It's been a good week for Moscow vis-a-vis ties with their Slavic brethren in Ukraine. First, the Kremlin secured a 25-year extension to the lease for its Black Sea fleet. Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin smirked smugly as Ukrainian lawmakers rocked and socked amid the a haze from smoke bombs to ratify the extension, which opposition gadflies blasted as a sellout of Ukraine's sovereignty. For Russia, Yanukovich was paying immediate dividends. But he wasn't finished. Now, Yanukovich has had a rethink on the Holodomor, the Stalin-era 1930s famine that Ukrainian patriots, as well as more than a dozen countries, have classified as a genocide.Yanukovich said that Holodomor was “a consequence of Stalin’s totalitarian regime,” but cannot be called genocide against any particular nation, since mass famine was a tragedy for all countries in the Soviet Union.
The NATO leviathan wants more prey, and the elites in Bosnia are offering their fractured, internationally supervised state, on the military tray. At a NATO foreign ministers meeting in Tallinn, Bosnia had the honor of being issued the dazzlingly named Membership Action Plan, or MAP, which spells out the dos and don'ts to joining the globe's preeminent war machine. Amid a period of warming relations with Russia, NATO is doing its darnedest to piqued Russian paranoia. Croatia and Albania were lassoed into NATO last year. Montenegro got its own MAP back in December. If the statelet of Montenegro and the basket case of Bosnia join, NATO jumps to 30 members.
The economic juggernaut that is China is rolling into eastern Europe. Belarus, Europe's great dictatorial backwater under President Alexander Lukashenko, is the unlikely target of the latest Chinese largesse. The amounts are filled with lots of zeros. A billion dollar loan, on favorable terms. Ten billion in potential projects, spanning several industrial sectors, including cars, electricity and sugar. It's the latest proof China is sniffing out economic opportunities in other former Soviet republics after conquering with its bulging checkpoint Central Asia.
To much fanfare, the United States and Russia have announced they have hammered out all the details of what is being billed as the most comprehensive nuclear arms treaty in nearly two decades. The "New START Treaty" demands each side cut their strategic nuclear arsenals by about a third. The agreement is due to be signed in Prague on April 8th, just days before U.S. President gathers powerbrokers in Washington to talk nuclear disarmament, a 'cause' of his outlined in a Prague speech last April. However, the treaty still must be ratified by both countries' legislatures, and the Russian State Duma will likely be skeptical if the treaty is not linked to U.S. pledges not to expand its 'missile defense' program, something Washington categorically rejects. And as the two sides were backslapping over the no-nuke pact, reports leaked of fresh Pentagon plans to boost 'military assistance' to several former Soviet republics.Yes, START is a step forward, but just one in a race whose finishing line at times seems to fade further into the distance.
Viktor Yanukovich travels to Moscow today on his first official visit to Russia as the president of Ukraine. The Kremlin has to be pleased with the election of Yanukovych who has already ruled out NATO membership for his country, talked about letting Russian warships stay docked at a Ukrainian Black Sea port, and suggested the Russians could buy into the country's rusting pipeline network. But the visit may prove relations even under Yanukovych may not be all backslapping and smiles.
The paperwork appears in order, let the construction begin. That's the message coming out of the Russian-led consortium to build the Nord Stream pipeline to ship Russian gas under the Baltic Sea to Europe. On February 12, 2010 -- Finland approved construction of the pipeline under their territorial waters, 374-kilometers worth of tubing. Now, the Nord Stream consortium says construction on the 1,200-kilometer pipeline will begin in April.
The standard boilerplate on Georgia is that the Caucasus country may be small but strategically important. Straddling the Black and Caspian Seas, Georgia is seen by Washington and Brussels as a key fossil fuel transit country. The Baku-Ceyhan pipeline attests to that. It's all part of the grand strategy to tug the region out of Moscow's orbit. Less know is the fact that Georgia has a little oil of its own and a Houston-based drilling firm is doing its darnedest to suck it out of the ground.
With his days as Ukrainian president quickly coming to a close, Viktor Yushchenko has made one of his most controversial decisions yet. Yushchenko has awarded posthumously the "Hero of Ukraine" title to Stepan Bandera, a Ukranian nationalist leader. Bandera is a hot-button issue for sure. For many Ukrainians, he was a brave fighter who struggled for their country's independence during World War Two and years after until he was assassinated by the KGB in Munich in 1959. For others, Bandera was a Nazi collaborator and murderer, and needs to be pilloried not praised. Beyond that debate is another issue rarely examined in the West. Many of those within the Soviet Union who fought Soviet troops also had embarrassing ties to the Nazis.
Once not long ago, the leaders of Belarus and Russia fawned over each other and talked glowingly of their coming fusion in one union, with even one currency. Those days are fading now as relations fray and the EU and Washington nudge into the picture, trying to pry away away one of Moscow's last true allies. The latest sign of souring relations is the failure of Moscow and Minsk to agree on oil deliveries for 2010.
For decades, the people of the Soviet Union craved the dollar, a sign of stability and the prosperity they dreamed of in the West. Now the dollar is on the outs in most former Soviet states. It's just the latest sign of the dollar's creeping decline as currency numero uno, a leading economist has told the Informant. Russia, with the globe's third largest currency reserves at $443.7 billion, is already moving away from the dollar to a wider basket of currencies. Not coincidentally, Russia along with China have been leading the charge for a new world currency.
Believe it or not, the type of reactor once found in the nuclear house of horrors, Chernobyl, is still churning out power in Europe. But the Ignalina nuclear power plant in Lithunia, which provides 70 percent of the power of that small Baltic state, is living on borrowed time. Under an agreement with the EU, Lithuania will pull the switch on Ignalina on New Year's eve. While Europe will be rid of one more dangerous nuclear site, Lithuania is stuck with a problem. Where to get the power Ignalina provided in bunches.
France is planning to sell one of its most advanced warships to Russia in a move that would greatly beef up Moscow's military might.
However, former Soviet states are jittery about the Russians getting their hands on a Mistral warship, the second largest in the French fleet. Some in Washington are warning the first ever sale of such high tech military equipment by a NATO country to Russia could upset regional stability.
The standard boilerplate on Georgia is that the Caucasus country may be small but strategically important. Straddling the Black and Caspian Seas, Georgia is seen by Washington and Brussels as a key fossil fuel transit country. The Baku-Ceyhan pipeline attests to that. It's all part of the grand strategy to tug the region out of Moscow's orbit. Less know is the fact that Georgia has a little oil of its own and a Houston-based drilling firm is doing its darnedest to suck it out of the ground. 
