Medvedev Speaks Out on Ukraine
By Nikolaus von Twickel
The St. Petersburg Times
MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev lashed out at Ukraine’s pro-Western leader Viktor Yushchenko on Tuesday, indicating that the Kremlin is counting on a change of leadership when Russia’s most important neighbor state votes in a presidential election. Analysts said Medvedev was effectively telling Ukrainians to vote Yushchenko out of office in the election scheduled for January. In an open letter to Yushchenko, Medvedev said he would postpone sending a new ambassador to Kiev and accused the Ukrainian president of putting gas supplies to Europe at risk by souring ties with Moscow. Medvedev suggested that only a new president could restore friendly relations between the two countries. “I am sure that our relations will return to a strategic partnership in the foreseeable future. I hope that a new Ukrainian leadership will be ready for this,” he said in a video address published on his blog on Tuesday. Medvedev announced that Russia’s new ambassador to Ukraine, Mikhail Zurabov, would only be dispatched after relations improved. “In the present situation, I decided not to send our ambassador to Ukraine. He will start his job later,” he said. The appointment of Zurabov, a former health and social development minister, has been beset with difficulties. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry only formally endorsed him last week, almost two months after Moscow’s previous envoy, Viktor Chernomyrdin, retired. But national media reported at the same time that Yushchenko would probably not immediately hand credentials to Zurabov and that the Kremlin was considering withholding the ambassador until the presidential vote. Sergei Markov, a State Duma deputy for United Russia, said the impasse surrounding Zurabov was one of the reasons for Medvedev’s anger. “He is reacting to the unprecedented delay of a formal agreement to the ambassador. … It seems the only reason for this is that Mr. Zurabov will represent the Russian Federation,” Markov told The St. Petersburg Times. Speaking on a balcony at his Sochi residence in front of the Black Sea, a casually dressed Medvedev outlined what he called “Kiev’s openly anti-Russian positions.” As examples, he named “the obstruction” of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, a “campaign” to roll back public use of the Russian language and Ukrainian attempts to “distort” Soviet history. Medvedev also accused Ukraine of supplying weapons that Georgia used in last year’s five-day war over South Ossetia. “It was with Ukrainian weapons that civilians and Russian peacekeepers were killed,” he said. Moscow’s lease of a base for the Black Sea Fleet in the Crimean port of Sevastopol has been a thorn in relations with Kiev since Ukraine’s independence in 1991. Both sides have also clashed over Ukrainian attempts to describe the deadly Holodomor famine of the 1930s as a genocide ordered by Josef Stalin. But the biggest sparring point has been Yushchenko’s ambition to bring Ukraine into NATO, a policy that is unpopular with many Ukrainians.
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