Afghan heroin could kill US-Russian reset

Graham Stack for Russia Profile (www.russiprofile.org)

In context of the “reset” in U.S.-Russian relations, the two countries’ cooperation over Afghanistan has been hailed as a model for working together in other areas, ranging from Europe to Iran and North Korea. But with the reset hardly underway, opinion differences are already emerging between Moscow and Washington over anti-narcotics policy in Afghanistan.

Russia’s security policy hawks tend to react negatively to the United States acting unilaterally, deploying interventionist military power and tweaking UN mandates to expand missions. But when in 2008 U.S. hardliners pushed for the American military and allies to widen the fight against the Afghan Taliban to include military engagement of the country’s billion-dollar narco-industry, including a shoot-to-kill policy against heroin producers and a blanket aerial crop-eradication campaign, Russia’s siloviki stood up and applauded.

U.S. hardliners regarded Afghanistan’s opium production as a crucial source of financing for the strengthening Taliban insurgency, and drew inspiration from the America’s experience of having fought and largely won a war with drug producers in Columbia. In 2007, the U.S. ambassador to Columbia William Wood, an ardent supporter of aerial crop eradication, was reassigned to Afghanistan to step up the war on drugs. “If there is no poppy, there is nothing to traffic,” Wood told reporters on arrival. In 2007, military operations supporting manual eradication got underway, and in January 2009, a leaked letter by NATO’s Supreme Commander General John Craddock to European counterparts declared an effective shoot-to-kill policy for the drug war, saying it was “no longer necessary to produce intelligence or other evidence that each particular drug trafficker or narcotics facility in Afghanistan meets the criteria of being a military objective.”

Iraq, Iran and North Korea are all examples where Russia has vehemently opposed the use of American military force against weapons of mass destruction. But without any sense of irony, Viktor Ivanov, the head of Russia’s Federal Anti-Narcotics Service (FSKN) speaking in February called Afghanistan’s heroin “a weapon of mass destruction of a special kind,” and expressly demanded that the United States and its allies in Afghanistan engage and destroy it.

Ivanov’s reasoning is clear: Russia is the country worst affected by Afghanistan’s heroin exports. According to FSKN statistics, Russia has up to 2.5 million drug addicts, mostly in the critical reproductive age group of 18 to 39, with the number surging by 80,000 a year. Ninety percent of drug addicts in the country use Afghan heroin. These alarming figures do not take into account the enormous number of HIV infections transmitted via dirty needle sharing. “Today it is self-evident for everyone that the state should take decisive emergency measures to prevent an approaching national catastrophe,” Reuters reported Ivanov as saying in May, adding that “it is time the world community got serious about the Afghan drug problem.”

Although Ivanov has no official foreign policy remit, he is not simply a law-enforcement officer lobbying for a larger budget. A former KGB officer, he is a longstanding associate of the current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, and a key member of the influential “silovik” network of former KGB officers from St. Petersburg responsible for Russian security policy. He was a top Kremlin aide throughout Putin’s presidency before moving to the FSNK in 2008. And there is also a special personal background to Ivanov’s interest in Afghanistan: he served there with the Soviet forces in the 1980s during the Soviet Union’s disastrous occupation. His move to the FSNK duly shifted the organization’s attention from the domestic to the international dimension of Russia’s heroin problem.

It is testimony to Ivanov’s influence that the joint declaration given by U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev at June’s Moscow summit listed combating illegal drug trafficking alongside the fight against terrorism and armed extremism as shared goals in Afghanistan, with Obama acknowledging that “Russia has deep concerns about the [Afghan] drug trade and its infiltration into Russia.”

New man on the job

The Obama-Medvedev summit was the birth of the U.S.-Russian “reset,” and the new spirit of cooperation was marked by Russia’s agreement to allow the transit of U.S. weapon cargo to Afghanistan. But ironically, as part of Obama’s global adjustment of foreign policy, the U.S. policy in Afghanistan is also being reset – and the results are not looking like anything Russia would want them to be.

Obama’s shift away from George Bush’s hardline policies has seen both general Craddock and ambassador Wood lose their posts this year. Instead, a veteran Democrat diplomat Richard Holbrooke has taken over the U.S. policy in the area as the American special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Holbrooke is a longstanding opponent of any form of crop eradication, whether on ground or by air, and indeed largely denies that Afghanistan’s opium trade is the main source of funding for the Taliban insurgency.

“If the drugs ended tomorrow, it would not have a major effect on the Taliban source of funding,” Holbrooke declared in June at a ceremony to mark General Stanley McChrystal’s assumption of command of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Holbrooke pointed out that the ground-based crop eradication program has been costly in terms of money and lives, and has failed to make any impact. These are points the Russians agree with – but instead of ending crop eradication, Ivanov is demanding a step-up to aerial eradication, and lamented general Craddock’s departure in an interview he gave to the Kommersant daily in June.

In response to Holbrooke, Ivanov claims it would be possible to end the Afghan opium production swiftly, and adduces two examples: firstly, he says, following the UN’s condemnation of Afghanistan’s heroin exports in 1999, in 2000 and 2001 the Taliban reduced the opium harvest practically to zero. Secondly, the U.S. crop eradication campaign in Columbia has been largely successful. According to Ivanov, 74 percent of the coca crop was destroyed in 2008, with no increase in armed resistance.

Ivanov says the UN should force the United States and its allies to take decisive action against opium production in Afghanistan, firstly by declaring Afghan’s narcotics trade an international threat, as it has done with terrorism and piracy. Following this, Russia should make the next annual renewal of the UN mandate for international troops in Afghanistan conditional on action against heroin production and trafficking. “The further presence of coalition forces in Afghanistan should be made conditional on an undertaking to destroy drug fields,” Ivanov told a conference in April. Russia’s UN Security Council veto means that theoretically, Russia has the leverage to do this.

Ivanov has gone as far as to propose tying U.S. transit of weaponry to Afghanistan via Russia to a more active pursuit of crop eradication on behalf of the Americans. “The granting of transport corridors to NATO forces in Afghanistan should be conditioned on a commitment to destroy sown areas, laboratories, stocks and other infrastructure of the Afghan drug business,” he told Russia’s Duma in late June.

With Russian demands for crop eradication becoming more strident while U.S. strategy moves decisively away from the approach, the signs do not bode well for U.S.-Russian cooperation in the one policy area where it has been strongest to date.

At the same time, however, U.S. strategy is shifting away from unconditional support for the Afghan President Hamid Karzai, an opponent of crop eradication who has been frequently accused of protecting major figures involved in opium and heroin production. Indeed, on August 28 reports appeared in the media that Holbrooke had had a major row with Karzai over allegations of ballot-stuffing in the August 20 presidential elections.

A more distanced approach toward the Karzai administration could make Holbrooke’s plan to go after the big fish of heroin production and trafficking, instead of the small fry opium farmers, seem more plausible to the Russians. This is something that Ivanov, who has called for a UN blacklist of Afghan drug barons to be compiled, could go along with. On the other hand, Russia’s drugs tsar is skeptical that the big fish can be found in Afghanistan. “All these people live a long way from Afghanistan, for instance in United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia,” he told Kommersant in June

Legal eagles Obama and Medvedev swap notes

Graham Stack for Russia Profile (www.russiaprofile.org)

The Connection Between the Lawyer Presidents is More Curious than Medvedev Seems to Have Realized

When they first met, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev played up the common legal background he shares with U.S. President Barack Obama. And despite question marks over the veracity of Medvedev’s claim to have studied a “legal reference work” authored by Obama, the influence of the Russian president’s legal schooling is palpable, in his public statements, policies, and above all his appointments. But is his habit of hiring like-minded colleagues really a bid to consolidate the rule of law, or just good old-fashioned nepotism?

Relations between U.S. and Russian presidents are full of paradoxes. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, each new Russian president has been paired with a new U.S. president – Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin, George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin, and now Barack Obama and Dmitry Medvedev. The previous two presidential pairs featured an unlikely personal bond, which nevertheless failed to prevent tensions escalating between the countries.

Obama, after his first meetings with Medvedev, seemed to deliberately avoid any sentimentality, emphasizing that he wants a relationship based on shared national interests, not personalities. In fact, Medvedev’s response to Obama was more personal than vice versa, inspired by his and Obama’s common background as legal scholars.

Following the two presidents’ first meeting at the G20 summit in London in March, Medvedev commented that “we have read the same books.” Following a bilateral meeting at the G8 summit in L’Aquila on July 10, the footnote swapping seemed to have gone one step further: Medvedev said he had previously studied a “legal reference work” co-authored by Obama. “This is curious to say the least,” Medvedev remarked.

The issue is actually even more curious than Medvedev seems to have realized: Obama, as a legal scholar, published nothing, except one research note to the Harvard Law Review as a graduate. Medvedev’s own publication record is far more impressive than Obama’s – having co-authored a standard work on Russia’s civil code in the 1990s.

What publication was Medvedev referring to, then? It could be that he meant the Harvard Law Review. Obama famously edited the prestigious periodical between 1980 and 1990 as its first black editor. These were also the years when Medvedev was completing his doctorate in St. Petersburg.

However, according to a number of sources, it is extremely unlikely that the journal was available at St. Petersburg State University until the late 1990s. Also it is unclear why Harvard Law Review could have been interesting for a Russian legal scholar at that time.

More likely is that Medvedev confused Obama’s editorial position at Harvard Law Review with his later teaching post at University of Chicago. University of Chicago law school publishes the famous journal “Law and Economics.” “Law and Economics” is the flagship journal of the neo-institutional economic school that analyses an economy according to its legal institutional framework, and as such is a key journal in Medvedev’s field of commercial law. Obama’s faculty friend and now top economic advisor, Austan Goolsbee, was lead editor of the journal in the 1990s.

Neo-institutional economics became mainstream in Russia in the second half of the 1990s, as it became clear that macroeconomic stabilization and privatization did not work if an economy lacked efficient laws and institutions. As a result, government economic reforms started to focus on the legal sphere. This shift was embodied by the appointment of legal scholar German Gref as a long-serving economy minister between 2000 and 2007. Gref studied and taught alongside Medvedev in the St. Petersburg law faculty in the early 1990s.

Medvedev must have studied this school of thought – and may (wrongly) think Obama edited its foremost journal when he taught at the University of Chicago. In fact Obama taught constitutional law, and was concerned with issues of race and citizens’ rights quite distant from Medvedev’s scholarly interests.

Civiliki: Network or norms?

Whatever the truth, Medvedev’s response to Obama demonstrates how strong his identity as a civil law scholar remains, despite years of working in the Kremlin and government. This is an identity he shares with other top officials and friends, nicknamed the civiliki, to distinguish them from Vladimir Putin’s ex-KGB network of siloviki.

This identity was underscored last week by a visit to his alma mater, St. Petersburg University’s law faculty, posted on his video blog on the Kremlin website, where Medvedev reminisces about his years studying and teaching there. Ilya Nikiforov, an associate lecturer at the civil law department, pointed out that “Medvedev even contributed a chapter for a civil law textbook, co-authored by members of St. Petersburg Law School, after having become president last year.”

Medvedev’s background in law does not just serve him intellectually, but as a source of personnel appointments. Besides Gref, who now heads Russia’s largest bank, the state-owned Sberbank, the new Minister of Justice Alexander Konovalov also studied and taught alongside Medvedev in Petersburg in the 1990s, where he lectured on Roman and civil law.

From among Medvedev’s undergraduate classmates (class of 87), Konstantin Chuichenko heads the Central Control Directorate in the presidential administration, Nikolai Vinnichenko is presidential envoy to the Urals Federal District, Artur Parfenchikov heads the State Bailiffs Service, Nikolai Gutsan is deputy prosecutor general, and Valeriya Adamova chairs the Moscow Arbitration Court. About a dozen other colleagues and classmates are scattered through the top echelons of the state as well as Gazprom.

Most civil among the civiliki, and the closest to Medvedev, is his longtime friend, former classmate, faculty colleague and textbook co-author, Anton Ivanov. Ivanov was catapulted to head Russia’s Supreme Arbitration Court, the country’s court of final instance in commercial disputes, also with prerogatives in norm setting, in 2005.

Like Medvedev, Ivanov has retained close ties to academia, as scientific director of the law faculty of Moscow’s prestigious Higher School of Economics. According to deputy dean of the faculty, Natalia Rostovtseva, Ivanov’s position is not a formality. “He plays an active role in the life of the faculty,” said Rostovtseva. “He teaches the second year course on the civil code, and examines. Moreover, he insists that students get practical experience by attending sessions of the Supreme Arbitration Court and completing internships there.” Ivanov himself complains that he now only has time for three or four publications per year.

Ivanov is notable for having taken a principled position against siloviki policy in the state sector of the economy. In June he called for a moratorium on the creation of state corporations such as giant defense sector and engineering holding Russian Technologies, headed by leading silovik Sergei Chemezov, a personal friend of Vladimir Putin’s. Ivanov argued that Russia’s civil code does not envisage any such hybrid form of private and state property, and demanded “common norms for all legal entities.”

Likewise, Medvedev’s rhetoric against “legal nihilism” and his calls to strengthen the rule of law obviously draw on his roots in jurisprudence.

On the other hand, the civiliki network might turn into a “jobs for the boys” club, ensuring the loyalty to Medvedev of what are meant to be independent institutions. On July 7, for instance, a former St. Petersburg law faculty member, Sergei Mavrin, was proposed by Medvedev as deputy chairman of the constitutional court. Prior to this, new legal amendments empowered the president to propose candidates, whereas previously judges had voted on new members. Mavrin is now widely tipped to head the constitutional court when current head Valery Zorkin steps down in 2012.

So the crucial test for Medvedev’s presidency could be whether his declared interest in strengthening legal norms is actually implemented, or whether his academic background will simply serve him as a source of cadres, equivalent to Vladimir Putin’s siloviki network.

Similarly in U.S.-Russian relations, a reset will only work if Obama’s and Medvedev’s shared legal background helps them move ahead with strengthening the rule of law in the international sphere. If their legal interest is simply used as a basis to build a personal relationship, the history of the previous two presidential pairs, where personal friendship failed to prevent escalation of Russian-U.S. tension, may be doomed to repeat itself.

Ukraine’s poisoned president launches doomed bid for second term

Graham Stack in Kiev

Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko, the world’s most unpopular president according to opinion polls, climbed Ukraine’s highest mountain Sunday July 19 to prove his fitness for a second term in office. At the summit of Mount Hoverla (2016m) in the Carpathians, with a view westwards to the Europe he aspires to, Yushchenko announced officially that he would run for a second term in office in elections in January 2010.

“I would like to officially announce here that I will be running for the Ukrainian presidency in January,” he said.

A small band of supporters who had followed him to the peak in beautiful summer weather struggled with tears after his announcement. Opinion polls give Yushchenko an approval rating of only 2% – less than the margin of error – meaning he is facing utter humiliation in the elections. Pollsters point out that his rating constitutes a world record for unpopularity. His motorcade regularly encounters a hostile cacophony of blaring horns as it winds through Kiev streets.

Yushchenko’s record-breaking unpopularity is astonishing considering his initial approval rating of over 60% on taking office in January 2005. Yushchenko was swept to power by mass protests against electoral fraud in late 2004, known as the Orange Revolution. In the run-up to the rigged elections, opponents poisoned Yushchenko with dioxin. The images of his severe facial scarring that resulted have become an icon of people’s struggle for democracy.

The scarring, the medical term for which is chloracne, and facial immobility are still very obvious. The subtext of yesterday’s ascent of Hoverla was not only symbolic, but also simply to prove that the president is physically fit enough for high office in times of crisis.

Poisoned chalice

Leading international toxicologists familiar with the case argue however that the poison has massively impaired the president’s performance. They dispute Yuschenko’s claim that his body has got rid of 95% of what was one of the highest dioxin doses in humans ever recorded.

“My belief is that he will suffer many ill effects of dioxin for many years, including possible brain damage,” says dioxin expert University of Texas professor Arnold Schechter. “His chloracne not only affects the face, but the whole body – as every single follicle may be involved in severe cases as the one of president Yushchenko is,” agrees Vienna’s Alexandra Geusau.

Yuschenko has traditionally said little about the effects of the still unsolved poisoning, except to claim he is in good health. Last month, however, he admitted he had undergone 26 secret operations in the first two years of his presidency. “Nobody knew about the operations, because they were carried out at the weekend, on Friday evenings, and on Monday I was already back at work,” Yushchenko told journalists, adding that each operation lasted over three hours.

Toxicologists say Yushchenko’s out-of-touch performance in office is a direct result of the poisoning.

During the Orange Revolution, the poisoning added fuel to the popular fury at stolen elections. But according to Valery Khmelko, president of Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, “following the poisoning, Yushchenko became more interested in his presidential palaces, amateur history and bee-keeping than in running the country.” Crisis-hit Ukrainians see their president as out of touch with reality and incapable of exercising power.

British toxicologist Alastair Hay of Leeds University lists lethargy, enervation, numbness, liver damage and weakened immune system as medium-term consequences of dioxin poisoning

“Yuschenko’s behaviour is what you might expect from someone exposed to dioxin in the quantities he was,” says Hay. “The chloracne indicates he is genetically susceptible to dioxins, so he may have many systems of his body damaged. It must have taken an effort of will to continue in his high-octane job.”

Now, in a bitter irony of history, the clear favorite to win the upcoming elections is the man whom the Orange Revolution prevented seizing power in 2004, pro-Russian former Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych.

A further bitter blow is the decision on the part of Barack Obama’s new US administration to send only the vice president to Ukraine, while Obama himself visited Moscow last week without any stop-over in Kiev. Yushchenko has staked everything on a pro-US foreign policy aiming at NATO membership, and Obama’s rapprochement policy with Moscow is making this look like a dead end.

Earlier this week, Yushchenko’s foreign policy spokesman said pointedly that the main topic of discussion with Biden would be to negotiate a visit to Kiev by Obama himself.

Say no to NATO, US experts tell Ukrainians

Graham Stack in Kyiv for Russia Profile

Following the Russian-U.S. reset, a new American policy institute has opened in Kiev to dissuade Ukraine from its bid to Join NATO. Its fellows argue that Ukrainian NATO membership would be bad for both the United States and Ukraine. But while their message is in tune with Ukrainian public opinion, they face an up-hill struggle convincing the foreign policy establishment in both countries.

“Ukraine’s NATO membership is not in Ukraine’s interests. Nor is it in U.S. interests. All that it will create is a nuclear trip wire at the heart of Europe,” argued Anthony Salvia, director of the American Institute in Ukraine (AIU), a non-commercial organization founded this year in Kiev, funded by U.S. citizens. “In Ukraine, U.S. opinion is often represented as being monolithically in favor of Ukraine’s future membership of NATO,” he added. “We’re here in Kiev to show this is definitely not the case.”

AIU is unique in being an American organization campaigning overseas against NATO expansion. “Other American organizations in Ukraine, many of which are funded by the U.S. government, actively promote Ukraine’s entry into NATO at the earliest possible date, despite the fact the majority of Ukraine’s population is opposed to NATO accession,” said Salvia, who served in Ronald Reagan’s White House.

The AIU is aligned, but not affiliated, with the Nixon Center, headed by legendary former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and which publishes the influential journal “National Interest”. In March 2009, the Nixon Center released a review of Russian-U.S. relations arguing that Ukrainian or Georgian NATO membership “could decrease rather than increase Europe’s overall security.” The review called for U.S. policy makers to “work closely with U.S. allies to develop options other than NATO membership to demonstrate a commitment to [Ukrainian and Georgian] sovereignty.”

“The U.S. should refrain from making promises to Ukraine it cannot honor, but which might embolden Ukraine to provoke a conflict. The Ukrainians should realize that the US will never fight Russia over Ukraine,” argued Doug Bando, senior analyst at the conservative Cato institute, and a recent AIU guest speaker in Kiev. The August 2008 Georgian war looms in the minds of all those warning against extending NATO deep into the unstable former Soviet Union. “Ukraine must learn to rely on its own resources for securing its sovereignty, and not to trust to U.S. promises,” said Bando.

“Ukrainian NATO membership, by ruining relations with Russia, would make Ukraine less secure than it is, not more. And it would also harm U.S. security, by ruining the chances for cooperation with Russia over vital issues such as Afghanistan, North Korea and Iran, all issues that the new administration has said it will prioritize,” agreed Salvia.

“There are other mechanisms available for strengthening Ukrainian security,” he added. “One is a new European security treaty, similar to that being proposed by Dmitry Medvedev. The other is for European Union membership. The Kremlin is basically open toward Ukraine’s future EU membership, especially if it is an alternative to Ukraine’s NATO membership”.

Reset in Action

The AIU is in fact part of a wider battle waged over the new U.S. administration’s Russia policy. U.S. President Barack Obama has famously called for “pressing the reset button” in Russian-U.S. relations, but he is advised on Russia by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Michael McFaul, both historic advocates of a tough line with Russia. “We hope Obama listens to a wider range of opinion,” said Salvia.

Underlining the potential of cooperation with Russia, on the other hand, last week’s Moscow summit between Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev saw the Russians sensationally agree to the United States transiting weaponry through Russia to Afghanistan.

And equally sensationally, although little noticed in the West, Obama, speaking to Moscow students, said that NATO membership would require a majority of any country’s population to be in favor – which is not the case in Ukraine. He also said that America would not press any country to join the alliance.

Ukraine’s bid for NATO membership, and Russia’s adamant opposition to this, put the United States in a bind. Washington is unwilling to openly privilege Russian interests over Ukrainian. Changing the situation on the ground in Ukraine could help U.S. policy makers out of this dilemma, hopes the AIU.

It should also not be too hard, given that Ukraine public opinion is solidly anti-NATO. Polls have consistently shown support for joining NATO to hover at around only 20 percent of respondents, with over 50 percent against.

But at the other end of the scale, Ukraine’s powerful foreign policy bureaucracy has an entrenched ideological commitment to joining the military alliance, according to Yelena Biberman, a U.S. embassy policy specialist engaged in research on Ukraine’s foreign ministry.

“Foreign ministry officials are ideologically anti-Russian and nationalist to the extent that they may not always be able to objectively assess Ukraine’s real national interests,” said Biberman, who has interviewed many top foreign ministry officials. “They believe that Russia is inherently imperialistic and bent on regaining control over Ukraine as a step to rebuilding its empire, and NATO membership is the only way to stop this. Even for a new Ukrainian president, it will be very hard to change their perspective.”

This means that for AIU, it is work with opinion makers in the media that matters most. “We don’t engage in lobbying, but work exclusively in the public field holding conferences, talks and round table discussions,” said Salvia. “What we are trying to tell Ukrainians is simply that you can be pro-America and pro-European without having to want to join NATO.”

West should beware “junta” coalition, says Yatsenyuk

Graham Stack in Kiev

With a grand coalition in Ukraine’s parliament looking set to cancel upcoming direct presidential elections and change the constitution, Arsenyi Yatsenyuk, dubbed Ukraine’s Obama, and one of the favourites to win the elections, has warned the West of a Russian-backed “junta” that could turn Ukraine into “a banana republic.”

“I know the West is exhausted of the stand-off in Ukraine,” 35 year old Arsenyi Yatsenyuk, parliamentary deputy and leader of Ukraine’s “Front for Change”, told this correspondent in perfect English, ”but this is very dangerous. Because if the coalition’s plans go ahead, Ukraine will return to the sphere of influence of a certain big country,” he added, leaving no doubt he had Russia in mind. “It will also turn Ukraine into a banana republic,” he added.

Yatsenyuk called the nascent coalition’s plans to cancel presidential elections and shift power to the parliament “an anti-constitutional conspiracy,” and promised to head a campaign to stop what he referred to as a “junta”.

Asked if there would be a second Orange revolution, Yatsenyuk said, “you will see.”

The two parties which are negotiating the coalition, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko’s Bloc Yulia Tymoshenko and opposition leader Viktor Yanukovch’s Party of Regions, together command 70% of the parliament, meaning the coalition will monopolise power in the country if comes to fruition, as it is expected to within this week.

Currently, presidential elections are scheduled for January 2010. The nascent coalition and its plans to abolish presidential elections are expected to be formally announced coming Tuesday.

Analysts agree that the move would condemn Ukraine to follow Russia and Belarus along the path to authoritarianism, by sidelining opposition and restricting political participation.

Until Yatsenyuk threw his hat into the ring, the presidential elections were seen as a two horse race between Yanukovych and Tymoshenko. Incumbent president Viktor Yushchenko, although also intending to run, has poll ratings of 2%, making him a marginal candidate.

Yatsenyuk’s rating has already reached 14% and is rising monthly. PM Tymoshenko is on 15% and opposition leader Yanukovych on 25%.

Yatsenyuk’s campaign team have no doubt that his rapid rise has prompted the move to cancel elections, with both Tymoshenko and Yanukovych now uncertain of their chances in the winner-takes-all presidential race. Yatsenyuk declared his candidacy on May 22 on turning thirty five, the minimal age for a presidential candidacy.

Former PM Yanukovych and current PM Tymoshenko were on opposing sides during the globally-acclaimed 2004 Orange revolution. It was largely Tymoshenko’s firebrand rhetoric and actions that stymied Yanukovych’s attempt to rig the elections in his favour. Now they appear to be divvying up power between them to keep Yatsenyuk out. Reports indicate Yanukovych will have himself elected president by parliament, in return for Tymoshenko continuing as prime minister.

Yanukovch openly favours a pro-Russian Ukraine. Tymoshenko, formerly vehemently pro-Western, has shifted radically to a pro-Russian position since the Russian-Georgian conflict of August 2008, prompting Ukraine’s secret service to investigate her for betraying the national interest.

Yatsenyuk’s soaring popularity in Ukraine has led to him being dubbed the Ukrainian Obama. Like Obama, he is a legal scholar by profession, with a background in civil activism. Despite his youth he has held high office in Ukraine as Minister of Economy, Foreign Minister and Parliamentary speaker. He has however avoided being mired in political sleaze and backstabbing that has dogged the country.

His campaign is also modeled on Obama’s success in 2008, with its slogan of ‘change’, and reliance on grassroots activism and also financial support from the pockets of ordinary people donating via the Internet.

His campaign team, however, playfully disclaim any such parallel, saying there are significant differences between the two young politicians. “Obama uses a blackberry, while Yatsenyuk prefers an i-phone’ a source close to Yatsenyuk joked.

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