President Yanukovich and NATO

After all court procedures in the Supreme Administrative court, Viktor Yanukovich is now preparing for inauguration. The Party of Regions carries on complicated negotiations with different political powers about creating a new coalition and forming a “technical” government that will lead the Ukraine out of the crisis it had been drawn into by the Orange government. Timoshenko doesn’t intend to leave the prime-minister’s post and promises to fight the existing government “to the last ditch”. Nationalistic and quasi-nationalistic powers that lost the elections and are unable to oppose representatives of the regions in the field of economics start crusade against the Russian language. Yushchenko chooses for himself a governmental dacha, gives awards to his supporters and goes on his last tour across the country of exhibitions dedicated to the “fight of heroic Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and Ukrainian Insurgent Army against the Soviet rule”. The West meanwhile discusses the after-election fate of the Ukraine.

“The Ukraine at least won’t insist on providing the prospects of membership either in EU, or in NATO. These questions of Yushchenko’s time stand no longer. Everybody understands that the issue of Ukraine’s joining NATO ceased to be an urgent one for now, and may be forever,” stated Arnaud Dubien, a prominent French political scientist and a leading researcher of IRIS.

Nevertheless, Arnaud Dubien doesn’t rule out the possibility of collaboration of Kiev with the West to be more efficient with Yanukovich at the helm, then it was during Yushchenko’s presidency, in case the situation in the Ukraine is not catastrophic. “We’ll be less talking about membership, prospects and dates and will deal more with boring but necessary issues, such as the adaptation of Ukrainian legislation and standard specifications to the European standards, and so on,” says the scientist. First of all, apart from the cooperation in energy sector, the West is interested in the relations between the Ukraine and NATO. As Arnaud Dubien says, the fact that the “golden age” of Ukrainian relationship with NATO has gone doesn’t impede the real army cooperation.

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