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Russia offers Ukraine's Yushchenko 'cooperation'
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-01-13 11:26
Russia offered on Wednesday to work with Ukraine's new leader, in an end
to its frosty silence over Viktor Yushchenko's election victory.
Yushchenko, whose inauguration has been stalled by last-ditch appeals from an
opponent once backed by Russia, angered Moscow during his campaign but has made
overtures to the Kremlin since his win in the Dec. 26 vote.
"The Russian Federation is ready for cooperation with the newly appointed
leadership of Ukraine," Russian Defense Minister Sergei Ivanov told reporters
through an interpreter during a visit to Washington.
"Now the election is already a thing of the past ... I believe that currently
normal work will be reestablished on the part of the government of the Russian
Federation as was the case with the previous government of Ukraine," he added.
Ivanov, whose comments indicate Russia wants to retain its influence over the
ex-Soviet state, noted Yushchenko had announced his first foreign visit would
symbolically be to Moscow.
The historic change of power appears to orient the country of nearly 50
million on the edge of NATO and the EU decisively to the West after an election
that many analysts saw as a tussle for influence between Russia and the West.
But Yushchenko is keen to patch up ties with Moscow, where Russian President
Vladimir Putin originally backed his opponent, former Prime Minister Viktor
Yanukovich.
Yanukovich was declared winner of a rigged earlier election in November,
bringing hundreds of thousands of Yushchenko supporters into the streets.
Putin quickly congratulated Yanukovich but the United States said the vote
was "illegitimate."
Ukraine's Supreme Court overturned the vote, paving the way for the Dec. 26
ballot.
Putin has yet to congratulate Yushchenko, so far saying only that whoever
becomes Ukraine's president should be "pragmatic."
A serious breakdown in ties would hurt both countries' economies. Ukraine's
Soviet-era industry overwhelmingly depends on imports of gas and oil, from
Russia itself or through Russian pipes. Moscow's own westward exports go mainly
through Ukraine.
Ukraine's westward shift has reopened the question of how far organizations
such as NATO and the EU should overcome Russian resistance and open their doors
to ex-Soviet states once seen as firmly in Moscow's orbit.
Ivanov indicated Russia expected the West to exert no more influence over
Ukraine than it did during the last decade, when President Leonid Kuchma had
cool ties with governments and largely ignored their calls for democratic and
human rights improvements.
"The Ukraine government will also establish the same kind of contacts as it
did previously with Western countries," he said.
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