To be sure Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko was quick to condemn Russia's actions and ratchet up the rhetoric against Russia. But then earlier this week he all but accused his Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko of treason on the vague grounds that she was "working for Russia", sparked apparently by her not joining in his condemning Moscow.
Yushchenko and Tymoshenko were the heroes of Ukraine's 2004 Orange Revolution - the event that got the democracy ball rolling in Ukraine. But the two are also bitter political rivals. Their first partnership ended after only a few months due to infighting between their two camps. Two elections later they were forced to once again become coalition partners. Things aren't going much better the second time around.
Yushchenko is rabidly pro-Western, wanting Ukraine to be on the fast track for membership in both NATO and the European Union. Tymoshenko would like Ukraine to join the EU, but also wants to have good relations with their next-door neighbor, Russia, so she is decidedly less enthusiastic about signing up for NATO. Meanwhile, waiting in the wings is Viktor Yanukovych, the former president of Ukraine. His power base is in Eastern Ukraine, which has a large Russian population, is therefore, not surprisingly, pro-Moscow.
And just to complicate matters even more, there's the Crimean peninsula, home to Russia's Black Sea fleet. Russia now rents the base that has long been the historic home to the fleet from Ukraine, something that greatly irks Yushchenko. The Crimean region also has a large Russian population; it had been part of Russia until 1954 when then Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev gifted it to Ukraine (since they were both part of the Soviet Union, a state that Khrushchev thought would last forever, it didn't seem like a big deal at the time). The Russians of Crimea, proud of their long naval heritage, also want no part of NATO.
Early in the Russia-Georgia conflict several Russian ships set sail from the naval base at Sevastopol. As a protest against Moscow, Yushchenko threatened not to let them return to Ukraine. They did, without incident, which may be a good indication of, despite the bluster, how powerless Yushchenko is in this situation.
In fact it's quite likely that Ukraine will become more pro-Russian in the near future. The Yushchenko-Tymoshenko partnership looks like it's about to fall apart (again). This leaves Yushchenko with two options: form a coalition with the pro-Russian Yanukovych, or call for new elections. Right now Yushchenko is third in the polls behind his more pro-Russian compatriots Tymoshenko and Yanukovych. Either way it would seem that Ukraine’s leadership will be moving closer to Moscow soon.
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