Russia's Move with Ukraine May Win the Election

While it may prove true Putin hurt his relationships with the west, he appears to be on the verge of success in the Ukraine. The west leaning political spectrum has split on the issue of gas prices. Last year's loser and Putin's favorite appears to leading in the polls.
Los Angeles Times

After last week's signing of a five-year natural gas agreement with Russia, President Viktor Yushchenko was basking in self-congratulation. "I would call it a brilliant achievement," he told Ukraine's NTN television.


But former ally Yulia Tymoshenko thought otherwise. "Only a person with a huge New Year's hangover can call this a success," declared Tymoshenko, who was a partner in the 2004 Orange Revolution that brought Yushchenko to power and was his prime minister until last fall. "It's clear that the government has systematically and consciously betrayed the national interests of Ukraine." Just a little more than a year ago, the duo were a "dream team" that stood, hands clenched triumphantly together in the air, in Kiev's Independence Square. For much of the world, they came to symbolize democratic aspirations throughout the former Soviet republics.


But just two months before parliamentary elections that could make or break Yushchenko's efforts to steer Ukraine toward Europe, the showdown with Russia over gas has left the two reformists more divided than ever. In an alarming sign for Ukrainian liberals, Yushchenko's Our Ukraine party got just 13.7% in a poll taken before the gas deal, putting it in third place, trailing Tymoshenko's bloc. Leading the pack is the party of former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich, the Russian-backed candidate who faced Yushchenko in 2004 and was defeated only after hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians occupied the streets and demanded new elections. His party now commands 26.6% in the polls.


Many here felt Russia's move to quadruple natural gas prices was an attempt to punish Ukraine for its drift to the West. It presented the Yushchenko administration with its most serious crisis yet — the prospect of billions of dollars in higher gas costs. Yushchenko successfully called on a broad range of Ukrainians to rally against the Russian enemy and emerged with a pact that he said guaranteed the nation "true independence" where it counts. "We have guaranteed ourselves a stable gas supply in the next five years, and this is the most important thing, believe me," he said. But Tymoshenko has charged that Russia shrewdly outmaneuvered Ukraine and took home a deal that gave it almost everything it wanted.

Only time will tell if Putin's heavy hand will prove effective reality politics in Ukraine and the west.