Intelligence

Putin has an eye on the future as he looks back on Soviet glory victory

Telegraph | News | Putin has an eye on the future as he looks back on Soviet glory victory

By Julius Strauss in Moscow
(Filed: 29/10/2004)

In scenes eerily reminiscent of the Cold War, President Vladimir Putin joined President Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine to watch a military parade goose-step through Kiev yesterday.

They stood on a raised platform as thousands of soldiers, sailors and a Second World War T-34 tank moved down the main street of the Ukrainian capital behind the red Soviet flag that was raised over the Reichstag in Berlin in 1945.

The parade was ostensibly to celebrate victory over the Nazis nearly 60 years ago, but it was brought forward to try to give a boost to Viktor Yanukovich, the regime's candidate for the Ukrainian presidential election this weekend.

For Mr Putin, a Yanukovich victory would be a big step towards realising plans to reconstitute a mini-Soviet Union by forming a common economic zone constituting Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

Mr Yanukovich, a businessman from the coal-mining region of Donetsk with an unsavoury past, has promised closer ties with Russia, dual citizenship and making Russian a second state language.

According to Jane's Intelligence Report, he has also promised to hand over the port of Sevastopol in the Ukrainian region of Crimea to the Russian Black Sea Fleet. At present, the facilities are shared under a deal reached in the 1990s.

Mr Kuchma, who is retiring after two terms in office, is also anxious for a Yanukovich win, otherwise he and his cronies could face prison over a series of scandals.

Viktor Yushchenko, the pro-western candidate whose face was badly disfigured after he was allegedly poisoned, has threatened to take Ukraine out of the Russian orbit and seek membership of the European Union and Nato.

Polls show that victory for Mr Kanukovich is far from certain. Recently several pro-democracy and opposition activists have been arrested. Last weekend provocateurs attacked a crowd of 100,000 people protesting at government attempts to influence the vote.

Volodymyr Polokhalo, an independent analyst, said: "This election is the dirtiest, most immoral and most dishonest of all post-Soviet campaigns in Ukraine.

"The Russian factor is present everywhere."

Mr Putin's increasingly Soviet-era style was also on display in Russia yesterday as the Kremlin bused in thousands of students and schoolchildren for a "spontaneous" pro-Putin demonstration.

The rally was said to be a protest against terrorism but critics say it was timed to undermine simultaneous opposition demonstrations against Mr Putin's plans to abolish gubernatorial elections.

October 28, 2004 at 11:46 PM in Russia | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home