D.J. Webb
I published an article on the Ukraine recently. The thrust of my article was not anti-Ukrainian, but I did argue that Russia should not be alienated geopolitically, a tragedy that is playing out before our eyes from day to day now. This does not mean, however, that the Ukrainians should welcome the incursion of Russian forces into their territory. My chosen resolution is to trade the Crimea for the Donbass: let Russia have the Crimea, which they took without a fight and which is majority-Russian demographically, if they will only let the Ukraine have Donetsk and Lugansk. Assurances should be given that the Ukraine will not join a military alliance against Russia.
The impact of separatist rule on Donbass
However, it would be deceitful not to admit that Russian incursion has brought nothing good to the people of the Donbass. This is not at all a secession of a functioning civilian administration. The proper government of the area has disappeared, and what has remained is just the rule of thugs. From the point of view of the local people, it would have been far better for Donetsk and Lugansk to have been openly occupied by Russia’s official armed forces and then incorporated into Russia—this would have left them under a proper government—than for them to be forced to acts as props in a ghastly drama whose only function is to enable the Russian government to manipulate the Ukraine as a whole. Summary justice by irregular soldiers meted out in the street, including executions after no real trials, is now the order of the day in Donetsk.
Funnily enough, the local people were not that happy with Kiev before the arrival of the separatist regimes. The ejection, outside of any legal procedure, of the elected president—a corrupt oligarch who nevertheless had greater support in the east of the country—is thought to have alienated many in the east. The refusal of Kiev to admit a full policy of bilingualism in what is undoubtedly a bilingual country provides the backdrop to the cultural divide in the Ukraine. The people of the Donbass are probably not best pleased at being bombed by Kiev with cluster bombs—undoubtedly the Ukrainians are targeting military targets in the city, but those military targets are close to civilian areas—and so it is probable that their alienation from Kiev has not lessened.
Yet it must have long been evident to the people of Donetsk and Lugansk that they are being used by Moscow. Had Moscow sought to organise them quickly as constituent regions of the Russian Federation, it might have won their support, but having consigned them to the living hell of an area of frozen conflict, I doubt the local people have a good word to say for either side.
Breaching the Minsk Agreement?
In this context, I noted with interest the mass mobilisation of Ukrainian troops that took back the charred and devastated remains of the Donetsk airport last night. Ukrainian troops are now directly outside Donetsk. At this point, the Ukrainian government may be beginning to regret Western involvement in the region’s politics, as to “invade” their own Donetsk city would be classed in some Western eyes as a breach of the Minsk ceasefire agreement. But what is the ceasefire agreement other than a tool to force frozen conflict on the region?
If I were in the Ukrainian government I would not be planning to abide by the Minsk agreement. Now they’re on the outskirts of Donetsk, Ukrainian patriots will be urging the Ukrainian army to enter the city itself. Of course, the Russian plan has always been that conquest of Donetsk could suck the Ukrainians into street-by-street fighting where any attack on the separatist forces could hardly not affect civilian areas too. The quicker things are over and done with, the better. It seems clear to me that with the Russian economy on the ropes, now is their chance to win back territory. If they wait until mid-year, a recovery in oil prices may have begun.
The gradual encroachment on Ukrainian territory
From the Ukrainian point of view, Ukrainian territories have been under siege for nearly a century. In the 1926 Soviet census, the Kuban area (now Krasnodar and Stravopol) in Russia was majority Ukrainian-speaking, and the Rostov-on-Don area adjacent to the Black Sea was also historically Ukrainian-speaking. (I am unsure whether or not this issue is connected to whether the speech of the Cossacks is classed as a dialect of Ukrainian or of Southern Russian.)
In particular, the Novorossiya concept trumpeted by the Russian government is quite problematic for Russia, because Novorossiya (i.e. those parts of the Ottoman Empire that were conquered by the Russian Empire after the 1654 reunification of the Ukraine with Russia and that were therefore settled by both Russians and Ukrainians, with a Ukrainian majority in rural areas) includes areas of what is now the Russian Federation. The logical conclusion is that those territories are not traditionally Russian.
Kuban was, I believe, briefly included within the borders of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in the 1920s. Looked at from that perspective, Russia ought not have a Black Sea coast at all, as the original ethnographic Ukraine stretched all the way to the border with Georgia. Yet strong Russification campaigns in the Kuban area over the past century mean that less than 1% of the population of Krasnodar and Stavropol now identify themselves as ethnic Ukrainians. Maybe the same thing will happen to the rural areas of Novorossiya, if Russia gets the chance.
Winning hearts and minds
I would urge the Ukrainians to complement a military campaign with a commitment to political change in the Ukraine, and in particular full official status, as a state language, of Russian. Maybe they should state that the east of the Ukraine will always be a bilingual area. An attempt should be made to turn this into a positive for the Ukraine, to remodel the country as a bridge between East and West.
The Ukraine needs to give some thought to the longer-term future. They can’t forever seek to hold off the Russians by means of an implied threat of economic sanctions or even military sanctions by the West. The Ukraine is where it is, and it has to get along with the neighbours that it has got. That means they have to find a way to keep Russia happy. Defending Ukrainian sovereignty only by allying with the Americans is a lousy long-term strategy, if only because Moscow cares about control over the Ukraine more than Washington does.
How can Russia be assured that the NATO military alliance will not move closer? Can both Russia and the Ukraine be brought into a closer trade and investment relationship with the rest of Europe? Is it possible to devise a solution of geopolitical problems in Europe without excluding Russia? Is it possible that Germany would like to exclude Russia long-term precisely because, as the country with the largest population in Europe, Russia is the only real long-term competitor with Germany for influence over the whole of the European continent? The Ukrainians need to answer these questions, and find a way of reaching a win-win solution with which the Russians can live.
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The fighting in these areas has been going on for months (people killed each day – but it has been out of the media spotlight. And I must be truthful and say that not everyone on the Putin side is a Russian solider “on holiday” who just happens to have gone to the Ukraine – some really are born and brought up in the Ukraine.
It is odd – Mr Putin is not a Marxist (in his generation of KGB people – Marxists, for example Western Marxists, were known as “shit eaters”, people who “ate the shit” about “the rich” and “the corporations” being to blame for X,Y,Z – Putin and co actually despised the people they used in the West, they still do). However, those people in the Ukraine who look back fondly at Soviet times (and there are some) have rallied to his cause (dancing round statues of Lenin and so on – which Putin himself would never dream of doing), also there are the hard core Russian nationalists (with a basically RACIAL ideology) who live in the Ukraine, but do not believe it should exist (believe that the land they on should be part of Russia).
The other side? Mostly pro E.U. social democrats (hardly my sort of person either – but a bit better than Putin’s people) although a few are other sorts of thing.
However, they are bound together by a hatred of Soviet times – when TENS OF MILLIONS of Ukrainians were murdered. Putin has not clearly repudiated the old Soviet Union (he would lose his allies in the Ukraine if he did) – so they hate him, personally, as well.
This is still, I believe, not a hatred of “Russia” – after all the principle victims of Mr Putin are Russian, it is the Civil Society of RUSSIA (that was remerging after the nightmare of the Soviet years) that Mr Putin destroyed – it must be clearly understand that it is RUSSIA who is the real victim of Mr Putin. Although the majority of people in Russia (with no access to dissenting opinions) may not know this.
Mr Putin’s regime is closer to that of Mussolini’s Italy than it is that of Lenin’s Soviet Union – the state controls the “commanding peaks” of the economy (such as natural resources – basically all Russia exports, bar arms), but not everything. The basic difference is that Mussolini tried to crush the Mafia – whereas Mr Putin has made himself the head of Russian organised crime (he has co opted it into the regime – with “both sides of the law” being controlled by ex KGB people personally loyal to Mr Putin) – a regime oddly similar to that of the “Federation” at the start of the old British science fiction series “Blake’s Seven”.
As for our own position?
The Ukraine is not a member of NATO – whether it should be a member of a NATO is another question, the fact is that it is NOT.
We, therefore, have no legal obligation to come to the military aid of the Ukraine – which is just as well as the British armed forces (cut and cut and cut for 50 years or more) are in no state to go into the Ukraine. The American armed forces (contrary to the “libertarian left”) have been repeatedly cut as well.
However, we are in a defensive alliance with the Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and these nations have Russian minorities that Mr Putin could exploit (put there in Soviet times) – we must look to the Baltic, not to the Ukraine.
By the way – contrary to all the stories, there never was a deal that Eastern European countries should not join NATO.
On the contrary, there was some hope (before the rise of Putin) that Russia itself would join NATO.
The repeated efforts to make friends with Russia have broken on the rock of Mr Putin – his hatred of the West (NOT based on Marxism – for he is not a Marxist) is pathological, anyone who bothered to watch “Russia Today” (now “RT”) could have told Mr Bush or Mr Obama that – but neither man was listening. The true roots of Mr Putin’s hatred of the West are complex – but it is to be hoped that when his regime finally falls, there will be friendship with the great historical nation that is Russia.
After days when both sides claimed to have conquered the airport once and for all, with reports of skirmishing around a bridge that represents the boundary with the city of Donetsk, today the Guardian reports that the Ukraine has admitted the rebels have taken the airport. There has been an upsurge of fighting, but it looks like the Russians have prevailed for now. It’ll be fascinating to see how this plays out. Whether the West will finance the Ukraine to the extent required to fend off default on sovereign debts remains a key unknown. This is certainly the most important international news story at the moment, with long-term implications, although often receding from the headlines.
I’ve been reading today’s comments by the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, at http://en.interfax.com.ua/news/general/246216.html . Unfortunately, they are utterly misguided.
“First of all, Ukraine will not be federative: it will remain a unitary state. Secondly, our European choice is not subject to discussion. Thirdly, Ukrainian is and will be the only official language. However, no one will ever encroach on the right of people to speak Russian or any other language and use it freely at home, on the street or at work. Decentralization, which will also apply to the humanitarian policy, will offer an additional guarantee to this right.”
While Russia’s attempt to create a frozen conflict in the Donbass is a provocation – there is no doubt about that – it is also without doubt that there is a background of refusal to compromise on key cultural issues that has led to this. The Ukrainian territory has never been solidly Ukrainian-speaking, and in a country where Russian is used as much as Ukrainian, it is totally wrong to declare making Russian an official language at the state level “out of bounds for discussion”. Most of the rest of this is wrong too – the choice whether to attempt to join the European Union must be subject to discussion, or the Ukraine is not really a democratic state.
I can’t help but notice that the Ukraine has brought its fate upon itself.
Yes indeed the Ukrainian performance leaves a lot to be desired. Not only have they lost the airport – but the “Rebels” (Putin’s Russian army and local helpers) are now hitting Mariupol – the main port in the area. The Russian forces will keep pushing till they link up with their forces in the Crimea, thus getting a land connection between Russia and the Crimea.
A fish goes rotten from the head – and I suspect that the Ukrainian forces (who contain many brave men) have a very bad political leadership in Kiev.
Mr Putin cares about one thing and one thing only – his own power (his personal conquests). And he understands that power is based upon FORCE and FEAR.
Do not just have someone killed – do it such a way that everyone knows that YOU had them killed, and that no one can touch you for doing it.
Whereas the Kiev pro E.U. types?
They are more concerned with their P.R. image. Nobody fears them.
They are not in the same line of work as Mr Putin.
It’d be fascinating to know if the RT story that the Ukraine is using anti-retreat troops to fire on their own troops if they retreat is true (http://rt.com/news/226831-ukraine-barrier-troops-donetsk/) . I believe this was a Soviet tactic too.