Nezavisimaya Gazeta's recent article (Russia's Replacement of Chernomyrdin Signals Shift in Policy Toward Ukraine, June 15, 2009) notes the importance attached to Chernomyrdin 's replacement.
The mission of the new ambassador is considerably larger in scope, and more complicated: he will be called upon to become the personification of the new Russian policy with respect to Ukraine.***The time has now come when the rotation cannot be put off any longer -- Ukrainian political scientists think that presidential elections are drawing near in Ukraine. Vitaliy Kulik, director of the Center for the Study of Civil Society Problems, noted that Russia "needs a specialist who would play a more subtle game and not make such mistakes as were made in 2004." He noted that Chernomyrdin had formed close relations with Yuliya Tymoshenko, and that might worry Moscow.***
Vadim Karasev, director of the Ukrainian Institute of Global Strategies, thinks that the Russian authorities are much more worried about the inability of the embassy, under Chernomyrdin's guidance, to switch to a new format of interstate relations, devoid of the factor of informal contact between the leaders of the states. He noted that Chernomyrdin was a successful diplomat in the days of presidents Leonid Kuchma and Boris Yeltsin. In the changed political conditions, the functions of the ambassador have amounted "to the role of a mere wedding general (VIP)."
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