UKRAINE: RUSSIAN OFFICIALS CIRCUMSPECT WHILE DUMA

C O N F I D E N T I A L MOSCOW 001631 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 04/11/2017 TAGS: PREL PGOV UP RS SUBJECT: UKRAINE: RUSSIAN OFFICIALS CIRCUMSPECT WHILE DUMA BLUSTERS REF: MOSCOW 1552 Classified By: Ambassador William J. Burns. Reasons: 1.4(B & D). ¶1. (C) GOR officials assured the Ambassador April 10 that the Russian government would continue to be an attentive observer of the Ukrainian political crisis while avoiding direct public involvement. Russian Presidential Foreign Affairs Advisor Sergey Prikhodko told the Ambassador that Russia would keep a low profile and appreciated U.S. efforts to do the same, underscoring that no one would benefit from getting in the middle. Duma CIS Committee Chairman Kokoshin also urged "no (overt) involvement" in political tensions in a conversation with the Ambassador, echoing his April 6 comments to DAS David Kramer that the U.S. and Russia should resort to "quiet diplomacy" to dampen tensions between the two Ukrainian leaders. Kokoshin said Yushchenko's tactics were muddled, while Yanukovich was playing a "shrewd" game. ¶2. (SBU) While senior officials advocated a measured approach, the Russian Duma's April 6 condemnation of President Yushchenko's dissolution of the Rada was strongly endorsed afterwards by individual legislators and the talking heads on Russian weekend television programs. Many of the latter viewed Yushchenko's move as part of an ongoing political struggle dating to the Orange Revolution; most saw Yulia Tymoshenko and Yanukovich as the likely winners. Duma members have pledged that they will raise the "illegality" of Yushchenko's move in interparliamentary fora -- Duma International Affairs Committee Chairman Konstantin Kosachev said he would push for a review of the Ukrainian political crisis at the April session of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. A group of twenty Duma members (a "Ukraine caucus") were scheduled to leave April 11 for Kyiv on a fact-finding mission. ¶3. (C) Moscow experts echoed what we heard from the official circle. Artyom Malgin, a specialist on Ukraine at the Moscow Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) termed the current crisis an internal affair and said Russia must wait for the outcome. He underlined that neither Yushchenko nor Yanukovich wanted Russia involvement. According to him, the Duma delegation to Ukraine would not have much impact because the Duma had little power to influence Russia's foreign policy. Individual Russian groups may be active in Kyiv, but on a governmental level, "they know better this time," and Russia was less emotional about Ukraine than it had been during the Orange Revolution. ¶4. (C) Vitaliy Portnikov, a Radio Free Europe journalist, who works both in Moscow and Kyiv, agreed: if Ukraine was a geopolitical disaster in 2004 for Russia, Russia had accepted the defeat and moved on. What worried Portnikov was that if Yushchenko lost legitimacy -- by decision of the Constitutional Court or by some other unpredictable and chaotic movement -- the country could enter a prolonged period of uncertainty. Both Portnikov and Malgin thought that the May elections would not help Yushchenko. BURNS