Zitat:
What Is at Stake in Ukraine
A horrible civil war—with global ramifications.
Andranik Migranyan
July 30, 2014
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In fact, Moscow's aims and problems were clearly stated long ago.
Russia's strategic line, defined by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs before the unification with Crimea, was a comprehensible formula, backed by the more prudent political analysts and strategists both in the U.S. and in the West: Russia supports the territorial integrity of Ukraine, the federalization of the country, its out-of-bloc status, and the adoption of Russian as a second state language. In this context, Ukraine would be a buffer zone between Russia and the West. It is crucial for Russia to have a friendly country in this region of high sensitivity in politico-military and ethno-cultural terms. If this order of things had been accepted by Washington and Kiev, Crimea would still be an integral part of Ukraine, and the country would not be engulfed in large-scale civil war. Yet neither Washington nor Kiev were ready for compromises. Instead, they played a zero-sum game with Russia.
I believe Russia held all the cards in the period following the unification of Crimea. Most Western politicians and analysts were ready to close their eyes to, if not yet acknowledge, the unification with Crimea and limit themselves to only symbolic sanctions if Russia stopped and did not invade Eastern and Southern Ukraine.
Russia expected its American partners to make their Ukrainian protégés accept its conditions. Unfortunately, these expectations were not met. Washington adopted another strategic line: it pushed for a consolidation of powers in Kiev in order to check Russia's influence in Ukraine and to defeat Russia. As a result, a civil war broke out in Ukraine. Although pro-Russian forces failed to establish their dominance in Odessa and Kharkov, they succeeded in Lugansk and Donetsk, where they proclaimed independent republics supported by referendums in those new formations. The pro-Russian forces regarded themselves as the core of the future Novorossiya, aspiring to unite their republics with the other regions of historical Novorossiya: Odessa, Kharkov, Dnepropetrovsk, Kherson, Nikolayev, Zaporozhie in a way leading directly to Transnistria.
Understandably, in this situation, even if Russia did not get the whole Ukraine, it would have serious influence over the significant part of it: the military-industrial potential of the East and the South, created by the USSR as an inalienable part of the Military-Industrial Complex of Russia, together with almost half of the country’s population numbering Russians and Russian-speakers, who linguistically, ethnically and culturally identify with Russia. As a result, Russia would have changed its own geopolitical and geostrategic positions in Europe and in the world. In this scenario, Russia would not maintain its control over the whole Ukrainian territory, yet it would not lose anything; on the contrary—it would gain a lot.
In another scenario, if Russia preserved Crimea and the rest of Ukraine fell under the control of anti-Russian nationalists in Kiev, under the command of Washington, the outcome of the fight for Ukraine would obviously be a serious defeat for Russia. It can easily be assumed that most Russians would be forced out of the country in a short period of time, (even today, according to Russian immigration agencies, two million people have already crossed the Russian border), while the remaining Russians would be forcefully “ukrainianized.” No one has any illusions about the national-linguistic policy of the incumbent powers in Ukraine, should they prevail in the South and East of the country.
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The new Russian tactics probably derived from the assumption that the authorities in Kiev would hardly be able to stabilize the situation: they would not achieve a military victory in Lugansk and Donetsk, which would remain huge obstacles for them and would threaten to move toward Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Odessa and spread across the entire South and East parts of the country; that the West would be unable to pull the country out of its grave economic crisis and collapse. In addition, Russia has the real power to crush the Ukrainian economy by closing its market to Ukrainian goods. Further, Europe cannot impose tangible sanctions against Russia, as, at least for now, any significant sanctions would have a negative impact on Europe itself should Russia decide to stop gas supplies to Europe in retaliation.
Thus, we can state that neither Russia nor the U.S. have given up on their strategic goals; what has changed is the tactics of achieving them...
Thus, Russia has secured its power to exert substantial influence on national politics in Ukraine without deploying its own military forces or waging a full-blown war with Ukraine. The U.S. faced even greater difficulties on the way of reaching its strategic goals given the collapse of the Ukrainian economy and the state institutions, as well as the severe internecine battles within the elite. In this context, it has became obvious that closer to fall and winter a social conflict might erupt in addition to the national and regional conflicts: Western aid to Ukraine has been based on a number of very severe economic measures such as reducing social spending, increasing public utility costs and tariffs on gas and other energy sources on the domestic market for individual consumers. All these factors combined could completely destroy the powers in Kiev and accelerate the disintegration processes of the country: given the chaos and uncontrollability, other regions, not only in the East and South, would look for salvation, giving up any real hope that Kiev would help them survive.
