Paul
Goble
Staunton, September 2 – By fighting
against separatism in Chechnya two decades ago, Aleksandr Nevzorov says, Moscow
was at least promoting its interests in blocking the spread of national liberation
ideas to other parts of Russia. But in
invading Ukraine and promoting separatism, it has sent a message that may come
back to haunt it in Russia itself.
Commenting on the 20th
anniversary of the Khasavyurt accords, the Russian journalist says that Russia
lost its “unnecessary” war in Chechnya in which tens of thousands of people
died. Today, he continues, it is
conducting yet another absolutely senseless war but one still more dangerous
for Russia” (rosbalt.ru/russia/2016/09/01/1546201.html).
The reason the war in Ukraine’s
Donbass is more dangerous for Russia than the Chechen war was is because now Moscow
rather than its opponents are fanning the flames not just of separatism but of “[ethnic]
Russian separatism.” And from there, this kind of separatism can easily shift
to the territory of the Russian Federation.”
Nevzorov says that “the Donbass
tragedy shows that Russia didn’t learn anything from the Chechen experience,”
perhaps evidence that the current leadership is incapable of learning from
anything that it does.
And he points out in conclusion that
“in the Donbass, Moscow set for itself ambitious tasks but everything ended
with the seizure of ‘a few petty little towns and settlements which were able
to separate [from Ukraine] at the price of an enormous number of victims and
much suffering for all.”
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