Wait and see
Secretary of State Kerry today urged Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov to accept the Ukrainian parliament’s dismissal of President Yanukovich and its appointment of an acting president and prime minister. This follows on Susan Rice’s warning yesterday against Russian military intervention. There is a great deal riding on Moscow’s responses.
Judging from past performance–something our stock brokers warn us not to do–Russia will be deaf to American pleas. When and where pro-Russian populations have managed to carve out an area of territorial autonomy in former Soviet republics, Moscow has been unwavering in its support: witness Trans-Dniester in Moldova as well as Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia. If some of the eastern provinces of Ukraine were to resist the new authorities in Kiev and declare themselves autonomous or even independent, Moscow would be tempted to provide what support they require, including troops. They wouldn’t invade. That’s so twentieth century. They could respond to a request for assistance to prevent atrocities.
Moscow seems to be hesitating, at least for the moment. Vladimir Putin did not like Viktor Yanukovich, but he loaned him a good deal of money. Russia will want it back from the new authorities in Kiev, which could be difficult to arrange if it is occupying a portion of Ukraine. It might be better to establish decent relations and use Ukraine’s need for Russian money and natural gas to keep the whole country under Moscow’s influence, if not under its thumb, rather than settling for half a loaf, or less. The likely exception to such a choice would be Crimea, which was transferred to Ukraine only in the 1950s and hosts a big piece of the Russian navy at Sevastopol.
Now that the Sochi Olympics are over, President Putin is free to try to hive off a piece of Ukraine, if that is what he wants to do. But making trouble in a neighboring state is rarely a good strategy, however tempting tactically. Moscow doesn’t need the difficulties that could ensue from a change of borders in Europe. Federalism is a real option, as Dimitri Trenin points out:
If Dimitri doesn’t know what is going to happen, certainly I don’t either. We need to wait and see what Moscow intends to do, or not.
In the meanwhile, it would help if the new authorities in Kiev avoid moves that offend the Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine and try to widen their support base as much as possible. Their revolution faces a steep uphill climb. Making things more difficult is not wise.
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While Russia may not need any more territory, as Mr. Trenin points out, Putin sorely wants the Euroasiatic Union he plans to hold up as a replacement for the Soviet Union and a counterweight to the EU. Without Ukraine, this will mean Russia and some Stans. Ukraine is large, potentially rich, and close to European markets – it’s hard to see the EAU being much more than a joke without it, especially if Ukraine is aligned with the EU.
Our best hope may be that Putin decides to follow his previous strategy in Ukraine, when he simply gave the Orange Revolution’s unlikely team of Yushchenko and Tymoshenko time enough to fail. We, on the other hand, have to hope that in the meantime the Ukrainians have learned the first lessons of self-governance, and that the outcome will be different this time. (This http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116724/yulia-tymoshenko-shes-back-euromaidan-revolution from today’s New Republic will help explain why making Tymoshenko Prime Minister was not a good idea.)
The idea of a federation suggested by Mr. Trenin sounds eminently sensible, especially if the Crimea in particular is treated generously. This is going to require maybe more magnanimity than the new winners are feeling these days, but they should be inclined to listen politely to pointed suggestions from their potential sources of economic support. These would include not only the Western governments and international organizations, but their own oligarchs. Many of these are based in the East, but may see more opportunities in aligning with the EU than Russia at this point. And some of them – in particular, some with television stations – have been backing the opposition since the beginning of the demonstrations.
One thing in the democrats’ favor that they didn’t have before is Russia’s weakened economic position – it’s projected to grow at below the world-average rate for the next 30 years. Another newly discovered Ukrainian advantage is the massive amounts of shale gas trapped by all that lovely flat ancient seabed. It will have to be developed, of course, but look what developing the Bakken Shale has done for North Dakota’s economy.
Hope the Tremin-Serwer-Amin scenario works out. So far it seems that about the only decisive step toward reconstructing Ukraine that the present quasi-government in Kiev has been able to take has been to abolish the status of Russian as an official language, which doesn’t bode well for a peaceful outcome. If only the EU and Russia could compromise with each other on the kind of Ukraine they’d like to see, and use what could, after all, ultimately be their complementary economic clout to rein in the OUNist westerners and the post-Soviet easterners. But for that, the EU core countries would have to break with their habit of insisting on haircuts for peripheral countries in economic trouble, which might undermine haircutting in general; and Russia would have to break with its habit of defensively bullying its neighbors, which might undermine bullying in general. Still, the danger that conflict in Ukraine presents for both Europe and Russia might lead them to edge toward some kind of deal, and maybe the OUNists and the post-Soviets will after all step away from the abyss. Here’s hoping.
Amer, who is having technical trouble posting on peacefare.net today, writes: On most of the Crimea being Russian-speaking – well, about 60%, and some Russian politicians are talking about issuing Russian passports on a mass, accelerated basis. (The Serbs of northern Kosovo will remember that Putin claimed that under Russian law, he could not do this for them, a year or so ago, although Russian passports had been generously distributed to the good citizens of Abkhazia in the years preceding the 2008 invasion. But I digress.)
The original inhabitants of the Crimea were the Crimean Tatars – a Turkic, Muslim people – who were deported (like the Chechens and other groups thought to be disloyal) to Siberia during WWII and allowed to return to the area only in the 1950s. Not to reclaim their property, of course, one reason their proportion of the population is no higher than it is. Even before the deportations, relations between the Russians and the Tatars had never been good, from the time before the Crimean War when the Tatars sold Russians (among others) into slavery in the Ottoman Empire through the mass famines of the 1930s, where the Tatars suffered worse than even the Ukrainians.
All has not been forgotten or forgiven. In a TV interview reported here http://www.regnum.ru/news/polit/1770039.html, the head of the Tatar community of the Crimean Tatars in Moscow claimed that his people would oppose an attempt to return the Crimea to Russia “in every way.” The Russians, he says, are “slaves by birth,” probably having in mind the centuries of serfdom rather than sales to the Ottomans, but the Tatars are a freedom-loving people and were never slaves, he says, leaving it to the Russian listener to draw the parallel with the Muslims populations in the Caucasus and the ongoing problems they are causing the Russians.
If the politicians in Kiev can overcome their tendency to bicker and instead take advantage of an opportunity, they could profit from making the Tatars a decent offer – maybe even doing something about restoration of stolen property?
One of the reasons for what seems to be counterproductive squabbling was suggested by an article today from Gordon – http://gordonua.com/news/money/Federaciya-rabotodateley-Ukrainy-Biznes-daet-chinovnikam-vzyatok-na-160-mlrd-grn-v-god-11681.html. A high-ranking officer of the Ukrainian Employers Association is quoted as saying businesses have been paying officials 160 billion hryvnia in bribes – per year. Even if the hryvnia was worth more at the time than the new low of 10-to-the-dollar it is fast approaching, that could still be $10-15 billion. Per year. Remember, Putin’s offer of a $15 billion loan – dribbled out in tranches – was thought to be enough to stabilize the Ukrainian economy. (Along with a more realistic gas price, to be sure.)
Of course, the new positions being squabbled over may not prove as lucrative, not with the trove of documents divers rescued from the pond near Yanukovych’s over-decorated chalet now being published on the web. These detail not only the money expended on his residence, but apparently plans for the bloody putdown of the fighters in Maidan Square and the murder of their political allies. Yulya Tymoshenko may have drawn the appropriate conclusion – she’s accepted Angela Merkel’s invitation to travel to Berlin for medical treatment, and her press secretary is reported to have said she will not be seeking the presidency.