ANALYSIS:Viktor Yanukovich's presidential win is the result of bickering rivals blowing it in a country with a talent for flux, writes DAN McLAUGHLIN
UKRAINE HAS a long history of evading easy definition. Divided and reunited many times over the centuries, its territory has drifted between Russian, Polish, Austrian and Lithuanian control, its allegiances moving from east to west or looking Janus-faced both ways at once, towards Europe and Moscow. Even the name, Ukraine, is commonly traced back to a Slavic root meaning “borderland”, suggesting a liminal space of shifting identities.
Home to some 46 million people and bigger than France, with borders running along the eastern edge of the European Union, Russia and the shores of the Black Sea, Ukraine now appears to be taking another turn.
Five years after the leaders of the Orange Revolution claimed to be throwing off the Russian yoke and pushing Ukraine towards membership of the EU, they have been beaten in a ballot by the man they exposed as an election cheat and mocked as a bumbling Kremlin stooge.
Official results from Sunday’s ballot give a narrow victory to Viktor Yanukovich over his old adversary Yulia Tymoshenko, the doyenne of the huge street protests that overturned the fraudulent 2004 election and swept her into power alongside pro-western president Viktor Yushchenko.
Their extraordinary harnessing in winter 2004-5 of the disillusionment with the pro-Moscow old guard, as personified by Yanukovich, was supposed to propel Ukraine through a period of swift and fundamental reform that would transform it forever.
Having ousted the Kremlin’s man in Kiev and embarrassed Russian president Vladimir Putin after he rushed to congratulate him on his election “victory”, surely nothing could stop the “orange team” from turning a corrupt and inefficient country into a beacon of democratic, progressive change.
Even the cast seemed perfect: Yushchenko, the thoughtful economist with a heroic streak who survived a mysterious poisoning to triumph on the campaign trail, his handsome features badly scarred by the dioxin that nearly took his life; alongside him was Tymoshenko, the steely businesswoman with the fiery rhetoric, the chic suits and the peasant’s traditional blonde braid.
Their double act, however, was a disaster.
With the praise and encouragement of the western world ringing in their ears, and their compatriots longing for a better life, the orange allies set about destroying each other.
For fully five years each one sought to maximise personal power while undermining the other, leaving the country at the mercy of their incessant squabbling. Reforms got nowhere, corruption flourished, the economy crumbled, Russia reasserted its authority in the ex-Soviet space and Yanukovich, having never admitted to rigging the 2004 election, watched his enemies fight each other to a standstill and open the path for his comeback.
To many in Washington and European capitals, it is utterly baffling that a publicly exposed and humiliated election fraudster should be chosen as president in the very next ballot. But things are never clear-cut in Ukrainian politics, and the Orange Revolution was not welcomed in Ukraine with the same unalloyed joy as in the United States and EU.
Many Ukrainians did not believe that Yanukovich rigged the 2004 election, and saw him as a victim of a conspiracy drawn up by western governments and security services.
As some of Yanukovich’s many critics were crowing that the election fraud and the Orange Revolution had ruined his political career, the rerun of the 2004 presidential ballot saw him take 44 per cent of the national vote, less than 8 per cent behind the triumphant Yushchenko.
Considering that result, and the abysmal performance while in power of the orange pair, his victory in Sunday’s vote is not so surprising. Millions of Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine will feel much more secure with one of their own at the helm, and Yanukovich will be much happier dealing with Moscow than with the European capitals that have demonised him. He has pledged to make Russian an official language in Ukraine and support Kremlin calls for a new security body to replace Nato.
The ex-mechanic has also called for Kiev to seek stronger ties with the EU, however, and his post-election message on Sunday night called for unity in a Ukraine that is deeply divided and faces huge and pressing problems.
The economy shrank by 15 per cent last year, when the hryvnia was one of the worst-performing currencies in the world. Further financial meltdown, or default on sovereign debt, could cause major problems in other European economies. Time is also running out for Ukraine to build the stadiums, hotels and roads required to host the Euro 2012 football championship.
Most urgently, Yanukovich will have to find a way of handling Tymoshenko. She is still prime minister but he has vowed to get rid of her as soon as possible. She may yet challenge the election results in the courts or with street protests. Yanukovich will not easily prise her hand from the tiller of Ukraine, a country forever in flux.
Dan McLaughlin, based in Budapest, reports on central and eastern Europe, the Balkans and Caucuses