Window on Eurasia: Proposed Law to Allow Russia to Expand Could Lead to Its Destruction, Murtazin Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 1 – A bill being pushed in the Russian Duma to allow Russia to “absorb and form new subjects,” one that promotes the idea that local referenda can trump international agreements, could backfire on the country and even lead to its destruction, according to a Moscow commentator.

            Writing on the Kasparov.ru site yesterday, Irek Murtazin says that it is clear those behind the measure want to create a legal fiction that would allow them to make an end run around international law and to absorb parts of neighboring states without the agreement of the governments of those states (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5310CD26DBD2A).

            But those backing the measure forget that two can play that game. What will happen, Murtazin says, “if tomorrow a similar law is adopted by China, Japan, or Mongolia, by Ukraine or Belarus? And then across all of Russia, ‘a part of another state’ begins to conduct referenda about unification?”

“If Tyva, for example, wants to combine with Mongolia? A couple of districts of Orenburg with Kazakhstan? Taganrog and Novorossiisk to join to Ukraine? And Smolensk and Pskov with Belarus?”  If any of those things happen, what will the Russian backers of this new measure say?  That is “contradicts international law” given what they have done.

Clearly this measure is being pushed because of a desire in Moscow to spark a civil war in Ukraine over Crimea.  But if Ukraine might be the first victim, “Russia would suffer most of all,” Murtazin says. Doesn’t anyone in the regime understand that? Or do they assume that the world will allow Russia to act in ways it would not allow anyone else?

            But even if those things don’t happen, even if the West continues to defer to Moscow and permit it to do what it would not allow anyone else, Russia will still suffer from this law and its application. It will find it harder to export its oil and gas, and it may very well face serious refugee flows.

            Russians should be thinking about all these risks before adopting such a dangerous piece of legislation, Murtazin says.  One can only add that so should the leaders of the West who need to recognize not only how dangerous this law would be in the short term but how it would reinforce Moscow’s view of international acceptance of Russian exceptionalism.

            Boris Vishnevsky, a Yabloko deputy in St. Petersburg’s legislative assembly, puts the challenge to the West Putin has laid down in even more stark terms.  He says that what is happening in Crimea recalls Hitler’s move into the Sudetenland, where initially German forces were welcomed with flowers (echo.msk.ru/blog/boris_vis/1269148-echo/).

            That leaves open, of course, another and potentially more important question, he suggests.  Will there be a new Munich?

 

Window on Eurasia: Russia Again Living by Lies, Ukrainian Philosopher Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, March 1 – Vladimir Putin is again teaching Russia to live by lies, 40 years after Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn warned Russians of the dangers to themselves and others of doing so, a Ukrainian philosopher argues in an article that leading Russian publications like “Nezavisimaya gazeta,” Polit.ru and Snob.ru have refused to publish.

            On his own blog, Sergii Datsiuk points out that “the lie in Russia is a means of avoiding necessary changes ... it is an attempt to shift responsibility for one’s own mistakes to others in order to whitewash the authorities ... it is dangerous for Russia itself because it generates hatred with no way out ... [and] it is dangerous for the entire world because it divides Russia and the rest of the world (blogs.pravda.com.ua/authors/datsuk/53116eef447b1/).

                The fact that Ukrainians like Russians and want to live in peace but Russians dislike Ukrainians and are aggressive toward them, something confirmed by the actions of their respective governments and by various polls, he says, is not a natural or inevitable situation but the result of “Russia’s information war against Ukraine.”

            According to Datsiuk, “to force Russians to hate the Ukrainian people without the use of lies in Russia would have been impossible. And [consequently] Russia began to lie and to conduct a war.” That war consists of several components: trade, information, history, and technology.

            Lying behind Russia’s information war against Ukraine, he continues, is “the unwillingness of Russians in the Russian elite to recognize the right of Ukrainians to self-determination and independence.” But its results would not have been so terrible had there not been compradore elements within Ukraine like Yanukovich and the Berkut.

            But everyone must remember that it is not just former president Yanukovich and his group who bear responsibility for the spilling of Ukrainian blood. Also responsible are Vladimir Putin, Dmitry Medvedev, Sergey Lavrov, Dmitry Kiselyev, Vladimir Zhirinovsky, Sergey Glazyev and Dmitry Rogozin.

            “There are the enemies of Ukraine,” Datsiuk says, “whose actions led to human victims,” and we can and must recognize them as such.  But they had the assistance of others in the Russian cultural elite in spreading hatred of Ukraine and Ukrainians, people llike Mikhail Zadornov, Ivan Okhlobystin, Sergey Lukyanenko, and Iosif Kobzon.

            What is happening in Crimea now is “the direct continuation of the information war of Russia against Ukraine, a ‘war of nerves’ which seeks to provoke Ukraine into making a harsh responsible so that Russia can unleash a full-scale war.” If before the existence of this information war was a matter for regret, now it has become “mortally dangerous.”

            Ukraine may be the target of this war, Datsiuk says, but Russia is its victim as well. “Ukraine is not Russia.” And even in the worst times of Yanukovich’s rule, “the lie in Ukraine came from two sources – Russian television channels ... and pro-regime ones.”  Truth defeated them in Ukraine, but in Russia, the lie swallowed up everything.

            One cannot “kill Russia’s lie against Ukraine without killing the lie in Russia itself,” Datsiuk says.

            The Putin regime has updated and modernized the system Solzhenitsyn decried. By claiming it is concerned about the defense of the state and the Russian people, the Kremlin hides its own crimes by spreading lies about other countries and peoples, in this case, Ukraine and Ukrainians. 

That means, Datsiuk says, that “the lie of the Russian authorities about themselves become  less obvious” because it is obscured by the lies Moscow is telling about everyone else.  As a result,”Russia is becoming the generating of hatred in the world.” Many countries have resisted this, including the Baltic states, Georgia and now Ukraine.

“However, hatred in Russia continues to be generated. The hatred which cannot be transferred to another remains in Russia, builds up and explodes it from within.  The lie and hatred will destroy Russia if this doesn’t stop.” But can that happen? Solzhenitsyn’s advice that individuals stop lying clearly isn’t enough. Public intellectuals must speak out.

Datsiuk says that “Russia needs its own Maidan where there is no hatred” and where truth can triumph and its people can think “collectively about their future. “’To Live Not By Lies’ today means not so much to avoid the individual lie but the collective one, the agitationand propaganda communicated by the Russian authorities through television news.”

The Internet isn’t enough; television news is required. But “today there is almost no quality TV news in Russia.”  Instead there is “agitation and propaganda” which promote “a positive image of Russia and its regime,” says Russia is surrounded by enemies, and argues that “the Russian empire is heaven on earth.”

That reflects the rise of the lie to a new level: the Russian elite is lying to its own people.  “This is the Big Lie about the possibility of an Empire.  This is a lie of the Russian elite to itself in the first instance” because that elite “cannot but know that the future does not belong to empires or even isolated states but to trans-national organizations.

But “the Big Lie continues in Russia and destroys all ideas of the future in which there is no place for the Empire.  The vacuum of ideas about the future supports and decorates the Big Lie.”  The only way out is to tell the truth and in the first instance to say and recognize that “there won’t be an empire.” Russia and Russians need  to “seek something else.”

Window on Eurasia: Putin Seeks to Provoke ‘Full-Scale Civil War’ in Ukraine, Illarionov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 28 – Russian President Vladimir Putin’s goal, as shown by the various provocations he has arranged in recent days, is not to seize Crimea right now but rather to provoke a civil war in Ukraine that will allow him to gain control over Ukraine by posing as a peacemaker, according to Andrey Illarionov

            Putin “does not want to fight now,” the Moscow economist and commentator says. Rather, he wants for now that others including Ukrainians, Russians and Crimean Tatars do so. That this is Putin’s plan is shown by all the actions he and his agents have engaged in over the last few days (echo.msk.ru/blog/aillar/1268770-echo/).

            Among the elements of this plan, Illarionov are the Russian foreign ministry’s comments, Russian military maneuvers, the seizure of government buildings and airports in Crimea, labelling the secessionist Crimean prime minister “an authoritative actor,” the uncontrolled actions of Russian soldiers and sailors in Crimea, the desecration of the Ukrainian flag, attacks on Ukraine and Ukrainians in the Russian official media, “cynical praise for the Berkut sadists,” the protection of ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich, formation of groups ready to go to Ukraine “and hundreds of other facts” as well.

            “Many of these provocations intentionally and demonstratively desecrate the Ukraine state, Ukrainian national symbols and Ukrainian national consciousness,” Illarionov continues, all a reflection of Putin’s hopes that there will be a reaction by the Ukrainian authorities, that this will lead to bloodshed, and that then Moscow can intervene.

Putin’s goal is to provoke and to trigger conflicts of “all against all” in Ukraine, “political conflicts, civil conflicts, and inter-confessional conflicts,” among groups in all parts of Ukraine, the Moscow commentator says. For Putin to achieve his goals, he needs corpses, “the more, the ‘better.’”

Their appearance in turn, Illarionov argues, will lead not simply to civil conflicts but “to a full-scale civil war in Ukraine.” That will allow Putin to argue that Ukraine has been engulfed by “total chaos, collapse and catastrophe,” to claim again as he did in April 2008 that “Ukraine has not succeeded as an independent state,” and to get support for the restoration of stability and order by Russia and its forces.   

What this means for the new Ukrainian authorities is obvious, the Moscow analyst concludes: They must hold out against this Putin attack, “display patience and restraint,” and not allow themselves to be “provoked into a mass suicide” lest they present themselves and their countries as “a desired victim to the neighboring dictator.”

Window on Eurasia: The US is Betraying Its Founding Principles in Ukraine, Russian Commentator Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, February 28 – If anyone reads the opening words of the American Declaration of Independence, a Russian opposition commentator says, he or she will immediately see that the United States is betraying its founding principles by refusing to stand up to Moscow in defense of Ukraine.

            In a commentary on Kasparov.ru, Aleksandr Lukyanov says that despite mistakes and failures to follow through in support of its principles in the past, the United States has more often acted on the basis of them and made the world a better place on balance than it would otherwise be (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=531058A8F183A).

            But in recent years and particularly with regard to Ukraine, Washington has not defended the basic principles its founders proclaimed: the inalienable natural rights of every individual, the legitimacy of states based on the expression of support of the governed and the right of a people to resist despotism.

            “In the majority of major and minor conflicts of the20th century (both world wars, the cold war, the wars in Korea and Vietnam, numerous conflicts in the Middle East and so on),” he continues, “America has taken the side of those who were struggling for freedom against tyranny.”

            Despite shortcomings and mistakes, “the hypothetical ‘world without America’ that is the dream of Russian ‘patriots’ would have been an extremely uncomfortable place in which tyrant would have been far more numerous and freedom far less than in the real world” that exists at the present time.

            That is what makes the last few years so troubling to those who have looked to the United States, Lukyanov says.  “The history of American foreign policy under Obama’s leadership,” he argues, “has been a history of defeats and retreats” – in Iraq, in Syria, in Iran, and now tragically in Ukraine.

                While some are hoping that no one will do something untoward in Ukraine, there is mounting evidence that “Putin will decide on armed intervention and the annexation of Crimea,” under one pretext and cover or another.  One hopes that this will not happen, but recent history “does not give a basis for optimism.”

            “The only force capable of effectively guaranteeing the security and territory integrity of Ukraine is the United States,” Lukyanov says. But recent events suggest that that “the hope that the US will as in former times support those who struggle for their freedom are today practically equal to zero.”

            US Secretary of State John Kerry has already declared, Lukyanov continues, that”America and Russia will not get into a dispute over Ukraine.” Translated from diplomatic language, this means or at least will be interpreted by Vladimir Putin to mean that “’we will not support Ukraine; do what you want.’”

            The many who promote anti-Americanism “love to call America ‘the world gendarme.’ Alas,” Lukyanov concludes, “the problem [now] is not that America is a gendarme but that the gendarme has grown timid and no longer will defend peaceful residents from hooligans who are no longer constrained” by the United States.