Paul
Goble
Staunton, August 12 – Despite its
declarations about taking revenge against Kyiv for supposedly sending “diversionists”
into Crimea, Moscow is unlikely to launch a major war but instead hopes to use
the threat of such a conflict to force Ukraine to agree to a resolution of the conflict
that would result in a Bosnia-style outcome, according to Anatoly Oktisyuk.
But the senior analyst at Kyiv’s
International Center for Research about the Future says that Moscow’s interest
in such a solution inevitably challenges Kyiv to select one of four very
different strategies (apostrophe.com.ua/article/politics/2016-08-12/posledstviya-kryimskoy-diversii-ukrainu-jdut-chetyire-stsenariya-razvitiya-sobyitiy/6735).
As Oktisyuk points out, “the Bosnian
war ended more than 20 years ago but Bosnia-Herzegovina is one of the most
backward countries of Europe with massive corruption and the deepening erosion
of state institutions. Local identities dominate over national ones, there is
no consensus or national unity, and that interferes with the country’s development.”
Not surprisingly, he continues,
Russia would like to see exactly that outcome for Ukraine because it would
leave the country as “a neutral federal state without claims on Crimea and one
in which the anti-Russian West and Center would be balanced by a pro-Russian
enclave in the Donbass.”
Indeed, the Kyiv analyst says, “the
political component of the 2015 Minsk agreements very much recalls the Dayton
format of resolving the conflict in Bosnia in 1995.” The major difference is that there were NATO
and then European forces in the former Yugoslavia while there are no such
forces in Ukraine. Kyiv has sought so far unsuccessfully to change that.
“With the help of the Minsk agreements,” Oktisyuk
continues, “the Kremlin plans to create in Ukraine a pro-Russian enclave of the
DNR and LNR” with its own special local administration and policies oriented
toward Moscow. If Kyiv does what Moscow wants, Ukraine will get these regions
back in forms that will harm Kyiv.
It
is clear, he argues, that “Russia in any case will work to promote the federalization
of Ukraine if not in the current circumstances then after several electoral
cycles when a new pragmatic government, like Georgia after Saakashvili, will
appear in the country.”
The
Ukrainian government has made Russia’s task easier, he suggests, by failing to
articulate a clear policy of national unity.
Efforts to promote one oriented toward the east or toward the west have
failed in the past. And now Ukraine
would have to come up with one while Russian forces are on its territory.
The
Minsk accords are “dangerous for Ukraine” for all those reasons, but Kyiv can’t
simply walk away from them without being accused by the West as well as Moscow
of not keeping its promises. Consequently, Oktisyuk says, “Ukraine needs to
decide what to do with the Donbass and Crimea as soon as possible.”
.
There
are four stark choices, he suggests:
·
First, Kyiv could “agree to the Kremlin’s
conditions, federalize the country, reject the possibility of NATO membership
and pursue a mutually profitable foreign policy on the multi-vector principles.”
·
Second, it could “construct ‘a Ukrainian Israel,’
give up the territories in revolt and await better times for their return.” In
the meantime, it would pursue the construction of “a successful country, a
powerful army and a competitive economy.”
·
Third, it could “live under the conditions of
‘no war, no peace,’ in which corruption would continue and the country would
march in place. Such a scenario,” Oktisyuk says, “sooner or later would lead
either to the first or the fourth variant.”
·
Or fourth, Kyiv could attempt “to resolve the
conflict by military means, which could end either with a complete castrophe or
the formation of a new state idea and mythology.”
Moscow’s latest actions do not necessarily
point to one or the other of these, he suggests, but the Kremlin’s moves do
make the choice clearer and more immediate.
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