Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Grigory Karasin said Thursday that Russia's ambassador to Ukraine, Mikhail Zurabov, will attend the June 7 inauguration of Ukraine's new president, Petro Poroshenko. The decision to send a representative to the ceremony in Kiev is more than just a diplomatic formality; it is a sign that Russia is willing to negotiate with the new government in Kiev, all the while using pressure elsewhere to preserve its influence in Ukraine.
For Russia, Ukraine is an essential buffer zone. Ukraine's efforts to integrate with the West threaten to move it further away from what Russia wants it to be: a neutral state between Russia and NATO. Russia has a variety of ways to influence the government in Kiev. Ukraine relies on Russia for much of its natural gas, while Russia indirectly controls and determines the future direction of a good deal of the armed separatist movement in eastern Ukraine.
In the long run, however, Russia is negotiating from a position of weakness. Russia's reaction to the crisis in Ukraine has galvanized the United States to play a more prominent role in the region and develop stronger defense ties with countries such as Poland and Romania. Moscow thus has an incentive to take advantage of its existing levers in Ukraine to ensure that the country at least remains a neutral buffer state.
Ukraine's leadership is also open to a compromise with Russia. Poroshenko ran on a pro-West platform, pledging to sign free trade and association agreements with the European Union as soon as he took office. Kiev is now likely to sign the agreements June 27, along with fellow former Soviet states Georgia and Moldova. Nevertheless, Poroshenko, like previous Ukrainian leaders, understands that Ukraine — as a country in Europe's borderlands and as Russia's most important buffer — must continue to balance its aspirations for Western integration with its need for stability in its relations with Russia. Poroshenko also knows that his ability to control a highly divided and unstable country such as Ukraine is severely limited. Ukraine's internal divisions constrain its leaders, making it difficult to reorient the country's foreign policy without risking internal destabilization.
Poroshenko has already indicated that he will pursue talks with Russia and introduce a peace process for the crisis in eastern Ukraine. While Poroshenko's proposals are unlikely to include significant concessions to the separatists, he is aware that the negotiation can have a much larger impact on the situation on the ground than the Ukrainian military's anti-separatist operations. As president, one of Poroshenko's first decisions will be whether to declare martial law in the eastern provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk. Martial law may help Ukraine's military by enabling it to shift tactics and use more force in urban areas, but it also carries the risk of alienating Ukrainian citizens in the east who have thus far been unsympathetic to the armed separatists.
European leaders support Ukraine's aspirations for further Western integration and have pushed for the government in Kiev to sign the agreements in June. However, some European heavyweights, such as France and Germany, highly value their relationship with Russia and therefore support ongoing negotiations — and potential compromises — between Russia and Ukraine. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's support for France's decision to follow through on its delivery of two Mistral-class helicopter carriers to Russia, as well as her June 2 statement that NATO will not be granting Georgia a membership action plan at the upcoming summit in Wales, both demonstrate that Germany is continuing to balance its support for the Ukrainian government's European integration with Berlin's cooperation with Moscow.
When the Russian ambassador arrives at Poroshenko's inauguration ceremony, separatist activity will still be ongoing in eastern Ukraine. But Russia's decision to respect, though not officially recognize, the results of Ukraine's presidential election fulfills a key European and U.S. demand for the Kremlin while showing that Russia is willing to negotiate with Kiev. The move comes just as Russian President Vladimir Putin is meeting with the French and German leadership in France. Energy talks are ongoing, but deeper political negotiations may resume after the ceremony. The Kremlin will keep supporting separatists in eastern Ukraine in order to maintain one of its chief levers in the negotiations, at least for the time being. Ultimately, Russia will continue to pursue Ukraine's neutralization — whether through diplomacy or, if that fails, through subversion.
