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Ukraine: behind the crisis
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02 December 2004
Ukraine: behind the crisis
Long before the present post-election standoff in Ukraine, JID warned that a free and fair election appeared a remote prospect. As the crisis escalates towards a possible civil war, JID's regional correspondent - who has been working under cover in Kiev - looks behind the international headlines to analyse the key role being played by Moscow.
The already tense situation seems set to get worse as 16 oblasts (regions) in Ukraine's industrialised Russian-speaking east and south-east threaten to hold a referendum on 12 December. The vote would be the first step towards establishing greater autonomy - or an ideological split within the deeply divided nation.
Critics of the proposed referendum warn that such a poll would effectively bring those regions of Ukraine entirely into Russia's orbit, which many observers suspect was the original motivation behind Russian President Vladimir Putin's open support for presidential hopeful, the current Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych. According to JID's sources in Kiev, on 28 November the pro-Russian Yanukovych met in Severodonetsk with an aide of former Russian prime minister, and current Russian Ambassador to Ukraine, Viktor Chernomyrdin, the mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov and the 16 oblast governors. Top of the agenda was a discussion on greater autonomy for the eastern and south-eastern oblasts of Ukraine.
Prior to the hotly disputed elections held on 21 November, Moscow had been offering the possibility of extending Russian citizenship to Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the Eastern and Southeastern regions such as Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk and Dnipropetrovsk. The situation in the latter could prove particularly volatile, since the population is split between Russian and pro-Western Ukrainians and any efforts to achieve further regional autonomy could easily spill over into violence.
The Kremlin has been openly promoting a scheme to create a new economic power bloc consisting of Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan that could function as counterbalance to the EU and the West in general. Russia and Kazakhstan has very substantial oil and gas reserves, while eastern Ukraine has tremendous coal reserves, as well as 13 Soviet-era steel mills that are still awaiting privatisation.
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