Russia Opposes a New Orange Revolution in Ukraine

Abstract

The conciliation efforts of Ukrainian President Leonid Kučma in the early 2000s masked, but didn’t resolve, the domestic and international contradictions in Ukraine. And the United States would once again transform these latent contradictions into open conflict by treating Ukraine as a bridgehead into Eurasia and its effort to keep Russia down. Yet, Kissinger had already warned that this was a foolish strategy; that Russia and Ukraine were historically intertwined; and that under no circumstances would Moscow permit Ukraine to leave its sphere of influence. When Viktor Yanukovych became President of Ukraine in 2010, he acknowledged this fact and made a clear geopolitical choice. Ukraine would abandon the pipe dream that was part of the EU and turn to Russia and Eurasia, its natural economic partners. Yanukovych suspended negotiations with the EU and signed a deal with Russia regarding the gas supply to Ukraine and the Sevastopol naval base. This decision prompted large protests, instigated by foreign-funded NGO’s that had monopolized the discourse of Civil Society. Under this pressure, Viktor Yanukovych eventually fell in 2014, in what was essentially a replay of the Orange Revolution of 2005. But circumstances had changed from what they had been a decade earlier, and this time Russia reacted.