K. M. TRUEVTSEV

Candidate of Philosophical Sciences

National Research University "Higher School of Economics"

Keywords: "Arab spring", Middle East policy of Ukraine, research of Ukrainian Arabists

Events in the Middle East that have rocked the entire world continue to attract close attention in many countries and regions. And this is hardly surprising to anyone: in addition to their own significance, they also became a kind of trigger for unrest that swept many countries around the world, and the New York Protestants who took over Wall Street shouted the name of Cairo's at-Tahrir Square, hardly suspecting that "at-Tahrir" was a real name."it means' liberation ' in Arabic.

Ukraine follows the Middle East events with particular interest, and with very different, sometimes very contradictory feelings: some are attracted by the external similarity of these events with the "orange" Kiev Maidan, while others are much more concerned about what will happen to Ukrainian interests in this important region for the country. It is characteristic that when talking about Ukraine, almost all the time they look back at Russia.

These are the impressions left by the international conference "Ukraine and the Middle East: Problems, Challenges and Prospects for Cooperation"held in Odessa in October 2011. The conference was organized by the Odessa branch of the National Institute for Strategic Studies (NISI) under the President of Ukraine.

The main goal of the conference is to analyze the policy of Ukraine regarding the main regional problems in the Middle East "in the context of competition of great states in this region". In addition, various aspects of Ukraine's trade and economic activities in the Middle East were considered in order to provide recommendations for adjusting Ukraine's Middle East policy to take into account new processes and trends in the Middle East that emerged as a result of the Arab revolutions in early 2011.

The conference was attended by scientists and experts in the field of international relations, specialists in the Middle East, teachers, graduate students and students of Odessa universities.

Its participants presented 15 reports on the following topics::

1. Ukraine's position on the main regional problems in the Middle East.

2. Ukraine's Middle East policy in the context of competition between great and regional powers in the Middle East.

3. Main directions of economic cooperation between Ukraine and the Middle East countries.

In addition to Ukrainian specialists, the conference was attended by representatives of Arab communities in Ukraine. However, according to the organizers of the conference, the international format was given to it to a greater extent by the speeches of the Russian participants-the Consul General of the Russian Federation in Odessa, Yu. Antonov and Associate Professor of the National Research University "Higher School of Economics", Ph. D. K. Truevtsev.

The tone of the discussion, which permeated almost all the reports and speeches at the conference, was set in the opening speech of its main organizer - Director of the Odessa Regional Branch (RF) of NISI, Candidate of Historical Sciences Alexey Volovich. As the speaker emphasized, the main interest of its organizers and participants

It consists in considering the complex processes taking place in the Arab world today through the prism of Ukraine's strategic interests. At the same time, he pointed out the objective difficulties that the conference participants face due to the versatility and ambiguity of these political processes, their incompleteness. This leaves open many questions related to forecasting their results, and, consequently, brings into the band of uncertainty a number of the most important aspects of concrete cooperation with the countries of the region of many states that have serious national interests here.

As an illustration, A. Volovich cited Libya, noting that in February 2011, when holding their previous scientific forum, Ukrainian researchers could hardly have imagined that the Libyan events would take such a turn and lead to such consequences as we are seeing today.

It should be noted that for Ukraine, cooperation with Libya has always been of particular importance, was large-scale, and at the same time, it may have been more tied to Gaddafi personally than in other countries, including Russia.

The report of the Director of the Institute of Social Sciences of the I. I. Mechnikov Odessa National University (ONU), Professor V. Glebov, contained an assessment of the activities of the Odessa Branch of the NISI. In particular, it was noted that over the 8 years of existence of the regional branch of NISI, a unique team of orientalists has been formed who speak the main languages of the Middle East region, primarily Arabic and Turkish. Hundreds of analytical articles and a number of monographs on its current problems have been published, which have received recognition not only in Ukraine, but also abroad*.

V. Glebov also stressed that, despite the main foreign policy vector declared by Ukraine - the direction towards European integration, the Russian and Middle East directions were and remain among its most important priorities, and in this regard, attention to the Middle East vector lies in the sphere of main national interests.

A sharp controversy unfolded at the conference about the events in Libya and the role of Russia in them. Chief Researcher of the Institute for Market Problems and Economic and Environmental Studies (IEPEI), who delivered the report "Geopolitical Reset of the Arab East" Professor Vladimir Dergachev of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine expressed a number of interesting thoughts about the geopolitical cycle of the Arab world, which began with liberation and national-democratic revolutions and ended with the crisis of despotic "stagnant" regimes formed in its course.

Drawing attention to the role of Westernized youth organized and directed through the social networks Twitter and Facebook in recent events, V. Dergachev expressed the opinion that in this case we should not talk about revolutions, but about counter-revolutions directed by the West, primarily the United States. At the same time, highlighting Libya as a special example, he expressed the opinion that a negative role in these events was played, as the speaker put it, by "the betrayal of the Arabs by democratic Russia."

This last point has been criticized in a number of other speeches. Yuri Antonov, Consul General of the Russian Federation in Odessa, who worked for many years before his current appointment in the Middle East, including as Russia's Ambassador to Bahrain, stressed that our country has taken the only correct position of non-interference in the Libyan events. "We don't like what is happening in Libya - this is a fact. There is a gross violation of the decisions of the UN Security Council, external interference is completely shameless, no one justifies this, but no one has the right to demand that Russia protect Gaddafi with its chest."

Konstantin Truevtsev, Ph. D., also spoke from the same position. In his report "The Arab Spring: causes, course, interim results, consequences, significance for the CIS countries", the author considered the problem of the crisis of modern authoritarianism, the Achilles heel of which is the lack of a clear mechanism for the succession of power. An obvious paradox of events taking place in the Arab world was analyzed, which is expressed in the fact that countries with a conservative model of authoritarian modernization, such as monarchical Arab regimes, were more resistant to mass protests than republican regimes of the progressive type, based on various modifications of Arab nationalism.

The speaker suggested that the Arab Spring may trigger the beginning of broad socio-political shifts on a global scale, marked by mass unrest in many countries of the world, which, in turn, may portend significant changes both within individual countries and in regional and international political structures. Moreover, these changes may also be of an institutional nature.

To. Truevtsev emphasized that even in Soviet times, relations with the Gaddafi regime were far from straightforward. Despite large-scale economic and military-technical cooperation, Moscow was wary of its socio-political experiments, and Tripoli's expansionist aspirations and cooperation with the most odious terrorist groups were completely rejected.

After 1991, these relations went through an even more difficult period, before the scale of cooperation reached the level of recent years. During the uprising-

* Here is a list of only the main works published by the members of this team over the past 3 years: Zakharchenko A. Arab-Israeli conflict: problems of vreg-ulyuvaniya na suchasnom etapi. Одеса: Феникс, 2009; Манух В. В. Україна і країни Магрібу: реалії та перспективи. Одеса: Феникс, 2010; Волович О., Шелест Г. Ірак на шляху випробувань і відродження. Одеса: Феникс, 2010; Волович О., Воротнюк М., Габер Э. Туреччина у сучасному світі: пошук нової ідентичності. Одеса: Феникс, 2011; Зінько Соломія. Країни Близького Сходу в сучасних міжнародних інформаційних відносинах. Львів: Ліга-Прес, 2009.

Russia has repeatedly drawn Gaddafi's attention to the inadmissibility of conducting large-scale military operations against its own citizens: this is what dictated its position when voting in the UN Security Council. However, this did not at all mean its sanction for intervention, and the Russian leadership strongly condemned the subsequent actions of NATO countries, regarding them as a violation of the Security Council resolution.

In conclusion, Konstantin Truevtsev expressed the opinion that Russia's positions, which undoubtedly suffered as a result of the political process in the Arab world, have the potential not only to recover, but also to expand further if Russia pursues a more diversified policy, establishing strong ties not only with the ruling regimes, but also with the opposition.

To a large extent, this point of view was shared by the organizer of the conference Alexey Volovich. For all his obvious personal sympathies with Gaddafi, he considers Russia's role in the Middle East events and the certain strengthening of its position in the region that has taken place in recent years to be important not only for its own national interests, but also in demand by the Middle Eastern states themselves.

The discussion of the Libyan issue has not overshadowed other important aspects of the political process in the Middle East. Nevertheless, the central theme, perhaps, was the question formulated by A. Volovich: "What should Ukraine do to adapt to the radical changes that are taking place in the Middle East today? What actions do we need to take to at least not lose the positions that we had in the Arab world?"

Of course, the conference did not give, and could not give, an unambiguous, and even more so an exhaustive answer to this question. Nevertheless, the approaches to the answer to it were seen in most of the reports and presentations, covering a variety of its aspects, and from different positions.

Thus, the report of Anna Shelest, a leading researcher at the Odessa Research Institute of International Relations, "Prospects for expanding Ukraine's peacekeeping activities in the Greater Middle East and Africa" provided an overview of Ukrainian participation in the US-led coalition in Iraq, the presence of Ukrainian military specialists in Afghanistan, as part of the peacekeeping contingent in Lebanon. The speaker drew attention to the fact that the participation of Ukrainians, as a rule, was positively assessed by various parties to conflicts "due to their open-mindedness, tolerance and high professionalism."

In this regard, the question arises: is Ukraine's following in the Middle East in the wake of the West (primarily the United States and NATO) exactly the prospect that opens up possible ways for it to preserve and expand cooperation, including economic cooperation, with the countries of the region in the current conditions?

Many conference participants expressed doubts about the validity of such a statement of the question. The position of A. Volovich, who sharply criticized the actions of the Americans and their allies in Iraq, Libya and other states in the region, and some other speakers indicates that they consider such a prospect unacceptable for Ukraine.

Alla Zakharchenko, a leading researcher at the Russian National Research Institute of International Relations, who considers the US Middle East policy unsuccessful, if not disastrous, agreed with him. In her report "US Middle East Policy and its consideration by Ukraine", she attributed the failure of plans for a peaceful settlement of the Middle East problem, attempts to disrupt Iran's nuclear program, and the situation in Afghanistan to the failures of the regional course of the Obama administration.

The "Arab revolutions" of 2011 presented Washington with a number of new challenges. "The main one is establishing relations with new political elites in the face of weak democratic forces, the growing popularity of radical Islamic ideology and the spread of anti-American sentiment in Arab countries."

Indeed, one of the main trends in the political process, marked by the overthrow of a number of ruling Arab regimes and a serious upheaval of others, was the strengthening of the influence and the emerging rise to power in many Arab countries of socio-political forces that can hardly be considered pro-Western. We are talking about Islamic parties and movements.

At the conference, the problems associated with this vector of development of the political process were most emphasized in the report of Zhanna Igoshina , a lecturer at the Institute of Social Sciences of the I. I. Mechnikov ONU,"Ukraine's position on Islamic fundamentalism and terrorism in the Middle East". As the speaker emphasized, "with the spread of globalization processes in the Arab world, Islam, due to its genetic politicization, becomes a convenient tool for achieving poly-political goals."-

political goals that are determined not so much by religious values as by the interests of political struggle both within the Arab States and at the regional and global levels."

Drawing a dividing line between "moderate and extremist Islamic fundamentalism", Zh. Igoshina noted that the main criterion in this is the concept of takfir, i.e. accusing a believer of disbelief. For example, moderate Islamists do not consider Westernized Muslims to be infidels, and this in principle opens the way for them to form political alliances with secular political forces.

The speaker drew attention to the fact that the Islamic factor is for Ukraine not only an external, but also an internal political factor, given the impact that modern Islamic trends have on the Crimean Tatars.

A lively discussion broke out at the conference on what to do if Islamist organizations come to power in Arab countries, and how this coming to power will affect the nature of international relations of these countries with Ukraine and other CIS countries.

During the exchange of views on this issue, it was noted that the growing influence of the Islamic factor in the Arab world is not only a matter of the immediate historical perspective, but it already has a significant impact on the course of events in many Arab countries. In Egypt and Tunisia, despite the fact that the initiators of the unrest were representatives of civil society, primarily Westernized youth, it was Islamist parties and organizations that were most institutionally prepared for the upcoming coming to power. This is already having a serious impact on the moral and political climate in these countries. If we add to this the growing influence of Islamist forces in Libya, the increasing political pressure of Islamists in Algeria, and the influence of Islamist forces in the Syrian opposition, it is quite obvious that this factor has already acquired a regional dimension in the epicenter of the Middle East. In this regard, the conference's attention was drawn, first, to how this affects Israeli-Palestinian relations, and secondly, to the growing role of Turkey in the region.

As for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, it was noted that Israel is concerned about the growing influence of the Islamic factor, which was manifested, in particular, in the attack on the Israeli Embassy in Cairo and had an indirect impact on the submission of the head of the Palestinian Authority's application to the UN for recognition of the Palestinian State.

Two reports on the recent dramatic increase in Turkey's regional role were particularly relevant. The first one is "Opportunities for Cooperation between Ukraine and Turkey in the Middle East", presented by Marina Vorotnyuk, a leading researcher at the Odessa Institute of National Research and Development, and the second one is the report of Yevgenia Gaber "The Arab Spring and the role of Turkey in the transformation of the Middle East".

In fact, both reports were mainly concerned with Turkey's new Middle East course, as well as the attitude of Arab socio-political forces towards it. In this regard, M. Vorotnyuk noted that Turkey's role today can be reduced primarily to two points: first, for the first time in recent years, Turkey has begun to position itself as an active state. Second, in the light of the changes taking place in the countries of North Africa and the new balance of socio-political forces emerging in the course of these changes, there is a significant increase in the attractiveness of the Turkish model of socio-political structure in the Arab world. All this objectively puts Turkey in a central position in the region.

E. Gaber highlighted a number of points that, in her opinion, played an important role in increasing the weight of Turkey in regional politics: 1) the secular regime of government; 2) the progressive process of democratization, which allowed various socio-political forces, including Islamists, to take part in political life, including elections and the possibility of taking command of administrative positions; 3) the formation of Turkey as a "trading" power, the orientation of the ruling Islamist party towards domestic politics and the implementation of political reforms. deep reforms; 4) expanding Turkey's soft power and cultural contribution to the region; 5) a new active diplomacy.

However, I must say that the statement of the growing role of Turkey in the region was met by some participants of the conference with a certain degree of skepticism. Thus, the director of the Center for International Studies of the I. I. Mechnikov ONU, K. I. Mechnikov. Political scientist Vladimir Dubovik drew attention to the fact that the "Turkoo-optimism" mentioned in the reports actually has its limits. The trend of neo-Ottomanism manifested in Turkey's regional actions, if it continues, may ultimately provoke a reaction of rejection that will reduce the effect of the current pro-Turkish euphoria of the Arab public, given the heavy burden of the legacy of Ottoman rule in the Arab world.

The conference participants paid considerable attention to the role played by major world Powers in the Middle East. In addition to the already mentioned report on US policy, separate speeches were devoted to the Middle East policy of the EU and China. A significant increase in China's presence in the region over the past decade was noted. However, the main focus of the speakers was on the Middle East policy of the European Union. This attention to the EU is probably due to the European orientation of Ukraine's official policy. Hence the interest in the existing and possible points of contact between Ukraine's Middle East policy and the course of the European Union in this region. In particular, A. Volovich "EU Policy in the Middle East: Experience and consequences for Ukraine"was devoted to these issues.

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