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