Stepping out of Russia’s shadow

Kiev is also said to be extremely keen on participating in the modernisation of India’s steel and power plants. The argument: although Russia was acknowledged as the inheritor state of the USSR, Ukraine is equally capable of performing tasks originally undertaken in the mother Union. Still, Kuchma’s visit itself must count as one of the most significant events in New Delhi’s diplomatic calendar.

The visit in 1992 by Ukraine’s then president Kravchuk was hardly as important, since Kravchuk was one of the Big Three who participated in the December 1991 Beloveshkaya Pusha conclave — with Russia’s Yeltsin and Belarus’ Shushkevich — where they agreed to break up the Soviet Union.

Not that India’s relationship with post-Kravchuk Ukraine fared much better. Kiev was among those who vehemently criticised New Delhi’s nuclear tests in mid-1998, not a surprising development in itself. Moreover, when India bought arms from Russia, Kiev had little hesitation in selling variants — especially of T-90 tanks — to Pakistan.

As the world rearranged itself in the post-Cold War years, it was no secret that the US poured large amounts of money into Ukraine as a counterweight to Russia.

As Ukraine became America’s second-largest recipient of foreign aid after Israel, Kiev returned the compliment by giving up its nuclear ambitions, standing up to Russia.

Like so much else, 9/11 changed the world again. It forced India to diversify its foreign policy and take a new look at countries like Ukraine. And even as Moscow began to make new overtures to Pakistan in the post-Taliban era, New Delhi awoke to the charms of Ukraine. Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal’s visit to Kiev weeks before he took over the top job really broke the ice between the two countries.

Kuchma’s visit, then, has both enormous potential as well as significance. Ukraine has many advantages that Russia flaunts, including the ability to supply spares for India’s Air Force, which remains predominantly of Soviet origin. Its geographic location, cheek by jowl with Poland — a key US ally — means that Indian business has the opportunity to move into central Europe as well.

The president is accompanied by a big business contingent that is especially interested in joint ventures in pharmaceuticals and fertilisers.

Interestingly, though, even as Kuchma has come under the US scanner at present, for allegedly supplying radar systems to Iraq (a charge that Kiev denies), Kiev and Moscow seem to be coming closer together in some fields. Both countries decided last year to jointly push their arms exports worldwide, even as they put forward a proposal for the joint production of the An-70, a military aircraft.