There is actually plenty of action at the border, including
the surrender of over 200 Ukrainian troops on August 4, who crossed the border
into Russia as they were pressed by the insurgents and ran out of ammunition.
On the one hand, there is an assessment that the territory
controlled by the insurgents has shrunk greatly, and the cities of Donetsk and
Luhansk are surrounded by Ukrainian forces, even if Russian weapons are still
coming through. On the other hand, there is a stark assessment by a senior US
official: “The more success Ukrainian forces have, the more pressure there is
on Moscow to escalate” (The New York Times, August 4).
Russia has nearly 20,000 troops near the border and,
according to the Times article (”Buildup makes Russia battle-ready for
Ukraine”). Russia could launch an incursion with little or no warning, possibly
as a “peacekeeping mission”. It only requires a political decision by Mr.
Putin.
Increasingly there is speculation that establishment of a
rump Donbas buffer state, obviously under Moscow’s complete control, is the key
part of Putin’ plan. The outlines of its government and bureaucracy are already
in process, staffed by experienced key personnel from Transnistria, a
quasi-mini-state carved out of Moldova in 1991 with the presence of Russian
troops that never departed.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has been psycho-analyzed by legions
of political scientists, who built careers
that way without noticing some of the tedious key movements, such as
observed in a New York Times article
“Separatist Cadre Hopes for a Reprise in Ukraine” (August 4). People slated
for top posts in the Donbas buffer state all have had extensive experience in
the workings of Russia’s security agencies in Moldova’s former enclave.
The cadre of bureaucrats from Transnistria who have made
their way into Donetsk are led by Vladimir Antyufeyev, who in July was
appointed the acting prime minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic. Most of
the nearly 40 personnel in that group have already arrived.
How all this will square with Ukrainian troops ongoing
presence in the area is not at all clear. If Russia makes a move, reaction from
the West will be incremental sanctions. And more handwringing from NATO.
Actually NATO’s battle-readiness ls below that of the Ukrainian army with the
latter’s volunteer battalions, even if the political will existed at NATO to
become proactive. Its record in the 21st century is mainly deployment in Afghanistan (with minimal Taliban
encounters) and conferencing with Russia’s military about hypothetic
cooperation.
Russia’s military move into Donbas eventually can produce a
ceasefire — a result of his
peacekeeping prowess, as will be pontificated by Putin and not ardently
disputed in the West. The mood in Europe is not fixed on Russia. In this
anniversary year of the WWI hardly anyone is troubled by Russia grabbing from
Germany what was East Prussia for a thousand years. And in the USA the mood is
soured not so much by Putin’s activism as by the invasion of the tens of
thousands illegal immigrants crossing the Mexican border, this year mostly
children from Guatemala and Honduras, unaccompanied by parents. The US
government has shown itself entirely helpless figuring how to stop this flood.
For Ukrainian government, choices may be confused by recent history. In August 1991, it may be
recalled, Rada Chairman Leonid Krawchuk was able to persuade Ukraine’s Soviet
elite to vote for Ukraine’s independence as the way to own all levers of
political and economic power, at the moment when Boris Yeltsin was standing on
the threshold of his finest hour. The Donbas elite, among others, then envisioned
a Ukrainian state as whatever they make it. Ukrainian content was to be window
dressing.
Very little since then has changed in Donbas, including its
primarily Russian culture and identity. Not a single Ukrainian language school has
existed recently in Donetsk (I am not far off if there was one). To expect many
to stand up firmly for Ukraine in Donetsk when the crowds were deliriously
waving Russian flags is to walk in fairyland.
Russia’s aggression in Ukraine was inevitable because most
Russians believe, now as in the past, that what’s good for the Russian empire
is good for the Russians. President Putin’s rhetoric makes use of this trait
(not uniquely Russian), which also originates the preposterous claims that the
presence of Russian speakers in nearby
countries (into which they were brought in by earlier conquests in the
first place) justifies Moscow’s meddling, as in the Donbas, where loyalty to
Ukraine was always shaky.
In the words of Vladimir Antyufeyev, the new acting prime
minister in the separatist republic, “The people have a right to live on their
land, to speak the language they want”. This right actually exists in Ukraine
today both in theory and practice, and yet Putin’s rhetoric relies on playing
the language theme as a crutch for packaged lies.
The right which Russia’s leaders and pro-Russian politicians
in Ukraine really want is political ownership of Ukraine. They owned much of it
by way of the Regions Party strength with its powerful Donbas constituency,
except during Viktor Yushchenko’s presidency, and not after the Euromaidan
Revolution this year. Putin’s anti-Ukrainian
government rhetoric finds fertile ground in Donbas, as can be expected.
But for the Ukrainians to highlight and give weight to speculation that many (or
some) people in Ukraine are hostile to the government mainly because they have
succumbed to Putin’s brainwashing does not erase and should not justify the
consequences of the resulting behavior by those who presumably were fooled. In particular, the expectation that some day
these folks will discover they have been duped is sadly irrelevant to Ukrainian
soldiers killed in battle.
Russian language in the media and in print in Ukraine today
by far outweighs the use of Ukrainian language. This should be seen in the
context of at least 23 official prohibitions of printing in Ukrainian during
the centuries of Russian rule in Ukraine. Here are some, chronologically:
Number 1, in 1720: Executive order by Tsar Peter I
prohibiting printing in Ukrainian language.
Number 3, in1763: Executive order by Empress Catherine II
prohibiting teaching in Ukrainian language at Kyiv’s Mohyla Academy.
Number 10, in 1876: Emsk Ukaz by Emperor Aleksandr II,
prohibiting all printing in Ukrainian, and outlawing the writing of music score
in Ukrainian. This listing may be enough for now.
Boris Danik is a retired Ukrainian-American living in North Caldwell, New Jersey.
