It was Vladimir Putin’s script, accepted by the shameless Barack Obama-Angela Merkel-Francois Holland trio, even if the U.S. president was not there in person.
It was their alternative to offering Ukraine weapons for self-defense.
In the month after Minsk II, the government in Kyiv has handled its part of the deal as best it could.
It passed a law conditioning special status on elections in rebel-held territory under Ukrainian law and with international observers.
The Kremlin yelled foul, accusing Kyiv of trying to replace the current proxies there by pro-Ukrainian politicians.
No one can seriously expect “zhiteli Donbasa” (Donbas residents) elect anyone other than the pro-Russian officials, under any law, as they had done during Viktor Yanukovych’s presidency.
Moscow simply sees Kyiv’s move as foot-dragging.
From Putin’s point of view, it would be perfectly proper to have the same pro-Moscow stooges govern in Donbas (as part of Ukraine) who showed their hate of the country by boisterously trampling on Ukrainian national flag and openly abusing captured Ukrainian soldiers in the streets of Donetsk.
News media also mentioned that “nationalists in Kyiv” protested the special status law. But what did they expect? The government has not much maneuvering space. Logic dictates that the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk republics must be kept outside the Ukrainian state, rather than let them in under Putin’s cynical formula.
President Petro Poroshenko and the leadership around him can see it clearly. The talk about “regaining border control” between Donbas and Russia is not serious.
Many or at least some Ukrainians had erroneously believed that pro-Russian orientation of voters in Donbas does not mean they would actually prefer to be part of Russia, given a chance.
That was wishful thinking.
Most of Donbas population has shown itself decidedly anti-Ukrainian, regardless of ethnic origin.
And they despise the presence of Ukrainian army.
Kyiv has been actively seeking military and economic aid in the West. Not much will be forthcoming unless and until the White House inner circle starts treating Ukraine as a major factor in their world view.
So far it has been treated as an expendable chip, despite all the “concern” and the smooth talk.
Western leaders should readjust their receptors to understand that Ukraine is important because it is the first line of defense of Europe.
With the White House shift of attention towards Asia in the last 15 years, NATO has gradually abandoned its original mission to defend Europe (without saying so), and is becoming irrelevant.
There is still a nonsensical discussion under way about which of the two is the bigger threat to the United States, ISIS or Russia.
Meanwhile, American influence in Europe is waning. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier is openly at odds with NATO supreme commander U.S. General Philip Breedlove concerning war in Ukraine (“Back off NATO, there is a new army in town,” op-ed by Pyotr Romanov, Kyiv Post, March 17).
But, of course, “the new European army,” envisioned by European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker in a recent talk, is in a dreaming phase.
Europe is more likely to retreat into its traditional rivalries, as the US is gradually removing itself from Europe.
Obama recently announced more cuts of U.S. troops in NATO.
American combat units now are down to two brigades (about 4,000 each). And so did Britain.
Not promising moves to protect NATO image, much less defend anything. If the neo-isolationist trend in the USA is not reversed, European nations may be returning to their pre-World War II usual self-defeating initiatives quicker than could be expected, with gates open for Russia to trample into almost any central European country.
Rather than providing an escape for Europe’s playmakers, who possibly are expecting miracles, Minsk II looks like the precursor to a quicker “skid of the West,” fulfilling the prediction in a famous 1918 book on the same subject (“The Downfall of the West” by Oswald Spengler).
The Minsk experience of Merkel and Hollande shows the fantasy qualities of what they have achieved. “Through both of us, our countries (Germany and France) have found each other again,” Hollande after the all-night negotiating session with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin in Minsk (Financial Times, March 19).
They will find the rest later.
Such paltry talk is on the same plateau as the drivel about “no military solution” in Russia’s war on Ukraine (repeated by Steinmeier on March 22).
The latter equivocation is by far more devious than a pretended learning disability could be among fools. It falls in the same category as rationalizing that weapons delivered for Ukrainian army (which, by the way, is now among the strongest in Europe and has a much more supervised and reliable logistics base than it had last year, according to Poroshenko) could fall in the Russians’ hands.
Ultimately, it is the defeatism in the 21st century Western vision — an antithesis to the notion that “freedom is not free” — that nurtures the absurdities and excesses of addiction to the good life with lifelong guarantees.
Boris Danik is a retired Ukrainian-American living in North Caldwell, New Jersey.
