Ukraine held elections recently to give the government of president Pedro Poroshenko a mandate to re-think Ukraine’s re-alignment move toward Europe, and resolve the internal political turmoil and the ongoing civil war in the Eastern regions. The elections were supposed to prove democratically that the elected government in Kiev is the only legal authority to determine the fate of Crimea (already annexed by Russia) as well as the split with Ukraine of the provinces Donesk and Luhansk, which declared independence and aligned themselves with Russia.
On the other side is Russia, which -using the same argument- claims that if elections were sacred, the overthrow of the formerly elected Ukrainian president Victor Yanukovich was illegal too. The simplified analogy here is this: Ukrainian pro-Nazi and Right Wing parties overthrew the democratically elected president by force, and we (Russia) are bound to protect the majority vote legacy of that election from the unlawful extremists. If those extremists want to align their territory with the West, they can do that. But we won’t allow them to drag along by force those who want to stay back here. That is the position of Russia, and it is democratically legal too – as I shall elaborate later.
Pedro Poroshenko was elected because he promised to pacify militarily the rebellious Eastern regions, and reclaim Crimea -already annexed by Russia. Crimea was Russian territory gifted to Ukraine by the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in 1953 in a Communist comradery gesture to Ukraine for being an “integral part” of the Soviet Union. But when the Ukrainian Right Wingers overthrew Victor Yanukovich to make Ukraine “an integral part of Europe,” a disgusted Putin obviously thought: Our former land won’t be “an integral part of Europe” because the former disciples of Adolf Hitler want to. It stays here, where it belongs. The repossession, therefore, was legitimate. Also legitimate was the declaration of autonomy by the Donesk and Luhansk regions inhabited mostly by Russian nationals. If the Ukrainian rights wingers and Nazi sympathizers want to ally themselves with the West, they were free to do so. But they couldn’t pull from the nose other nationals that wanted to keep their identity and allegiance in the land of their origin. They affirmed that popular will with elections that they won overwhelmingly. The popular will mandate was that Crimea, Donesk and Luhansk do not want to be “an integral part” of Europe. Under any genuine constitution, the voters right is inalienable and protected.
Politics being the art of “Who gets What and How,” Pedro Poroshenko campaigned and elected on a promise to Western Ukrainians to retake Crimea, and bring Donesk and Luhannsk under the Western Ukrainians control – militarily if necessary. But Crimea had already been annexed and protected by the Russian army, and Donesk’s and Luhansk’s well-armed by Russia militias defeated the Ukrainian army. The West retaliated with sanctions against Russia in a vain effort to reverse the Ukrainian losses, but 87% of Russians approved their president’s Vladimir Putin policy on Ukraine. Russians would certainly do with some commercial inconveniences, but their national pride stands above them.
Ukraine today is the playground of an East vs. West “geopolitical hard-ball” that has been playing out since the Ukrainian right wing mobs overthrow of Victor Yanukovich. Ukraine unraveled after his overthrow because it was not only instigated by the West, but also European parliamentarians – including the German Foreign Minister, who traveled to Ukraine and joined the Ukrainian Right Wingers demonstrations against Yanukovich. Behind them came U.S. lawmakers to offer their support too. Diplomatic protocols of non- interference into the internal affairs of other countries were portrayed by the Western media propaganda as a fight for democracy in Ukraine – even though Yanukovich was just freshly elected – not a dictator. Why the European parliamentarians and the U.S. lawmakers did not join the Arab Springs demonstrations to overthrow dictators? Because the Arab dictators were their stooges, whereas Yanukovich wasn’t. The West thought that if Yanukovich was overthrown, Ukraine would fall into their lap without firing a shot. And Yanukovich did fall, and Ukraine fell into their lap – but in the process it became maimed! The adage: “Be careful what you wish. You might get it!’ haunts now both the West and its new friends in Kiev.
Ukraine is now in complete disarray, and the West scuttles to make it whole again, but Russia is not forgiving. To do so it would set a precedent of buckling under pressure, and that will encourage the West to get involved in other activities detrimental to Russia in the future. The “Cold War” is not over. Ukraine is the second former Soviet State that the West has tried to detach from Russia. The first was Georgia in 2008, whose president Mikhail Saakashvili was lured by the West to take 2 autonomous regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia by force, and then join the Nato which then will protect the Georgian annexation militarily from Russia. That plan turned into a fiasco when Russia responded militarily immediately and defeated the Georgian invading army. It then allowed those regions to declare independence from Georgia with Russian protection. The same scenario is now playing out in Donesk and Luhank, with Russian protection. Historical ignorance in politics is costly because those who don’t know history repeat the errors of the past. Count the West’s and the Ukrainian leaders as such for the current turmoil in Ukraine.
Can Poroshenko make Ukraine whole again? No. The citizens of any region have the right to declare independence, as the recent Scotland ballot proved, and as the Spanish Catalonia plans to vote for independence from Spain does. The West, therefore, cannot claim that the elections in Crimea, Donesk, and Luhansk that overwhelmingly approved independence from Ukraine have been illegal. If such elections are legal in Europe, Canada (Quebec) and elsewhere, why are they not legal in Ukraine? Any state that can protect itself is sovereign Aristotle tells us. He even mention Heraclea in the Black Sea as such a sovereign state. Heraclea’s history in that region is a good omen to Crimea, Donest and Luhansk. They were born with superb democratic birth certificates, and they are much better protected!
Nikos Retsos, retired professor