversations are taking place concerning Ukraine and the dividing of its territory… at various levels of the Russian political, military and secret service leadership,” he wrote. In fact, other experts suggest, such belligerent talk is meant more as a corrective threat than a potential course of action. But even if Moscow has no immediate designs on Crimea, the continued flow of baleful utterances from the Kremlin does reflect a desire for what Medvedev has called Russia’s “privileged interests” in the region to be respected — in terms of politics, business and culture.

And the Kremlin certainly has plenty of levers to pull in Ukraine to make its views felt, with its control over gas supplies, alongside the popularity of Russian state-controlled TV in the east and south of the country, where pro-Russian sentiment is strongest. “In certain sections of the Ukrainian political and business élite there are links with Russia stretching back to Soviet times,” says Paliy from the Institute of Foreign Policy. “There are also a large number of Russian-sponsored think tanks in Ukraine, which function freely and push the Kremlin’s views.”

These levers are likely to play a significant role in Ukraine’s upcoming presidential elections, set for next January. Last time round in 2004, Russia and Putin threw their weight behind then Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych, whose initial victory was overturned after massive protests after massive protests in Kiev against vote-rigging, which turned into the so-called Orange Revolution. This time, analysts say that the Kremlin is likely to diversify its approach, with support for both Yanukovych and previously hostile Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, President Yushchenko’s former Orange ally.

“The Russian leadership learnt one important lesson from 2004 — not to put all their eggs in one basket,” says Trenin. Meanwhile Russians and Ukrainians alike will be watching for Putin’s next trenchant explanation from literary history.

AP

Ukraine probes devastating Soviet-era famine

25 May 2009

KIEV, Ukraine (AP) – Ukraine has opened a formal investigation into a Soviet-era famine that killed millions of people, as part of a government campaign to prove the famine was an act of genocide.

The State Security Service said in a statement on its Web site Monday that it was launching a criminal probe into the tragedy.

The 1932-33 famine was engineered by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin to force peasants to give up their private plots of land and join collective farms.

Ukraine, which has rich farmland, suffered the most of all Soviet regions. President Viktor Yushchenko has led efforts to win international recognition of the famine as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian nation.

Russia opposes the term genocide, saying other ethnic groups also suffered.

Window on Eurasia: Putin Praises Denikin Whose Nationality Policies Led to Lenin’s Victory

Paul Goble

Vienna, May 25 – Prime Minister Vladimir Putin yesterday laid flowers on the Moscow grave of General Anton Denikin, a White Russian leader whose opposition to the aspirations of non-Russian nations in the Russian Empire and unqualified commitment to the “indivisibility” of Russia opened the way for the victory of Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks.

Indeed, it was Denikin’s unwillingness to make any concessions to non-Russian groups, combined with Lenin’s false promises of respect for national self-determination that led to the collapse of the anti-Bolshevik cause and allowed the communists to triumph, first at the expense of the Russians and then of the non-Russians among and around them.

And consequently, as several commentators have already pointed out, Putin’s latest remarks, including in particular his denigration of the separateness of Ukraine, are certain to drive many non-Russians away from Moscow, even if they appeal to Russians as “the [latest] end of the [Russian] civil war” and a reaffirmation of the continuity of Russian history.

Yesterday, Putin laid flowers on the graves of anti-Bolshevik generals Anton Denikin and Vladimir Kappel, émigré nationalist philosophers Ivan Il’in and Ivan Shmelyev, and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn at Moscow’s Sretensk Monastery. Accompanying him and relaying some of his words was Archimandrite Tikhon.

After laying flowers on the leader of the South Russia government, Putin quoted Denikin’s suggestion that “no one must be allowed to interfere in relations between us, big and little Russia, Ukraine. This was always an affair of Russia itself!” And he added that Denikin considered that any movement toward disunity was “impermissible.”

According to Tikhon, Putin “recalled how he had read the memoirs of Denikin in which the latter said that despite his hostility to Soviet power, even to think about the dismemberment of Russia was a crime, … especially when one is talking about the Little Russian land – Ukraine” (grani.ru/Politics/Russia/Cabinet/m.151488.html).

And the Russian Orthodox churchman added that Putin had given the money from his personal account for the restoration of the graves of Denikin, Il’in and Shmelyev. Several months ago, Tikhon said, Putin had seen pictures of the graves and decided that he had to intervene to support the preparation of new headstones.

During his visit, Putin praised Denikin and the others as leaders committed to the Russian state, noting that “the main thing which distinguished them was a deep and true love for the motherland, for Russia, true patriotism,” something that made them “heroic people” in what Putin conceded was “a tragic time” (forum.msk.ru/material/news/901048.html).

Such comments are certain to be well received by Russian nationalists either as the latest indication of an “end” to the divisions of the Russian civil war out of which the Soviet Union was forged or as the beginning of the reaffirmation of Russia as a continuation not so much of the USSR but of the Russian Empire.

Evidence of this was provided today by nationalist Pavel Svyatenkov who suggests that Putin’s actions represented a concerted effort to create a new state ideology, one that would separate his government from the Stalinist past and ultimately lead to “reestablishing the succession of our state from the Russian Empire” (www.rus-obr.ru/day-comment/3020).

Other writers, however, including many on the left, are appalled by Putin’s celebration of leaders who fought the Bolsheviks (Denikin and Kappel), welcomed the actions of the Nazis in limiting the spread of communism (Il’in), or otherwise opposed the rights of the peoples of Russia.

But the most serious immediate consequences of Putin’s words are likely to be on non-Russians around and even within the Russian Federation. As one writer points out today, “the historical logic” Denikin employed and that Putin invokes, “will drive Ukraine away from us,” however attractive Russians find it (www.rus-obr.ru/opinions/3025).

Indeed, many non-Russians are likely to see this latest statement by the Russian prime minister as further evidence that Putin does not view Ukraine as an independent state. In April 2008, Putin notoriously said that “Ukraine is not a state! What is Ukraine? Part of its territory is Eastern Europe, and part, a significant part, was given to it by us!”

And consequently, just as the unreflective nationalism of Denikin led to the destruction of the anti-Bolshevik cause 80 years ago, so too the equally unreflective nationalism of Putin could contribute to the final dismemberment of what he and tragically many others in Russia and elsewhere see as that country’s patrimony.

The New York Times

Europe and Russia Fail to Agree on Way to Ensure Gas Supplies

By CLIFFORD J. LEVY

23 May 2009

Late Edition – Final

5

MOSCOW — Russia and the European Union failed Friday to reach an agreement that would prevent future disruptions of energy supplies to Europe, and the two sides appeared unable to draw closer on a range of other matters.

Russia’s president, Dmitri A. Medvedev, and his counterparts from the European Union sought to play down their differences at the end of their summit meeting by saying that the discussions had been useful.

The Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, whose country holds the rotating presidency of the 27-member European Union, said the meetings had enhanced ”mutual trust.”

Still, the very location that the Kremlin chose for the get-together — the city of Khabarovsk, in Russia’s Far East, near the Chinese border and the Sea of Japan — seemed intended to highlight its unease at the state of relations.

By making European officials fly 10 or more hours, the Kremlin appeared to be underscoring the fact that Russia was not just a European nation and had many opportunities to its east as well.

European Union officials were eager to discuss an arrangement to guarantee energy supplies, less than five months after Russia, for the second time in three years, shut off natural gas to Europe in a pricing dispute with Ukraine.

Russia and Ukraine, which maintains pipelines that deliver Russian gas to Europe, have quarreled repeatedly over pricing and supplies in recent years, raising questions in Europe about whether Russia is a reliable source.

Mr. Medvedev brushed aside European concerns on Friday, saying that Russia had no need to give promises and suggesting that Ukraine was solely to blame.

”The Russian Federation has not given, and will not give, any such assurances,” Mr. Medvedev said at a news conference. ”What on earth for? From our side, there are no problems; everything is in order with gas and with fulfilling our obligations. Let those who are required to pay for the gas give the assurances.”

Mr. Medvedev added that he doubted whether Ukraine, which has been severely affected by the financial crisis, would be able to continue to pay for Russian gas for its own use. He indicated that both Russia and the European Union might need to step in to send assistance.

The president of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, emphasized that even in the absence of a formal arrangement, Russia and Ukraine had to settle their problems without threatening gas supplies and leaving Europeans freezing during the winter.

”Disruption in the transit and export of gas must not be allowed to occur again,” he said.

Last winter’s supply disruptions and subsequent strong-arm tactics from the Kremlin shook up both European consumers and Central Asian suppliers, helping revive long-stalled plans to build a pipeline to provide an alternative to Russian gas. But the so-called Nabucco pipeline has never managed to put together the elusive formula of plentiful supplies, customers and financing.

Kyiv Post

There will be no forgiveness’

May 21, 2009

Thousands came to the Bykivnya mass grave northeast of Kyiv on May 17 to remember an estimated 100,000 victims of Stalin’s repressions.

Late at night at the end of the 1930s, tram number 23 would rattle its way from Kyiv to Brovary with a grim cargo on board: dead bodies. Victims of the NKVD, the predecessor of the KGB, they were on the way to be tossed into mass graves at Bykivnya forest.

On May 17, several thousand people gathered at the memorial center in the forest to mark Ukraine’s Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repression and remember those destroyed by the Soviet machine.

“Here, at Bykivnya, Stalin and his monstrous hangmen killed the bloom of Ukraine,” said President Victor Yushchenko in a speech at the event. “There is no forgiveness, and there will be none.”

Yushchenko’s presidency has seen a marked attempt to revise traditional Soviet views of Ukraine’s history. He has drawn international attention to Holodomor, the man-made famine that killed several million people in Ukraine in 1932-3, overseen the erection of statues to Ukrainian national heroes and ordered the declassification and publication of thousands of documents from the archives of the SBU, Ukraine’s State Security Service, known in Soviet times as the KGB.

In the days leading up to the Day of Remembrance, SBU archivists announced that they had identified 14,191 bodies in the mass graves using archival materials. The exact number of people buried at Bykivnya is unknown, but estimates suggest as many as 100,000 were dumped here during the orgy of killing from 1937 to 1941 that was part of the Great Terror unleashed by Stalin against political opponents.

Yushchenko praised the archivists for their work, part of the drive to declassify and publish archival documents on political repressions, the Ukrainian liberation movement and Holodomor that he ordered in January. Around 800,000 files previously marked “secret” and “top secret” will be opened up and made available for publication.

Declassifying the documents is only a small part of the archivists’ work, said Volodymyr Vyatrovych, the director of the SBU archives. As the files are declassified, electronic copies are being taken that are available for viewing at centers across the country, 14 of which have already been opened.

“All the stories reflect the larger picture,” Vyatrovych said. “We want to give people an opportunity to see the documents and make their own interpretations.” He added that there has been a marked increase in interest from relatives in recent months wanting to find out about the fate of their family members.

Some of those gathered in Bykivnya forest on May 17 had brought their own documents and stories. One lady, who gave her name as Natalia, said that her grandfather had been denounced to the NKVD by the head of the local village council who wanted to take his apartment. She claimed the man’s son still lives there and that she can’t get the apartment back, despite possessing documents that she says prove it belongs to her family.

Such stories are a testament to the paranoia and vicious self-interest that combined in an ostensibly political campaign. Anyone could be denounced as an “enemy of the people” as the purge spun out of control, even consuming people with seemingly solid party credentials.

Hryhoriy Brovchenko was an activist who had taken part in the 1905 and 1917 revolutions. But in 1937, the NKVD took him away as an enemy of the people, killed him and dumped his body at Bykivnya. His daughter, Olha Kostenko, was among those at the ceremony.

Yushchenko listed a number of the most famous victims of repression who are known to lie in the forest, including writers, poets, professors, doctors and priests. “An invisible link runs from Bykivnya to all of the countless cemeteries of the communist terror in our land,” he said. “All of Ukraine is part of this hellish network. The duty of the nation is to remember everyone.”

He also called for the removal of all symbols of Soviet repression from the country.

“Ukraine must finally purge itself of the symbols of a regime that destroyed millions of innocent people,” he said, adding that 400 such monuments had been taken down in the past year.

Not everyone agrees with the president’s steps. The Head of the State Archives, Olha Ginzburg, a member of the Communist Party, has criticized the president’s decision to publish archival documents. The president has often riled Russian leaders with his portrayal of their country as the perpetrator of horrific crimes against Ukraine during the Soviet period.

Political analysts suggest that his willingness to touch the prickly subject of Ukraine’s Soviet past has opened a can of worms which is negatively affecting his popularity, which now runs in single digits.

“Many people who benefited from the Soviet Union are still alive,” said Roman Krutsyk, president of the non-governmental organization Memorial, which documents Soviet political repressions. “But lots of people who suffered are also still alive, and relatives of those who were killed. It is essential for Ukraine as an independent state that it remembers its past.”