It so happened that all roads from countries referred to as Orthodox would lead to Bethlehem for Christmas. There were also more knights of the Order of the Holy Sepulcher during the 2000 Christmas celebrations: the order was bestowed on the presidents of countries referred to as Orthodox, who came to attend the festivities. One happened no longer to be president.
Boris Yeltsin proved to the whole world that he was not deprived of his sense of dignity; in any case, he made a spectacular departure. It was also Leonid Kuchma’s second foreign trip of his second presidential term. As practice has it, there was a report on bilateral contacts he had with the Israeli and Palestinian leaders, and his presidential counterparts.
For the world at large, this Christmas pageant was the farewell show of Mr. Yeltsin who thus said goodbye to big-time politics and allegedly repented in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Little attention was paid to Ukraine, and rightly so. But there were problems. For example, how can one promise to support the idea of Palestinian statehood without simultaneously spoiling relations with Israel (for only the US and Russia can now afford this given their clout)? One cannot avoid supporting the Palestinians, for otherwise one will have nothing to catch in the Arab world, while Israel promises to help Ukraine put its agriculture in order (that will be the limit).
The same with Alyaksandr Lukashenka. Now his press service reports that the Ukrainian and Belarusian presidents agreed during the festivities to have a meeting later, which is good. For there was a pratfall last September over the cancellation of the invitation to Mr. Lukashenka to visit the Yalta summit, and he naturally felt hurt. He said that Ukraine would have no option but to eventually join the fraternal Slavic Union. Now, nobody seemed to make such a statement. But the relations between Ukraine and Belarus simply look odd: it is not clear whether they exist, are friendly or hostile, or whether or not, at last, the two countries are going to carry on trade. And, in general, why on earth does Lukashenka need Ukraine in a union, which so far only flatters his ambition and arouses nothing but distaste?
We never came to terms with Romania about the border or division of the sea shelf, while earlier the presidents seemed talk so much about some free trade areas, European regions, and the resumption of Danube shipping. This time they seemed to have forgotten all this, as well as the intention to organize a customs union among Ukraine, Rumania, and Moldova, although diplomats sometimes say that nobody has forgotten anything, that simply the time has not come. Perhaps precisely in Bethlehem during the Christmas festivities one could think over the way the words about Orthodox brotherhood could have been translated into deeds in the Balkans, to be more exact, in Yugoslavia, so badly needing a cure of the consequences of NATO’s heroism. Thus far, Ukraine is obviously not among the friends of Yugoslavia, no matter who rules it.
The Orthodox Club that gathered in Bethlehem is an ephemeral, mostly imaginary, and hence probably unreal, thing. Conversely, the problems the states are facing are more than real. Christmas-2000 has so far proven that the leaders of the states with common traditions can at least get together and talk. The year 2000 itself makes us believe it is high time to translate talks into something practical if only for the sake of the symbols so much liked by sinful humanity. But it still remains unclear where to the roads from Bethlehem will lead Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, and Yugoslavia, as well as, for that matter, the other countries that consider themselves Orthodox.
