The election of Viktor Yanukovych as Ukraine's new president may further delay Ukraine's bid to enter NATO, the president of Eurasia Group Ian Bremmer told RIA Novosti on Friday.
Yanukovych, who won the February 7 presidential runoff over Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, said on the eve of his official visit to Moscow on March 5, that the depth of Ukraine's ties with NATO would be "no deeper than Russia's."
West-leaning ex-Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko bid unsuccessfully to bring Ukraine into NATO, an issue that soured relations between Kiev and Moscow.
"I think that the election of Yanukovych will end the conversation about Ukraine joining NATO for the foreseeable future ... Yanukovych is not a Kremlin puppet, by any means. He cannot afford to be if he hopes to maintain his political credibility at home. But Ukraine's NATO bid will remain on hold for years to come," Bremmer said, adding that "talk of membership for Ukraine and Georgia was always a long-term issue."
"The U.S. and Europe have too much to lose in terms of stability along the former Soviet periphery from dramatically worsened relations with Russia. Neither country was ever going to join NATO in the next five years. Recent developments simply ensure that a long-term project will take even longer-if it EVER happens," he added.
Bremmer said there would be very little talk about NATO expansion within Europe in the next few years, as the initiative was not likely to meet with much support.
He also said that tensions in the post-Soviet space had been on a dramatic decline in recent years, due to economic troubles in Russia and a reset with the U.S. Obama administration as it tries to win Russian support for sanctions on Iran. And most importantly, "Russia is feeling more secure about how things are going in Georgia, where President [Mikheil] Saakashvili has been tamed, and in Ukraine, where the Russia-friendly Viktor Yanukovych has been elected president."
NEW YORK, March 5 (RIA Novosti)
