In the meantime negotiations between Ukraine and the European Union on an Association Agreement have reached a decisive phase. On March 30, 2012—after five years of intensive negotiations—the chief negotiators of the EU and Ukraine initialed the text of the Association Agreement, which included setting up a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA). The text was hailed by some as “the most extensive international legal document in the entire history of Ukraine and the most extensive international agreement with a third country ever concluded by the European Union.”[47] Unfortunately, however, due to election fraud and selective justice (the imprisonment of former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko), the EU decided to delay the signing of the agreement. Although association with the EU would be in the long-term interest of Ukraine, eventually raising the prospect of EU membership, it is not certain that the Ukrainian government would make the necessary efforts to take up this opportunity. Russia, which does not formulate conditions of democratic governance or human rights, makes things much easier for Yanukovych. Moreover, the benefits (lower energy prices) are immediate. It is still an open question whether Ukraine will be able to resist the Russian pressure. On May 22, 2013, the Ukrainian government signed a memorandum applying for observer status in the Russia-dominated Customs Union.[48] Ukraine considers association with the EU compatible with a similar relationship with the Customs Union/Eurasian Union. However, this is not the case for Moscow. The Kremlin put enormous pressure on Viktor Yanukovych to shelve an Association Agreement with the EU, which the Ukrainian president planned to sign in Vilnius on November 28, 2013. The Kremlin’s blackmail was successful. Yanukovych refused to sign the agreement—the result of six years of hard, protracted negotiations—in exchange for the Kremlin’s offer of a $15 billion loan and a discount in the price of Russian gas. Yanukovych met with mass protests at home. The protesters were not reassured by his statement that a Ukrainian membership of the Eurasian Union was not (yet) on the agenda. It is clear, however, that most European governments, treating the relationship with Ukraine as a technocratic problem, have massively underestimated the important geopolitical implications of Ukraine’s choice. However, it is not sure that this is also the case for Moscow. If Ukraine were to opt for deeper integration into the European Union, a Georgian scenario could not be excluded, in which the Kremlin could provoke riots in Eastern Ukraine or the Crimea, where many Russian passport holders live. This would offer Russia a pretext for intervening in Ukraine in order “to protect its nationals” and dismember the country. Unfortunately, such a scenario cannot be excluded. It is a corollary of the five principles of Russian foreign policy, formulated by President Medvedev on August 31, 2008. The fourth principle he mentioned was “protecting the lives and dignity of our citizens, wherever they may be.”[49] It leaves the door open for military adventures throughout Russia’s “neighborhood.”
In 1992 Brzezinski warned: “The crucial issue here… is the future stability and independence of Ukraine.”[50] In 2012—twenty years later—in his book Strategic Vision, Brzezinski repeated this warning, writing: “It cannot be stressed enough that without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire.”[51] Brzezinski’s warning is, more than ever, still relevant today. It is not without reason that Polish analysts especially, or analysts of Polish origin, warn about the dangers of Russia’s new imperialism.[52] Their country was, in the twentieth century (and in the centuries before), the main victim in Europe of the aggression from the imperialist powers, which dismembered and occupied the country. When the Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski was asked: “Can you imagine any kind of renewed geopolitical conflict to your west in your lifetime?” he answered “I have a vivid imagination, but no, I cannot imagine an armed conflict between us and Germany.”[53] When asked: “Does your imagination extend to the possibility of a future conflict to the east?” he answered: “Our relations with Russia, like yours [U.S.A.], are pragmatic but brittle. And unfortunately, after the war between Russia and Georgia, I’m afraid conflict in Europe is imaginable.”[54] Another East European politician, Czech President Vaclav Havel, expressed the same concern sixteen years earlier: “I have said it so often: if the West does not stabilize the East, the East will destabilize the West.”[55] This is a warning that should be taken seriously.
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47
Oleksandr Sushko, et al., “EU-Ukraine Association Agreement: Guideline for Reforms,” Konrad Adenauer Stiftung and the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation, KAS Policy Paper, no. 20 (Kyiv, 2012), 6.
48
Margarita Lyutova, “Ukraina stanet nablyudatelem v Evraziyskom Soyuze ne ranee 2015 goda,”
49
“Interview given by Dmitry Medvedev to Television Channels Channel One, Rossia, NTV,” Sochi (August 31, 2008). President of Russia Official Web Portal. http://www.kremlin.ru/text/speeches/2008/08/31/ (emphasis mine).
52
Another analyst of Polish origin, Janusz Bugajski, also warned that “Russia under Putin has evolved into an imperial project…. The Russian regime defines its national interests at the expense of its neighbors, whose statehood is considered secondary or subsidiary and whose borders may not be permanent.” Cf. Janusz Bugajski, “Russia’s Pragmatic Reimperialization,”
53
“The Polish Modeclass="underline" A Conversation With Radek Sikorski,”
55
Vaclav Havel, “L’alliance euro-américaine doit s’approfondir en s’élargissant,”