President Dmitry Medvedev will visit Kiev in May, returning a trip that new Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych made to Moscow this month, Yanukovych’s office said Wednesday.
Medvedev agreed on the May 17-18 visit — his first to Ukraine as president — during a telephone conversation with Yanukovych.
Yanukovych, who won election in a runoff vote on Feb. 7, traveled to Moscow on March 5 as part of an attempt to improve relations strained by the pro-West policies of his predecessor, Viktor Yushchenko.
Yushchenko angered Russia with initiatives such as applying for NATO membership for Ukraine. Last August, Medvedev refused to send an ambassador to Kiev as long as Yushchenko remained in office.
In a sign that Yanukovych was reversing Yushchenko’s course, the new governing coalition in Ukraine’s parliament promised this week to pass a law against joining military alliances such as NATO.
In a statement of purpose published in the parliament’s official newspaper, the pro-Yanukovych coalition said the new legislation would “enshrine Ukraine’s nonaligned status in law.”
Ukraine’s opposition denounced the decision, signing its own formal agreement to work together against Yanukovych and his supporters in the parliament.
“Today we are forming a union of opposition parties,” said opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko, who lost to Yanukovych in the hard-fought presidential race last month.
The statement of purpose from the coalition made no mention of the European Union, which Ukraine had also sought to join under Yushchenko’s presidency.
Ukrainian analysts criticized the statement as playing too much into the Kremlin’s hands.
“This is what Russia has been waiting for,” said Vadim Karasyov, head of the Global Strategies Institute, a think tank in Kiev. “But this is a dead end. A country in Ukraine’s position cannot remain unaligned.”
As part of its effort to assert influence over the post-Soviet sphere, Russia has been promoting the Cooperation and Security Treaty Organization, or CSTO, which is seen as its answer to NATO.
Analysts have said Yanukovych could be pressured to join the Russia-dominated bloc, but the coalition’s statement appears to apply to all military alliances, including the CSTO.
(MT, Reuters, AP)