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 A week after violence involving pro-Moscow separatists left three
people dead in border cities, the outlines of a consensus have
emerged between the new leaders in Kiev and the eastern business
oligarchs allied to ousted president Viktor Yanukovich.
Cooperation between Kiev and the magnates in Yanukovich's native
Donetsk and the wider Donbass coalfield would make it harder for
Moscow to present any military intervention as humanitarian help and
less likely it would be widely welcomed.
It follows a vow by Ukraine's new prime minister to decentralize
power to the regions, safeguard Russian language rights and protect
industries, a compromise Western diplomats have been pressing for to
stop Ukraine breaking up.
Shortly after Yanukovich fell, parliament briefly moved to make
Ukrainian the sole official language. That, and the inclusion of
nationalists in the new government, alarmed Russian-speakers and
helped fuel the separatist move in majority ethnic-Russian Crimea.
Describing "an understanding between the elites and regional
government in the east and the central government", a political
source in the Donbass said it included constitutional change to
strengthen rights to use Russian as well as decentralization.
"This will contribute to unity in the country," he said.
Volodymyr Kipen, a political analyst in Donetsk, said Moscow — despite its denials — could yet invade, or more likely promote
unrest. But he also said the oligarchs, seeking stability for
businesses built on the back of 1990s acquisitions of ex-Soviet
state assets, were rallying behind Yanukovich's successors.
Noting the failure of pro-Kremlin activists to hold out after a
takeover of the regional assembly building early this month that saw
Russia's flag flown from the building for nearly a week, he
concluded:
"The Crimean model has now failed in the Donbass."
Weekend rallies demanding union with Russia drew only a few thousand
and passed off without incident, despite noisy chants of
"Crimea-Donbass-Russia" during a standoff with riot police as people
waved Russian flags below the Donetsk governor's office.
That protest failed to disrupt a visit by the German foreign
minister, who met Ukraine's richest man Rinat Akhmetov and came away
praising his pledges to prevent the country breaking up and to
cooperate in liberal reforms of a corrupt, failing economy.
"We have heard here today the very pressing desire that the new
Ukraine should be a united Ukraine and that there should be no
breakup," Frank-Walter Steinmeier said after meeting Akhmetov and
steel magnate Serhiy Taruta, Donetsk's new governor. He also met
Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk and praised the "signal" he sent to
easterners in a speech made, significantly, in Russian.
BUSINESS REASSURANCES
Taruta, critical of missteps in Kiev that played a part in the loss
of Crimea, told Reuters he expected tough negotiations on sharing
power but believed the government which appointed him was moving in
the right direction. He felt his own efforts to ensure police were
loyal and to stop Russian "provocateurs" coming across the border
were curbing unrest.
Fear of hardline Ukrainian nationalists in the government is
widespread among Russian-speakers in the east, who share the view
dispensed by Kremlin-controlled media that there has been a "fascist
coup" in the capital.
There is also deep anger in Donetsk region, home to 10 percent of
Ukraine's 46 million people and producer of 20 percent of its
industrial output, that 23 years of post-Soviet independence have
left them poor and exploited by a rich elite many see as little more
than a mafia.
Yet despite that profound discontent, only a minority seem actively
to want to break with Ukraine and join Russia.
A month ago Steinmeier was in Kiev negotiating an end to bloodshed
between Yanukovich's police and protesters.
His arrival in the fallen president's power base followed weeks of
Western pressure for compromise to prevent Ukraine cracking open
along an east-west faultline that could hand its main industries
over to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Ukraine plunged into crisis when Yanukovich spurned a free trade
pact with the European Union in November, sparking protests on
Kiev's Independence Square, known as the Maidan. He later took a
financial aid package from Putin but, after the protests turned
bloody a month ago, Yanukovich fled to Russia.
While threats of a trade war from Russia clearly played a role in
Yanukovich's rejection of the EU pact, concern among eastern
oligarchs at possible damage to their businesses from removing
import duties was also cited by analysts as a factor.
Yatseniuk, in his broadcast last Tuesday, said he would avoid a free
trade deal for now to protect eastern industry.
The premier, an ally of Yanukovich's long-time rival Yulia
Tymoshenko who is widely disliked in the east, ran through a
shopping list of policies designed to reassure Russian speakers,
from ruling out NATO membership, to guaranteeing their language
rights and pledging to disarm far-right and other militants.
One Western official described it as "everything we had been
pleading for" to repair the rift in Ukraine and engage the east.
REGIONAL POWER
Perhaps most important for the eastern elite, however, was a promise
of a constitution offering "decentralization", rather than
"federalism" — seen as a recipe for regions breaking away.
That was welcomed by Donetsk mayor Oleksander Lukianchenko when he
addressed a regional congress of Yanukovich's Party of Regions on
Friday. The party, previously a vehicle to assert presidential
authority nationwide, was debating its role without its leader and
shorn of its status as the "party of power".
Distancing the party from calls by some members for a local,
Crimea-style referendum on federal autonomy or even secession,
Lukianchenko said the party, which opposed federalism while in
control in Kiev, supported Kiev's proposed "decentralization". He told Reuters the party wanted regions to have more power over
budgets — they already raise substantial direct taxes — and also run
services "like the police, courts and prosecutors".
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Negotiations have yet to start in earnest on a constitution.
Ukrainians will first vote for a president on May 25. But the idea
of devolving control of the judiciary could be a key part of a
post-revolutionary bargain between the rival factions.
Yanukovich saw Tymoshenko jailed for corruption after he beat her to
the presidency. He is himself now a fugitive from justice, accused
of the "mass murder" of Maidan protesters. The eastern oligarchs
have reason to be anxious for their assets -and personal freedom — in a backlash against the old guard.
Maintaining the influence that civil rights activists say they
already enjoy over the police and courts, could be a prize they are
seeking in negotiations over decentralization.
While some eastern businessmen are guarded in criticism of Russia — possibly out of concern for business ties there, or afraid tanks
might roll into Donetsk — many have spoken out against Moscow.
Ukrainian unity may be good for profits but also few would relish
the curbs Putin imposes on Russian oligarchs. Nonetheless, said
analyst Kipen, some in the business elite seem willing to encourage
the idea that eastern Ukraine could still be tempted to break way:
"They want to play the separatism card as a bargaining chip with
Kiev, for their own personal security and for their own interests."
DIVIDED OPINION
Beyond the calculations of the oligarchs, who have managed to
dominate Ukrainian electoral politics especially in the east, public
opinion in Donetsk is sharply divided.
Many of those who took part in pro-Russia rallies cited Russia's
stronger economy for wanting to follow Crimea.
"We want a referendum on joining Russia," said Anton Sedykh, 27,
among a crowd of some 3,000 gathered under a statue of Lenin on
Donetsk's Lenin Square, across the road from the gleaming glass
office tower where Akhmetov met Steinmeier on Saturday.
The company where Sedykh makes windows had not paid him for two
months, he said, and he envied higher wages in Russia. After 23
years of independence, he had no faith in Ukraine's economy. Nor was
"decentralization" an answer: "It's just playing for time," he said.
"It's the oligarchs looking out for themselves."
Others at the rally cited cultural or family ties to Russia,
nostalgia for Soviet certainties, an admiration for Putin's firm
hand or a disdain for Ukrainian speakers in the west. There is also
fear of EU free-market ideology and austerity. One poster showed
German Chancellor Angela Merkel with a Hitler moustache.
For Denys, 35, a composer watching proceedings from across the
square, the protesters were wrong to ignore Russia's flaws: "It's
not about the economy," he said. "This is a fundamental question of
freedom. Russia is a very authoritarian state."
His wife Svitlana, 29, said her criticism of Russia was not about
ethnicity: "I have a Russian name. We speak Russian and Ukrainian,"
she said. "But I am a Ukrainian citizen."
Similar sentiments were voiced in dozens of conversations in the
past week in Donetsk with people in colleges, shops, farms or the
steelworks that sprawls into a city dotted by slag heaps and
showpiece modern buildings. Factory workers clocking off were united
in their fears of war with Russia and of damage to their export
business — much of which goes into Russia.
"It might be better to be with Russia," said steelworker Ivan, 36.
"We can't compete if they open trade with Europe."
But few people said their main priority was joining Russia.
Opinion poll evidence, from before the crisis came to a head a month
ago, suggests core support in the area for Russian rule may be in
single figures, although as many as a third of people were recorded
as saying they might prefer living as Russians.
INTERVENTION FEARS
Alexander Bukalov of the Moscow-based human rights network Memorial
said he saw little evidence in his work in Donetsk of
Russian-speakers facing discrimination. He saw in the surge in
protests since the fall of Yanukovich a "psychological outburst"
among people still grappling with the collapse of communism,
resentful of oligarchs and alarmed by Russian media reporting.
Reports of Moscow's troops massing unsettle people in the east.
There is little sign Ukraine's army has moved in strength to the
frontier.
While some in Donbass say they would be willing to emulate Crimean
militias and help Russian troops take over the region, others say
they would be ready to fight Moscow's forces.
Many analysts doubt a Russian move on the east though many believe
Moscow has and will continue to promote militants there, looking for
influence or a moment to step in. Signs the Donbass oligarchs are
lining up alongside the leadership in Kiev, ensuring police rein in
protests, may complicate that.
"We're past the worst," reckoned rights activist Bukalov, who thinks
Russia has missed its moment. "They should have been quicker. They
lost time and people have had time to think."
For Oleksy Garan, a political scientist in Kiev, however, Putin was
unlikely to leave Ukraine alone, arguing that he did not want an
example of a successful revolt on his doorstep:
"If the plan to split Ukraine doesn't work — and it seems it hasn't — they will try to complicate life for the central government and
press for federalism," he said. "For them, it's important Ukraine
does not make a successful transformation on their border. That's
what they're afraid of."
(Additional reporting by Lina Kushch and Sabine Siebold;
editing by Philippa Fletcher and Peter Graff)
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