Last August, Russian president Dmitry Medvedev sent a letter to his Ukrainian counterpart Viktor Yushchenko effectively breaking off relations with the neighboring state until a new president had been elected.

Just eight months later, Medvedev is celebrating a deal with Ukraine’s new president Viktor Yanukovych that will keep the Russian Black Sea Fleet at the naval base of Sevastopol for at least 25 more years after the current lease expires in 2017.

How did Russia manage to gain such a deal? And who are the beneficiaries?

The Russian Black Sea Fleet has been at the Sevastopol base since 1783 and has fought wars against the Turks, British, French, and Germans over the years. In 1991 its future came under consideration as it found itself part of an independent Ukraine. Eventually about 80% of the ships went to Russia, which signed an agreement with Ukraine in 1997 for a 20-year lease of two Black Sea bays at Sevastopol for a payment of around $98 million per year.

Yushchenko had indicated his reluctance to extend that lease, pointing out that according to the Ukrainian Constitution, no foreign military installations are permitted on Ukraine’s territory. The presence of the Fleet and its use in Russia’s war with Georgia in August 2008 was a bone of contention between Yushchenko and the Russian leadership. He also evicted Russian security agents operating in Sevastopol late last year.

The current agreement represents a stunning volte-face on Ukraine’s part. The deal was evidently elaborated by Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and signed in Kharkiv on April 21. Medvedev, rather than Putin, was the official signatory but there is little doubt of the latter’s crucial role in formulating the contents. The two parliaments, it was reported, may ratify the agreement as early as April 27.

Russia has agreed to reduce the cost of gas exported to Ukraine by 30% until the year 2019, which will save Ukraine expenses estimated at $40 billion over the next decade. In 2010, Ukraine will pay $230 per 1,000 cubic meters of gas compared to an originally anticipated $334. In return Ukraine agreed to increase its imports of gas by 10% this year and extend the lease for the Russian Fleet for a further 25 years, i.e. until 2042.

To most outsiders the deal seems heavily weighted in Russia’s favor. Until 2017, Russia can continue to deduct the price of the lease from monies owed by Ukraine for gas since the early 1990s. After that time cash payments will be made, but the agreement will only last for two further years. In the remaining 23 years, Russia can theoretically raise the price of gas again.

Ukraine, by contrast, is already paying well above market prices for gas. More important, it is allowing a foreign state to occupy a key strategic base indefinitely. Ukraine’s prospects for future membership of NATO, which could reemerge after the end of Yanukovych’s tenure, now seem dim indeed. Russia intends to modernize and expand the fleet, and stresses its role in combating piracy off the coast of Somalia as evidence of its international usefulness.

Yanukovych manifestly failed to negotiate on Ukraine’s behalf. It is inconceivable why his starting point was not a five-year extension of the existing lease, which was stipulated as an option according to the 1997 agreement. There is also no logic to his ready agreement that the lease of a military base be linked to payments for gas. There is no indication that Russia intends to halt construction of its Nord Stream pipeline, which would bypass Ukraine in the transport of Russian gas to Western Europe.

The Kharkiv agreement practically nullifies Ukraine’s ability to conduct an independent foreign policy. And only the most naïve observers would anticipate that the deal clarifies the future of Russian-Ukrainian relations. Putin, Moscow mayor Yuri Luzhkov, and dozens of MP’s in the Russian Duma have dismissed the 1954 transfer of Crimea to Ukraine as an anomaly. They have also declared that Sevastopol will always remain a Russian city. More pressure could soon be put on the pliable Ukrainian president.

The agreement instantly divided Ukraine. It is supported by the Regions Party, which has a small majority in the Parliament, but has outraged other factions, including Our Ukraine and the Tymoshenko Bloc. The former has called for Yanukovych to be impeached. Whether the president has enough support to win ratification as early as next week remains to be seen.

Despite his April meeting with US President Barack Obama, resulting in the decision to remove highly enriched uranium from Ukraine by 2012, Yanukovych has been dismantling his predecessor’s legacy with bewildering speed and lack of respect for formalities or rules. He gained a majority in parliament by ignoring the law on factions and persuading individual delegates to switch their support to Regions.

The presidential web page on the 1933 Famine disappeared promptly after Yanukovych’s electoral victory, allegedly because of “technical difficulties” (a typical Soviet phrase) and his appointment of Dmytro Tabachnyk as Minister for Science and Education seemed calculated to inflame Western Ukrainians in particular. Tabachnyk published an article in Izvestiya last year claiming that residents of this region were not really Ukrainians and had different values from people in “Greater Ukraine.” A parliamentary vote to remove him failed narrowly in late March.

In Kharkiv, Yanukovych once again demonstrated his disdain for the current Constitution. In the short term, he might have improved Ukraine’s financial standing, but he has tied Ukraine’s military and security future to that of Russia, undermined its independence, and divided the country more than his hapless predecessor managed after five years in office.

An earlier version of this article appeared in the EDMONTON JOURNAL and KYIV POST

David Marples

http://ukraineanalysis.wordpress.com/

It is irresponsible to fan the flames of partition as Ethan Burger does in his openDemocracy article ”Could partition solve Ukraine’s problem?” Neither the facts nor opinion polls support such wild speculation, says Adrian Karatnycky

Every scholar, writer, or intellectual takes on serious obligations toward the reader when he or she engages in speculation or hypothesis. Among the most important of these obligations is to assess the probability of his proposition and, if the probability is remote, to be cognizant the consequences and uses of his exercise in speculative analysis.

On both these counts, Ethan Burger’s openDemocracy article “Could partition solve Ukraine’s problem” fails to meet to meet the test of responsible speculation.

First, Mr. Burger’s main thesis is wrong. Ukraine is not a state riven by an ethno-linguistic divide between its West and Centre on one hand and the East and South on the other. Indeed, as a closer look at public opinion will show, Ukraine has something of a national consensus on the key questions of national unity and sovereignty.

Second, while Ukraine is a relatively stable democracy, its statehood is of very recent vintage, its institutions are immature, and its politics is raucous. The last thing it needs is discourse from the West that fans the flames of separatism, however remote.

As Serhiy Tyhypko, one of Ukraine’s new generation of politicians, has argued, many of the leaders of neighboring Russia have not come to terms with Ukraine’s sovereignty and independence. Moreover, as Tyhypko suggests, Russian intelligence services have a large presence in Ukraine and some leading Russian politicians have built strong relationships with marginal separatist forces in Ukraine. It is irresponsible to give any of these inimical actors the slightest encouragement.

As importantly, Ukraine is a country that has made great progress in consolidating its democracy, with frequent rotations of power based on competitive elections. Before the economic crisis of 2008-2009, Ukraine had seen one 10 years of uninterrupted growth averaging 7 percent per year. Its media are diverse, its civil society is strong. And when democratic procedure has been challenged its citizens have risen up to defend their rights.

All in all the country has been trending in the right direction. There is no reason for outside voices to suggest that these desirable gains be rewarded by destabilizing talk of partition.

At the same time, because of the legacies of the Soviet past and of Eastern and Western Ukraine’s divergent histories of foreign occupation, Ukraine was bequeathed linguistic and cultural cleavages. These will be overcome in time and must not be exaggerated by superficial analysis.

Above all, it is essential to look at how Ukraine’s citizens—Ukrainian and Russian, Ukrainian-speaking and Russophone alike – see their future. A series of public opinion samplings undertaken in the last two years offers a clear picture.

A poll conducted in mid-2008 by the Gorshenin Institute, a respected Kyiv think tank, shows that 87.5 % of the population identifies Ukraine as its homeland, while only 7.5 % considers Russia to be its real homeland (with much of that support concentrated among populations of retirees in Crimea). This identification with Ukraine transcends regions, ethnicities, and religious affiliations. Moreover, the consolidation trend has been on the rise: between 2006 and 2008, the proportion of Ukrainians expressing pride in their Ukrainian citizenship rose from 52. 5 percent to nearly seventy percent.

As significantly, when Ukraine’s inhabitants were recently asked how they would vote in a referendum on Ukraine’s statehood, nearly 60 percent supported a unitary state, 20 percent opted for a federative state and around 20 percent were uncertain.

And on the allegedly divisive language issue, the Gorshenin poll found that while 49.5 percent stated they primarily speak Ukrainian at home and 46 percent said they speak Russian at home some three-quarters said it was the obligation of every citizen to master the Ukrainian language.

More recent data reaffirms these trends. According to a poll conducted in February 2010, Eastern and Western Ukrainians alike want better relations with Russia. However, only 12.5 percent would like to adopt laws jointly with Russia and only 7.6 percent would like to see Ukraine and Russia as part of a single government. At the same a vast majority of Ukraine’s inhabitants is united in the view that the country’s weak economy is the main problem that needs to be confronted.

In short, Ukraine’s citizens across the east-west divide take pride in their state, do not wish to surrender their sovereignty, recognize the obligation to strengthen and speak Ukrainian, and wish to achieve economic prosperity.

On a recent nationwide TV program that brought together ordinary citizens from Western and Eastern Ukraine, one speaker from the Eastern city of Donetsk put it this way: “Why is it that when we Easterners and Westerners travel abroad to watch soccer we all cheer together and get along? And why is that here in Ukraine we always talk of our divisions. I’ll tell you why: here we are surrounded by politicians.”

In short, Ukraine’s East and West is not on the verge of sharp or violent disagreement. And politicians as well as analysts like Mr. Burger should not be suggesting that they are.

Mr. Burger is also far off the mark when he invokes the example of the “velvet divorce” between the Czech Republic and Slovakia as a model for Ukraine. Unlike Slovakia in the early 1990s, there is no sentiment among Ukraine’s major parties, leaders, or civic movements to partition Ukraine or to separate East from West.

In January 1994, the US government’s national intelligence estimate covered similar territory. It postulated, in the words of the Washington Post, that “Ukraine’s worsening economy will spark ethnic conflict that provokes the country’s partition into two states and creates a new dispute over the fate of the nuclear weapons on its territory, which the nation has just agreed to give up.”

This incompetent assessment received widespread attention and was given serious credence in the policy community. It evoked consternation and unease in Ukraine. And it was wrong then just as partition talk is wrong now.

In the last twenty years, Soviet identity and regionalism have withered in Ukraine’s East, Center, and West. But in the East and South they have not been supplanted by Russian nationalism nor by Russophone separatism. Instead, they have been replaced by the clear acceptance of Ukraine’s unified statehood.

What remains to be resolved is a common agreement about how to address the country’s past. Yet, these often sharp discussions of the past should not blind us to the reality that Ukrainian citizens of all ethnicities are in agreement about the present and the future of their young democratic state. Ukraine’s citizens, elites, and leaders are committed to unitary statehood, a civic nationhood, and linguistic tolerance. This is no time to fan the flames of a partition that no one in Ukraine seeks or wants.

Adrian Karatnycky is a Senior Fellow with the Atlantic Council of the U.S.

http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/adrian-karatnycky/partition-ukraine-i-think-notAdrian KaratnyckyAdrian Karatnycky is a non-resident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council and Managing Partner of Myrmidon Group LLC, a New York based consultancy that works with investors and corporations seeking entry into the complex emerging markets of Ukraine and Eastern Europe. He is a founder and co-director of the Ukrainian-Jewish Encounter.From 1993 until 2004, he was President and executive Director of Freedom House, during which time he developed programs of assistance to democratic and human rights movements in Belarus, Serbia, Russia, and Ukraine. At Freedom House he devised a range of long-term comparative analytic surveys of democracy and political reform. For twelve years he directed the benchmark survey Freedom in the World and was co-editor of the annual Nations in Transit study of reform in the post- Communist world.He is a frequent contributor to Foreign Affairs, Newsweek, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, the International Herald Tribune, and many other periodicals. He is co-author of three books and co-editor of eight books on Soviet and post-Soviet themes.

http://www.acus.org/users/adrian-karatnycky

Computerworld – Environmental groups like the Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, among others, have been in the news lately, chiding gadget makers in general and Apple in particular for bad environmental policies. They’re bringing attention to the growing mountains of toxic PCs, cell phones, iPods and other electronics in landfills and pushing governments for “green” regulation.

This problem is real, and I applaud these and dozens of other organizations that are working to make a difference. But their prescriptions for consumer action — what they want you and me to do about e-waste — is actually bad for the environment. I’ll tell you why in a minute. I’ll also outline a superior alternative to the recycling they are demanding. But first, let’s review the problem.

The trouble with e-trash

Consumer Reports says Americans threw away about 3 million tons of electronics in 2003. Some 700 million cell phones have already been thrown away worldwide, with 130 million disposed of in 2005 alone.

Worse, this stuff is toxic. Old-school CRT monitors and TVs average about 6 pounds of poisonous lead, which is the leading source of this toxic substance in landfills. Most PCs and electronic gadgets contain circuit boards packed with toxic metals like chromium, zinc and nickel. Even the plastics contain toxic flame-retardant chemicals.

A recent report by researchers at the University of California at Irvine analyzed the chemical brew that leaches out of cell phones in a landfill and found toxic lead, copper, nickel, antimony and zinc all creating a serious hazard. Consumer Reports says that only 10% of discarded PCs are recycled “responsibly.”

About 80% of discarded electronics is currently sent to a handful of developing countries like China, India and Kenya, where people (including small children) dismantle the gadgets for parts and metals. The work is dangerous and low-paying, and greatly increases life-threatening water and soil pollution in those countries and air pollution globally. Forthcoming laws in most industrialized countries will effectively ban this practice. We’re going to have to deal with our own toxic e-waste problem in the future, and we won’t be able to just export the problem.

But what should we do about it?

The trouble with environmental groups

The Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition, Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace and other organizations push recycling hard. They want you to participate either in the “take-back” programs offered by Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Apple and others, or find a recycler to take your e-junk.

However, this overemphasis on recycling fails to take advantage of the special nature of electronic equipment. Gadgets are completely different from other products that we recycle. Worse, pushing recycling is actually hurting the environment, and I call on all these groups to rethink their obsession with recycling, at least in this particular matter.

Here are five reasons why recycling electronic gear is bad for the environment:

1. Recycling pollutes. Unlike other commonly recycled products, such as cans and paper, the processes for recycling electronics is monstrously time-consuming, labor-intensive and wasteful. Recycling gadgets involves refurbishing (testing, fixing and reusing), demanufacturing (stripping for parts) or extracting raw materials (such as metals). Every single device must be carefully and individually handled in these processes, which nearly always results in incomplete recycling anyway. It requires heated buildings with lights burning, power tools, trucking — all kinds of processes that are bad for the environment.

2.Recycling doesn’t cut gadget production. It feels good to drop old junk off at the local recycling center, but doing that actually provides an incentive for manufacturers to keep cranking out millions of new gadgets, which will all have to be dealt with eventually. Environmental groups should be pushing consumers to demand that manufacturers make fewer devices.

3. Recycling demands virtue and so will fail. Recycling requires individual sacrifice for the collective good. When is the last time that worked? People cut gas use and buy hybrid cars because gas is too expensive, not because they want to help the earth (with exceptions). If environmental groups are waiting for everyone to become a good citizen, they’re going to wait a long time. They should be educating consumers on how to make choices that both benefit the consumers personally and help the environment.

4. Recycling doesn’t improve products. One of the biggest contributors to e-waste is lousy products, which people either get tired of or get rid of because they’re too hard or unpleasant to use. Excellent products are more desirable to keep around and last longer.

5. Recycling feeds one of the biggest environmental problems: lazy storage. Environmental groups push recycling electronics over throwing them away. But most buyers do neither. I think recycling contributes to this. People feel weird throwing a working cell phone in the trash and know they should recycle. But people are busy and they procrastinate. There’s no urgency; something can be recycled now, or 10 years from now. What’s the difference? Environmental groups should be pushing for action to get these devices out of the garage and into the hands of people who can use them as soon as possible, before they’re obsolete.

Here’s the solution

It’s time for environmental groups to stop pushing the feel-good panacea of recycling and start advocating a practice I call “reupgrading.” Reupgrading (recycling through upgrading), involves selling your gadget when it’s still practically new and using the money to upgrade to a better gadget (buying used if possible).

Technology created the problem of e-waste, and technology provides the solution. Online sites like eBay, Craigslist and others are ideal for buying and selling used electronics. I’m talking about treating cell phones and PCs like we do high-value products such as cars, not like low-value products such as newspapers. With cars, we repair them when they’re broken, sell them when we buy a new one and squeeze decades of use out of them.

Here are six reasons why reupgrading is better than recycling:

1. Reupgrading “recycles” gadgets efficiently. Reupgrading is energy- and labor-efficient. Nothing has to be processed, and no testing, refurbishing or disassembly is required. And reupgrading takes advantage of miniaturization. Cell phones, digital camera and media players are light and cheap to ship.

2. Reupgrading forces manufacturers to make fewer devices. By buying used electronics en masse, consumers can force much lower unit sales by gadget makers. That’s the best thing we can do for the environment.

3. Reupgrading takes advantage of self-interest. Early adopters and serious users sell gadgets to fund their next purchase. They get to upgrade more frequently and always stay on the bleeding edge without a huge financial penalty. Bargain hunters get more for their money. If your budget for a new laptop is $800, would you rather have a powerful system that’s cheap because it’s used or a brand-new clunker that’s cheap because it’s too weak to run Windows Vista?

4. Reupgrading punishes junk manufacturers. If more purchases are made initially by knowledgeable power users, and if the bargain hunters buy better products used rather than seeking out the cheapest new junk, companies will work harder to serve the high end of the market. As a result, the average device in every category will be better and easier to sell, and enjoy a longer life.

5. Reupgrading addresses the biggest problem: lazy storage. By selling a gadget as soon as you buy a new one, you’re motivated by self-interest to move the device out of your house and into full, productive use while its still valuable.

6. Reupgrading takes pressure off recycling centers. Many of the devices taken to recycling centers are going to be used by someone anyway, but only after a costly and environmentally unfriendly process.

The biggest hurdle for the reupgrading movement is psychological. People have been conditioned by marketing to want brand-new electronics. But part of this is a delusion — we’re already getting used products. Carriers already sell “refurbished” phones. Often, when a manufacturer replaces a damaged unit, it sends you a “used” phone. These devices tend to work exactly like new ones. It’s just an idea we need to get used to. It would help if the environmental groups pushed this notion.

Meanwhile, if you want to embrace the reupgrading movement, here are my best reupgrading tips:

1. Always look for maximum resale value when you buy (and force manufacturers to make longer-lasting products). Upgrade frequently.

2. Always consider buying used instead of new. Become skilled at monitoring the auction and classified ad sites for deals.

3. Sell your previous model on eBay, Craigslist or similar site as soon as possible, while it still has maximum value.

4. Always keep packaging to facilitate shipping and enhance value.

5. Always keep items such as cables and accessories. To enhance value, bundle them free when you sell the old model if they don’t work with the new.

6. If something breaks, fix it before selling or donating. You’ll get a better price or make a better contribution, and you might be able to do it with your existing warranty or insurance that the buyer may not have.

Recycling e-waste is good, but only as the last resort. It’s time the environmental groups start pushing for reupgrading and stop pushing recycling. It’s better for the environment, and it’s better for you and me.

Mike Elgan is a technology writer and former editor of Windows Magazine. He can be reached at mike.elgan@elgan.com or his blog: http://therawfeed.com.

Read more about Mobile and Wireless in Computerworld’s Mobile and Wireless Knowledge Center.

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