Yanukovych Says Ukrainian Famine Not Genocide

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.

Ukraine On the Brink?

Fisticuffs, smoke bombs, and a legislator hiding behind an umbrella to avoid the barrage of eggs hurled his way.  Such was the scene Tuesday in Kiev, where Ukraine's law givers convened to ponder whether to allow Russia's Black Sea fleet to stay moored at Ukraine's port of Sevastopol for an addition 25 years.  The decision by Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovich was a Faustian bargain.  Ukraine, tipped to the economic edge by the global financial crisis, is desperate to save money any way it can.  In return for the Black Sea fleet lease extension, Moscow is dropping gas prices to Ukraine about a third.  However, many Ukrainians, the more patriotic in the Western parts, see the pact as nothing more than a loss of sovereignty and act of treason. 

Could Polish Air Tragedy Lead To Better Russian Polish Ties?

In the fog and trees of western Russia, Poland lost many of those who moved and shook that eastern European country.  The Saturday crash in Smolensk took the lives of President Lech Kaczynski, and dozens of other Polish political, military and religious leaders.  Poles are shocked and numbed, noting the bitter irony of the disaster.  Poland's who's who were on their way to commemorate victims of the Katyn massacre.  In 1940, Soviet secret police gunned down more than 20,000 Polish officers and other elites, effectively decapitating the ruling class.  And while completely at different ends of the scale spectrum, the target was the same: Polish elite.  And although one appears to be an accident, the other coldblooded mass murder, the two tragedies took place a stone's throw from the other.  But there is one other big difference.  Katyn painted the Russians as murderers and liars, just another seed of distrust, fear and hatred in these countries' stormy 500 years of ties.  However, the Smolensk plane tragedy has brought the two countries together if briefly, to share their grief and condolences.

Yanukovich Goes To Moscow

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.

Central European States Huddle For Energy Security

The European Union has talked lots, acted little, on coordinating energy policy for the 500-million, 27-nation, mega bloc.  The specter of the Russian bear grinning as its grips Europe's energy spigot gives EU bureaucrats the heebie jeebies.  But that fear, largely unfounded the Informant believes, has not translated into action.  Until now, possibly.  Leaders from eleven central and eastern Europe, where Russophobia is an art form, have met for a first ever energy summit, to chart a course of energy security.  The big news to come out of the Feb. 24th meeting in Budapest was the signing of a declaration to create a north-south-east gas supply network. 

Pipeline Puzzles: Finland Approves North Stream Construction

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.