Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych symbolically selected Brussels as his first foreign visit upon taking the oath of office in what can only be seen as an exercise in public relations. The new government of Prime Minister Mykola Azarov headed straight for Moscow shortly thereafter with the sole intention of cutting a deal.

Contrary to expectations, the new Pro-Russian leaders in Kyiv appear to have been more warmly received farther afield.

Yanukovych wanted to show Europe that he is no Russian stooge, but a sophisticated world leader capable of engaging his counterparts on the most complex of economic or geopolitical issues. By all accounts, the Donetsk strongman said all the right things during his brief visit. Having been roasted at home for his common verbal slip-ups, Yanukovych prepared well for this trip. But, EU optimism is still heavily guarded and graciously condescending.

Azarov went to Moscow to agree a lower price for the gas Ukraine imports from Russia. The only problem is that the Kremlin is holding all the cards in this poker game. Why should Mr. Putin be motivated to accept less for Russia’s gas, say USD 168 per 1,000 cubic meters instead of Ukraine’s USD 305 – for the sake of a poor relation?

Well, for starters, the new government in Kyiv has been talking about creating an international gas consortium that would allow Russia, together with Europe, to help Ukraine manage its pipeline.

The idea isn’t new, but it has received a lot more positive feedback from the EU following a string a gas-shut-offs over the last couple years as a result of price spats between Kyiv and Moscow.

On the surface, such an agreement seems reasonable. Russia could ditch plans to build its South Stream pipeline around Ukraine to Europe (which it can ill afford these days anyway) and invest some of these savings into upgrading the existing Ukrainian pipeline, while the EU could rest assure of steady supplies of blue fuel from back east.

However, as always in such matters, the devil is in the details. First, it’s far from clear just what kind of role the ostensibly more fair-minded EU would play in such a consortium? Considering that EU leaders like Sarkozy have no qualms about selling the Kremlin a sophisticated warship less than two years after Russia’s invasion of Georgia, or that German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder landed a job at Russian gas giant Gazprom just days after leaving public office, Europe’s participation in the international project could very well be limited to that of a rubber stamp.

EU majors Germany and Italy are Gazprom’s top two customers, while former East Bloc countries are virtually energy dependencies of Moscow. By comparison, Ukraine has proven to be little more to its western neighbors than a pesky middleman that has a snowball’s chance in hell of joining the EU.

As for Russia, is anyone so naïve to believe that the authoritarian regime of Vladimir Putin would settle for anything less than a majority stake in the consortium? The Kremlin has done little to disguise its intention to use gas and other energy exports to influence if not bully its way back to superpower status. And Ukraine, with its access to the Black Sea and largely Slavic population enjoys a special place in Russia’s imperial heart.

Lastly, the Ukrainian people may not be as eager to swap their country’s gas transit pipeline for cheaper gas as everyone thinks. A slim majority voted Yanukovych into power earlier this year, but that still leaves a lot of others who have an innate trust for his new team or anything that smacks of Russian hegemony. And opposition leader Yulia Tymoshenko has a knack for nationalist crusades, which she has continually made out of the pipeline issue.

But even more important here is that the Kremlin isn’t exactly begging for a deal with Kyiv. Humiliated by Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, which inaugurated five years of historical, religious, linguistic and geopolitical distancing from Moscow, Putin isn’t likely in a mood to concede much.

After all, it’s Yanukovych, who represents Ukraine’s gas guzzling eastern industrialists on the one hand, and powerful former monopolists of the two countries’ gas trade on the other, who really needs a deal.

Why shouldn’t Mr. Putin simply continue crippling Gazprom’s cash-strapped customer with month after month of gas bills?  Why not let the Ukrainian people, long feeling quite shut out of the EU, beg for Mother Russia to once again embrace them into something more lasting than joint management of their pipeline such as membership in a union state?

At the very least, we can expect the unenviable Mr. Azarov to concede such relative trinkets as greater status for the Russian language in Ukraine, an extension of the Russian Black Sea Fleet’s lease in Crimea, possibly more status for the Moscow Patriarch down south, certainly access to prized state assets slated for privatization, and you can forget about any talk of recognizing Ukraine’s famine of the early 1930s as a genocide plotted by the Bolsheviks.

All of this, of course, may be a tough pill to swallow for modern Ukrainians, many of whom have grown to enjoy the new sense of freedom and national identity cultivated following their peaceful revolution. But Moscow and Yanukovych’s team have deep pockets and plenty of mass media resources. And the opposition is short on heroes, with Tymoshenko already beginning to look like a spent politician, and former President Viktor Yushchenko suffering from some sort of a strange schizophrenia that makes him speak like a nationalist but act like a Communist Party functionary.

Indeed, Ukraine’s relations with Russia, the EU and even the United States may have never been so poor. Like an impecunious cousin or perennially impoverished stepbrother, the country may have worn out its welcome among its numerous strategic partners.

John Marone, a columnist of Eurasian Home website, Kyiv, Ukraine

March 29, 2010