As Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine's former prime minister and defeated presidential candidate, clears out his government office in Kiev, pundits, journalists and political analysts back in Moscow continue to ask what went wrong. With so much financial backing from Russian businesses and political support from Russian President Vladimir Putin, why did Yanukovych lose?
Many Russian and Ukrainian analysts have hesitated to place primary responsibility on the Kremlin for misjudging the Ukrainian situation. Instead they have been blaming the "aggressive tactics" of a gaggle of Russian campaign consultants who began arriving at Kiev's Borispol Airport sometime in July. In an interview with the Lviv ekspres paper on Dec. 22, Vasyl Baziv, outgoing President Leonid Kuchma's chief speechwriter, said that Foundation for Effective Policies head Gleb Pavlovsky, former ORT deputy general director Marat Gelman and Russian businessman Maksim Kurochkin "made themselves at home" in the presidential administration during the lead-up to the first round of presidential voting on Oct. 31. He said that he even saw one Russian spin-doctor sitting beside Yanukovych during an official meeting.
"This is not a matter of campaign tricks but an erosion of our sovereignty," Baziv complained.
Naturally, the spin-doctors themselves have a variety of explanations for what happened. First, they assert that Yanukovych did not in fact lose. At a news conference in Moscow on Dec. 28, Pavlovsky asserted that Yanukovych won the second round on Nov. 21, but through a series of "manipulations of the results the political process became one based entirely on force."
At the same time, in what might be considered an apparent contradiction, they proffer at least three different explanations for why Yanukovych did not win or why they shouldn't be blamed for Yanukovych's failure to perform better. First and foremost, they were outgunned by U.S. and Polish resources, according to Sergei Markov of the Institute for Political Research. Second, they had too little time to refashion Yanukovych's image. Third, Yanukovych, a former convict, was too difficult a candidate to make palatable to the broad public.
Marat Gelman told the Lvivska hazeta on Nov. 16 that Yanukovych's criminal record [was] a formidable issue, "a brick wall that no brilliant scheme [could] break down." In an interview with utro.ru on Dec. 30, Markov said, "If you ask me, I would say that the candidate should have been someone else. It was unwise to put forward as a candidate for president someone with two previous criminal convictions. I can assure you that this was not Moscow's decision."
But the biggest problem, according to Markov, was not the candidate or any lack of time, but that Russia and its spin-doctors were outnumbered and outgunned by the West. In the gazeta.ru interview, Markov claimed that "Americans and Poles spent several years working with Yushchenko." When asked to explain what he meant by Poles and Americans, Markov said that there was "American and European collaboration with elite structures and the public across a broad front."
Markov also said that while Russia spent only millions of dollars on the campaign, the United States and European Union spent hundreds of millions in Ukraine. Therefore, according to Markov, Yanukovych's defeat was not a defeat for Russian spin-doctors but for "Russia's ruling class, which proved incapable of achieving such a major strategic task."
Pavlovsky put forth a more obscure defense of his and other spin-doctors' roles in Ukraine. In an interview with the Russian daily Nezavisimaya Gazeta on Dec. 7, he faulted himself and others merely for being unable "to draw the attention of our partners in Ukraine that an 'overthrow' project was in preparation." "The point is that the opposition circles were not preparing for elections. They were preparing for the seizure of power, in the guise of elections."
In a later interview with gazeta.ru on Dec. 28, when asked whether he was willing to share responsibility for the defeat of Yanukovych, Pavlovskii responded: "Yes, but as a politician, not as a spin doctor. Unfortunately, I did not work in the latter role in Ukraine." In his words, he was "liaising with the group of politicians that put Yanukovych forward. Unfortunately, this was not enough. You need to have the powers to make decisions."
In an interview with The Washington Post Jan. 2, former U.S. political adviser Dick Morris explained how he managed to contribute a key element of President-elect Viktor Yushchenko's strategy without ever managing to actually visit the country. Morris told the paper that an acquaintance from a previous overseas campaign put him in touch with Yushchenko's campaign manager. Because of unspecified "security concerns" he met with Yushchenko officials in an undisclosed East European capital. According to Morris, his main contribution to the campaign was to urge exit polling on election day and the immediate publication of those results. In this way, according to Morris, Yushchenko's campaign would draw supporters to the streets to celebrate 's thus presenting Ukrainian authorities with an angry mob if they tried to tamper with the vote.
So far, though, it's the CIA's acumen rather than Morris' that is being hailed in Moscow. In an interview with Radio Rossii on Dec. 7, Aleksandr Konovalov, president of Moscow's Institute for Strategic Assessments, suggested that Russia believes "the myths created by our spin doctors" and "now we probably will believe their explanations, the main one being [that Ukraine was lost because of] a CIA conspiracy."
He asked ironically, "How can poor Gleb Pavlovskii handle the whole Central Intelligence Agency on his own?"
