Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Window on Eurasia: Putin has Set Off a Conflagration in Ukraine that Will Engulf Russia, Pastukhov Says



Paul Goble

            Staunton, May 6 – Vladimir Putin, who very much wants to go down in history as “the ingatherer of Russian lands,” is far more likely to be recorded as the man who has set Russians and Ukrainians against each other, ended any hope that Moscow could unite the Slavic world, and set off a conflagration in Ukraine that will ultimately engulf Russia.

            That is the judgment of Vladimir Pastukhov, the St. Antony’s College expert and one of the most penetrating commentators of contemporary Russian affairs. And in a post on Polit.ru yesterday, he argues that because of that rather than because of any “specific provocation, responsibility for the Odessa tragedy lies on Russia” (polit.ru/article/2014/05/05/ukraine/).

            “Russia has done everything it could to push Ukraine into the chaos of civil war,” Pastukhov continues. “No it can watch from the side the fire in its neighbor’s house. But the problem is that moral laws do not work in a linear fashion,” and the fire in Ukraine can “easy spread to the Russian house” as well.

            “The civil war in Ukraine is thus only a prelude to the civil war in Russia.”

            And Putin bears full responsibility for this.  “A generation is being raised in Russia which is being taught by television that a fratricidal war is permissible ... Soon this generation will grow up and go out on the streets of Russian cities with baseball bats.” Once that happens, people will be talking about “’the self-defense’ of Moscow, Petersburg, Kazan and so on.”

            It has become a commonplace that “the Odessa tragedy is a point of no return,” although people interpret  this in different ways. Most are trying to identify the guilty, but that is impossible because as Chekhov wrote, when all are guilty, it means that none are.” And there is enough responsibility to go around or all sides.

            But what is critical to remember is that “if this had not happened today in this place, then it would have happened tomorrow in another place,” because that is the nature of such conflicts and because the police are not designed to prevent it, however much people may hope otherwise, Pastukhov continues.

            Moreover, everyone should remember that “the events in Odessa are already the third point of no return” in Ukraine over the last several months. The first was the dispersal of students on the Maidan on November 30; the second was the shooting of Maidan participants on February 21; and now this.

            In each case, the St. Antony’s expert says, these vents have driven Ukraine “ever further into a social and political dead end out of which there cannot be any rational exit.” But there are differences among them.  In the first two, it will still possible to blame others; but in the third, this was an act of self-immolation.

            Given what has already happened, “Ukraine doesn’t need any more provocations in order to burn. It can now provoke a fire around itself.”  And consequently, what happened in Odessa is “the direct result of an autonomous civil war which can draw on the internal energy” to spread. “The Kremlin like the Moor has done its work.”

            As a result, “a new ‘long-playing’ source of tensions has arisen in the east of Europe, one that for the next several decades will define the format of European politics.”  Ukraine before our eyes has been transformed “into an east European ‘Near East,’” where outside powers will clash because this is a zero sum game in which if one side wins, the other loses.

            In short, the south east of Ukraine is likely to suffer “the fate of a Russian Palestine, a poor, criminalized, marginal, cruel, aggressive and uncontrolled enclave in which laws do not work, money is spent and disappears without a trace, life is worth nothing but where all the people still live.”

            It will thus be “yet another black hole for the Russian budget,” Pastukhov continues,  a place where hopes for the modernization of the Russian economy will die as money is spent on gigantic showplaces and passed into the hands of officials and oligarchs.
            “Global responsibility for the creation of this ‘Russian Palestine’ and for the unleashing of a civil war in Ukraine lies with part of the Russian leadership,” the scholar says. Its use of subversion and its propaganda campaign have split apart two peoples who had lived together more or less well in the past. 
As a result, “the civil peace in Ukraine has been destroyed,” and “any hope for a peaceful resolution has been buried,” with horrific consequences now and in the future not only for Ukraine but also for the Russian Federation itself.

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