AN OFFER YOU CANNOT REFUSE


Obscured by all the recent acclaim for Vladimir Putin, - leader of his people, statesman, peacemaker, - Putin has, yet again, been putting the squeeze on his neighbours. He has been making his immediate neighbours, in particular Armenia and Ukraine, offers that are difficult to refuse. The catalyst of this activity has been the possibility that either country might sign bilateral trade and economic co-operation agreements with the EU.

Since the collapse of the USSR, with the brief exception of the early Yeltsin years, Russia has sought to bully and intimidate all the former soviet states that now constitute Russia’s immediate neighbours. Russia’s track record against tiny Estonia alone makes for particularly grizzly reading.

However the real affront to Russian hegemony is the existence of an independent Ukraine. Russia’s continued blatant interference in the internal affairs of Ukraine is so naked precisely because, for a considerable number of Russians in general and the ruling Russian elite in particular, Ukrainian independence is itself illegitimate; for Putin Russia and the Ukraine are in reality one and the same. Thus Putin cannot bring himself to acknowledge that Ukraine a country in it’s own right:-

“…[There is] Big Russia and Little Russia — Ukraine," Russian news wires quoted Putin as saying after laying a wreath in Moscow at the grave of Denikin, [the White Civil war General] who is now portrayed as a Russian patriot. "He [Denikin] says that no one should be allowed to interfere in relations between us; they have always been the business of Russia itself.”[1]

An independent Ukraine with strong ties to the EU, even NATO, is the stuff of Putin’s nightmares. However Putin’s instinctive Mafia tactics have now significantly backfired.
His use of gas prices in 2005 and 2009 to punish the Ukraine after ‘the orange revolution’ triggered a response from the EU which began to look for alternative sources of supply to Russia and ‘…Gazprom's [ the Putin controlled gas supplier] sales started to decline since it had proven itself an unreliable and excessively expensive quasi-monopolist.’[2]
Whilst Putin’s efforts to force Ukraine into a customs union[3] that would effectively end Ukrainian economic independence has provoked alarm in Kiev, even amongst previously pro- Kremlin politicians such as Viktor Yanukovych.
After Ukraine’s refusal to enter into this union Putin has imposed ‘a near complete boycott against Ukrainian imports using red tape as his chief weapon. Considering that Russia last year imported one fifth of Ukraine's exports, this is a heavy blow to Ukraine.’[4]
Ukraine is a highly corrupt state with a terrible human rights record; consequently it has not endeared itself to international organisations such as the EU and The International Monetary Fund. However Russia’s clumsy acts of thuggish intimidation has forced the Ukrainian government to see closer ties with the EU as the only alternative to becoming a Russian satellite, whilst the EU, prompted by Putin’s actions, has softened its stance toward the Ukraine.

As I write this Ukraine is preparing to take the first crucial step towards the European Union by signing bilateral trade agreements, if agreement can be reached this will be signed in November. The Russian government is seething at the prospect, with the Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warning of a ‘catastrophe,’ if Ukraine signs.
The EU has played down Russian threats, we shall see. However it would do well to look to Georgia, a country invaded and occupied by Russian troops after it sought to remove itself from the Russian orbit and join NATO.
In the meantime what Price cuddly Vladimir the peacemaker, currently being acclaimed by a spectrum stretching from the left of the Labour party and The Greens, to the so called Stop The War Coalition and the BNP.


 Meanwhile Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot who is being held in a Russian prison camp has gone on hunger strike in protest at the conditions she is being forced to endure. You can read a full account of these conditions in the Guardian:-  

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/sep/23/pussy-riot-hunger-strike-nadezhda-tolokonnikova

Her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/NadezhdaTolokonnikova


[1] http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1900838,00.html#ixzz2fvBuMvQj This reference to ‘little Russia’, a long standing Russian term for Ukraine, with its patronising assumptions understandably caused great offence throughout Ukraine.
[3] Armenia acquiesced and signed up to the CU with disastrous consequences for both the contries economy and independence.
[4] Ibid.










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