While the European Union leaders are responding by talking
more sanctions on Russia, the business lobbies of the larger western countries
are bristling with discontent at the rebounding effect of the existing
sanctions. They see Ukraine as a problem to be done away with through
diplomatic channels and, in effect, Kyiv caving in to conditions imposed by
Moscow.
Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel, recently de facto
arranger of the EU line, seems to be playing both sides of the coin. She has
been handed the ball of Western strategy against Russia, for the time being at
least, by US President Obama, who is having his hands full with the ISIS scare
in Iraq and Syria which is affecting both the United States and Britain.
The Chancellor has let out a puff of smoke on August 25, the
day before the handshakes in Minsk, by thinking loudly that Ukraine is free to
join Putin’s Eurasian Union. No one seemed to be quite sure “how she meant
it”. The confusion has sort of simmered
away in the last few days.
Could this episode have gone unnoticed in Kyiv? President
Petro Poroshenko is under pressure from both Russia and the West to agree to
some settlement with Russia unacceptable to Ukraine. Under these circumstances,
there is no better way for Kyiv to give a definitive answer than by making clear
that Ukraine wants to join NATO. That message came from Prime Minister Arsenyi
Yatseniuk on August 28.
Ukraine’s path to NATO is hypothetical, to say the least, but
that’s not what matters now. The message
from Kyiv means that Ukraine will continue to fight defending its territory. What it needs now from NATO is weapons. They
have been denied by Obama until now, rationalizing that it would escalate the
conflict. With Russian troops now undeniably on the ground in Ukraine, there is
a new reality.
Where do we go from here? First, it should be understood
that there is no such thing as settlement between Ukraine and Russia on
equitable terms. President Putin knows it probably better than anyone, because
that’s not what he wants.
“Russian stealth offensive is seen as tactic to freeze
conflict”, is the description in the Financial Times (August 29). And it goes
on: “Freezing the conflict means having large chunks of eastern Ukraine in
control of Russian-backed rebels, while forcing Kyiv to call a ceasefire and
hold negotiations with Moscow, potentially for years”.
For years? What about for generations? Has the struggle for
Ukraine’s survival not been going on for centuries, with Ukraine subdued and
barely noticed in the capitals, the media and academia outside Russia’s empire?
What does Vlad Putin mean when mouthing an obvious absurdity “The Russians and
Ukrainians are one people”? Are one people from Russia waging war against one
people in Ukraine? Are we having a misunderstanding? Actually, Putin’s
soliloquy has a deeper meaning. It translates into “We shall bury you” in
Kremlin’s language, Nikita Khrushchev style.
The Kremlin has been burying Ukraine for a long time. It
would take volumes to recount all the genocides committed by Moscow in Ukraine
since the 17th century. Aside from Stalin-made Holodomor in 1933, one
of the first atrocities was mentioned in Taras Shevchenko’s poetry, the
destruction of Baturyn, the capital city of Hetman Ivan Mazepa, and the murder
of all its inhabitants, including infants, after Tsar Peter’s victory at
Poltava in 1708. That’s the physical part.
The other dimension of the one people line has been the
systematic mortification of the Ukrainian language and culture, with official
prohibitions since the 18th century to print anything in Ukrainian,
or use it in school teaching and in liturgies. The prohibitions were not weakened until the
revolution in 1905, but the results are visible to this day.
Getting back to “Where do we go from here?” Anticipating a
frozen conflict, Timothy Ash wrote in the Kyiv Post (“West may be telling
Ukraine to stand on its own against Russia”, August 15): “While Ukraine may
have lost Crimea, and may struggle to get a large slice of Donbas back under
its control for an extended period of time, and while Europe has yet again
disappointed, the big “win” for Ukraine is that the nation has been born.
Finally, after 23 years, Ukrainians do feel a sense of identity. They have been
willing to lay down their lives for the state, and will likely be willing to
struggle to ensure its survival and success, irrespective of Russia having
lopped off bits of its territory.”
If part of Donbas becomes a semi-permanent buffer territory
under Russia’s control, including the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, it is not
something to cry over. Much of it has
been gangster territory, inflicting plenty of harm on Ukraine, besides being
the bedrock of pro-Russian fifth column that paralyzed the Ukrainian state.
Think of Ukraine dropping that burden.
Boris Danik is a retired Ukrainian-American living in North Caldwell, New Jersey.
