Everyone Loses: The Ukraine Crisis and the Ruinous Contest for Post-Soviet Eurasia

This mode of thinking was quite familiar to many Western policymakers: in East Central Europe, democratisation and market reforms had coincided with geopolitical realignment in their favour. The circumstances of post-Soviet Eurasia were markedly different, and the assumed linkage with geo-ideas often led Western policy astray. In the end, none of the colour revolutions was a genuine democratic breakthrough.[6] Kyrgyzstan, which was little involved in the Russia–West tussle, was more repressive under Bakiev than it had been under Akaev, and in 2010 Bakiev was to be overthrown much like his predecessor. Post-Orange Revolution Ukraine was less repressive than under Kuchma, but its leaders were anything but democratic exemplars, often behaving quite similarly to their predecessors. Many corrupt practices continued unabated, and precious little was done to establish the rule of law. In Georgia, governance under Saakashvili’s administration did make impressive strides, especially in terms of anti-corruption policy, but pluralism and human rights did not. Any illusions should have been put to rest by a crackdown on protesters and subsequent takeover of the country’s main independent television station in November 2007. While the West often claimed to be shunning authoritarian regimes for their authoritarianism, not infrequently, as with Georgia in 2007, it overlooked the democratic shortcomings of governments that vowed their loyalty.[7]

In the years following the colour revolutions, Russia moved towards a counter-revolutionary regional policy. This has been widely misconstrued as a drive to sabotage democratic norms.[8] The evidence to support such claims is thin. Russian policymakers, whose cynicism often seems to know no bounds, do not see their neighbourhood principally through an ideological lens. Their objective instead is to have druzhestvennye (friendly) neighbours, that is, states whose leaders are not hostile to Russia. How these leaders get to power and how their political institutions function is of little concern. As one of us has written, ‘Russia has been more indifferent to authoritarianism in its former empire – homegrown, for the most part – than avidly supportive of it. There is no systematic correspondence between regime type and the relationship with Russia.’[9] Moscow’s counter-revolutionary turn was driven by the notion that revolutionary change had become a Western implement to undermine Russian interests. Moscow could no longer distinguish (what the West couched as) democratic change from loss of influence. Geopolitics and geo-ideas were now hopelessly entangled. As events were to demonstrate, the mix was highly combustible.

But Moscow does not have an authoritarianism-promotion agenda, an analogue to EU and US democracy promotion. Any policy of norm promotion is predicated not only on affirmative preferences but on deployment of the means to achieve them. Russia demonstrates neither.[10] The broader point here is that a simple dichotomy between a West altruistically promoting democratic norms and a Russia deliberately supporting authoritarianism does not match reality. By this period, a three-front regional competition – in geopolitics, geo-economics and geo-ideas – was central to decision-making on both sides.

Moscow’s immediate reaction to the Orange Revolution was relatively mild. Clearly, it was not pleased either by the revolutionary form of political change or by the ascendance of a leadership with an inimical policy agenda. But Putin did not attempt to isolate the Orange leaders. Yushchenko was invited to visit Moscow in February 2005, and Putin reciprocated with a trip to Kyiv the next month, meeting both Yushchenko and Tymoshenko, who seemed to be jostling for his favour.[11] The presidential meeting produced an agreement to create a Putin–Yushchenko Commission to oversee various mid-level working groups, and approval of a work plan for the year.