It does not seem likely that Borys Tarasiuk, Ukraine’s foreign minister, is going to lose his job. He is one of the few ministers who retained their places in the cabinet after Viktor Yushchenko became prime minister. Neither has there been any severe criticism by the Ukrainian President of the work of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs that might be interpreted as a signal that Tarasiuk was on the way out.
In spite of the lack of visible signs, Russia’s Nezavisimaya gazeta, in a recent article has pointed to substantial problems in Ukraine’s current foreign policy, which, according to the Russian newspaper, is aimed at provoking “Moscow into becoming an undesirable political and economic partner for Kyiv... In the past two years, well-engineered stagnation in the sphere of economic cooperation has been observed, the commodities’ turnover has hit a new low, and human relations have degenerated to mutual claims, complaints, and confrontations.” According to Nezavisimaya gazeta, Leonid Kuchma, during his reelection campaign, had to rely on political forces which pushed him to orienting Ukraine toward Europe” and kept telling him that “Russia should be regarded as a potential threat to Ukraine’s sovereignty.” The Russian newspaper quotes President Kuchma as saying that he will not allow any economic confrontation with Ukraine’s northern neighbor.
In the opinion of Nezavisimaya gazeta, it is Tarasiuk who should be held responsible for all the evident and potential complications and missteps in the sphere of Ukrainian- Russian relations. The newspaper even predicts that Tarasiuk will go “in the immediate future,” but adds that Leonid Kuchma will not risk dismissing the entire Cabinet, since in this case he himself will take all the blame for “the inevitably cold winter.” Thus, Kuchma “for the first time will confront not only with his own national patriots but also with those political circles in the USA and Western Europe which regard Ukraine as a Cordon sanitaire between ‘Asiatic’ Russia and ‘civilized’ Europe,” says Nezavisimaya gazeta.
P.S. Tarasiuk has been foreign minister for over two years now, and during all this time the Russian press has been regularly “dismissing” him from his post sources close to Ukrainian diplomacy. There are no reasons to believe that Tarasiuk’s replacement is imminent. The Russian press seems to be eager to have Tarasiuk out and this ardent desire to see him go could indicate that someone in Moscow has gotten his toes stepped on and it hurts. It is worthy of note that it is the Russian press alone that regularly trumpets Tarasiuk’s resignations, but there has not been a single article about it in The Times, Financial Times or Suddeutche Zeitung though these newspapers write quite often about the Ukrainian foreign minister. It is well-known whose mouthpiece Nezavisimaya gazeta is. Nor is it a secret that certain Ukrainian circles often turn to the foreign press and the Russian press in particular when they have certain tasks to fulfill in domestic politics.
