NEWSPAPER COLUMNS
 ¶ Most Recent
¶ Miscellany
|
COMMENTARY
December 4, 2004
Putin's rage
Vladimir Putin continues to make a fool of himself over the election in Ukraine though he is beginning to be a dangerous fool. Perhaps because his own views on life politics and diplomacy were formed through the many years he worked in the KGB the Russian President seems unable to grasp that meddling in Ukrainian politics to press Russian interests over Ukrainian is not in the Russian interest. A free democratic and sane Ukraine will always seek good relations with its much larger neighbour in the same way Finland under the late Urho Kekkonen did with the Soviet Union through decades after the Finno-Russian War. Finn for Finn they probably hated the Russians more than anybody not directly under the Soviet thumb. But war itself had made them appreciate that flattering Moscow was the price for avoiding the Red Army. This is why even our own Paul Martin though he might have wished to take cheap political shots at the visiting President Bush -- and thus preen before his own anti-American constituency -- knew better than to try. Viktor Yushchenko who clearly won the Ukrainian election under the many layers of fraud knows all this and has said as much on many occasions. He aspires to be a bourgeois politician in a "normal" country. And for all the fire directed against his domestic political opponents he has tried to moderate his supporters' lethal dislike of the bear next door. He has been careful not to say things that would come back to haunt him not only in Moscow but also in the Russian-speaking east of Ukraine. A bourgeois politician understands the necessity of diplomacy in a big ugly world; to say nothing of the income from good trading relations. Mr. Putin's rejection of this good sense is like the Chinese Communist deafness to offers of "live and let live" from Taiwan. It is bred of an arrogance that exposes genuinely aggressive intentions. For unfortunately Mr. Putin is only pretending to be a bourgeois politician. The mask too often slips. First he had his own party-controlled media promoting the idea of a referendum on separation for eastern Ukraine. (I was reading about this in Russian media before it was being discussed elsewhere.) That was incorrigibly reckless. Then he twisted and turned with events in Kiev seemingly looking for a way to step out of the corner into which he had painted himself. But now he is trapped and positively roaring against the possibility that Mr. Yushchenko might come to power; and against "Western interference" (which is code for the Bush administration openly backing Ukrainians demanding a clean election). Yesterday the Ukrainian Supreme Court spoke unambiguously demanding a new runoff between Mr. Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovich by Dec. 26th. This has made the orange-bannered demonstrators in Kiev's streets even more ebullient. And with the passage of days that ebullience is being communicated behind the barriers erected by state-controlled media in both Russia and Ukraine outflanking Mr. Putin entirely. His hard-to-articulate argument that Ukraine is in the Russian orbit and therefore Ukrainians and Westerners alike should butt out of its affairs looks worse and worse in Russia itself. And note the Ukrainian court did not defer to President Kuchma's "compromise" proposal to have a new election in which the old candidates could not again run. This was a manoeuvre to keep himself in power over an interminably extended emergency. But no one has fallen for it. Nor has President Putin the cards he is claiming to play. The Russian army today is not the Red Army. It has more than it can handle in Chechnya. But we do now have a level of tension between Moscow and Washington worse than the Kosovo crisis in 1999 when Russia tried to come to the aid of Serbia's Slobodan Milosevic. We should remember that in that one even against the naturally appeasing President Clinton Russia ignominiously backed down. This time it's Putin v. Bush. And whatever you say against George W. Bush he's no pushover. So the stakes are rising. As ever when that happens we begin to worry that our side might lose. Instead we should think what if we win? For the victory now is going to be a lot bigger and more consequential than if Mr. Putin had just left good enough alone. David Warren
© Ottawa Citizen
|
Top