A friend of mine summed up Russia’s actions in eastern Ukraine perfectly,
saying that it is important to remember that historically the inhabitants of
the Kremlin have never tended to do subtle either externally or internally. When it
comes to ‘Soviet / Russian intervention’ to suppress striking East German
workers (in 1953), the crushing of the Hungarian revolution (in 1956), the
invasion of Czechoslovakia to crush the Prague spring (in 1968), the invasion
of Afghanistan (in 1979) and the invasions of Georgia (in 2008) and recent events
in Ukraine most people would be hard pressed to describe them as subtle.
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| The shadow of a gunman... |
Orchestrated by the Kremlin Russian nationalist elements active in eastern Ukraine are busy throwing their
weight around and the realities of President Putin rule in Russia are coming
home to roost. News filtering out from
eastern Ukraine is beginning to suggest a pattern to disappearances as journalists,
local politicians, and ordinary citizens have begun to go missing at an
alarming rate. The Kyiv Post and
the Committee to Protect Journalists have
compiled lists of documented cases of kidnappings in the region.
We are where we are
because of Russia’s long planned but hastily implemented occupation of the
Crimea which followed the collapse of the corrupt oligarchic pro Moscow
government in Kyiv in the face of a bloody but popular revolt. The US Secretary
of State John Kerry has rightly accused Russia of "distraction, deception
and destabilisation" in eastern Ukraine. In the strongly worded statement,
he has called on Moscow to help defuse the crisis or face further sanctions.
The continuing unrest of eastern Ukraine has more
to do with deflecting public opinion in Russia away from the example of Kyiv
than anything else. That said the unrest in Eastern Ukraine was stirred up
after, from the Kremlin’s perspective, a pro western revolt succeeded. The key
and as yet unresolved issue remains as to whether the Ukraine looks east to Moscow
or west to the EU looms large in the Kremlin’s thinking.
Last month Russia
annexed Ukraine's mainly ethnic-Russian Crimea following a questionable referendum
in the region which ‘choose’ to that backed joining the Russian Federation.
Both the West and Kiev have said that the referendum was illegal and have
refused to recognise it. The problem is that the Kremlin’s concerns for ‘Russians in zones of
legitimate interest’ posses potential problems for Moldova (including
in the Trans Dniester
region) and other eastern states with Russian minorities.
For a man originally brought
in as a safe pair of hands to safeguard the interests of a clique of oligarchs
who made their fortunes plundering the privatised assets of the former Soviet
Union while ordinary Russians lost their savings, President Putin sits securely
(and genuinely elected with a large popular mandate) in the Kremlin. The
President’s popularity is higher than ever, state’s coffers are full of accrued
energy revenues, former oligarchs have been tamed, the bear has roared, Russia
has expanded territorially for the first time since 1945 and the West’s
criticism has been dismissed.
To a great extent we are
all still living with the consequences of the second world war and the cold war
– parallels between President Putin and the dictators from the 1930’s and
1940’s have already been drawn. The legacy
and legacy of Stalin’s terror continues to overshadow modern Russia to the day.
Communist tyranny died of apathy and inertia in the early 1990’s this meant
that there were no real consequences for the former communists and the agencies
of the communist state.
There was no day in
court to answer for terrible crimes and abuses inflicted on the Russian people.
There was no equivalent of a post cold war Nuremberg tribunal to bring the
former communist functionaries (including the KGB) to account for their crimes
against the Russian people continue to haunt the Russian people and the rest of
us. Unlike in much of Eastern Europe the former dissidents never inherited
political power the former communist bureaucrats did.
The West preferred to
work hand in hand with former communists to saddle Russia the inheritor of much
of the former Soviet state with a dubious legacy of privatisations. Now while there are some in the
West who are quite happy to admire President Putin’s values the problem with
appeasement is not how it starts but how it ends. If the West accepts that
eastern Ukraine President Putin’s final territorial demand
then we will be on seriously unstable political ground for the foreseeable
future.
Disturbingly the modern
Russia’s ‘brown’ vote long targeted by President Putin appears to be the home
to some extreme views
long dispatched to the home of the extreme right wing. The Crimean Tartars, who
suffered deportation at the hands of Stalin and years of discrimination at the
hands of the Soviet authorities, now find themselves back in Russia and like
some other ethnic and religious minorities at risk.
When it comes to
articulating the consequences and realities of appeasement these are the times when
we seriously miss people like Michael Foot
who would have stated in no uncertain terms exactly what Russia’s intervention
in Ukraine actually signifies. That murmur
of Munich that drifted through the West’s chancelleries in the 1990’s over
Bosnia clearly has not gone away.
A combination of
increasing EU dependence on Russia gas supplies and potential loss of trading
opportunities seriously threatens to put the skids under any EU diplomatic
response to recent events in eastern Ukraine. If we in the West choose to do
nothing , then what message does that send to Russian and Belarusian democrats
and would be democratic movements across Eurasia and the rest of the world?
