When Putin came to power in 2000 there was little to suggest that Russia’s overweening influence on Ukraine would soon be under threat. Indeed, one of the pet projects of the early Putin years was the creation of a trading bloc that would tie the former Soviet republics into a far-reaching customs union dominated by Moscow. This mega-bloc was to act as a counterweight to the EU and China, drawing a line under the confusion of the immediate post-Soviet years and cementing Russian regional dominance for the foreseeable future.
Ripe for a Russian return
By the summer of 2004 Ukraine had agreed in principle to sign up to this new union, a decision which appeared to pave the way for the country’s final, ignominious retreat from dreams of European integration. With the Kuchma regime deeply discredited throughout the Western world and the country perceived as hopelessly mired in corruption, Ukraine on the eve of the 2004 presidential elections appeared more isolated than ever and increasingly dependent on Russia. The Kremlin simply had to make certain that their favoured candidate was elected and the process of reassimilating its erstwhile colony would be all but complete.
Paying the price for imperial pride
The rest, as they say, is history. From the very beginning of the 2004 presidential campaign the Kremlin appeared bent not only on winning the election but on demonstrating to the whole world that they could act with utter impunity in Ukraine. Few in Putin’s Kremlin had reconciled themselves to the loss of the vast Soviet empire, while the habit of referring to the lost Soviet colonies euphemistically as its “Near Abroad” illustrated a deeper denial over the new limitations of Russian power and prestige.
The idea that ordinary Ukrainians might take offence at overt Russian interference appears to never have been seriously entertained by those charged with shaping Russian policy, and no effort was made to camouflage the role played by the Kremlin in the campaign. Instead, Putin spin doctor Gleb Pavlovsky infamously advised Ukrainians to “resign themselves to the inevitable.” These presumptions were to lead to a catalogue of errors and misjudgements that ultimately cost Russia its hegemony over a country which it had dominated for the previous three centuries.
Putin takes a leading role
Putin’s personal involvement in the Ukrainian presidential elections was as conspicuous as it was crude. He openly supported Yanukovych from the outset and allowed Moscow to be plastered with his billboards and posters, the only recorded occasion in history when a national capital has been swamped by propaganda from a foreign election campaign. Ukrainians were offered the prospect of dual citizenship and preferential treatment in Russia as well as promises that the Russian language would soon be accorded official status in Ukraine.
Meanwhile, Putin’s spin doctors streamed into Kyiv en masse in the months leading up to the vote and began advocating an aggressive campaign demonising Yushchenko as a Western puppet, rabid nationalist or closet fascist. This imported and well-worn Russian election strategy failed to capture the imagination of the Ukrainian electorate, the majority of whom did not regard the West as their natural enemy. Nevertheless, it was to be pursued to the bitter end.
Perhaps most damagingly, Putin actually flew down to Kyiv on the eve of the vote to attend a hastily dreamed-up military parade and appear in a live TV broadcast screened simultaneously by various national channels in which he endorsed the government candidate in the most emphatic terms.
Putin’s appearance in Kyiv so close to the election shocked both Ukrainian and international observers. It has since been argued that his state visit was a key factor enabling opposition leaders to mobile such large numbers of protesters among an electorate that had long been regarded as resigned and politically apathetic. The sight of the Russian president boldly instructing Ukrainians who to vote for on eve of their own elections proved highly inflammatory and was widely interpreted as confirmation that Ukraine’s fragile independence was under direct threat, radicalising many instinctively moderate voters on the very eve of the vote.
Dark side of the moon
The results of the first round of voting demonstrated that the Kremlin’s Ukraine strategy had become wholly dependent on the success of mass electoral fraud, but even so, Putin did not attempt to distance himself from the growing scandal. He returned to Ukraine for another official visit prior to the second round of the elections and then famously phoned Yanukovych to offer his congratulations before the vote count itself had finished. This premature victory call was a clumsy attempt to force the issue and it provoked a display of hitherto unexpected resolve from the United States and the EU.
Events quickly overtook the Kremlin, which found itself attacked on all sides and forced to defend the indefensible. By continuing to blindly back the discredited government candidate, Russia had managed to position itself in direct opposition to the majority of the Ukrainian people, forfeiting the potential propaganda advantage they could have derived from the hundreds of years of shared history and cultural ties between the two countries.
With millions on the streets of Kyiv and international opinion outraged by the scale of the vote-rigging, the Kremlin finally distanced itself from the campaign, but not before it had encouraged calls for separatism. Putin eventually retreated into an ill-tempered neutrality, but his humiliation was already complete and the carefully crafted image of Ukraine and Russia as eternal Slavic brother nations lay in tatters.
Modern Russia’s worst nightmare
Since the debacle of 2004 bilateral ties between Ukraine and Russia have remained strained, with regular energy conflicts serving as flash points in what is now routinely described as a troubled relationship. Once seen as two peas in a pod, the two countries have experienced a major parting of the ways that has become more entrenched during the intervening period. While Ukraine has stuttered along the road to democracy and Euro-Atlantic integration, Russia has plunged further and further towards authoritarianism to such an extent that it is now difficult to imagine that they were once considered so politically intertwined.
The outgoing Russian President appears to have suffered from recurring Orange nightmares throughout the past three years. Since his defeat in Ukraine Putin has become markedly more aggressive internationally, exploiting Russian paranoia in order to secure popular acquiescence for one-party rule.
The clampdown on Russian civil society, which reached a new nadir with the closure of Russia’s British Council teaching centres in January, can be directly traced to the role played in 2004 by Ukraine’s NGOs and to wider fears of people power movements stemming from the Kremlin’s Orange Revolution experience.
In recent years Putin has also overseen the creation of slavishly loyal youth movements which are the polar opposite of the student groups that served as the vanguard of the pro-democracy movement in Ukraine. Internet censorship and state control of political news sites have become priorities as the Russian authorities work to smother any indication of a new colour revolution in their own backyard. Almost every step of the Kremlin’s campaign to eradicate any sign of a political opposition has been shaped by a desire to prevent a repeat of the Orange Revolution.
It is now inconceivable that Russia could seek to exert the kind of influence on Ukraine that was so taken for granted in 2004. Even the country’s pro-Russian political parties have distanced themselves from calls to instate Russian as a second official language, while the old talk of customs unions and eternal brotherhood now sound almost as anachronistic as the empty Soviet slogans of a previous generation. This will be one of the great legacies of Putin’s presidency, but it is unlikely that many in Moscow would care to admit it.
