On Oct. 14, more than 30,000 people took to the streets of Kyiv to protest the Steinmeier Formula. Western media began to issue reports that these were right-wing radicals agitating against peace with Russia and for the continuation of war.
Why is this not so? And why do such headlines and texts in the media serve the continuation of the Russian hybrid war against Ukraine?
With the annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russia has launched a hybrid war against Ukraine. The peculiarity of this war is that it takes place in every sphere of interaction between the two countries: in the Council of Europe, in the UN, in Western media, in social networks, in Donbas with the help of the Russian army, in the field of gas transit, in the economic sphere and so on.
In this kind of war, it is very difficult for an outside observer to determine the parties of the conflict and confidently state who is right and who is to blame, since various means of propaganda, misinformation and manipulation are used.
Yesterday’s headlines in the media are among the Russia’s tactics against Ukraine – the goal is to show that it was not the Russian Federation that started the war, killed thousands of civilians, shot down a passenger plane and invaded an independent state but supposedly it is just “radical” Ukrainians who do not want peace on the European continent. And, unfortunately, such Russian manipulation works.
On Oct. 14 I was at the march in Kyiv. It is important to emphasize here that the people who took to the streets were not there to support war. They were there for peace, however a peace not at the price of surrender. Putin will continue to force the offensive operation if we capitulate, as he doesn’t really need part of Ukraine. He needs all of it.
Putin needs the restoration of the Soviet empire within its former borders and with its former influence. After Ukraine, he will come for the Baltic states and Poland. Chamberlain once returned to Britain after an agreement with Hitler and told people he had secured “the peace of our time.” We all know how this peace ended. The people who came out yesterday to protest were not against the peace, they were against peace on Chamberlain-like terms.
Peace can be achieved in two cases: 1) if we win the war with Russia; 2) if we agree with Russia, making some concessions and compromises. In the case of the Steinmeier Formula (in fact, this is Putin’s formula), we are not just making some compromises, we must follow all of the terms Putin put before Ukraine. This is not peace, this is surrender.
Putin’s idea is extremely simple: to make the Donbas a Russian enclave in the middle of Ukraine, which will prevent Ukraine from carrying out reforms, moving towards joining NATO and the EU and conducting a sovereign foreign and domestic policy.
De jure Donbas will be controlled by Ukraine, but de facto it will be controlled by Putin.
This is what we cannot accept under any condition. That is why people took to the streets, and by the way, it is the march of Oct. 14 that demonstrates the strength of democracy in Ukraine. Can you imagine this happening in Moscow? Would thousands of people peacefully take to the streets to say no to Putin? The last time people tried to do this in Russia it ended in mass violence and arrests.
And this is what the Russian government is afraid of above all else. Russian elites are afraid that the Russian people will be “infected” by Ukrainian democracy and will also begin to protest and demand their rights and freedoms. That is why a democratic and free Ukraine is dangerous for them. That is why it is so important for them to sign the Steinmeier Formula, where by gaining control of Donbas they will gain control of all of Ukraine.
About the author
Oleksiy Goncharenko is the chairman of the Odessa Regional Council, the leader of the public organization “Quality of Life”
