Paul
Goble
Staunton, June 2 – The West has been
far more united and tougher about Russia’s intervention in Ukraine than anyone
would have expected only a year ago, but “one must understand that the West
having adopted a tactic about this conflict all the same has not yet elaborated
a strategy,” according to Liliya Shevtsova.
As a result, even now, “many
consider the conflict a local one and await its end in order to return to ‘business
as usual with Russia,’” the Russian analyst and commentator says in a
wide-ranging interview on Ukraine’s Liga.net portal (news.liga.net/interview/politics/5911642-liliya_shevtsova_zapad_gotov_sdelat_pauzu_v_davlenii_na_rossiyu.htm)
To a certain extent, Shevtsova says,
the US is “in fact” the only real ally of Ukraine in the West. Europe is tired
of war and of the costs to itself of the sanctions it has adopted against
Moscow. But no one could have expected
all 28 EU members to go as far as they have or that “Angela Merkel will
maintain this pro-Ukrainian unity.”
The American role, she says, is “really
very serious, but it is serious in that the US has outsourced the European
problem and made Germany the key player in the Ukrainian-Russian conflict.”
Washington supports Berlin, but Berlin now has too much on its plate to be able
to act on its own with regard to Moscow.
Unfortunately, Washington is not
doing what it might, Shevtsova continues. US President Barack Obama “to a
certain extent is limiting the possibilities of the West in adopting an
integral and common doctrine on Ukraine because the policy of Obama (not
Congress) is one of withdrawal and the limitation of its responsibilities regarding
the world abroad.”
Given these German and American
problems, the Russian commentator continues, she “does not exclude that the
West will decide to take a pause” in its actions regarding the
Ukrainian-Russian conflict. That is
especially likely if as now the Minsk-2 accords remain the test given that
different governments view those accords and their fulfilment differently.
But however that may be, Ukraine
cannot count on a rapid improvement in its situation and thus must pursue a
policy directed at “the consolidation and strengthening of Western support by
means of reforms within Ukraine,” Shevtsova says. Much depends “not so much on the West as on
Ukrainian elites” and on their readiness to take steps to retainWestern
backing.
In other comments, Shevtsova says that she
does not expect the Nemtsov report on Russia’s role in Ukraine to transform the
situation in Russia: Fifteen to seventeen percent of Russians will accept its
findings because they had reached that conclusion on their own earlier; the
rest will ignore it because the Moscow media present an alternative reality.
She
says that Russia is suffering from “cognitive dissonance” and “political
schizophrenia,” with large parts of the population believing contradictory
things at the same time. Thus, vast majorities support Putin and Russia as a
great power, but equally large ones understand its greatness far differently
than he does.
Shevtsova
adds that Russians differ from Ukrainians in that “they want the authorities to
hand them a normal life,” while Ukrainian have been prepared to struggle for
it. “You don’t believe the elite and went into the Maidan. Russians are still
not capable of this,” although perhaps at some point they will be.
She
suggests that everyone needs to understand that Putin decided to move into
Ukraine not because of the Maidan but because of the demonstrations against his
regime that took place even before the Ukrainians changed their government. He
acted out of fear and decided to take actions to prevent the influx of freedom
into Russia.
That
fear led Putin and those about him to take steps that violated many of their
own ideas. “On the whole,” Shevtsova
continues, “it was much more comfortable for them to live” as they did before
they invaded Ukraine, “in the times of imitation, games at partnership with the
West and when the Russian elite” could live and vacation abroad.
The
reason for the impact of this fear, Shevtsova argues, is that “for the first
time in the history of the country, the force structures have attained absolute
power. That was never the case in Russia before.” And the siloviki responded as one might have
predicted, closing the very window through which had come benefits to
themselves and others.
This contradiction, she suggests, is “leading the Putin
regime to its end: it cannot exist with ‘an open little window,’ because
society is in the grip of the siloviki, but at the same time, having closed the
window and driving the people further from the influence of the West, it
undermines itself since all the elites in Russia have long been in fact
pro-Western.”
Thus, she says, the threat to the world
emanates from Russia itself rather than from Putin. The problem, Shevtsova
continues, is “the system of absolutism, of one-man rule, which has a millennium-long
history and is embedded in the minds ofmillions of people who do not want
change.”
“This sytem,” she
argues, “represents a civilizational threat to the West.” And Moscow engages in
war only when it has “exhausted its resources” for living in peace. Putin is
thus “not an embodiment of evil.” He was simply installed in office by Boris
Yeltsin on the basis of 1993 Constitution which was “more autocratic” than any
Soviet one.
How soon Russia might change and how the West might
promote such change are questions for which there are no clear answers in the
current environment, Shevtsova says, even though the search for such answers is
critically important given that the Putin regime while not yet fascist is
moving in an ever more threatening direction.
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