Paul
Goble
Staunton, March 4 – Vladimir Putin’s
Anschluss of Crimea and continuing aggression against Ukraine means that
Ukrainians will never again accept ethnic Russians as “a fraternal people” or be
prepared to defer to Moscow unless they are compelled to by forces beyond the capacity
of today’s Russia to field. Instead, they will continue to pursue their
European choice.
That puts Putin in a difficult
position, but he appears to have found a way out, one whose implications some
leaders in the West have ignored or may not even understand. By involving them in talks about undermining
the integrity of Ukraine, Putin is laying the groundwork for Ukrainian
hostility to Europe as well.
Such antagonism to Europe will not
mean that Ukrainians will want to turn to Russia instead, at least not anytime
soon. But any such hostility will mean that Ukraine will remain caught between
Moscow and the West, not taken in by either and thus ever weaker, more divided, and more subject to manipulation by various means overt and covert from Moscow.
That Western leaders like German
Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Hollande should have fallen for
this trap laid by Putin is appalling not only in terms of its immediate impact
but even more because of its long-term consequences, but that the Kremlin
leader should set it makes perfect sense from his point of view.
Those conclusions are suggested by “Moskovsky
komsomolets” which notes that not Russia along but it together with France and
Germany are now involved with Kyiv in the beginning of “the decentralization of
Ukraine,” something the Moscow outlet clearly celebrates (mk.ru/politics/2015/03/03/normandskaya-chetverka-nachala-decentralizaciyu-ukrainy.html).
The paper reports that the three
countries, along with Ukraine, have “discussed the beginning of the work of a
special group in Minsk which will be concerned with the preparation of local
elections in special regions of the Donbas,” thus giving to Putin yet another
victory over Ukraine through the involvement of Western pressure.
It notes happily that yesterday “it
became known that Poroshenko had signed a decree about the creation of a
Constitutional Commission which is needed for “the development of agreed upon
proposals for the perfecting of the Constitution of Ukraine taking into account
contemporary challenges and requirements of society.”
And it concludes with the words of
Mikhail Pogrebinsky, head of the Kyiv Center for Political Research and
Conflict Studies, that Poroshenko is moving in this direction because “foreign
players including the European Union want this,” again a source of influence
Putin may be glad to get but that the EU should not be giving to an aggressor.
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