Ukraine’s foreign policy priorities can be in short described as heading West but emotionally clinging to the East, as suggested by a poll of 1,600 persons conducted by the Sociological Service of the National Institute for Strategic Research (NISR) from November 13 through 19. The pollsters believe that the survey results are evidence that Ukrainians’ geopolitical orientation is two directional, since they are contemplating integration in both Western and Eastern directions. However, one can with no less certainty call these orientations ambivalent, that is, contradictory. The poll results suggest that over half the population (52%) would support a decision by the leadership on Ukraine’s membership in the EU, while precisely as many (52%) support Ukraine’s joining the Single Economic Space. Under such conditions, it is quite difficult to picture the results of a hypothetical referendum in which the citizens would be offered a choice between the two unions. Meanwhile, if you consider that another 50% favor Ukraine’s joining the Russo-Belarusian union, 51% support Ukraine’s WTO accession, 38% look toward Ukraine’s deeper integration within the CIS, 25% support Ukraine’s joining the CIS Defense Alliance (the Tashkent Agreement), and 23% favor Ukraine’s joining NATO, this prompts only one conclusion: Ukrainians do not want to remain on the sidelines of the global integration processes. Still we are yet to decide which is better: an unpredictable Russia or an orderly Europe with its inflexible requirements.
The polltakers have explored the nature of the Ukrainians’ Western and Eastern aspirations. According to NISR Sociological Service Director Viktor Nebozhenko, the poll results have shown that our compatriots’ pull toward Russia is due to lingering nostalgia. Meanwhile, our European aspirations are based on reason. Twelve years into independence, our social consciousness is becoming more rational under the influence of the factors of the modern world. Thus we should expect even greater support for Ukraine’s European integration in the immediate future. Moreover, there seems to have been a slight tilt toward the European choice in the minds of many Ukrainians. Significantly, 25% of those polled believe that Ukraine should turn away from the SES should it jeopardize Ukraine’s accession to the EU. Fewer respondents (18%) believe that in this case preference should be given to the SES over European integration. Simultaneously, nearly half of those polled (46%) hesitated which to choose.
The polltakers’ attempt to determine how the respondents feel about the concessions Ukraine will have to make on entering either the EU or SES can be considered unsuccessful. Simultaneously, its results are quite telling: unsuccessful, because this attempt has revealed the same ambivalence. Those polled split over whether Ukrainian laws should be adapted to those of the EU or SES, expressed readiness to accept a free trade regime with all partners, and objected to fulfilling the requirements of supranational bodies in both variants of integration. Yet this makes the study valuable, since it answers the question of what we expect from the deepening of cooperation with both the East and West and what we fear. We look to the opening of markets, better conditions for labor migration, and harmonization of laws. We fear the worsening of relations with other strategic partners, the creation of supranational bodies, and reduction of state support for domestic producers.
However, there is nothing strange about the fact that public opinion does not provide unequivocal answers to geopolitical questions that even the experts find quite puzzling. Thus NISR experts have provided follow-up comments on Ukraine’s integration priorities. According to Anatoly Halchynsky, NISR director to President Kuchma, this issue involves some “precautions in principle regarding the correspondence of Ukraine’s strategy of European integration with its cooperation with the CIS and SES members.” “In deepening the cooperation with the SES members we can take only such steps that do not run counter to Ukraine’s strategy of European integration,” he said, adding that Ukraine has an option to integrate in different directions and at different paces under Article 5 of the SES Agreement.
According to Halchynsky, adapting Ukraine’s laws to those of the SES members is out of the question, because it would mean “moving backward.” As he put it, NISR experts “have major reservations” about the prospects of a customs union and institution of a common SES currency, along with Ukraine’s participation in a regulatory body in which the votes will be distributed among members according to the size of the respective country’s economy. Considering that in 2002 Russia’s GDP was $346 billion, Ukraine’s $42 billion, Kazakhstan’s $25 billion, and Belarus’ $14 billion, Russia will receive 81 votes in the regulatory body versus Ukraine’s ten votes and six and three votes for Kazakhstan and Belarus respectively.
Moreover, according to the NISR director, today Russia is in fact unprepared to create a free trade zone as part of the SES with Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan in keeping with WTO norms. “Perhaps this explains the Tuzla provocation,” he said. Simultaneously, Halchynsky recalled that Ukraine actively supports the creation of a free trade zone within the CIS and would like to see such a zone created as part of the SES. He also stressed that a free trade zone should be created without the existing exemptions and restrictions and it should function in keeping with the accepted international principles and norms of the WTO, so as to create equal competition opportunities for the participating countries.
