The election campaign in Ukraine is already underway

Ukraine takes a decisive step closer to parliamentary elections after 155 Verkhovna Rada deputies surrender their mandates.

By Ilya Khineyko

On June 15 the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine of the 5th session ceased to exist. By the morning of that day, 151 deputies from Our Ukraine and the Tymoshenko bloc had submitted their resignation papers to Oleksandr Moroz, bringing the total number of parliamentarians below the necessary quorum of 300. Later that same day, four more resignations were announced.
The de-facto dissolution of the Verkhovna Rada was carried out through the resignations of opposition deputies in accordance with the May 27 agreement of the Big Three, which ended the two-months-long political crisis in Ukraine. It happened in spite of the obstructionist maneuvers on the part of Oleksandr Moroz, who stands to lose most from the dissolution of the current parliament. Also, many rank-and-file opposition deputies were extremely reluctant to relinquish their mandates. As Ukrains’ka Pravda reports, before the resignations list was read out loud at the Verkhovna Rada session, “many MPs [had] asked not to have their names put in the top ten of the list because in the event that dissolution of parliament fails they would never have a chance to return to the Verkhovna Rada.”

Update: Who is behind the leaked protocol on Russian-Ukrainian energy trade? The Ekonomichna Pravda version.

On June 7, Ekonomichna Pravda (EP), the business spin-off of Ukrains’ka Pravda, published an article entitled “Gas Subversion,” which seeks to refute most of the claims made in the Glavred piece discussed in our previous posting. While confirming the authenticity of the leaked document, citing some anonymous insider sources from the Naftogaz of Ukraine, the EP journalist disputes the main message of the Glavred article – namely, that the Ukrainian authorities are about to make serious concessions to Moscow, bringing the country’s energy system under control of the Kremlin.

A “Hot” Summer for Russian-Ukrainian Relations

By Ilya Khineyko

It seems that the two neighbors do not have much time for each other at the moment. Russia is trying to deflect criticism over her stance in international affairs and human rights record at the G-8 summit in Germany. Meanwhile, Ukraine is at the beginning of a new election campaign and trying to recover from a prolonged political crisis. That is why Viktor Yushchenko’s insistence that “Ukraine has not done anything to complicate Ukrainian-Russian relations” is slightly surprising. However, given recent developments an escalation of tensions between the two countries does indeed seem probable.

UKRAINE CONSTITUTIONAL CRISIS DEEPENS

David Marples

The bewildering series of events in Ukraine over the past two months have led to a compromise between the two main factions: the office of the president led by Viktor Yushchenko and the Parliament led by Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich. A third figure, Speaker of the Parliament Oleksandr Moroz, also added his signature to the new agreement. However, most analysts concur that the real struggle is yet to come.

Confessions of an Ethnic Russian

By Ilya Khineyko

It has become commonplace to point out that many Russians in Ukraine, and other post-Soviet republics for that matter, are clinging to the Soviet past. However, despite the lack of loyalty to the respective newly independent countries in which they reside, there is little attachment to the current Russian Federation. A number of scholars have argued that the persistence of Soviet identity is rooted in the historic experience of Russians who suffered a loss of identity following the USSR’s own ‘nationalizing’ project aimed at creating a Soviet people. This factor helps to explain why ethnic Russians in the republics did not rush en masse to save the USSR in 1991. However, it cannot account for the absence of ethnic Russian mobilization in the post-Soviet period. The text below helps to shed light on this issue. As an emotional invective, evidently written by an ethnic Russian, it represents an attempt to explain how ethnic Russians feel about their status and perspectives in Ukraine as well as their relationship with Russia. Whether the opinions of the anonymous author of this internet posting are indicative of a broader societal trend remains an open question. However, it does provide an interesting insight into the psychology of this relationship.