The Wavering Line

There are some interesting insights into the political status and prospects of Ukraine's president-elect Poroshenko in this (NB) Valdai Club article. A couple of excerpts:

Statements made by US politicians did not have much influence on Ukrainian voters. More likely, the electorate was swayed by technologies invented by a Ukrainian spin doctor, Igor Gryniv (who was behind the electoral success of Viktor Yushchenko and still earlier planned the establishment of the Reforms and Order and Our Ukraine parties). First of all, he cleaned out the minds of Ukrainian voters and made them accept Poroshenko as a “new politician.” Next he began publishing his growing ratings and convinced the public that his client took the lead in the race. All that remained was to give voters a motivation for support and urge a first-round vote.
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The new Ukrainian government’s ability to steer an independent line with regard to the Russian Federation will depend on many factors, including the international situation. The world is volatile. Poroshenko, a flexible politician and diplomat, is unlikely to focus on just one line of behavior. I would not be surprised if the utterly pro-American politician Poroshenko turns into a no less enthusiastic pro-Russian politician, come a change of mood in the world. It’s almost like an old joke from the Stalin era: “Did you waver with regard to the Party’s general line? I wavered with the general line.”

Ukraine as Antidote

In the wake of the large gains by ultra-right wing parties in the recent European elections, Timothy Snyder suggests in the New York Review of Books that Ukraine could provide an antidote to the problem. A country that actively wants to join the European Union and is willing to work for it could help the body to rediscover its purpose:

In the Ukrainian revolution, people fought carrying the EU flag; in the Ukrainian elections, people stood in line for hours wearing EU symbols. The European Union has been enlarging since its establishment as the European Communities, and it will and should continue to do so. A promise of further enlargement would not be expensive: on the contrary, the incentives for reform and for investment would reduce the need for future aid.

By contrast, Snyder says, the voters who in Scotland, France, England, Greece, Austria, Bulgaria and elsewhere in Europe voted for a return to the nation state are living in a parallel universe, and really voted for a "separation from the world". Their detachment from reality is merely enabling Putin's scheme for the Russian domination of Europe - the Russkiy Mir - for these nationalists and advocates of "independence" also support Putin's aims and policies. However, "if Europeans voted the way Ukrainians did, Europe could count on a far more secure and prosperous future."

Russian right-wing mercenaries in Ukraine

The Winnipeg Media Centre has published a detailed survey of the leaders of Russian neo-Nazi and other extreme right wing groups currently operating in eastern Ukraine. These include the high-profile Strelkov-Girkin 'Donbass self-defence' group, but also many others that are less well known but are also trained in Russia and have a fascistic, anti-Semitic and militaristic orientation.

Ukraine: Real Deals

In Grani, Ilya Milstein writes about the aftermath and possible consequences of yesterday's Ukrainian presidential election (my tr.):

Meanwhile Tymoshenko has other plans. Her "Fatherland " party is initiating a referendum on Ukraine's accession to NATO, and it is only outwardly that this step appears risky, reckless and unwise. Well, yes, NATO does not accept states with unresolved territorial issues, but after all it is not a question of joining the alliance immediately. It is rather about scaring Putin, who has been scaring the Russians and giving himself nightmares about a terrible scenario: the entry of American cruisers into the peaceful waters of Sevastopol and the installation of American missiles on the territory of Ukraine. Now, if the issue is discussed in the Rada, the propaganda horror stories that were suitable only for justifying intervention in Crimea will acquire the traits of another geopolitical disaster.

Poroshenko himself is by no means a supporter of Ukraine's accession to NATO, but he can offer Putin an exchange. You get rid of Grandpa Babai and his RPGs, and I will calm Yulia. You stop supporting the bandits who are already building real concentration camps in our country and have effectively used them, and we will postpone the referendum on accession to NATO. You temporarily forget about Ukraine and stop blackmailing us with rising gas prices, and we will temporarily forget about Crimea. Agreed?

Kyiv's eastern strategy

Mychailo Wynnyckyj in Euromaidan PR:

Effectively, the strategy of Kyiv in the Donbas must gradually shift from waging a “hot war” to exercising “soft power” eastward – i.e. the goal must be to shift the line that formerly defined Ukraine’s electoral geography to the Russian border (or at least as far eastward and southward as possible). From this perspective, the war in eastern Ukraine becomes a civilizational war (i.e. informational, economic, cultural). The conflict is less about whether the population wishes to be Ukrainian or Russian (or about what language they speak), but rather about whether the Donbas will be a part of Europe or will continue to be (post)Soviet. Putin has made it eminently clear that he wishes to reinstate the USSR, and during the economic summit in St. Petersburg today he reiterated that he views the conflict in eastern Ukraine in geo-political terms (as engaging the US and EU), rather than as a local/regional struggle for ethnic or linguistic self-determination.

Russian army tries to break up Tatar rally

The Russian army has used military helicopters in an attempt to disrupt a small prayer rally of Crimean Tatars in Bakhchisaray, after the occupying forces banned all commemorations of the 1944 deportations under Stalin.

https://twitter.com/svaboda/status/467934317482876928/photo/1

There are similar reports from other areas of Crimea today.

Ukraine:Thinking Together

An international conference called Ukraine: Thinking Together («Мислити з Україною») is currently being held in Kyiv, with participants who include Timothy Snyder, Leon Wieseltier, Timothy Garton Ash, Adam Michnik, Slavenka Drakulić, Paul Berman and others. The conference aims to discuss Maidan and reactions to it in the context of wider questions of human rights and contemporary geopolitics, and the sessions can be followed in livestream here.

Language as a barrier to dialogue in Ukraine

Via openDemocracy

http://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia/polina-sinovets/language-as-barrier-to-dialogue-in-ukraine

Polina Sinovets  6 May 2014

The issue of language and politics has long been a problem in Ukraine. Recent developments and unrelenting Russian propaganda have made the problem centre-stage once more.

Recent events have reinvigorated the debate about the official and unofficial use in Ukraine of the Russian language, which has long been a part of Ukrainian society. Local political parties and external actors have used Russian and Ukrainian language cards during electoral campaigns, connecting language use to identity and politics to sway public opinion. After the collapse of Victor Yanukovych’s regime, Ukraine’s new parliament repealed the controversial 2012 Language Law [12] that gave Russian (and some other languages) official status in regions where they are dominant. The repeal was vetoed by Ukraine’s acting president and never came into force, but it nonetheless provoked unrest in the south and east, specifically in Sevastopol, Kharkiv, and Odessa. It also enabled Russia to accuse Ukraine of suppressing the political rights of ethnic Russians and gave Moscow the pretext for military intervention in Crimea.

Russian language and culture

In Ukraine, there are two main groups of language users, which tend to be associated with the country’s political divisions. Geographically, the first group has been based in the larger part of the country, in the south and east, which was part of the Russian Empire for hundreds of years. It associates itself historically and traditionally with Russian language and culture. At present, certain Ukrainian political parties like Rodina (a pro-Russian party based in Odessa) and Russkiy blok (an alliance of parties that includes Za Rus Edinuyu and Russko-Ukrainskiy Soyuz), as well as the transnational Russkiy mir foundation, try to connect Russia’s cultural and linguistic heritage to the influence of contemporary Russia over Ukraine.

[13]Historically the south and the east of Ukraine have associated itself with Russian language and culture. Photo cc via news168

The positions of such parties and movements are quite aggressive and radical. They consider Russian the legitimate ‘civilised’ language of the cities and Ukrainian just a ‘country dialect,’ spoiled by the intrusion of Polish linguistic and cultural heritage. Any expansion of Ukrainian language and culture is regarded negatively as an attempt to erase Slavic identity: to ‘cut Russia off from the southern seas, push it to the north, and launch the process of ultimately dismantling the Russian state’ (as described [14] [in Russian] by a member of Russkiy mir).  In their opinion, this leads to the cultural degradation of the Ukrainian population and ultimately the isolation of Russian minorities into ghettos surrounded by hostile environments.

These groups have made the term ‘Ukrainians’ synonymous with ‘enemies,’ ‘traitors,’ ‘Banderovtsy’ (a reference to the Ukrainian World War II-era nationalist leader Stepan Bandera), and a ‘fifth column’ helping the West to weaken Russia. They insist that Russians are segregated in Ukraine. They regard the 2012 language law as only a very modest step toward the protection of Russian-language rights, because it also provides equal rights for other regional languages, alongside the one with ‘undeniable superiority over all other European languages’ (words, ascribed to the poet Alexander Pushkin, written on advertising billboards all over Odessa). This extreme approach does not support dialogue or compromise, so represents a serious conflict that cannot be won.

At the same time, one of this group’s arguments is difficult to ignore: statistically, the Russian-speaking ‘minority’ in Ukraine makes up 30-40 percent of the population. This is enough for Russian to be considered a state language, similar, for example, to the evolution of English as an official language in British colonies like India, Ireland, and Malta. Surveys conducted in 2013 suggested that Ukrainian self-identification often includes use of the Russian language: 35 percent of respondents called Russian their native language and nearly half of respondents claimed Russian was an easier language for them to speak (another 13 percent said they spoke Russian and Ukrainian equally well). This is one of the reasons why the influence of Russia on the political life of Ukraine is so strong: Russia’s questionable policy of ‘protecting Russian populations’ outside its borders does not apply only to ethnic Russians but also to Russian-speakers. As we have seen in Crimea, this approach may be used as a pretext for military aggression against a sovereign state.

The Russian Orthodox Church also brings its influence to bear in the sphere of language politics. It does this, in particular, through the concept of ‘Russkiy mir,’ according to which Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians constitute the so-called ‘Russian World,’ a single civilisational space united by Russian language and culture. This concept tries to revive the unanimity of the three nations, harking back to the Russian Empire and Soviet times and also setting them collectively apart from Western civilisation. Appearing to justify Russia’s military intervention against Ukraine, a Russian Orthodox Church spokesperson spoke [15] approvingly of a past statement by the Church-backed World Russian People’s Assembly that ‘the Russian people is a split nationality on its historical territory and has the right to be reunified as a single governmental body.’

[16]The Russian Orthodox church actively promotes the idea of 'Russkiy mir', a civilisational space united by Russian language.

Elections are always a prime time for putting forward pro-Russian arguments. That Russian should be made the second state language was one of the main pledges of President Leonid Kuchma in 1994. It was a gambit that Victor Yanukovych and his Party of Regions also used, resulting in the adoption of the 2012 language law. When the Ukrainian parliament initially reversed this law, after deposing Yanukovych, Russia used it as justification for their occupation of Crimea ‘to defend Russians’ on Ukrainian soil.

Ukrainian language and culture

On the other side of Ukraine, however, is a second group—those for whom the unlimited spread of the Russian language means a certain displacement of Ukrainian. This group has been associated with Western Ukraine, where national traditions are very strong, and also with Kyiv, where national ideology is being formed today. The group does not accept Russian as a second official language, as they believe it interferes with the construction of a Ukrainian nation and state. Members of this group consider the Ukrainian language is deprived of proper status and opportunities. In particular, they say that language is the foundation for building the nation, and the ubiquitous use of Russian kills this possibility by marginalising Ukrainian to a narrow area of domestic communication. They consider that the Ukrainian language has to be fostered by the conscious limitation of Russian, the day-to-day language for culture, information, and business in the largest Ukrainian cities. Russian linguistic soft power has played an active part in perpetuating the dominance of the Russian language.

A dangerous mistake

The attempt to repeal the language law unleashed the hardcore positions of both language groups. Just when it was necessary to unify the nation, the Verkhovna Rada (parliament) made a very dangerous mistake. The right-wing nationalist Right Sector movement insisted [17] on the necessity of de-Russifying Ukraine while Russkiy blok rose to defend the rights of Russian-speakers against armed Banderovtsy.

However, this ideological fight is hollow in the face of reality. To begin with, the repeal never came into effect since the acting president of Ukraine, Oleksandr Turchinov, rejected it. Moreover, Ukraine ratified the European Charter on Regional or Minority Languages in 1996 and gave Russian the status of a regional language in many parts of the south and east of Ukraine. The sole effect of the language law was to tip the existing legal balance toward Russian. Repealing the law would only have levelled the playing field again.

[18]Ukraine's Right Sector has insisted on the need to de-Russify the country. Photo cc: Yuriy Kvach

Today, the possibility of actually displacing the Russian language throughout Ukraine is unimaginable and unrealistic. The current challenge to surmount is the exploitation by political parties and actors of language issues to destroy dialogue and integration.

One popular cliché is that a Russian-speaker must be closely connected politically to Russia. Surveys cast doubt on this claim. According to a June 2013 poll conducted in the city of Donetsk, the number of local respondents between 18 and 45 years old who identify as Ukrainians ranges between 60 to 75 percent, while 99 percent of all respondents preferred to take the survey in Russian. Is not a bilingual Ukraine feasible? A large ‘Russian-speaking Ukrainian Nationalists (RUN)’ group conducts discussions in Russian on the popular social network VKontakte. Its members consider Ukrainian the only official language but say that the transition to Ukrainian should be gradual and that no languages should be suppressed or humiliated on the territory of Ukraine.

Conclusion

As Ukraine finds its feet, it is a mistake for those on either side of the language divide to politicise linguistic matters. There is far more to nation-building than language. Only a small part of the Ukrainian population see themselves as being part of Russia—according to an April 2014 survey [19] [in Russian] by the Kiev International Institute of Sociology conducted in the south and east of Ukraine, only 8.4 percent consider that Ukraine and Russia should be united in one state and only 15.4 percent support the unification of their region with Russia.

The majority of educated and urban-living Russian-speakers in Ukraine demonstrated strong solidarity with their Ukrainian-language compatriots, standing together against Russian aggression and the attempts to divide Ukrainian society and territory. The situation with the population in the small towns is slightly different.  Passive, afraid and confused, today they present an easy prey for any political actors, from pro-Russia agents offering them money or communists to Russian intelligence and propaganda.

This article was originally published as PONARS Eurasia policy memo no. 318 in April 2014

Russian troop locations near Estonia's borders

Kaarel Kaas, editor of Estonia's Diplomaatia monthly, has compiled a detailed survey of the state of Russia's conventional forces near Estonia's borders.

The failed lingua franca

Leonidas Donskis, writing in New Eastern Europe:

The Russian language could have become a lingua franca of Eastern Europe. It failed irreversibly precisely because Putin and his regime stripped the political vocabulary of Russia of its potent moral imagination and alternative potential. What is left is not even the banality of evil practiced by the Kremlin with no impunity and in the moral and political void created by the West and its impotence – the West that attempts to reset relations with a regime hostile to every single political and moral sensitivity of the EU and the US. Instead, it is the evil of banality whose essence lies in exercising power for no meaningful reason and with no love for humanity.

Breedlove: Putin may not need to invade Ukraine

Instead, Russian President Vladimir Putin may be able to annex pieces of Ukraine simply by encouraging unrest among pro-Russian forces inside the country, said Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, who commands U.S. and European NATO forces.

http://www.nationaljournal.com/defense/nato-commander-says-russia-doesn-t-need-to-invade-to-take-over-eastern-ukraine-20140502

Hrytsenko: a third world war has already begun

In Ukraine, Civil Position leader and ex-defence minister Anatoly Hrytsenko writes that Putin’s current foreign policy aims include much more than an annexation of Crimea and East Ukraine. Putin wants the whole of Ukraine, and much more besides. Hrytsenko says that the Russian president has decided to demonstrate to the world by his aggression that international law no longer has any validity and that money and power are the only factors that have meaning in the modern world.

Hrytsenko considers that the fears of Western nations that by confronting Putin they will provoke a third world war lag a long way behind the reality of what has actually happened: Putin has already begun such a war, and the West will need to take swift and decisive action to stop it.

Pointing to recent threatening statements from Moscow about the rights of Russian-speakers in the Baltic States, to the movement of heavy artillery and missile launchers to Russia’s borders with Moldova and Transnistria, to the direction of  strategic bombers down the Baltic and North Sea, to the redeployment of fighter and long-range aviation including Su-27s, MiG-29s and Tu-22M3s to the Crimean peninsula, to the distribution of airborne assault teams, sabotage units and  covert agents throughout Ukraine, and probably also into neighbouring countries, Hrytsenko says that Putin has made no secret of his plans: they are already in operation, without any restrictions.

The West’s attempts to slow the aggression by means of negotiations, diplomacy and economic sanctions have not been effective, Hrytsenko warns. To deter further aggression, the West will need to  form an anti-Putin coalition and focus all  available means and capabilities on taking practical military steps. These should in the first instance be the relocation and deployment around the territory of Ukraine (Poland, Slovakia , Hungary, Romania , Bulgaria, Northern Turkey) of a powerful NATO aviation group (80-100 F-16s and F-15s), a carrier strike group in the Mediterranean (70+ carrier-based aircraft) plus 7-8 warships in the Black Sea (destroyers and cruisers with powerful air defence) and several airborne brigades - to establish reliable control over Ukraine’s air and sea space in order to prevent  Russia from building up additional forces and halt the invasion that is now in progress.

Voices of Ukraine

Daniella Peled of the London-based Institute for War and Peace Reporting (IWPR) has interviewed the English-language editor of Voice of Ukraine, a volunteer-run translation project that is proving to be a vital resource in the Ukraine crisis, providing cross-checked reports and in-depth analysis:

It started in early December 2013 as a social network project when Euromaidan SOS put out a call to translate a text for the OSCE, and the Euro-Maidan As It Is  Facebook page was created by one founder to post such texts to, and very soon after a MaidanNeedsTranslators  Facebook page was started by the other founder in Ukraine as a companion, so translators could take on articles posted there for translation. 

At the beginning, there were two or three people working on the project. Now there is a core group of 15 coordinators and editors, with between eight and 11 doing most of the daily work. Beyond this core are many translators who are not coordinators but who put in a lot of time translating on a regular basis.

Sofi Oksanen's speech at PEN World Voices

Should Ukraine hold a presidential election on May 25?

In an article published in Die Zeit, but apparently translated from English, political analyst Andreas Umland thinks it would be wise for Ukraine to cancel this month's planned presidential election, which he believes could turn into a political disaster that would play into Russia's hands:

Ein Scheitern der Wahl würde Moskau die Möglichkeit geben, die Legitimität der Kiewer Staatsgewalt auf Jahre hinaus infrage zu stellen. Eine niedrige Wahlbeteiligung in der Ostukraine würde Putins Propagandamaschine das Futter liefern, um eine Teilung der Ukraine in zwei Staaten zu propagieren. Das Scheitern der Wahl könnte gar als Vorwand für einen Anschluss ostukrainischer Gebiete an Russland nach dem Muster der Krim-Annexion benutzt werden.

A failure of the election would give Moscow the opportunity to put into question the legitimacy of Kievan state power for years to come. A low voter turnout in eastern Ukraine would be fuel for Putin's propaganda machine to call for a division of Ukraine into two states. The failure of the election could even be used as a pretext for an annexation of Eastern Ukraine by Russia after the pattern of the Crimean annexation.

Umland holds out several alternative ideas, including a switch in the near future from a presidential system to a parliamentary one, and also a reform of Ukraine's constitution.