Ukraine Wants to Support Non-Russian Movements in Russia, Verkhovna Rada Deputy Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, Oct. 7 – The Verkhova Rada on September 3 on first reading a bill first submitted for consideration in July 2024 to develop ties between Kyiv and the national movements in non-Russian regions of the Russian Federation and may soon pass an amended version of the measure.

            An informal English translation of the original measure is available at windowoneurasia2.blogspot.com/2024/08/ukraine-set-to-adopt-comprehensive.html, but both the supporters of the measure and those who still object to all or parts of it say that the final version will be significantly difficult.

            As the measure moves through its final stages of consideration by the Ukrainian parliament, the Political Arena portal has interviewed three involved in this process (politarena.ua/ukraina-khoche-pidtrymuvaty-natsrukhy-u-rf-nardep-v-iatrovych-rozpoviv-iak-tse-zrobyty-a-rosiyska-opozytsiia-pro-te-chy-ie-tsi-rukhy-vzahali-123394/).

            The portal’s Andriy Kovalenko spoke first with Volodymyr Viatrovich, one of the authors of the bill and the former head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance and then with two representatives of the Russian opposition, Pavel Shekhtman and Ilya Ponomaryev who generally support the measure but disagree with parts of it

            According to Vyatrovich, Kyiv has “a vital interest” in “the development of national movements among the peoples enslaved by Russia so as to lead to the decolonization of Russia” because “only when Russia ceases to be an empire will it cease to be dangerous” to Ukraine and to others.

            “Our duty is to develop a program of interaction with the movements of enslaved peoples,” he continued, something which up to now, Ukraine has “unfortunately used very little.” Such cooperation will “not only bring our victory in the war closer but also lay the foundation for friendly relations between Ukraine and those nation states that will arise.”

            Asked whether there are really any national movements inside the Russian Federation, Vyatrovich responded by saying that “if some had asked in 1981 whether there were any national movements in the Soviet republics,” the answer would have been no. But within a decade, “there were powerful national movements” in many; and independence followed.

“In Putin’s totalitarian Russia, open movements for independence are just as impossible as in Brezhnev’s USSR,” he continues. “. But among the zombified mass of the Russian population, there is certainly a fairly significant proportion of representatives of enslaved peoples who hate the Moscow occupation and are just waiting for the right time to rise up.”

Ukraine has many ways to support them, Vyatrovich says; and the bill outlines some of them. It can continue to declare that it recognizes the right of these peoples to seek independence. It can work with these movements and their representatives both at home and abroad. And it can provide training and other assistance to help them grow. 

And he concludes: “support for the national movements of the peoples of the Russian Federation and the process of decolonization of Russia in general is vital for our survival and victory. And every hryvnia, competently invested in national movements, will save tens and hundreds of hryvnias we would otherwise have to spend on a war with a consolidated empire.”

Pavlo Shekhtman, a Russian historian who fled Moscow in 2015 and now lives in Ukraine, says that many in Kyiv failed to recognize that working with the non-Russians inside Russia is critical to the achievement of Ukraine’s goals but that ever more people in the Ukrainian capital are changing their minds on that point.

And Ilya Ponomaryov, a Russian opposition politician abroad, objects to the current measure not because it calls for too much action but because it calls for too little. According to him, “we need to interact not only with representatives of the non-Russian republics but with all opposition forces.”

“There are certainly national movements in Russia,” he says. They are “very strong” in Chechnya and Dagestan. But elsewhere the situation is different. What is needed is to recognize that things will change in the republic only after they change in Moscow and that Ukraine needs to focus on the opposition there.

            Supporting the rights of non-Russians to leave is essential, but going further and specifying which should and which should not do so is to usurp the rights of the peoples one is supposedly coming out in support of, Ponomaryev suggests.