Engaging Ukraine in 2009

Transcript

DAN BENJAMIN: You don't need to be a professional Ukraine watcher to know that Ukraine today is a troubled country and as such represents a significant policy challenge for the United States. As the New York Times wrote on March 1, "Ukraine, once considered a worldwide symbol of an emerging free-market democracy that had cast off authoritarianism is teetering and its predicament poses a real threat for other European economies and former Soviet republics."

Among its problems are a high level of government dysfunction bred by the continuing feud between the President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, a quarrel exacerbated by an uncertain constitutional situation regarding the delegation of powers to different officials of the government. There is also a ferocious economic crisis which takes many of the characteristics that are afflicting countries around the world but is perhaps deepened by the near collapse of the export steel market that is the market for one of Ukraine's key commodities. Then there is the difficult relationship with Ukraine's neighbor Russia whose antipathy toward the Ukrainian President and his Western orientation is quite deep and whose desire to keep the United States and the West out of its sphere of privileged interest is powerful. That too is compounded by Russia's economic woes and the difficult relationship over energy for which Ukraine serves as the main transit point between East and West.

Clearly this is a set of problems that cannot wait especially as the Ukrainian economy hovers near the edge of disaster, and it poses a serious challenge for a new administration.

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