Ukrainians Should Focus on the Choice They Made in the Revolution of Dignity Rather than on Control of Territory Alone, Pastukhov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 20 – Ukraine’s revolution of dignity was not about decolonization and control over territory but about an alternative civilizational choice that sought to make Ukraine a European rather than a Eurasian country, a choice that many Ukrainians although far from all support to this day, Vladimir Pastukhov says.

            Thus, that revolution, the London-based Russian analyst says, was far more than about territory and security, something many in Ukraine and the West have now forgotten but something that is why Putin has reacted in the way he has and why territorial concessions to him won’t guarantee Ukraine’s future (echofm.online/opinions/ukrainskaya-vandeya).

            That can be achieved “only by clear and forceful countermeasures that will convincingly demonstrate to Putin that his achievement of his initial goals in this war is unrealistic” now and will remain unrealistic in the future, Pastukhov argues. “Anyone who thinks otherwise is a naïve romantic.”

            “In 2014,” he continues, he “published a book entitled The Ukrainian Revolution and the Russian Counter-Revolution about the challenges Ukraine faced. One of its central ideas was that “attempts to hold the Donbass by force would inevitably come into direct conflict with the goals of the revolution of dignity.”

            At that time, Pastukhov says, he argued that such attempts would lead to a full-scale war and that “war is not the best time for realizing the ideals of freedom and democracy.” Now a decade later, he offers an additional one: “the revolution of dignity … was not about decolonization but about the European choice of the Ukrainian people.”

            Had it been only about decolonizing, control of territory would have been everything because that could have been achieved without fundamental changes in Ukraine. But most Ukrainians understood their choice differently, “as one in favor of other values and principles” than those Moscow had insisted on.

            However, “even if this was the choice of the majority, Pastukhov says, it clearly was not then and is not now the choice of everybody” in Ukraine. In fact, “a sizeable part of the Ukrainian people wanted to return to the comfortable USSR,” and that was the basis of the split between those who supported the revolution of dignity and those who did not.

            And this was and is the real dividing line in Ukraine, the London-based Russian analyst says. And consequently, “the problem is not that ‘Russians’ lived in Crimea or the Donbass but that the majority of those living there were people who wanted to return to the traditional Soviet past.”

            Prior to the revolution of dignity, he says, Russia was apparently committed to a European course while Ukraine was not and those in Ukraine who did not want to follow that course were quite happy to remain in Ukraine. “But when the roles were reversed,” such people “suddenly began to yearn for their ‘historical homeland.’”

            Consequently, he continues, “the southeast of Ukraine is the Ukrainian Vendée. And even if, at the cost of incredible efforts and sacrifices, Ukraine recovers control over these territories, it will also get back all the old problems that will push back for decades the implementation of the choice made by the Ukrainian people in favor of the European path of development.”

            The majority of Ukrainians who continue to favor the goals of the revolution of dignity should be focusing on that rather than expending lives and treasure on recovering something that will only compromise their ability to achieve what they really want, the London-based analyst concludes.