Mikhail Zurabov started work as Russia's ambassador to Ukraine on Monday, five months after he was appointed by the Kremlin and just a week after Ukrainians voted President Viktor Yushchenko out of office.
The Kremlin timed Zurabov's arrival to Kiev to show that it welcomed the end of Yushchenko's presidency and express a willingness to improve trade relations with Ukraine, analysts said.
Zurabov handed a copy of his accreditation papers, addressed to Yushchenko, to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Petro Poroshenko, who accepted them.
In line with diplomatic practice, Zurabov can start work as ambassador de facto after handing the copies to Poroshenko but will only become ambassador de jure after handing the originals of the papers to Ukraine's president, RIA-Novosti reported.
Questions lingered until the last minute over whether Zurabov would be allowed to assume the ambassadorial post.
Yushchenko said over the weekend that he would not accept the accreditation papers if they were not addressed to him. Kommersant reported Friday that the papers were only addressed to the Ukrainian head of state, not Yushchenko specifically.
In an indication of how terse relations remain, diplomats in both countries were reluctant or unavailable to comment on Zurabov's arrival.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Igor Lyakin-Frolov declined to comment, while repeated calls to the spokesman of the Russian Embassy in Kiev, Oleg Grishin, went unanswered. A Kremlin spokesman declined to comment.
Ukraine's Foreign Ministry directed inquiries to Yushchenko's administration. Repeated calls and an inquiry sent by e-mail to Yushchenko's spokeswoman, Irina Vannikova, went unanswered.
The appointment of Zurabov, a former health and social development minister, has been beset with difficulties. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry only formally endorsed him in early August, almost two months after Moscow’s previous envoy, Viktor Chernomyrdin, retired.
But President Dmitry Medvedev refused to send Zurabov to Kiev as long as Yushchenko was president.
Yushchenko's pro-Ukrainian and pro-Western rhetoric has infuriated Moscow over the past five years. Ukrainian voters rejected him in a Jan. 17 election that saw opposition leader Viktor Yanukovych and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko collect the most votes.
The Kremlin has made no secret that it hopes that front-runner Yanukovych wins a runoff election against Tymoshenko on Feb. 7.
Zurabov's arrival two weeks before the runoff is "a symbolic act" meant to show that the Kremlin welcomes the election of any president except Yushchenko, said Andrei Ryabov, a political analyst at the Carnegie Moscow Center.
Kirill Frolov, a political analyst with the Institute of CIS Countries, a Kremlin-leaning think tank, agreed, saying, "This is a demonstration of Russia's position: Any president, except Yushchenko, is more acceptable to lead a dialogue with."
The Kremlin sent Zurabov ahead of the runoff to tackle "dire" trade relations with Ukraine, said Alexei Mukhin, an analyst at the Center for Political Information.
Zurabov told reporters upon his arrival to Kiev's Borispol Airport on Monday that relations between Russia and Ukraine had "a big potential for development," Interfax reported. Zurabov made his remarks in both Russian and Ukrainian.
Ryabov said the spat about Zurabov's accreditation papers was minor and would have no influence on the development of relations.
•Ukrainian businessman Sergei Tigipko, courted by Yanukovych and Tymoshenko as a possible prime minister, said Monday that Ukraine's gas deal with Russia should be revised.
"Here transparency is needed. I am sure that we will, all the same, have to look again at these contracts. If a new president gets in, who is not Tymoshenko, he will be obliged to do this," Tigipko said in an interview with Reuters.
•Yushchenko called an emergency meeting of the National Defense and Security Council on Monday as the two presidential candidates battled over the state-run company that prints ballots, Bloomberg reported.
The government changed the head of the printing company Jan. 22, which Yanukovych claimed is an attempt to print more ballots than needed and falsify the results.
“It’s obvious that replacing the head of the printing company between the first and the second rounds isn’t a step that strengthens society’s trust,” Yushchenko said during the meeting in his office in Kiev. “I also don’t share the position of the other side, after five of its lawmakers forced themselves into the director’s office today.”
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