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Ukraine Resolves to Integrate With Europe
West's Uneasiness With President May Hinder His Plans to Join NATO and EU

By Peter Baker
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, August 5, 2002; Page A11


KIEV, Ukraine -- Like many former Soviet cities, Kiev retains unmistakable
signs of the past in the form of towering Stalinist buildings in the heart
of downtown. These days, though, the aging behemoths bristle with dozens of
satellite dishes. And they are all pointed west.

After a decade of independence and straddling the line between two worlds,
Ukraine has decided that it wants more from the West than television
signals. As Russia draws closer to the West after the Sept. 11 terrorist
attacks, Ukraine fears being left behind and has set its sights on finally
integrating with the rest of Europe.

President Leonid Kuchma announced recently that, after years of flirting,
Ukraine plans to seek NATO membership. The two sides are considering how to
proceed and, according to a senior diplomat here, may announce this fall
that Kiev will begin the application process, which is likely to be an
uphill struggle. Kuchma has also put together a task force to work on
joining the European Union, setting a goal of becoming an associate member
by 2007 and a full member by 2011.

The main obstacle is ambivalence on both sides. The West, especially the
United States, has been loath to work with Kuchma because of allegations
that he ordered a journalist's murder and shipped military equipment to
Iraq. And Kuchma has yet to demonstrate a sustained commitment or capacity
to follow through on the painful economic, political and military changes
necessary to link up with the West.

"He realizes that Europe is where Ukraine should be," said Markian
Bilynskyj, vice president of the U.S.-Ukraine Foundation here. "But to
undertake the serious reforms it would take would cause severe difficulty --
not for the population, which has already suffered a lot in the last decade,
but for powerful political players here."

The stakes are substantial not just for Ukraine but also for the West.
Ukraine -- Europe's second-largest country after Russia, and its fourth most
populous -- sits at a strategic crossroads with an abundance of natural
resources. Its educated if impoverished population of nearly 50 million
offers an important workforce and a potentially lucrative market. And,
analysts say, anchoring Ukraine in the West would help keep Russia in Europe
as well.

Until now, Ukraine has trod carefully in pursuing ties with the West for
fear of offending Moscow, and for a time last year Kuchma drew closer to
Russia as scandal repelled the West. But now that Russia has created a joint
council with NATO, political leaders here believe they have more freedom to
maneuver.

Ukraine would seem to have little choice. Europe is integrating its
neighbors all around it. If Ukraine does not join the trend, it risks
becoming Europe's "gray zone," as legislative leader Yuri Kostenko put it.

"After September 11, Russia achieved Western respect and went to a higher
status," said Heorhiy Pocheptsov, a Kuchma adviser and head of his new
office for strategic initiatives. "That's why we can follow Russia's steps,
because Russia has gone further."

"Suddenly, the geopolitical wind started blowing the other direction," said
a senior Western diplomat here. "The internal dynamics are pulling Ukraine
to say, at least, that it wants to integrate with Europe. The big question
everybody has is, will the leadership stick with it?"

In a gesture of encouragement, NATO Secretary General George Robertson paid
a high-profile visit a few weeks ago, as did U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul H.
O'Neill. NATO and Ukrainian officials are developing a plan to put Kiev on a
path toward membership, and NATO will complete a force structure analysis in
September. By November, when NATO will hold a summit in Prague, the two
sides hope to announce that Ukraine has entered "intensified dialogue" with
NATO, the first step toward applying for membership.

In reaching out to the West, Kuchma has allowed U.S. military planes to fly
through Ukrainian airspace more than 2,500 times as part of the war on
terrorism and has made some halting progress on reforms. Ukraine has
achieved notable success in increasing agricultural output by allowing land
sales. 

But real integration would require a more dramatic break with the past.
Vitaliy Opryshko, director of the Institute of Legislation, conducted a
study to determine the reforms needed to remodel Ukraine in European
fashion. All told, he figured, Ukraine needed 469 new laws.

"Today it's hard to find somebody who's against [integration], because
everybody understands that today it's hard to survive on your own," Opryshko
said. But "the question of whether to join the European Union or not is not
so simple. Are we ready for this? We need to think about it."

All of which has the potential to stoke passionate opposition. Older
Ukrainians remain nostalgic for Soviet times and resist the idea of
abandoning their Slavic brothers.

"They're trying to pull us into NATO and turn Ukraine into an instrument of
their struggle for world empire and an instrument in their struggle against
our brothers in Belarus and Russia," complained Nadezhda Trofimova, a
regional leader of the Progressive Socialist Party. Yet in reality the West
has done little to aid Ukraine's shift because of Kuchma.

A former bodyguard defected in 2000 with secret audiotapes purporting to
prove the president conspired to have journalist Heorhiy Gongadze murdered.
More recently, the bodyguard produced a transcript of a tape suggesting
Kuchma authorized sale of a sophisticated $100 million radar system to Iraq.

Kuchma has disputed the allegations, but U.S. leaders consider him
untouchable.

To some here, though, U.S. disengagement has only made a bad situation
worse. When Kuchma had Viktor Yushchenko, a pro-Western reformer, as prime
minister, Washington provided little new financial assistance, and he was
ousted last year after just 16 months.

Legislative leader Kostenko, head of the Ukrainian Popular Movement and a
Yushchenko ally, called it "the biggest political mistake." During a visit
to Washington, he said he pressed senior U.S. officials: "You give money to
all the corrupt governments of Ukraine, but you did not give it to the first
non-corrupt democratic government." A White House official told him it
reflected "the absence of real Western policy for Ukraine," he said.

Bilynskyj agreed that the White House policy has been one of "benign
interest" and noted that it has left U.S. Ambassador Carlos E. Pascual
struggling. "You sense that he's frustrated," Bilynskyj said. Pascual
declined to comment.

U.S. officials are debating whether to reengage with Ukraine. Policymakers
are considering whether to invite Kuchma to a meeting with President Bush
and Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski this fall, according to sources
familiar with the situation.

Such a prospect worries Kuchma's opponents, who are trying to organize a
coalition to give them control of parliament and have rallied behind
Yushchenko's presumed presidential bid in 2004. A meeting between Bush and
Kuchma "would be an endorsement of what he's doing," said Oleksandr Moroz,
head of the Socialist Party and former speaker of the Supreme Council, the
parliament.

"Both NATO and the European Union understand perfectly well that Ukraine is
not ready and in the next 10 years won't be ready," he said. "They
understand our Ukrainian politics. This is all political speculation for the
purpose of diverting U.S. and Western attention from illegal arms sales and
other issues."



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