Paul
Goble
Staunton, December 12 – Most evaluations
of the Paris summit have focused on the meeting in a narrow way with some
arguing that it constituted a moral victory
of Vladimir Zelensky because he fought it to a draw and others suggesting that
it was a complete defeat for him and thus a complete victory for Vladimir
Putin.
But Vladimir Pastukhov, a Russian
specialist at the University College of London, says the meeting needs to be
considered in a broader context, one in which Kyiv’s position on Russia is
unsustainable in the absence of the kind of outside support that has not been
forthcoming and is unlikely to in the future (mbk-news.appspot.com/sences/normandskij-neformat-sudba/).
The London-based Russian scholar
says that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine has been “completely natural
and routine for any post-colonial era.”
There is no country that having acquired independence doesn’t want to
move “as far from the former metropolitan center as possible, ideally to the
Moon.”
And at the same time, “there has
never been a former and still existing empire in which the obtaining of
independence by a former colony has not given rise among a significant part of
society of revanchist attitudes.” Sometimes but far from always this gives rise
to war, but more often if outsiders get involved.
Pastukhov says that “there is a very
high degree of probability that if the West had not provided support” to
Ukraine when Russia did attack, “then both sides of the conflict would have
continued to search for a painful compromise … because all economic and
historical circumstances were against” a complete divorce.
“But Europe not only supported but
actively encouraged the divorce of Ukraine and Russia,” the analyst continues,
and thus it “created the illusion of the existence of aa simple, easily
achievable and unproblematic alternative to Russian ‘gas slavery.’” There was no alternative because of Russia’s “situational
supremacy.”
This “superiority” arose “from a
fatal strategic miscalculation of the West which underestimated Russia’s
obsession and the readiness of its leaders to go for broke” with regard to
Ukraine. “No one thought that the Kremlin … would begin a war in the very
center of Europe … and not simply a war but a ‘shameful’ one at that.”
The West not only underestimated
what Moscow was capable of doing but it “overrated its own ability to react to
Moscow’s aggression,” Pastukhov continues. Russia found the resourcds to carry
out “’a blitzkrief,’” and the West was only prepared to introduce economic
sanctions which did not have the effects it wanted.
This left Ukraine “in the situation
of Czechoslovakia before World War II – everyone sympathized but no one was
prepared to fight.”
For several months in 2014, “first
inspired by Europe and then cast off by it, Ukraine found itself one on one in
a military conflict with an opponent who exceeded its strength by many times
and as a result quite naturally suffered a crushing defeat,” Pastukhov says.
“’The Minsk Agreements’ are ‘the
Brest Peace’ of Ukraine. They fixed the loss of Ukraine in a lightning quick
post-modern war.” Many Ukrainian patriots
will react angrily to the suggestion that their country lost the war, but that
is only because they think defeat means complete capitulation as in the case of
Germany in 1945.
But in most wars, the outcome is far
less dramatic: one side gains something, the other loses something, and then
they have to come to terms. In this case, Russia is the winner, Ukraine is the loser,
and Ukraine has “discovered that it is not especially needed by anyone,”
including those who had cheered it on.
As a result and as Paris showed, Pastukhov
argues, “the West has left Ukraine to its own devices.” In the Normandy format,
“it is an object not a subject” of political life.
That leaves Zelensky facing two options:
The first is that he can “recognize reality and that means recognize that the West
provoked Ukraine into a conflict” and then wasn’t prepared to follow up on it
encouragement, that Ukraine has lost militarily, and that this as must be “ended
at any price and relations must be established with the aggressor.”
And the second is that he “can allow
himself to remain a prisoner of illusions, to demand the impossible from Russian
in current historical circumstances, to calculate that ‘the foreigners will
help,’” and continue to waste time and resources Ukraine does not have.
The Normandy Format summit showed
that the West is “inclined to pragmatism” and is going to push Zelensky to adopt
the first and not the second option. If he does and survives politically, “then
in the final analysis, he may turn out to be the victor” in a horrifically
difficult situation.
That is because “for Ukraine to
honestly and calmly admit today its defeat and begin life anew means to win.”
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