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(Ukraineanalysis is a rightwing blog. What's interesting is that even though Tymoshenko, the loser in the presidential election, was for joining NATO, she was preferred by Putin. Typical of Ukraine's tangled politics.)
Poroshenko’s support for non-bloc status goes a long way to satisfying Russia’s demands for Ukraine’s Finlandization – a permanent buffer between East and West in a geopolitical no man’s land. Poroshenko’s position on NATO also conforms to his pro-Russian position in two other areas.
Firstly, his support for the April 2010 “Kharkiv Accords” that unconstitutionally and illegally extended the Black Sea Fleet base to the middle of the century making Sevastopol a de facto permanent Russian base. The irony of his support for the “Kharkiv Accords” is that the so-called “gas discount” was calculated using the 2009 gas contract pricing formula.
Secondly, Poroshenko has called for dropping four-country (EU-US-Ukraine-Russia) talks and replacing them with direct Russian-Ukrainian negotiations. Why does Poroshenko not value the support given to Ukraine by Washington and Brussels?
Poroshenko’s foreign policy represents a counter-revolution against the positions adopted by Ukraine’s first three presidents and fully conforms to the policies that were supported by Yanukovych. This is evident in three areas:
--Ukraine’s first three presidents supported the Black Sea Fleet base based on the 1997 20-year “temporary agreement” clause in the constitution. Yanukovych and Poroshenko support the “Kharkiv Accords” that extends the base until the middle of the century making it de facto permanent.
--Ukraine’s first three presidents supported NATO membership while Yanukovych and Poroshenko do not.
--Ukraine’s first three presidents always believed Ukraine, as a smaller and less militarily and economically powerful country to Russia, needed the support of the West behind its shoulders when negotiating with Russia. This was why in the 1990s President Leonid Kuchma and National Security and Defence Council Secretary Volodymyr Horbulin supported NATO enlargement, joined Partnership for Peace and established very close ties with the US (Ukraine in the late 1990s was the 3rd largest recipient of US aid).
Poroshenko’s foreign policy reflects the views of a Ukrainian businessman who favors Ukraine’s Finlandization because this will assist his business interests in Russia. In 2006 President Viktor Yushchenko elevated his hostility to Tymoshenko over Ukraine’s national security and today Poroshenko is prioritizing his business interests over that of Ukraine’s security interests.
full: http://ukraineanalysis.wordpress.com/2014/05/25/poroshenkos-finlandization-and-non-bloc-status-vs-tymoshenkos-nato-membership/
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