It is freezing cold in Kiev, legendary city of golden
domes on the banks of Dnieper River – cradle of ancient Russian
civilisation and the most charming of East European capitals. It is a
comfortable and rather prosperous place, with hundreds of small and cosy
restaurants, neat streets, sundry parks and that magnificent river. The
girls are pretty and the men are sturdy. Kiev is more relaxed than
Moscow, and easier on the wallet. Though statistics say the Ukraine is
broke and its people should be as poor as Africans, in reality they
aren't doing too badly, thanks to their fiscal imprudence. The
government borrowed and spent freely, heavily subsidised housing and
heating, and they brazenly avoided devaluation of the national currency
and the austerity program prescribed by the IMF. This living on credit
can go only so far: the Ukraine was doomed to default on its debts next
month or sooner, and this is one of the reasons for the present
commotion.
A tug-of-war between the East and the West for the
future of Ukraine lasted over a month, and has ended for all practical
purposes in a resounding victory for Vladimir Putin, adding to his
previous successes in Syria and Iran. The trouble began when the
administration of President Yanukovich went looking for credits to
reschedule its loans and avoid default. There were no offers. They
turned to the EC for help; the EC, chiefly Poland and Germany, seeing
that the Ukrainian administration was desperate, prepared an association
agreement of unusual severity.
The EC is quite hard on its new East European
members, Latvia, Romania, Bulgaria et al.: these countries had their
industry and agriculture decimated, their young people working menial
jobs in Western Europe, their population drop exceeded that of the WWII.
But the association agreement offered to the Ukraine
was even worse. It would turn the Ukraine into an impoverished colony of
the EC without giving it even the dubious advantages of membership (such
as freedom of work and travel in the EC). In desperation, Yanukovich
agreed to sign on the dotted line, in vain hopes of getting a large
enough loan to avoid collapse. But the EC has no money to spare – it has
to provide for Greece, Italy, Spain. Now Russia entered the picture. At
the time, relations of the Ukraine and Russia were far from good.
Russians had become snotty with their oil money, the Ukrainians blamed
their troubles on Russians, but Russia was still the biggest market for
Ukrainian products.
For Russia, the EC agreement meant trouble: currently
the Ukraine sells its output in Russia with very little customs
protection; the borders are porous; people move freely across the
border, without even a passport. If the EC association agreement were
signed, the EC products would flood Russia through the Ukrainian window
of opportunity. So Putin spelled out the rules to Yanukovich: if you
sign with the EC, Russian tariffs will rise. This would put some 400,000
Ukrainians out of work right away. Yanukovich balked and refused to sign
the EC agreement at the last minute. (I predicted this in my report from
Kiev full three weeks before it happened, when nobody believed it – a
source of pride).
The EC, and the US standing behind it, were quite
upset. Besides the loss of potential economic profit, they had another
important reason: they wanted to keep Russia farther away from Europe,
and they wanted to keep Russia weak. Russia is not the Soviet Union, but
some of the Soviet disobedience to Western imperial designs still
lingers in Moscow: be it in Syria, Egypt, Vietnam, Cuba, Angola,
Venezuela or Zimbabwe, the Empire can’t have its way while the Russian
bear is relatively strong. Russia without the Ukraine can’t be really
powerful: it would be like the US with its Mid-western and Pacific
states chopped away. The West does not want the Ukraine to prosper, or
to become a stable and strong state either, so it cannot join Russia and
make it stronger. A weak, poor and destabilised Ukraine in
semi-colonial dependence to the West with some NATO bases is the best
future for the country, as perceived by Washington or Brussels.
Angered by this last-moment-escape of Yanukovich, the
West activated its supporters. For over a month, Kiev has been besieged
by huge crowds bussed from all over the Ukraine, bearing a local strain
of the Arab Spring in the far north. Less violent than Tahrir, their
Maidan Square became a symbol of struggle for the European strategic
future of the country. The Ukraine was turned into the latest battle
ground between the US-led alliance and a rising Russia. Would it be a
revanche for Obama’s
Syria debacle, or another heavy strike at fading American hegemony?
The simple division into “pro-East” and “pro-West”
has been complicated by the heterogeneity of the Ukraine. The loosely
knit country of differing regions is quite similar in its makeup to the
Yugoslavia of old. It is another post-Versailles hotchpotch of a country
made up after the First World War of bits and pieces, and made
independent after the Soviet collapse in 1991. Some parts of this
“Ukraine” were incorporated by Russia 500 years ago, the Ukraine proper
(a much smaller parcel of land, bearing this name) joined Russia 350
years ago, whilst the Western Ukraine (called the “Eastern Regions”) was
acquired by Stalin in 1939, and the Crimea was incorporated in the
Ukrainian Soviet Republic by Khrushchev in 1954.
The Ukraine is as Russian as the South-of-France is
French and as Texas and California are American. Yes, some hundreds
years ago, Provence was independent from Paris, - it had its own
language and art; while Nice and Savoy became French rather recently.
Yes, California and Texas joined the Union rather late too. Still, we
understand that they are – by now – parts of those larger countries, ifs
and buts notwithstanding. But if they were forced to secede, they would
probably evolve a new historic narrative stressing the French ill
treatment of the South in the Cathar Crusade, or dispossession of
Spanish and Russian residents of California.
Accordingly, since the Ukraine’s independence, the
authorities have been busy nation-building, enforcing a single official
language and creating a new national myth for its 45 million
inhabitants. The crowds milling about the Maidan were predominantly
(though not exclusively) arrivals from Galicia, a mountainous county
bordering with Poland and Hungary, 500 km (300 miles) away from Kiev,
and natives of the capital refer to the Maidan gathering as a “Galician
occupation”.
Like the fiery Bretons, the Galicians are fierce
nationalists, bearers of a true Ukrainian spirit (whatever that
means). Under Polish and Austrian rule for centuries, whilst the Jews
were economically powerful, they are a strongly anti-Jewish and
anti-Polish lot, and their modern identity centred around their support
for Hitler during the WWII, accompanied by the ethnic cleansing of their
Polish and
Jewish neighbours. After the WWII, the remainder of pro-Hitler
Galician SS fighters were adopted by US Intelligence, re-armed and
turned into a guerrilla force against the Soviets. They added an
anti-Russian line to their two ancient hatreds and kept fighting the
“forest war” until 1956, and these ties between the Cold Warriors have
survived the thaw.
After 1991, when the independent Ukraine was created,
in the void of state-building traditions, the Galicians were lauded as
'true Ukrainians’, as they were the only Ukrainians who ever wanted
independence. Their language was used as the basis of a new national
state language, their traditions became enshrined on the state level.
Memorials of Galician Nazi collaborators and mass murderers Stepan
Bandera and Roman Shukhevych peppered the land, often provoking the
indignation of other Ukrainians. The Galicians played an important part
in the 2004 Orange Revolution as well, when the results of presidential
elections were declared void and the pro-Western candidate Mr Yuschenko
got the upper hand in the re-run.
However, in 2004, many Kievans also supported
Yuschenko, hoping for the Western alliance and a bright new future. Now,
in 2013, the city's support for the Maidan was quite low, and the people
of Kiev complained loudly about the mess created by the invading
throngs: felled trees, burned benches, despoiled buildings and a lot of
biological waste. Still, Kiev is home to many NGOs; city intellectuals
receive generous help from the US and EC. The old comprador spirit is
always strongest in the capitals.
For the East and Southeast of the Ukraine, the
populous and heavily industrialised regions, the proposal of association
with the EC is a no-go, with no ifs, ands or buts. They produce coal,
steel, machinery, cars, missiles, tanks and aircraft. Western imports
would erase Ukrainian industry right off the map, as the EC officials
freely admit. Even the Poles, hardly a paragon of industrial
development, had the audacity to say to the Ukraine: we’ll do the
technical stuff, you'd better invest in agriculture. This is easier to
say than to do: the EC has a lot of regulations that make Ukrainian
products unfit for sale and consumption in Europe. Ukrainian experts
estimated their expected losses for entering into association with the
EC at anything from 20 to 150 billion euros.
For Galicians, the association would work fine. Their
speaker at the Maidan called on the youth to ‘go where you can get
money’ and do not give a damn for industry. They make their income in
two ways: providing bed-and breakfast rooms for Western tourists and
working in Poland and Germany as maids and menials. They hoped they
would get visa-free access to Europe and make a decent income for
themselves. Meanwhile, nobody offered them a visa-waiver arrangement.
The Brits mull over leaving the EC, because of the Poles who flooded
their country; the Ukrainians would be too much for London. Only the
Americans, always generous at somebody’s else expense, demanded the EC
drop its visa requirement for them.
While the Maidan was boiling, the West sent its
emissaries, ministers and members of parliament to cheer the Maidan
crowd, to call for President Yanukovich to resign and for a revolution
to install pro-Western rule. Senator McCain went there and made a few
firebrand speeches. The EC declared Yanukovich “illegitimate” because so
many of his citizens demonstrated against him. But when millions of
French citizens demonstrated against their president, when Occupy Wall
Street was violently dispersed, nobody thought the government of France
or the US president had lost legitimacy…
Victoria Nuland, the Assistant Secretary of State,
shared her biscuits with the demonstrators, and demanded from the
oligarchs support for the “European cause” or their businesses would
suffer. The Ukrainian oligarchs are very wealthy, and they prefer the
Ukraine as it is, sitting on the fence between the East and the West.
They are afraid that the Russian companies will strip their assets
should the Ukraine join the Customs Union, and they know that they are
not competitive enough to compete with the EC. Pushed now by Nuland,
they were close to falling on the EC side.
Yanukovich was in big trouble. The default was
rapidly approaching. He annoyed the pro-Western populace, and he
irritated his own supporters, the people of the East and Southeast. The
Ukraine had a real chance of collapsing into anarchy. A far-right
nationalist party, Svoboda (Liberty), probably the nearest thing to the
Nazi party to arise in Europe since 1945, made a bid for power. The EC
politicians accused Russia of pressurising the Ukraine; Russian missiles
suddenly emerged in the western-most tip of Russia, a few minutes flight
from Berlin. The Russian armed forces discussed the US strategy of a
“disarming first strike”. The tension was very high.
Edward Lucas, the Economist's international
editor and author of
The New Cold War, is a hawk of the Churchill and Reagan variety. For
him, Russia is an enemy, whether ruled by Tsar, by Stalin or by Putin.
He
wrote: “It is no exaggeration to say that the [Ukraine] determines
the long-term future of the entire former Soviet Union. If Ukraine
adopts a Euro-Atlantic orientation, then the Putin regime and its
satrapies are finished… But if Ukraine falls into Russia's grip, then
the outlook is bleak and dangerous... Europe's own security will also be
endangered. NATO is already struggling to protect the Baltic states and
Poland from the integrated and increasingly impressive military forces
of Russia and Belarus. Add Ukraine to that alliance, and a headache
turns into a nightmare.”
In this cliff-hanging situation, Putin made his
pre-emptive strike. At a meeting in the Kremlin, he agreed to buy
fifteen billion euros worth of Ukrainian Eurobonds and cut the natural
gas price by a third. This meant there would be no default; no massive
unemployment; no happy hunting ground for the neo-Nazi thugs of Svoboda;
no cheap and plentiful Ukrainian prostitutes and menials for the Germans
and Poles; and Ukrainian homes will be warm this Christmas. Better yet,
the presidents agreed to reforge their industrial cooperation. When
Russia and Ukraine formed a single country, they built spaceships;
apart, they can hardly launch a naval ship. Though unification isn’t on
the map yet, it would make sense for both partners. This artificially
divided country can be united, and it would do a lot of good for both of
their populaces, and for all people seeking freedom from US hegemony.
There are a lot of difficulties ahead: Putin and
Yanukovich are not friends, Ukrainian leaders are prone to renege, the
US and the EC have a lot of resources. But meanwhile, it is a victory to
celebrate this Christmastide. Such victories keep Iran safe from US
bombardment, inspire the Japanese to demand removal of Okinawa base,
encourage those seeking closure of Guantanamo jail, cheer up Palestinian
prisoners in Israeli prisons, frighten the
NSA and CIA and allow French Catholics to march against Hollande’s
child-trade laws.
***
What is the secret of Putin’s success? Edward Lucas
said, in an interview to the pro-Western Ekho Moskvy radio:
“Putin had a great year - Snowden, Syria, Ukraine. He checkmated Europe.
He is a great player: he notices our weaknesses and turns them into his
victories. He is good in diplomatic bluff, and in the game of Divide and
Rule. He makes the Europeans think that the US is weak, and he convinced
the US that Europeans are useless”.
I
would offer an alternative explanation. The winds and hidden currents of
history respond to those who feel their way. Putin is no less likely a
roguish leader of global resistance than Princess Leia or Captain Solo
were in Star Wars. Just the time for such a man is ripe.
Unlike Solo, he is not an adventurer. He is a prudent
man. He does not try his luck, he waits, even procrastinates. He did not
try to change regime in Tbilisi in 2008, when his troops were already on
the outskirts of the city. He did not try his luck in Kiev, either. He
has spent many hours in many meetings with Yanukovich whom he supposedly
personally dislikes.
Like Captain Solo, Putin is a man who is ready to pay
his way, full price, and such politicians are rare. “Do you know what is
the proudest word you will ever hear from an Englishman's mouth?”, asked
a James Joyce character, and answered: “His proudest boast is I paid
my way.” Those were Englishmen of another era, long before the likes
of Blair, et al.
While McCain and Nuland, Merkel and Bildt speak of
the European choice for the Ukraine, none of them is ready to pay for
it. Only Russia is ready to pay her way, in the Joycean sense, whether
in cash, as now, or in blood, as in WWII.
Putin is also a magnanimous man. He celebrated his
Ukrainian victory and forthcoming Christmas by forgiving his personal
and political enemies and setting them free: the Pussy Riot punks,
Khodorkovsky the murderous oligarch, rioters… And his last press
conference he carried out in Captain Solo self-deprecating mode, and
this, for a man in his position, is a very good sign.
Israel Shamir reports from Moscow for Counterpunch,
comments on RT and pens a regular column in Russia's largest daily, KP.
He can be reached at
adam@israelshamir.net
No comments:
Post a Comment