Strongman, The

you persist in claiming that this is some artificial movement, financed by Western forces, which has no legitimacy, and that the elections were not rigged, then you’re getting it wrong; it means you don’t understand the seriousness of this situation.” ’
    Schröder called Putin – but got an earful. Putin believed he understood the situation perfectly well, much better than Kwa ś niewski and his EU mission. Schröder reported back to Kwa ś niewski that it was one of the hardest calls he had ever had with Putin.
    It is not clear what effect Schröder’s call had, or what Putin may have subsequently said to Kuchma. But on Sunday evening, one week after the election, the US embassy received news that the worst was about to happen: heavily armed police units were being sent in to disperse the demonstrators. Ambassador Herbst called Washington and told them, ‘I think Secretary Powell needs to call President Kuchma.’
    Powell was told that interior ministry troops were massing on the outskirts of the city. ‘I tried to call the president, but he suddenly wasn’t available.’ Kuchma explained in an interview that the reason he refused the call was because it was 3am and he had no interpreter available for the conversation. In the meantime the ambassador got through to Kuchma’s son-in-law, Viktor Pinchuk, and told him: if any repression happens tonight, we will consider Kuchma personally responsible.
    The troops were called off. When Powell finally got through to the president in the morning Kuchma told him nothing would happen: it was a ‘false panic’. But he added, ‘Mr Secretary of State, if the White House was surrounded as our presidency and government offices are at this moment, what would you do?’ Powell, according to Kuchma, had no answer.
    Kuchma was becoming ever more desperate and was now prepared to ditch his own man as well as Yushchenko and hold a fresh election with new candidates. He says: ‘If Yanukovych had become president then, Ukraine would have become a pariah state. There was all that pressure from the street. Plus the diplomatic blockade from the West, especially the USA.’
    But nothing could be done without Moscow’s blessing. On Thursday 2 December Kuchma flew to Moscow for consultations with Putin at Vnukovo airport. Putin seemed to give his backing to the idea. ‘Re-running the second round [with Yanukovych and Yushchenko] might also achieve nothing,’ he told Kuchma. ‘You’ll end up doing it a third, a fourth, and a twenty-fifth time, until one side gets the result it needs.’
    Putin spoke of his fears that Ukraine could split into two parts – the western, more nationalistic part that overwhelmingly supported Yushchenko, and the eastern, heavily industrialised part bordering Russia, where Yanukovych drew much of his support. ‘I have to tell you straight,’ he told Kuchma. ‘We are very worried about the trend towards a split. We are not indifferent to what is happening. According to the census, 17 per cent of Ukraine’s population are Russians – ethnic Russians. In fact I think there are far more of them. It’s a Russian-speaking country, in both the east and the west. It’s no exaggeration to say that every second family in Ukraine, if not more, has relatives and personal ties to Russia. That’s why we are so worried by what is happening.’
    It was clear from this that Putin regarded Ukraine (as he later revealed to George W. Bush) as almost a province of Russia – certainly what would later be termed a ‘sphere of privileged interest’. His adviser, Sergei Markov, says he had prepared briefing papers for Putin earlier in his presidency that suggested ‘public opinion in Ukraine wanted there to be no borders between Ukraine and Russia, that all the citizens should have the same rights, the same currency, the same education and information policy. But at the same time Ukraine would keep its sovereignty – separate flag, anthem, president, citizenship and so on.’
    This was what the Kremlin leadership believed. Just as strongly, the American administration believed Ukraine was ripe to align itself with the West, and that the majority of its citizens aspired to membership of NATO and the EU.
    In fact, both the Russians and the Americans underplayed the most important thing – that Ukraine is a finely balanced entity, divided and pulled in many directions. There is a linguistic split between Russian and Ukrainian speakers, a religious divide