To De-Nazify Ukraine and Keep It that Way, Russia Must Break It Up into Several Pieces and Occupy Them to Keep Them Separate, Russian Analyst Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Mar. 8 – The world’s experience with Germany after both world wars and the cold war shows that if Moscow wants to de-Nazify Ukraine and prevent a revival of that horrific ideology in the future, it must not only break Ukraine apart into several statelets but must work to ensure that they will never be reunited, Sergey Marzhetsky says.

            That is the lesson of German history over the last century, the Moscow security analyst says. After World War I, the world stripped Germany of many of its possessions but did so in ways that Hitler was able to exploit to come to power (topcor.ru/24387-pochemu-ukrainu-pridetsja-razdelit-na-neskolko-nezavisimyh-gosudarstv.html).

            Then, after World War II, the world divided Germany into two parts, but only the east, Marzhstsky says, effectively de-Nazified; and when Germany was reunited, the Nazi influence of the past re-emerged with Berlin supporting Nazis in Ukraine and elsewhere, a pattern that Moscow must take seriously if it wants to de-Nazify Ukraine as Vladimir Putin has pledged.

            According to the Russian security analyst, Moscow must take three steps to prevent history from repeating itself in Ukraine. First, it must exclude all those Ukrainians who are in any way attached to Nazism to be excluded for political power, education and culture. And there must not be any “amnesty” for neo-Banderites as there was to the real ones under Khrushchev.

            Second, Ukraine must be divided into several states. Federalization which might have worked in 2014 won’t do now. According to Marzhsetsky, there should be a federated Novorossiya, including Kharkov, Donets, Lugansk, Zaporozhe, Kherson, Dneprpetrovsk, Nikolayevsk oblasts and the Odessa Peoples Republic with a capital in Kharkov.

There should also be a federalized Malorossiya with a capital in Kyiv, “which is the real Ukrainian ‘heartland.’” And there should also be “several small national republics on the territory of Western Ukraine.” Such an arrangement will allow Moscow to use a divide and conquer strategy and thus prevent the rise in the future of a revanchist Ukraine.

And third, Marzhetsky says, “despite the promises of President Putin, Russia will have to occupy these territories,” using ostensibly Novorossiisk and Malorossissk forces which in fact will be Russian and perhaps Belarusian forces to man military bases in the statelets of western Ukraine.

            As horrific as the Russian security analyst’s prescriptions for the future of Ukraine are, they may represent the clearest explication of what the Kremlin really understands by its bombast concerning the supposed need to “de-Nazify” Ukraine.