Paul
Goble
Staunton, November 21 – Two days
ago, Aleksey Chesnyakov, a Moscow commentator known for his close ties to the
Kremlin and opposition to the continued existence of Ukraine, said that officials
preparing for the upcoming meeting of the leaders of Russia, Germany, France
and Ukraine in Paris have already reached agreement on what that meeting will announce.
Moscow had demanded that this arrangement,
the commentator said, lest Ukraine try to get out of the Minsk Accords -- an ominous
comment, Andrey Piontkovsky says, given Chesnyakov’s past statements that “we
need not the return of Donbass to Ukraine but the unification of Ukraine to the
Donbass” (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5DD6EA3054D82).
Chesnyakov’s statement is entirely
plausible, the Russian commentator says, because those negotiation for Kyiv are
people who have shown themselves entirely willing to defer to Moscow even
though Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky continues to say that he seeks the
return of the occupied territories and establishment of Kyiv’s control over the
Russian border.
Zelensky’s comments naturally have
sparked angry reactions from Moscow talk show hosts, but one of their Ukrainian
guests told them to calm down, that the agreement to return the Donbass to Kyiv
under Russian conditions had already been reached, and that Zelensky’s remarks
were a tactic to calm “the significant part of the population which has
unfortunately been harmed by nationalist views” and to prevent any protests.
The die appears to be cast just as
it was at Munich in 1938. “’Reunification of the ORDLO [the acronym for “particular
regions of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts’] is a legitimation of Russian aggression,
a guarantee of the spreading of the conflict to all of Ukraine and to that
country’s loss of sovereignty,” Piontkovsky says.
This isn’t the peace in our time
that Zelensky promised Ukrainian voters; it is instead “the suicidal ‘re-unification’
of the ORDLO under the diktat of Putin, Chesnyakov and Solovyev,” the Russian
commentator says. It won’t bring a ceasefire, and it won’t end either Moscow’s
demonization of Ukraine or its efforts to subvert it.
Rather, this peace in our time like
its predecessor will open the way to further aggression. Indeed, Piontkovsky
says, this is yet another example of “the usual practice of terrorists: as long
as you do not accept our conditions, we will kill you and torture in the
basements the hostages we have taken.”
“The analogy between Paris 2019 and
Munich 1938 are obvious,” he continues. “But each act of betrayal has its own
specific features.”
As Piontkovsky points out, “ORDLO is
not a territory; it is a way of thinking.” There are many expansions of this
acronym; but take together, they show that “ORDLO is SOMETHING from the film ‘The
Thing,’ which sought to swallow up everything around it that was living.”
Russia as a giant ORDLO is doing the same thing.
“Ukraine’s problem is that 15 to 20
percent of its residents (the voters for Medvedchuk and Rabinovich) are people
of ORDLO too. Their civil rights must be respected. But they must not be
permitted to swallow up the entire country.” However, that is what appears
likely to happen in the wake of Paris.
“Ukraine is not Russia,” he continues.
“In Russia, 65 to 70 percent of the population are ORDLO people … The West has
always felt this but never viewed its enormous eastern neighbor with such
frozen terror as for example [French President] Macron does today.”
He is obviously afraid of Russia now
that the US, the former protector of Europe, has “retired” from its
international responsibilities and has decided to do what he has to to try to
save himself and his country by sacrificing Ukraine. Macron and others like him
have forgotten that acting in that way will only ensure that the threat to them
will grow.
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