It’s just happened! It took President of Ukraine Victor Yuschenko less than a year to come to Moscow and have a meeting with Vladimir Putin. Note that this visit was scheduled for last April. However, the permanent political crisis in Ukraine and expressed reluctance of the “orange” Ukrainian establishment to maintain regular political contacts with the Russian leadership made this visit delayed for almost one year.

We may just recollect the refusal of Yuschenko to attend the CIS Summit. The Ukrainian President expressly preferred to visit France for a short time instead of meeting with his colleagues in the Community of Independent States.

Frankly speaking, it seemed that this visit will also fail due to the gas dispute between Gazprom and Ukraine. Nevertheless, Victor Yushenco came that means he needed this visit very much. In the conditions of a shadow fight with actual Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko who is much more popular in Ukraine, Yuschenko has to look for allies and support in the East so unloved by him.

Evidently, the visit of the Ukrainian President shaped well for him. Russia once again demonstrated its boundless patience and understanding of Ukrainian difficulties and came to terms first of all in the gas dispute. Victor Yuschenko said at a common press-conference with Vladimir Putin that Ukraine will pay for consumed Russian gas at the price of 2007. The redemption of the gas debt will start from February 14. Besides, the countries will set a joint Russian-Ukrainian working team to elaborate a new pattern of gas supplies, i.e. RosUkrEnergo will be removed as an intermediary from the scheme of gas supplies to Ukraine. Actually, the Ukrainian party succeeded in everything it wanted.

Yulia Tymoshenko already called the decision to remove the intermediaries from the gas market “a great victory of the democratic team”.

Of course, Russia is strong enough and self-confident to express favor once again to its closest neighbor and strategic partner. The Russian President was politically wise to settle again the conflict between Gazprom and Naftagaz. No doubt, otherwise supplies of natural gas to Ukraine would be suspended as it was promised at 17:00 on February 12.

We’ll hope that Ukraine also will take care of the Moscow concerns. Obviously problem No.1 in the relations between the two countries is potential membership of Ukraine in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

At a press-conference on the results of his talks with Yuschenko, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that membership of Ukraine in NATO is its internal affair, but he urged Kiev to think about consequences.

"Membership is NATO means limitation of sovereignty. If Ukraine wants to limit its sovereignty, it up to this country”, he said.

"The process of sovereignty limitation leads to various consequences, including establishment of military bases and ABM system deployment…We believe that they are deigned to neutralize our nuclear-missile potential that makes Russia respond”, the Russian President claimed.

"In is unthinkable that Russia in response to it (possible deployment of military bases or ABM systems) will aim its nuclear missiles at Ukraine. This is our headache”, Vladimir Putin emphasized.

Naturally, the Russian negative attitude to possible Ukrainian membership in NATO is caused not only by this factor. There is a complex of problems that will definitely affect the bilateral relationships between Ukraine and Russia. In so doing there is no need to forget the Ukrainian people are definitely against membership in NATO. All public opinion surveys confirm that the overwhelming majority of the population does not share the North-Atlantic aspirations of the “orange” team. This problem splits the Ukrainian society and causes instability that also worries Russia.

However, “the message” of the Russian party once again was not heard by Kiev. Already this morning Ukrainian President Victor Yuschenko said to TV Channel “Vesti” that the Ukrainian side looks to a positive decision on participation in the NATO Membership Action Plan during the April NATO Summit in Bucharest.

"We’d like that the Bucharest Summit give a positive answer to this question”, he said (Ukraine Daily). Today the Ukrainian Cabinet headed by Yulia Tymoshenko is also discussing a Ukraine-NATO target plan for 2008. It should be noted that this item was not included in the agenda in advance, it was done “by oral proposal” during the meeting of the Ukrainian Government.

Yesterday during his meeting with President Putin, Victor Yuschenko spoke a lot about strategic partnership with Russia. But it seems that for the actual Ukrainian leadership this partnership consists in the cheap, almost “free” Russian gas, unlimited access of the Ukrainian syrup to the Russian market and Russian matches to the Ukrainian market. It’s a strange strategy and strange partnership. However, the partnership will be as good as strategists in Kiev are...