Chernobyl Accident in 1986 Raised Ukraine’s Diplomatic Profile at the UN, Ogryzko Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, August 9 – The Chernobyl accident in 1986 changed many things for Ukraine, but one of the most important if not often mentioned is the way in which it elevated the status of the Ukrainian SSR’s mission to the United Nations. Because the accident was on Ukrainian territory, other countries focused their attention on Kyiv’s mission rather than Moscow’s.

            Vladimir Ogryzko, who served as Ukraine’s foreign minister between 2007 and 2009, reminds that despite the Soviet constitution, Moscow allowed Ukraine only to have diplomatic representations in multinational organizations but not to maintain them bilaterally with any country (ru.espreso.tv/vladimir-ogryzko-gde-to-k-2040-godu-rossiya-nachnet-razvalivatsya).

            That arrangement arose because Stalin wanted more votes for the USSR when the UN was created, and the Ukrainian SSR was given one. But with Chernobyl, the Ukrainian diplomat said, the Ukrainian mission effectively entered into bilateral relations with the representatives of other countries.

            That elevated the status in Kyiv of the republic foreign ministry which became even more active in maintaining contacts with consulates on Ukrainian territory and foreign governments who wanted to help overcome the Chernobyl disaster.  And that set the stage for the growth of Ukrainian diplomacy after the USSR disintegrated.

            We met with foreign diplomats regularly, Ogryzko recalls. And we told them about Ukraine and its aspirations. That created a basis for Ukrainian diplomacy that many other former republics did not have. At the same time, however, Ukraine after 1991 did not have to begin with the embassies and staff it needed to function internationally.

            Ogryzko led a team of five Ukrainians to open an embassy in Germany. The former USSR embassy, now the Russian embassy, allotted them a small room with one table and a broken chair. But they were able to work as were other Ukrainian teams and Kyiv soon had embassies in many countries.

            At a formal level, he continues, most countries recognized Ukraine on the basis of exchanges of diplomatic notes. But “real” recognition took longer “because first of all the West wasn’t ready for the disintegration of the USSR” and continued to “see things through the eyes of Moscow.”

            Speaking cynically, the Ukrainian diplomat says, “they wanted Moscow to continue to run this entire space.” That attitude gradually faded but, in some capitals, that attitudet lasted until the mid-1990s. Only then, he continues, did they understand that “Ukraine really isn’t Russia but something else.”

            Before becoming Ukraine’s foreign minister, Ogryzko served as first deputy minister with responsibilities for dealing with Russia. All his work at that time, the diplomat says, proved to him that Russia is not a friend” of Ukraine and that it is led by people who “one way another want to return Ukraine to under its influence.”

            That was true even of Boris Yeltsin and his more liberal foreign policy advisors.

            Because his mother taught economic geography and encouraged his interest in foreign countries, Ogryzko says he always wanted to be a diplomat; but as a child, he could not imagine that Ukraine would become independent and that “we would be able over the span of one generation see such fantastic changes … and be able to position ourselves as a normal country.”

            “We are on the way to becoming part of the collective West,” Ogryzko says. We are not there yet but the finish line is not that far ahead, and “we will be in both the EU and in NATO” within a decade.