The Ukrainian government dispatched on Thursday and Friday a “technical mission”to Brussels, after the Commission had rejected Kiev’s demand for a tripartite series of consultations between Ukraine, Russia and the EU.The consultations focus for the time being on the level of participation in the future high-level meeting that Ukraine wants to obtain before the end of the year. Commission officials insist that a negotiation of the details of the Agreement that Ukraine already rejected is totally out of the question.
In his turn, the European Parliament’s president Martin Schulz asked the Parliament’s two envoys, former Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski and former European Parliament President Pat Cox, to travel back to Kiev, in order to try to establish a dialogue between the government and the opposition.
Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych shocked the EU last week by refusing to sign an association pact, leading to big demonstrations in Kiev and other cities. Before that, Ukrainian officials had tried to raise the stakes by putting a very high figure on the compensations that Kiev thinks it is entitled to receive for choosing Brussels rather than Moscow.
The EU’s offer to Ukraine is still on the table, while Kiev has not yet joined the “Customs Union” that Russia is trying to put into place with its protégés Belarus and Kazakhstan. Officially, everything is still workable and Ukraine has only temporarily “suspended” the signing of its Association Agreement with the EU. The Commission insists that the benefits for Ukraine will come only in the long run and offers to help Ukraine in its negotiations with the IMF.
Meanwhile, a ministerial meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) opened on Thursday in Kiev, Ukraine holding presently the presidency of the organisation. Some of the most important Western figures skipped the event. The chief of EU’s diplomacy Catherine Ashton presented a plausible excuse, having to chair a Serbia-Kosovo consultations in Brussels, but the American state secretary John Kerry ostensibly annulled his Kiev trip and traveled instead to Chisinau, the capital of the "good pupil” of the Eastern neighbourhood Moldova. As for the German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle, he openly voiced support for Ukrainian protesters in a surprise visit to Kiev’s central square the Maidan.
The EU’s Deputy Secretary General for Political Affairs Helga Schmid told the OSCE meeting in Kiev that "the door remains open" for Ukraine to sign an EU treaty". She also complained about Russian pressure on Ukraine.
Kiev is facing a series of economic woes including liquidity problems and the inability of the government to meet basic financial obligations, thus facing possibly even a state default. Ukraine is now looking for other sources of external funding with less strict conditions, which is why president Yanukovych travelled on December 4 to Beijing, looking for quick loans.
Russia's temporary victory in this arm wrestling with the EU around Ukraine might well prove to be a Pyrrhic victory. It is not at all certain that Russia will be able to honour its promises made to Ukraine, while Ukraine is still reluctant to join Russia’s Custom’s Union. It is also too early to say whether the dispute around the South Stream project is related to the arm wrestling around Ukraine, but this is how it is perceived in Russia. The Commission announced on Thursday that the contract between the Russian giant Gazprom and several EU countries (Austria, Bulgaria, Greece, Hungary, Slovenia) plus Serbia is illegal and that the aforesaid countries will have to renegotiate the conditions of the contract with Moscow.
South Stream is meant to bring gas to Europe by avoiding Ukraine, which is already paying to the Russian giant Gazprom one the highest price for gas in Europe, whereas obedient Armenia was rewarded last week by Putin with a 30% reduction of the price for Russian gas.