Region: Medvedev visits Ukraine

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev embarked on a two-day visit to neighboring Ukraine May 17-18, as ties between the two countries continue to improve since Viktor Yanykovych won the Ukrainian elections in February.

Relations between Moscow and Kyiv soured under the previous president, Viktor Yushchenko, who pushed for Ukraine to join NATO and the European Union, but Yanykovich has sought to repair ties in the early days of his presidency.

In April, Ukraine extended the lease for Russia's Black Sea fleet based on the Crimean peninsula in exchange for lower prices on Russian gas.

However, Yanykovych also rejected a proposal by Russia's state-owned gas monopoly, Gazprom, to take control of Ukraine's network of gas pipelines that carries about 80 percent of Western Europe's gas supplies.

During this visit, Russia and Ukraine outlined a 10-year plan for cooperation in economics and trade. On May 17, the two leaders visited the Ukrainian tomb of the unknown soldier and also paid tribute to victims of the Holodomor, a 1930s famine induced by the Stalinist Soviet regime. Between 2 million and 10 million Ukrainians are estimated to have starved to death between 1932 and 1933, and the events were long covered up by Soviet authorities.

The tributes came amid a spring downpour and led Medvedev to joke that the rain had "washed away" the contentious relations of past years.  

The two leaders signed a joint declaration on European security, calling for, among other things, the removal of visa restrictions in Europe. The agreement pledged to "actively promote the creation of a common space of legally binding guarantees of equal and indivisible security for all states of the Euro-Atlantic space without exception, including reliable security guarantees to countries that voluntarily gave up their nuclear arsenals, and nonaligned states."

Both Medevedev and Yanykovych said they would broaden cooperation on banking and intelligence services.

"Our trade has risen by half in the first four months since the start of the year," Yanykovych said. "We are steadily heading toward a figure beyond $35 billion for this year."

Medvedev also said the two countries would finalize joint agreements for cooperation in the fuel and energy sector, as well as in space and rocket technology in the near future.

"Work on specific projects is certainly ahead. I hope that very soon we will complete a number of documents currently being agreed upon," he said.

While Yanykovych's political base is in Ukraine's Russian-speaking east, and he has often been portrayed as pro-Kremlin, in the early months of his presidency he has walked a middle line between Moscow and Brussels, visiting both cities in the first days of his presidency. Yanykovych rebuffed proposals to merge Gazprom with Ukraine's natural gas company Naftogas, meaning negotiations in the oil and gas sector may take on a more contentious tone in the coming months.

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin proposed merging the two firms just days after the lease on the Sevastopol naval base was extended by 25 years through 2046.

Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said merger efforts will continue.

The visit and the growing cooperation between Moscow and Kyiv have sparked fears among some of Ukraine's Western-leaning elites.

"I don't even think [the Russians] care about the economic side of things. The priority is on reviving the great Russian empire," Oleh Rybachuk, a former Yuschenko chief of staff, told the Kyiv Post. "They feel they have the momentum, and they want to capitalize on their gains without losing any time."

Yanykovych and Medevedev continued their visit May 18 at a forum with business leaders.

Benjamin Cunningham can be reached at
bcunningham@praguepost.com