Paul
Goble
Staunton, October 21 – The
disintegration of Ukraine, something Russian commentators and politicians often
predict or even urge, would be “a catastrophe” for Moscow because it would mean
that the Russian Federation which now faces instability along its southern
periphery would face the same thing in the west, according to a Ukrainian
political analyst.
In a comment to the Rosbalt.ru news
agency, Yuri Romanenko suggests that those who think Russia might gain from the
disintegration of Ukraine are dangerously misinformed and wrong-headed as any
clear-eyed assessment of what the world would look like in Moscow if that
happened (rosbalt.ru/ukraina/2013/10/16/1188661.html).
Just imagine, he says, that
“everything in Ukraine goes wrong and that we, God forbid, descend into a civil
war. What would that put at risk for
Russia? Everything. Its gas
transportation network, its oil pipelines, its transit flows, its base in
Sebastopol. NATO would expand further to
the east because in such a struggle, Ukraine would certainly fall apart with
all the ensuing geopolitical risks.”
Moreover, there would be “millions
of refugees. This would affect not only Russia but also Belarus, and that in
turn would have an impact on transportation stability. And he adds, “I am not
even speaking about the destabilization of the situation in Russia itself. And
there is every reason to assume that would happen because [it] is no social
paradise but just the reverse.”
“Therefore,” Romanenko says, “the
destabilization of Ukraine would undermine the quasi-stability of Russia”
itself. In addition, the collapse of
Ukraine would cost Russia not only that market, which now accounts for about
seven percent of Russia’s exports, but markets further afield.
And there is yet another possibility
that Moscow needs to consider: the victory of
revolutionary regime in Ukraine that would put that country on an even
sharper collision course with the Russian Federation. For the latter, the analyst suggests,
this would be “an automatic check and mate.”
Why? Because “instead of a comprador
regime of oligarchs on its periphery would arise a Slavic state with a
functioning government and which would reject everything that over the course
of 22 years has destroyed our morality and economy.” And that model in turn
would have an impact across the entire post-Soviet space.
“The destruction of Ukraine is thus
the prologue of the destruction of Russia itself,” Romanenko says, and “Moscow
must accept [this] new reality: without a stable Ukraine, there will not be a
stable Russia.”
The Ukrainian analyst’s observations
are important both because they call attention to the fact that many in the
Russian capital seem to believe that breaking Ukraine is in Russia’s interests and
because they underscore just how dangerous that process could be for the
Russian Federation itself.
Although he does not say so,
Romanenko’s post is a direct response to those Russian analysts and politicians
who in recent times have been talking about “the recovery” of Crimea for Russia
or about splitting Ukraine, with the eastern and historically more “Russian”
east going one direction and the Western and much more “Ukrainian” west going
in another.
Such loose talk reflects a failure
on the part of Moscow and others to understand the evolution of Ukraine itself
and an even larger failure, as Romanenko suggests, of what Ukraine means for
Russia. What is striking is that many in
eastern Ukraine support Kyiv’s drive toward Europe, preferring to live in a
country linked to the EU than in one tied to Moscow.
That attitude, of course, reflects
not only a pragmatic calculation of self-interest but also the weakness of
Russian ethno-national identity there and elsewhere and anger at Moscow’s
apparent assumption that it can push Ukraine around as much as it wants with
little or no regard for the interests of the citizens of Ukraine – or even with
regard to ethnic Russians as such.
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