Kuchma — Yeltsin. Yushchenko — Putin?

The first visit of Viktor Yushchenko in the capacity of Ukrainian Premier to the Russian capital is undoubtedly an outstanding event not only for the next few months but also for the next few years. It is also worth recalling that this is the first visit to Moscow of so high a Ukrainian leader after the unexpected-for-many resignation of President Boris Yeltsin and transfer of power to Premier Vladimir Putin. Leonid Kuchma was last in Moscow a few weeks before Mr. Yeltsin’s resignation, so he could see for himself that his long-time negotiating partner was hardly responsible for his own words: the two presidents’ agreements were then in fact disavowed in a letter from Premier Putin.

Thus Mr. Yushchenko will have to start over from scratch. Even before the transfer of power, Mr. Putin proved to his Ukrainian interlocutors he was a tough pragmatist bearing no burden from the Belovezhskaya Pushcha complex. Mr. Yushchenko also has the image of a pragmatic individual. Hence, from this perspective the negotiations between Messrs. Putin and Yushchenko will differ greatly in style from those between Yeltsin and Kuchma. Leaders of the old school, who reached career peaks in the Soviet period, Yeltsin and Kuchma appreciate the diplomacy of personal contacts; what is more important for them is a gesture rather than the result; they must have liked to stroll in a country retreat, coming to terms on everything in the world without being aware that bureaucrats will then translate these cordial agreements into the dry language of figures and see no reason why they should be fulfilled. It’s also obvious that the second President of Ukraine was eager to be on a par with the first President of Russia. Mr. Yeltsin, who perhaps considered only Bill Clinton and if in the mood Jiang Zemin as his equals, simply could not guess about such sentiments of his Kyiv guest and would have been astonished if somebody had told him about them. Mr. Yushchenko can hardly treat Mr. Putin the way Mr. Kuchma did Mr. Yeltsin. And not only because Mr. Yushchenko is not Mr. Kuchma, which is yet to be demonstrated, but precisely because Putin is not Yeltsin, like it or not.

This is why it will be very difficult to come to terms with him. Mr. Yeltsin never tried to assert himself, especially at the expense of “a certain” Ukraine. When Mr. Yeltsin told off Mr. Kuchma in front of the television cameras, he did so not because he wanted to make an impression of himself and his partner but because he really thought it was the right thing to do. Mr. Putin will look very polite on television, but he will say many unpleasant things to Mr. Yushchenko after the spotlights are turned off. And Mr. Yushchenko will probably not listen to him with the happy and slightly surprised smile, with which Mr. Kuchma heard out Mr. Yeltsin. Not everyone can smile like this.

And the point is not how long Mr. Putin and Mr. Yushchenko will rule Russia and the Ukrainian governments, respectively. The main point is we are going to deal with each other exactly like this: without sentiment. The epoch of personal informal deals ended on December 31, 1999. The time of demonstrative pragmatists has come.