Europe and Russia Speak loudly, carry small stick.Saving Ukraine How the West can help

Europe and Russia

Speak loudly, carry small stick

Mar 3rd 2014, 20:31 by Charlemagne ¦ Brussels The Economist / http://www.economist.com/blogs/charlemagne/2014/03/europe-and-russia

THE European Union’s foreign ministers today were long on condemnation of Russia’s take-over of Ukraine, but short on tangible responses. After about five hours of emergency talks in Brussels, their communiqué declared:

The European Union strongly condemns the clear violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity by acts of aggression by the Russian armed forces as well as the authorisation given by the Federation Council of Russia on 1 March for the use of the armed forces on the territory of Ukraine.

The 28 ministers demanded the “immediate withdrawal” of Russian forces to their bases, and urged Vladimir Putin to agree “without delay” to direct talks between Russia and the pro-Westetern transitional government in Kiev.

And if Mr Putin does not listen to their exhortations? European members and leaders of European institutions would stay away for now from the G8 summit to be hosted by Russia in Sochi, site of the recently-concluded Winter Olympics. "In the absence of de-escalating steps by Russia," they added, the EU might suspend negotiations to make it easier for Russians to obtain visas to visit the EU, and talks on a new EU-Russia partnership agreement. It could take other, unspecified, "targeted measures".

The ministers also held out an olive branch, recalling their “ambitions and openness to  a relationship with Russia based on mutual interest and respect”. Catherine Ashton, the EU’s foreign-policy chief, put it thus: “We value very highly the relationship that we have with Russia. We want Russia to reach out to people in Ukraine to have the conversation the Ukrainian government wants to have.”

But in effect, the ministers set a two-day deadline for Russia to reverse course before European leaders take up the issue at a summit expected to take place in Brussels on March 5th.

Nobody held out much hope that Russia would heed either the warnings or entreaties. The real question was how much worse things would get. Part of the debate was about how to characterise the Russian action: an “invasion” or merely a “violation”? In the end, they decided to pitch in one notch below an invasion, to give themselves scope to harden their language should Russia forces move beyond the Crimea.

Jean Asselborn, foreign minister of tiny Luxembourg, whose country now holds the rotating presidency of the UN Security Council, was particularly gloomy: “I fear we are at the beginning of the process, and not at the end." He said Russia’s call for an open session of Security Council to explain its position, a few hours after the foreign ministers’ meeting, was ominous: when Russia did the same in 2008, he said, its forces went on the offensive in Georgia the following day. “I hope this will not be the case again,” said Mr Asselborn.

David Lidington, the British minister for European affairs, said: “There is now a very narrow window of opportunity available for Russia to de-escalate the situation.”

France said the next steps could be visa bans and freezing the assets of senior Russian officials, of the same sort as those being pursued against the entrourage of Ukraine's departed President Viktor Yanukovych. A proposal for an arms embargo against Russia, which could have interrupted a French contract to build two Mistral-class warships to Russia, was struck out of the text.

But Germany was unwilling to talk about further sanctions, preferring as ever to concentrate on dialogue through a proposed “Contact Group” including the EU, the UN,  the Organisation for Security and Co-operation (OSCE) and both Russia and Ukraine. Frank-Walter Steinmeir, the German foreign minister, insisted: “Diplomacy is not a sign of weakness. It is more needed than ever.”

Others were more cautious still. One Italian official said that, even though Italy had signed up to a statement saying G7 countries would suspend preparation for the Sochi summit, the government in Rome privately disagreed with the move. He added: “What sanctions can you place on a country that can cut off your gas?” One answer to the conundrum might be to diversify energy sources away from imported fossil fuels. But Italy has abandoned nuclear power and embraced renewable energy comparatively late.

Americans rhetoric against Russia has been sharper. But in private US officials acknowledge they have no military option. They speak mostly of seeking ways of ensuring “de-escalation” and finding an “off-ramp” for Russia – principally the idea of sending UN or OSCE monitors to eastern Ukraine to report on the treatment of Russian-speakers. If Russia does not listen, they said, then the West would have to play a long game of political, economic and moral isolation. Russia, said one official, was acting in a 19th-Century manner but in the 21st-Century the Russian economy was vulnerable to external pressure. “The Russians have badly miscalculated,” said one US official, more out of hope than conviction.

Saving Ukraine

How the West can help

The turmoil in Ukraine is a chance for the West to prove that it is still a force for good

Mar 1st 2014 | From the print edition / http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21597897-turmoil-ukraine-chance-west-prove-it-still-force-good-how

A MAN goes bankrupt, Ernest Hemingway wrote, gradually, then suddenly. Autocrats lose office the same way, as the fate of Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s deposed president, dramatically illustrates. His authority had ebbed since popular protests against his spectacularly corrupt regime erupted last November. After the savage shooting of scores of his own people in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, once-supportive tycoons and generals abandoned him, and his power evaporated. Mr Yanukovych fled, pursued this week by a charge of mass murder.

His countrymen celebrated—some of them, at least (see article). The relief is understandable: with Mr Yanukovych gone, Ukraine has a chance at last to ditch its ersatz, post-Soviet version of democracy for the genuine kind. Equally—and terrifyingly for both Ukraine and its neighbours—this country of 46m people could implode. Averting that outcome is an urgent task for the West; for the European Union, in particular, this is a chance to show that, for all its internal fissures and foreign-policy quiescence, it is more than a busted flush.

More than money

By any historical measure, Ukraine is part of Europe. It borders four EU nations. Its great cities—Kiev, Lviv, Odessa—are ornaments of European civilisation. So its problems are Europe’s problems, too. Many Ukrainians already live and work in the EU, legally and otherwise. Economic or political turmoil could drive many more to emigrate.

And the turmoil bequeathed by Mr Yanukovych (reportedly in Russia, perhaps having fled on his unfortunately named yacht, the Bandido), is acute. Tension is crackling between Ukrainians who welcome the revolution, and those who repudiate it: in Kiev its victims are mourned as martyrs, yet elsewhere the riot police who battled them are lionised. Even with the unadulterated goodwill of outsiders, the situation would be perilous—and goodwill is not conspicuous in the Kremlin, which propped up Mr Yanukovych’s presidency and now denounces those who ousted him as terrorists. Meanwhile, this perennially mismanaged nation is almost broke.

First and foremost, Ukraine needs a legitimate, national government. The interim leaders installed by the Rada, its parliament, may be more palatable than Mr Yanukovych; but the Rada is a nest of crooks and placemen, and scarcely more legitimate than he was, as some protesters, and Russia, have pointed out. It is vital that the presidential election in May is clean, and seen to be: Western monitors must help to ensure that. And the new president should be untainted by the score-settling and nest-feathering that have blighted Ukraine’s politics. That is one lesson from the Orange revolution of 2004—an event that seemed to herald a democratic future, but instead merely reshuffled an entrenched elite. Yulia Tymoshenko, the Orange veteran and two-time prime minister, who was sprung from jail as Mr Yanukovych fled, should keep out of it.

Whoever wins will need help, and not just the financial kind. When he wasn’t pillaging his country, Mr Yanukovych undermined its courts, suborned its constitution and harassed its media, institutions that are as much a part of an enduring democracy as elections (see essay). That is another warning from the Orange revolution: without a proper underpinning, emerging democracies can slip back into misrule. The West must lend its expertise and resources to restore it.

But Ukraine needs money too—lots of it, and urgently. Its finances are dire: its hard-currency reserves are dwindling, the current-account deficit is widening and around $13 billion of debt repayments are due this year. Russia is unlikely to honour the $15 billion bail-out it agreed with Mr Yanukovych in December. Ukraine needs around $25 billion to stay afloat. That should come in two parts: first, several billion dollars in emergency loans to tide the country over until after its election, then a big multi-year package, financed largely through the IMF.

Of course, IMF support will come with conditions, such as a clean-up of Ukraine’s Augean corruption, a depreciation of its overvalued currency and a curtailment of its lavish energy subsidies. The interim government should begin these reforms, to take some of the heat off the elected one. And the Europeans can help, too, both with technical assistance and by holding out the best inducement to reform they can offer: the prospect (however distant) of full EU membership. That idea will alarm some member states, not to mention their voters. They should see that incentivising democratic change in this pivotal country, and welcoming it to the European club if that is accomplished, is as much in their interests as Ukraine’s.

Right and wrong, not west and east

The EU and its allies should do all this because it is right, rather than to rile Vladimir Putin. All the same, Mr Putin will be outraged. Russia is already destabilising—perhaps even preparing to annex—the Crimea, a peninsula transferred to Soviet Ukraine in 1954. Pro-Russian gunmen seized administrative buildings there on February 27th. Even if Mr Putin restrains himself for now, he is sure to respond eventually: he nurtures grudges for years, and the Potemkin democracy he has engineered in Russia lets him stick around long enough to avenge them. He exorcised his grievance over the Kosovo war of 1999 by invading Georgia in 2008. Ukraine is much more important to him than Georgia, for without it Russia’s sphere of influence looks paltry. Even in Mr Putin’s warped view of Russia’s interests, a civil war there would be undesirable—but, short of fomenting one, he will doubtless do his best to stop the country becoming an independent democracy.

All the more reason for the EU and its allies to help generously now. At root the real division among Ukrainians is not between east and west, but between hope and cynicism: between those who believe a better kind of government is possible and those who understandably think that, in their troubled post-Soviet nation, corrupt paternalism is the best they can do. Creating an honest, competent government, devoted to the well-being of its people, is the best way to persuade all Ukrainians that they are better off without the kleptocrats—and, incidentally, to show that the West is still a force for good.