Crimea voted ‘Out’. Yatsenyuk should offer East Ukraine the same choice
Jonathan Lindsell, 17 March 2014
Both Ukraine’s territorial integrity and Russia’s respect for the 1994 Budapest memorandum are dead in the water. The EU and Obama are powerless to stop further land grabs. Avoiding bloodshed and establishing stability is imperative.
While Kiev still controls the mainland territory, it should itself announce referenda in the eastern provinces, and invite a large international observer force (OSCE, UN) to keep the peace, regulate these referenda and ensure Russia does not import protesters/voters or agitate the regions.
These referenda should not be ‘snap’, but leave a few months for campaigning, debate and civil conversation to take place. The question could ask: ‘Should x region remain in Ukraine or become independent?’, with the independent states able to negotiate entry into Russia. Unlike in Crimea, there must be a ‘remain Ukrainian’ option.
At the same time, Arseniy Yatsenyuk and his government should strive, with the international community, to show that Ukraine (‘Rump Ukraine’) does not and will not persecute Russian speakers, ethnic Russians or others. This is one justification for the international observers – averting the fear of nationalist-fascism.
While Moscow is not currently communicating with Yatsenyuk’s interim government, informal channels should be used to impress on Russia the importance of respecting the rights and freedoms of the Crimean Tartars, many of whom boycotted Sunday’s referendum. Not doing so could ferment a Chechen situation.
If a dialogue between with Moscow can be established, Kiev should aim for the peaceful and unimpeded removal of its armed forces from the numerous mini sieges across the Crimean peninsula, into mainland Ukraine.
Russian troops are massed on the eastern border, performing huge ‘exercises’. Their justification for occupying Crimea (protecting Russian speakers from Kiev’s fascists) applies equally to Donetsk. Call my proposal defeatist by all means – it’s very easy for me to suggest breaking up a country I know little about from an office in London – but from all I can see following the conflict, Western pressure isn’t having even miniscule effect on Putin. Eastern Ukrainian cities like Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk and Kharkiv are in chaos.
My colleague said I’m advocating appeasement: I don’t think so. Appeasement is already happening. It’s clear that there’s severe dislocation in the East, and simply hoping the Putin’s ambitions go no further than Crimea is hardly constructive. Yatsenyuk’s government should get on the front foot, act in a stable and statesmanlike manner, and avert war. This way it will retain control of all parts of the country that genuinely want to be Ukrainian anyway.
A split could be best for both ‘halves’. As we’ve seen since 2004, Ukrainian presidential politics is largely a pendulum between east-facing and west-facing leaders. This reduces the importance of constructive policy differentiation (e.g. a socialist – capitalist split). Whoever is in, nearly half the country is unsettled, and not to mention the steady stench of corruption. Separated, Western Ukraine could embrace Europe and the East could join Russia. It’s a messy compromise, but might well be the safest.
I am a great believer in natural spheres of influence. Ukraine including the Crimea are indubitably part of Russia’s sphere of influence. Western interference can only be futile at best and dangerous at worst.
There really should be no debate over the position of Crimea. It is not Ukrainian having been gifted to Ukraine by Khrushchev. If it wishes to secede from the Ukraine it should be allowed to do so without any Western huffing and puffing.
There is also the broad strategic mistake of continually trying to expand NATO and the EU towards Russia. Any state would get twitchy if powers at best neutral and at worst hostile to you acted in such a way. Russia has its natural interests and defence concerns and the West would do well to remember that.
Arguably this is the most fissile situation involving Russia and the West since the Cuban Missile crisis and of crises involving Europe directly, perhaps the most important since the Berlin Airlift in 1949. I say since 1949 because that was an event which was much more dangerous than the Hungarian uprising of 1956 and the Czechoslovak invasion 1968 for at the time of the Berlin airlift the atomic age was barely begun and bombs still had to be delivered by propeller driven bombers. It would have been very difficult for the USA – the only atomic power to actually use atomic weapons against the Soviet Union. By 1956 the nuclear age had arrived with missile delivery system in the hands of both the USA and Russia,.