Europe Sees Its Stake in Ukraine

The electoral crisis in Ukraine was one that few European leaders and diplomats anticipated. Now many are arguing that the continent’s vital interests are at stake in the former Soviet republic on their doorstep.

As the struggle between two victory-claiming Viktors -- pro-Western Yushchenko and pro-Moscow Yanukovich -- has played out, Europe has been determined to find a solution to the impasse that meets both its own democratic proclamations and the geopolitical reality that Russia must be satisfied.

“We’re trying to help,” British Prime Minister Tony Blair told reporters this week, speaking of the fevered diplomatic involvement of the European Union to find a solution.

“I think the concern of everybody at the moment is how do we best keep [Ukraine] together, work out what has actually happened, and then work out what should happen and do it in a way that does not trample on sensibilities” about outside interference.

Preoccupied with war in Iraq, nuclear weapon developments in Iran, terrorism and a falling dollar, few of the continent’s leaders and diplomats suspected a vote in the Slavic hinterlands would emerge so suddenly as a major challenge to Europe’s values. News coverage of the election was consigned to the back pages until demonstrations began after the Nov. 21 runoff vote.

But now many respected voices, among them former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, have concluded that Europe must act to defend its self-proclaimed democratic values. A “new iron curtain” could fall across Ukraine if the West does not do so, Thatcher warned from retirement.

For many, the choice was stark: Should Europe accept the widely questioned victory of Yanukovich for the sake of appeasing Russia? Or insist that Yushchenko be recognized as the rightful winner -- or new elections held -- affirming that Europe will be a zone of transparent popular governance?

Most European leaders and opinion-makers have rallied to the orange-draped masses that have jammed the squares of Kiev, the Ukrainian capital, for Yushchenko in the greatest manifestation of people power since the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe fell in 1989. Some business leaders, however, have cautioned that keeping Russia happy might be a better long-term policy.

Timothy Garton Ash, an Oxford modern history professor who has written extensively on the anti-Communist revolutions, says the rest of the continent cannot afford to take a pass on the Ukrainians’ struggle.

“If we, comfortably ensconced in the institutional Europe to which these peaceful demonstrators look with hope and yearning, do not immediately support them with every appropriate means at our disposal, we will betray the very ideals we claim to represent,” he wrote in London’s Guardian newspaper.

He argued that the conflict could be decisive for the whole Eurasian continent, because what happens in Ukraine will determine Russia’s direction.

“A Russia that wins back Ukraine, as well as Belarus, will again be an imperial Russia, as [Russian President Vladimir V.] Putin wishes. A Russia that sees even Ukraine moving toward Europe and the West has a chance of itself becoming, with time, a more normal, liberal, democratic nation-state,” Garton Ash wrote.

Responding with a sense of urgency, the European Union’s chief diplomat, former North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary-General Javier Solana, has been to Kiev twice for negotiations. Polish President Aleksandr Kwasniewski has accompanied him, and many European leaders have been consulting by telephone -- including German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who spoke Tuesday with Putin.

Their aim: to prevent the disputed election from being validated and to forestall any moves toward secession by the more Russian-oriented east of Ukraine. The Schroeder-Putin talks resulted in a signal from Putin that he might support a rerun of the election to remove any shadow from the results.

There are dangers for Europe in leaning too hard on Russia. As a left-of-center German newspaper, the Frankfurter Rundschau, noted: “The correct course would not be doubted if it was just about falsified elections.... But behind Ukraine is Russia, a wounded world power with nuclear arsenals [and] in acute danger of slipping into dictatorship and chaos. It is of vital significance for Europeans that this neighbor becomes stable, predictable and reliable.”

Nevertheless, the greater priority for Europe as a whole is a free Ukraine, said Federico Rampini, a columnist for the left-leaning La Repubblica in Rome.

“Ukraine is such a large, populated country, and is somehow a buffer between the European Union and Russia,” he noted. “So it’s in our strategic interest that a democratic government governs it first of all.”

Having a democrat in power there, he added, would bring “quite an element of safety and of stability in that area so near to the borders of the EU.”

Margot Light, a professor at the London School of Economics, noted that whoever emerges the victor would still have to deal with Russia and the EU. “For election purposes, it may be useful to dichotomize them, but in the end, everybody has to get on with everyone else,” she said.

Light thinks a rerun of the second round of the presidential vote has emerged as the most likely outcome, acceptable both in Europe and to Putin. And a victory by either candidate would be acceptable in Europe if he won fairly, she said.

“What is very dangerous, however, is how easily it could all become violent,” she said. “And then it is going to be much harder to mend everything.”

Eric Hoesli, an opinion writer for Le Temps in Paris, urged fellow Europeans not to mislead Ukrainians with false hope the EU is waiting to welcome Ukraine with membership in the union and economic cooperation and assistance if it turns away from Moscow.

“It’s true that the democratic awakening of the Ukrainians and their claim of belonging in the EU are thrilling,” he said. “However, who thinks for one minute that the EU could endorse long-term support of Ukraine after its revolution?

“The EU has already enough to do to integrate its eastern part.... Offering illusions to Kiev’s demonstrators today is guaranteeing them many months of hangover later.”

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Times staff writers Maria De Cristofaro of The Times’ Rome Bureau, Petra Falkenberg and Christian Retzlaff of the Berlin Bureau, Achrene Sicakyuz of the Paris Bureau and Janet Stobart of the London Bureau contributed to this report.