Provoking Another Maidan in Ukraine Will Backfire on Putin, Inozemtsev Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, December 9 – Many analysts, including perhaps most prominently Vitaly Portnikov, are suggesting that Vladimir Putin wants to force Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to make so many concessions either at Paris or later that the Ukrainian people will respond with a new Maidan, thus weakening Kyiv and giving Moscow new opportunities.

            But Vladislav Inozemtsev argues that Putin has tried that twice before, in 2004 and 2013-2014, and while the Kremlin leader appeared to gain some advantages at first, that strategy has backfired and led Ukraine to take an even tougher position against Moscow than might have been the case had Putin adopted a different approach (theins.ru/opinions/191816).

            While Putin may now think he is in a position to go for broke and sweep the board, these two earlier cases suggest that he may be more cautious and less successful in putting pressure on Zelensky lest any victory prove Pyrrhic and Russia find itself in a more difficult position than a a less directly confrontational approach would have produced.

            This time around, Putin has already modified his approach. He is not relying on political technologists as he did in 2004 and he is not giving money to Ukrainian officials as he did with Yanukovich in 2013-2014. Instead, he is giving money “to the puppet masters who brought the current government in Kyiv to power.”

             Huge sums have been named, including Igor Kolomoysky’s reference to 100 billion US dollars, “but if Moscow’s plan really consists of getting official Kyiv to agree to ‘the federalization’ of Ukraine via ‘the autonomization’ of the Donbass … the consequences may turn out to be similar” to Moscow’s earlier efforts.

            Putin may be able to get the Ukrainian elites to go along. After all, he did that twice before. But in both earlier cases and potentially again now, the Ukrainian people “interfered in the process and achieved a completely opposite result,” Inozemtsev says. And in the two earlier cases, Russia faced a less difficult environment.

            In both 2004 and 2014, Ukrainians were focused on their own future and were relatively uninterested in their relationship with Russia. Now, “and this is no secret,” Ukrainians have had the experience of fighting with Russia and realize that their future depends in the first instance on defending their country.

            “Politics in Ukraine, and this too is impossible not to see, in recent years is something made not by the 70 percent of the population ready to vote for whomever if only to avoid ‘the chocolate king’ and ‘the gas princess,’ but by the one half of one percent of citizens who are not afraid to risk their lives for the future of the people.”

            “None of the six million Yanukovich voters (except for some who were paid) came out in support of him” when the others rose against him, “and today few of those who voted for Vladimir Zelensky” are likely to do the same for him. Those who would oppose a sell-out, however, are ready to act.

            If they conclude that Zelensky is making “serious concessions to Russia,” let alone “a capitulation, a new Maidan is practically unavoidable and president Zelensky will leave his post” to be succeeded by someone who almost equally certainly will be ready, willing and able to adopt a harder line toward Russia.

            That is more likely not less now because “in Ukraine there now exists an army capable of destroying the Donbass separatists while at the same time Russia has no chance to actively enter the struggle on their side without the complete destruction of its reputation in the world and receive in exchange yet another package of sanctions,” including really horrific ones.

            “It seems to me,” Inozemtsev says, “that the history of relations between Russia and Ukraine over the last 15 years shows that the Kremlin is pathologically incapable of learning from its own mistakes and recognizing the real arrangement of forces in Ukraine” and is driven instead by “strong emotions” rather than careful calculations.

            “Besides – and this is no less important – Putin and his entourage are prisoners of the conspiracy theories they have invented and continue to suppose that the Washington or Brussels obkoms are making all the policy in Ukraine today.”  In fact, “the influence of external forces on Ukrainian politics … is extremely exaggerated.” (emphasis supplied)

            Moscow might have used the change in power in Kyiv to better advantage by making concessions of its own to Ukraine on the Donbass and elsewhere. Ukrainians and Russians would have welcomed that because both have other more immediate and practical problems. That may still be possible but only if Moscow learns from the past.

            “If that doesn’t happen, what will, as one experienced politician said, will turn out to be worse than a crime: it will be a mistake.” But the prospects that Moscow will commit precisely such a mistake are high because it shows little inclination to focus on reality rather than act on its own false assumptions.