New Foreign and Defence Policies

Abstract

During the Kravchuk era Ukraine rejoined a world community of nations which did not always seem eager to accept the disintegration of the former USSR into 15 newly independent states. The election of Leonid Kuchma as president in summer 1994 brought few radical geo-strategic changes in Ukraine’s foreign and security policies and certainly no major alterations in its geo-political orientation. Nevertheless, there have been noticeable changes in style and substance between Kravchuk and Kuchma. Ukraine is no longer portrayed as a ‘buffer’ between Eurasia and Europe, but as a ‘bridge’ linking both halves of the European continent. Relations between Ukraine and the West have improved radically as Ukraine has launched its first serious reform programme and completed de-nuclearisation. Problems remain — and are likely to continue to remain — with the complete ‘normalisation’ of relations with the Russian Federation in the aftermath of the Chechen crisis.³

‘Ukraine and Russia are going in two different directions but hand in hand.’

(Russian Foreign Minister Yevgenny Primakov)

‘There is no government closer to us right now than Ukraine.’

(Nicholas Burns, US State Department spokesman)²

Earlier drafts of sections of this chapter dealing with the Chechen crisis and NATO enlargement appeared in Taras Kuzio, ‘Ukraine and the Expansion of NATO’, Jane’s Intelligence Review, vol. 7, no. 9 (September 1995), and ‘The Chechen crisis and the “near abroad”’, Central Asian Survey, vol. 14, no. 4 (1995), pp. 553–72.