Relishing his role as Putin’s man in Europe

By Robert Cottrell

Date: 09/12/04

The recent turmoil in Ukraine notwithstanding, I suspect that Sergei Yastrzhembsky must be enjoying his job as President Vladimir Putin's special representative to the European Union more than anything he has done since he ended his term as Russia's ambassador to Slovakia eight years ago.

He was spokesman for president Boris Yeltsin when Yeltsin often appeared incapable of constructing sentences. He went to work for the Mayor of Moscow, Yuri Luzhkov, just as Putin's rise ruined Luzhkov's presidential ambitions. To get back inside the Kremlin, Yastrzhembsky accepted one of the most gruelling posts in Russian public life, as spokesman on Chechnya, and spent almost four years insisting variously that Chechnya was not at war at all, that the war was constantly on the point of being won, and that the Russian army was a stickler for human rights.

He did it impeccably and has got his reward. Since the Spring, he has been putting his stamp on Russia-EU affairs. He outlined some of his ideas on Russian television just after the recent Russia-EU summit, encouraged by a question or two from his host, the newscaster Nikolai Svanidze.

"As a top-class professional," Svanidze asked helpfully, "don't you have a feeling that after the expansion of the European Union, the attitude of western Europe to Russia has been changing and not for the better?"

"I seem to be feeling it with all my skin," Yastrzhembsky agreed. His first complaint was with the attitude, as he saw it, of the EU's new central European members. "They got a chance to leap from the communist yesterday into a hyper-democratic today," he said, "but they did not pass through a school of political maturity, political correctness and tolerance. And these people with all their complexes and all their Russophobia, have now been integrated into Europe."

The "second and quite obvious sign" of trouble ahead, Yastrzhembsky continued, was the EU's "desire to be very active" in the Caucasus, Moldova, Belarus and Ukraine, at the risk of ignoring "the long-established realities there", namely, Russia's own claims to influence. He was particularly alarmed, he said, by heightened European interest in the "frozen conflicts" of Moldova and Georgia, where Russia has tried to maintain its power by sponsoring secessionist regions. As for Russia, Yastrzhembsky explained, its constant aim was to create "a zone of good-neighbourliness all along our borders".

On the face of it, who could argue with that? But run your fingers around Russia's borders, look at its neighbours now and you have to wonder what went wrong.

Belarus, North Korea and Turkmenistan are run by wild-eyed dictators. Azerbaijan and Armenia teeter on the brink of war. Ukraine is in turmoil. The Baltic states are objects of a Russian hate-campaign. Georgia is trying to get Russian troops out. China is the long-term threat that keeps the Kremlin awake at night. That leaves Kazakhstan for comfort.

I can only hope that Yastrzhembsky is being more perceptive in his private diplomacy than in his public commentary. He must surely see that the EU's new members are not a problem and belittling them is not an answer, even if Russia finds it psychologically difficult to treat them as equals. They want Russia as a secure and stable neighbour, at least as much as the EU's older members do. If Russia's relations with the EU are deteriorating, the problem lies more with Russia's policies and in particular with its habit of propping up bad governments around it while undermining good ones. Anything the EU can do to change that habit can only help Russia too. Ukraine has been an encouraging start.

• Robert Cottrell is central Europe correspondent for The Economist.

Commentary feature on the Special Representative to the European Union of Russia's President Putin, Sergei Yastrzhembsky.