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Ukraine: Europe's New Nation
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20408 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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3 / 1992 |
3,047 Words |
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Nadia Diuk and Adrian Karatnycky
Nadia Diuk is a specialist on central and eastern European
affairs at the National Endowment for Democracy and Adrian
Karatnycky is special assistant to t he president of the AFL-
CIO. They coauthored The Hidden Nations The people Challenge
the Soviet Union |
On December 1, 1991 a new nation emerged on the map of Europe. Ukraine's overwhelming vote in favor of independence and separation from the unraveling Soviet Union demolished the hope of reconstructing any kind of union with centralized institutions to govern the Soviet republics. Within a week of the referendum on independence and the election of a new president in Ukraine, the three leaders of the Slavic republic met in Minsk to hammer out the conditions for a new Commonwealth of Independent States that would make the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics finally obsolete.
Ukrain'e landslide vote in favor of independence was, as newly elected President Leonid Kravchuk later put it "the force" that destroyed the Soviet empire, though Boris Yeltsin was largely responsible for creating the conditions that made such an out come possible.
Kravchuk's determination to assert his country's newly won statehood should not come as a surprise. In a discussion with theses authors in Kiev in mid October, Kravchuk was unequivocal in his desire to shape a new Ukrainian State; "Ukraine does not want to participate in a political union with the former USSR, whose aim is a central government structure. We may take part in political alliances in economic union only if this does not infringe on our state interests. We will behave like other independent countries that observe agreement on political union but without surrendering our sovereignty."
Since the December 1 referendum, Ukraine has moved quickly to establish the attributes of independent statehood. Seeking recognition in diplomatic and foreign relations, Ukraine's diplomatic mission to the United Nations has struck out on its own after decades of being an obedient servant to Moscow. Ukraine has applied for membership in the IMF: a new currency is being printed in Canada, for introduction in the near future. Customs officials and KGB border troops around Ukraine's western borders have for some time been sporting the blue and yellow colors of the new state. Ukraine's national guard is growing in numbers, and the government is moving decisively to establish Ukrainian control over all conventional military forces on Ukrainian territory, eventually cutting down to an army of between 100,000 and 250,000. In meetings with U.S. Secretary of State James Baker in Kiev in December, Kravchuk pledge to move quickly to satisfy conditions set by the Bush administration for formal recognition, including the complete removal and destruction of strategic and tactical nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory. Baker, in turn, stated his satisfaction that Ukraine was "in the forefront of
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