Russia and Ukraine: Making up is hard to do

Two presidents at odds, but still needing each other

A PRAGMATIST who only picks fights he can win - or a bereaved nationalist, locked into a quixotic pursuit of Russia's lost empire? For most of his first term as Russia's president, Vladimir Putin seemed to be the first. But, after his crass support for the losing candidate in Ukraine's tumultuous elections, Mr Putin looked ill-informed, amateurish, even downright dangerous. His visit to Kiev this weekend will test how far he can now restore his previous pragmatic reputation.

His immediate goal will be to muster a bit more cordiality than he and Victor Yushchenko, Ukraine's new president, managed at a frosty meeting in Moscow in January. Mr Putin will need to clear his mind of excitable talk of “orange revolutions” in other bits of the former Soviet Union, even Russia itself (the flag of Pora, the youth movement in the vanguard of Ukraine's street protests, sometimes flutters at demonstrations in Moscow these days). He will need to rise above putative plans of Boris Berezovsky, a renegade oligarch given asylum by Britain, to move to Kiev. He must also pass over Mr Yushchenko's choice of Boris Nemtsov, a disgruntled Russian liberal, as an adviser.

Mr Putin's broader aim will be to stop Mr Yushchenko's desire for closer integration with the European Union compromising Ukraine's relations with Russia. So long as Ukraine's ambitions to join the EU remained more theoretical than real, they did not. But under Mr Yushchenko, whose strategy is to cultivate the conditions for an EU membership application without waiting for a nod from Brussels, the two allegiances seem sure to collide. Bold hopes for a single economic space comprising Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan - a scheme to which Leonid Kuchma, Mr Yushchenko's predecessor, signed up - now look out of the question, even if some sort of free-trade zone may be plausible. The long-term future of Russia's Black Sea fleet, based in the Crimean port of Sebastopol, would also surely be called into question were Ukraine to join NATO.

Mr Putin may also inquire about the future of some other Russian assets. At a meeting on March 14th, Mr Yushchenko reportedly reassured a clutch of top Russian managers or “oligarchs” that their holdings in Ukraine would not be unfairly picked on in the government's review of dodgy Kuchma-era privatisations. (Russian investment in Ukraine is hard to measure precisely, since much arrives via third countries, but it is extensive.) Mr Yushchenko says only a few dozen companies will be involved; a few thousand, said Yulia Timoshenko, his prime minister. Mrs Timoshenko is still technically under investigation by Russian prosecutors over an old corruption case; her nomination did not please the Kremlin.

For much of his ten-year presidency, Mr Kuchma tried to cultivate both Russia and the West. Towards the end, however, the crutch that Mr Putin offered after Mr Kuchma was widely linked to the murder of Georgi Gongadze, a journalist, skewed Mr Kuchma's loyalty. Like the wrangle over reprivatisation, a fresh investigation into the Gongadze case appears now to be reaching a climax. On March 4th a former interior minister due to give evidence apparently shot himself in the head (twice). Rumours that Mr Kuchma is protected by a secret immunity deal are denied by Mr Yushchenko. Mr Kuchma's foreign-policy balance between east and west was also disturbed by suspected arms dealings with Saddam Hussein (the troops he sent to Iraq to assuage the Americans began to return home this week).

One more mystery relevant to Mr Putin's visit also demands a nice balance between justice and political expedience: Mr Yushchenko's near-fatal poisoning last autumn. There have been persistent rumours of Russian involvement. But even if this could be proved - and, as in the Gongadze case, the Ukrainian authorities hint that they know more than they are prepared to say - Mr Yushchenko is unlikely to make a fuss. Paramount though the EU may now be, relations with Russia are still too important for grudge-bearing.

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