KIEV — Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych promised to keep the country out of NATO if he wins the Jan. 17 election but said he remained committed to taking it into the European mainstream.
Yanukovych, who was denied the presidency in 2004 by mass protests against a rigged vote, also promised to improve the lot of thousands of Russian-speakers whom he said had been alienated by President Viktor Yushchenko’s policies.
Tagged a pro-Moscow stooge in 2004 after he was congratulated prematurely by the Kremlin, Yanukovych is on the comeback trail. The most recent opinion polls indicate that he would beat Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko in a Feb. 7 run-off vote.
Both Tymoshenko and Yanukovich have said that, if elected, they will improve relations with Russia. Yushchenko, who has had low ratings and is expected to drop out in the first round, has branded his rivals part of a single “Kremlin coalition” that would compromise national interests.
Yanukovych told the newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda Ukraina that he would keep Ukraine out of military blocs, including NATO — membership of which has been one of Yushchenko’s goals.
“Ukraine, quite simply, has been and will be a state outside any blocs. … We will not aspire to enter either NATO or the ODKB,” he said, referring to the Russian-dominated Collective Security Pact that brings together several former Soviet allies.
But he said he would consider Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s call for a new European collective security system.
But Yanukovych was careful to say that Ukraine remained committed to joining mainstream Europe one day and would seek to improve its eligibility for European Union membership by raising living standards and reforming its economy.
Yushchenko, aiming to revive his own slim chances of reelection, went on the offensive earlier in the week, accusing Yanukovych and Tymoshenko of being part of the same “Moscow plot.”
“Tymoshenko and Yanukovych are the finest representatives of a single Kremlin coalition,” he told voters in the Lviv region of western Ukraine.
Addressing the prospect of the two becoming a tandem in power after a Feb. 7 run-off vote, Yushchenko said: “Irrespective of whether he is prime minister or she is president, or vice versa, the language will be one and the same.”
Tymoshenko has forged good personal relations with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and secured soft terms from Moscow for crucial supplies of natural gas.
Yushchenko accused Tymoshenko and Yanukovych of concocting gas agreements that met their personal ambitions but which could “lead Ukraine to energy and economic capitulation.”
Tymoshenko, campaigning in Crimea last week, said she would stamp out corruption among state employees. “I sometimes even envy China where, to deal with corruption, they cut off hands and execute people. We, of course, as a European country cannot use such methods even though our palms are sometimes itching to do so,” she said.
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