Paul Goble
Staunton,
June 8 – Forty-eight percent of Ukrainians blame Moscow for the war in the
Donbas, while 33 percent blame both Moscow and Kyiv and nine percent blame only
Kyiv, according to polls conducted by Ukraine’s Razumkov Center for a report on
the evolution of Ukrainian identity.
That
report, now available online at uceps.org/upload/Identi-2016.pdf
shows that Ukrainians overwhelmingly support a Western orientation for their
country and membership in Western institutions like NATO, something that makes
the findings about their attitudes toward the war in the eastern section of the
country somewhat surprising.
On DSNews.ua, commentator Yury
Vasilchenko says “it is difficult to imagine Croatians would have blamed their
government for the fact that the puppet republic of Serbska Kraina was set up
on their territory.” Why then, he asks,
are so many Ukrainians doing exactly that? (dsnews.ua/politics/pochemu-ukraintsy-i-dalshe-veryat-v-nevinovnost-putina-07062016191000).
Some
blame Ukraine’s information policy ministry and its failure to conduct effective
propaganda. Undoubtedly, there is some
truth in this given its fitful performance, but to lay all the blame on that
government agency would be “incorrect.”
Instead, he says, this set of attitudes reflects the promotion of
several myths by politicians, experts and posters on Facebook.
Among
these myths are the following, Vasilchenko suggests:
·
First, “the
military conflict is useful for the authorities of Ukraine and the Russian
Federation” because they use it to justify failures in other spheres and to
make profits.
·
Second, he
writes, there is the myth that “Ukraine could have avoided the war by agreeing
with the leaders of the separatists already in the spring of 2014.” This myth,
he says, “works particularly well among residents of the Donbass and” IDPs.
·
Third, there is
the myth that “simple people are not guilty when politicians unleash a war.
This is a very dangerous myth because it justifies the Russian occupiers and
their puppets in the Donbass.”
The last myth
explains why Ukrainians are overwhelmingly negative to the Kremlin regime but
are either neutral or positive toward Russians as such, Vasilchenko writes. And
that is why many Ukrainians are quite ready to forgive and forget those who
have acted as they have in the Donbass or even in the extreme case to consider
them “innocent.”
In other words,
the commentator continues, “there exist [in Ukraine] a significant number of
citizens who do not yet understand that the detonator of the conflict were
those residents of Donets and Luhansk oblasts who called on Putin for support.”
These were “simple pensioners, miners or ordinary lumpen,” he writes.
“If there had not
been their anti-Maidan, there wouldn’t have been a war,” and consequently
today, Vasilchenko says, “almost 40 percent of [Ukraine’s] compatriots are
ready to make peace with these people.” That points to real dangers ahead: explosions
like those in the Donbas “could be repeated somewhere else.”
There are of
course “other myths,” he argues, including the notion that “reforms lead only
to impoverishment of the population” or that the authorities are using the war
to justify their failure to reform. But
it is critically important to understand why these myths are now so widespread.
“The Ukrainian
authorities,” Vasilchenko concludes, “have themselves created fertile ground
for the development of [such] harmful myths.”
Kyiv doesn’t yet have a clear and well-defined strategy about the future
of the occupied territories.” And until it adopts one, he says, “the number of
victims of the myths about the war will alas only grow.”
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