Merkel's Explosive Interview Die Zeit | 96 comments (96 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: Pearl Clutching (4.00 / 2)

There are quite a few points I'll have to disagree with. The matter of the EU association was not "democratically settled". Yes, there was an offer, but among the EU demands was the acceptance of an IMF program that would among other things have stopped gas subsidies. Together with a loss of their primary market - you remember the Brexit primary color slides about being part of exactly one trade block? - it would have led to a massive jump in poverty and the end of eastern Ukraine's heavy industry. Yanukovich's electoral base would have suffered grievously. Of course the country was split about that, you can see the East - West divide on all election maps but the Russian offer was just objectively better at that point.

You claim Ukraine was de-facto under Russian control, but I really don't see how that is a fair characterization. After the fall of the USSR you have the successor regimes that are more or less run as extraction colonies by Western institutions, Russia certainly wasn't in any position to impose anything on its neighbors. Even after Russia stabilized the big change in the political system in Ukraine was the orange boys and girls taking over, that's hardly Russia running the country, is it? Of course after they didn't deliver and fell out among themselves the Eastern based Yanukovich came to lead the country. What's the timeline of "de-facto" Russian control you propose? Between the election of Yanukovich and Maidan? The mythical 300 years of oppression the sons of Bandera in Canada like to imagine?

Of course we have no proof whether the Donbas militias were cooked up in some Kremlin plot, but the material basis was there and the Russians hardly were expecting Maidan. Why would the people of Donbas accept the new government that replaced the one they voted inoverwhelmingly? The one that very publicly wanted to clean Ukraine of their language? That banned the communist party that still had a decent presence in the East?
You bring up the American civil war, though what is it supposed to tell me with the moral content stripped out? The Donbas militias aren't fighting for chattel slavery.

by generic on Fri Dec 30th, 2022 at 12:02:59 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Pearl Clutching (none / 1)

I've been going over election results in Ukraine since the end of the last century, and they are characterised by stability in the east (support for the Communist Party, then to the pro-Russian parties), and extreme volatility in the rest of the country. The Ukrainian national-fascists (Svoboda) peaked at 10% in 2012, and participated in government during 2014, then disappeared into insignificance; the Orangists also rose and fell. The Macronist Zelenskiy appeared out of nowhere and gained an absolute majority.

In 2014, the pro-Russian parties controlled both the presidency and the Parliament. It was they who were negotiating with the European Union and had agreed to sign the association agreement, before suddenly balking and signing a deal with Russia.

It is quite surprising that they should have negotiated such a bad deal with the EU (we agree on the fact that it was a lousy deal); my retrospective suspicion that they did not negotiate in good faith, but had prepared the alternative deal with Putin.

It does not surprise me that the Russians did not expect Maidan. As the events of this year make clear, their intelligence is not as good as they think.

Why would the people of Donbas accept the new government that replaced the one they voted in overwhelmingly?

Why would anyone accept an election they didn't win? In fact, (setting aside the parts that couldn't vote : Crimea and the occupied Donbas), the pro-Russians were disenfranchised by the voluntary withdrawal of the Party of the Regions from the parliamentary elections of 2014 : ostensibly because they claimed that the elections lacked legitimacy because the people in the seceding regions couldn't vote! A bit circular.

As for the status of the Russian language, I can't find any political parties which called for eliminating Russian from Ukraine. In fact, Ukrainian is the only official language since the 1996 constitution (which explicitly protects the use of Russian and other national minority languages). The language issue in the context of 2014 appears to be something of a beat-up; but clearly, over the last eight years, with a low-level, then high-level war with Russia, the position of a lot of people has no doubt evolved.

I brought up the American civil war because you posed the question of moral equivalence between the Maidan revolution and the Donbas secession. The US civil war was the first example of secession that came to mind. But the analogy is quite weak; the US case was endogenous, whereas the Donbas rebellion was always about transferring the region from Ukraine to Russia (or perhaps you disagree?)

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue
- Queen Elizabeth II}

by eurogreen on Fri Dec 30th, 2022 at 04:09:09 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Pearl Clutching (4.00 / 3)

As the events of this year make clear, their intelligence is not as good as they think.

I've been saying that for years. We've spent about a decade in a soulless rerun of the Reagan era Russia panic and the idea that the USSR had vast infiltration networks in the West was completely laughable even then.

whereas the Donbas rebellion was always about transferring the region from Ukraine to Russia (or perhaps you disagree?)

I do indeed. If the aim was to integrate the Donbas into Russia the time to do so was in 2014 when the Ukrainian army was in no position to fight and not ideologically hardened. Mostly the Donbas militias were not getting the logistical support you'd assume they would get if they were supposed to form an integral part of the Russian state. The people of Donbas found themselves in a similar unhappy situation as the KPP in Syria. They had to accept Russia's/the US' help and effectively become proxies since there was nowhere else to turn.
As far as I can tell the Russians wanted exactly what was on the tin: Minsk2. They grabbed the part of Ukraine they really cared about in 2014 and would have been happy enough to keep the rest in a state of neutrality while raking in euros hand over fist. Of course once the Ukrainian electorate voted the supposedly more pro-Russian Zelensky in, yet the renunciations of the peace treaty got if anything more pronounced all to applause from the guarantors in France and Germany they were left with the option of slinking home in humiliation or flip over the table in rage.

by generic on Fri Dec 30th, 2022 at 10:35:26 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Pearl Clutching (none / 1)

I appreciate your insightful posts.

I added my comments and review of earlier writings in a new diary covering censorship, disinformation and engineering a colour revolution. Decades of shameful acts and atrocities by the United States of America. Referenced also astute writings by Jerome a Paris ...

Censorship a Characteristic of Advanced Fascism

'Sapere aude'

by Oui (Oui) on Fri Dec 30th, 2022 at 11:07:07 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: Pearl Clutching (none / 0)

So let me see : In your opinion, Putin's invasion of last year was not a continuation of his 2014 policy of annexing the parts of Ukraine that he imagined were Russian? So what motivated it?

If the aim was to integrate the Donbas into Russia the time to do so was in 2014 when the Ukrainian army was in no position to fight and not ideologically hardened.

Indeed. Retrospecively, they could have accomplished the goals of the 2022 intervention much more easily in 2014. 2017 would have been a good time to do it too, because it's hard to see the Trump administration enthusiastically arming Poroshenko's army... am I wrong?

But I think we agree that Putin is a piss-poor strategist. In 2014, he was probably wary of provoking a strong US reaction if he attempted what he tried last year. So, the only unanswered question is why he thought it was a good idea in 2022.

The people of Donbas found themselves in a similar unhappy situation as the KPP in Syria. They had to accept Russia's/the US' help and effectively become proxies since there was nowhere else to turn.

Do you have documentation on this? I haven't seen any reporting of dissent by autonomists in the Donbas with respect to the annexation by Russia, but I haven't been paying attention. As far as I knew, it was their refusal to be ruled by Ukrainians, tied to their Russianness, that triggered their revolt. So the Syrian analogy is a bit weak, I think.

To come back to the subject of this diary : I hardly think Merkel's explanations about Minsk are explosive. It should have been obvious to any observer that the western guarantors of the Minsk accords had no illusions about the accords being fully implemented; the military situation was highly favourable to the secessionists and their Russian backers, and the main thing was to stop the fighting. The separatists visibly had no intention of implementing the accords anyway, as evidenced by the fact that they organised their own elections in November 2018 in contradiction of the accord; likewise, the Ukrainian parliament was not enthusiastic about federalist constitutional changes. If Putin was really not interested in annexing further chunks of Ukraine at that time, he could certainly have pressured his protégés into keeping their side of the bargain; but he didn't.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue
- Queen Elizabeth II}

by eurogreen on Mon Jan 2nd, 2023 at 03:56:41 PM EST
[ Parent ]

"contradiction of the accord" (none / 1)

Minsk Protocol, 2014 full text
#9
Participant of the Trilateral Contact Group:

OSCE Ambassador Heidi Talyavini (signed)
Second President of Ukraine, L.D. Kuchma (signed)
Ambassador of the Russian Federation in Ukraine, M.Y. Zurabov (signed)
A.V. Zakharchenko (signed)
I.V. Plotnitskiy (signed)

Minsk Agreement, 2015 full text
#11, #12
Participants of the Trilateral Contact Group:

OSCE Ambassador Heidi Tagliavini
Second President of Ukraine, L.D. Kuchma
Ambassador of the Russian Federation to Ukraine, M.Y. Zurabov
A.V. Zakharchenko
I.V. Plotnitskiy

::
Neither EU, DE, FR, or USA were parties to the agreement or Trilateral Contact Group in any way other than its sabotage.

by Cat on Mon Jan 2nd, 2023 at 07:31:15 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: "contradiction of the accord" (none / 1)

Based on the Law of Ukraine "On interim local self-government order in certain areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions", questions related to local elections will be discussed and agreed upon with representatives of certain areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions in the
framework of the Trilateral Contact Group. Elections will be held in accordance with relevant OSCE standards and monitored by OSCE/ODIHR.

Didn't happen. (At the risk of repeating myself,) the Donetsk and Lugansk juntas held elections outside this agreed process.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue
- Queen Elizabeth II}

by eurogreen on Tue Jan 3rd, 2023 at 04:08:55 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: "contradiction of the accord" (none / 0)

Was there ever a Law of Ukraine "On interim local self-government order in certain areas of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions", to base the dialogue on?

by fjallstrom on Fri Jan 13th, 2023 at 01:11:16 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: "contradiction of the accord" (none / 1)

Yes, passed in 2014.
It was even extended for a year by Kyiv in 2019, for what that's worth... trying to keep the Minsk agreements alive.
Wikipedia

While the 2015 Ukrainian local elections had been scheduled for 25 October, DPR leader Alexander Zakharchenko issued a decree on 2 July that ordered local DPR elections to be held on 18 October.[77] He said that this action was "in accordance with the Minsk agreements".[78] According to Zakharchenko, this move meant that the DPR had "independently started to implement the Minsk agreements".[78] Zakharchenko said that the elections would "take place 'on the basis of Ukraine's law on temporary self-rule status of individual districts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions', in so far as they are not at variance with the constitution and laws of the DPR".[78]
On the same day, President Petro Poroshenko responded that if DPR elections went forward in this unilateral manner, it would be "extremely irresponsible and will have devastating consequences for the process of deescalation of tension in certain areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions".[78] In addition, the OSCE said that it would only send observers to elections in the conflict zone if Ukraine invited it to do so.[79] As specified in Minsk II, local elections in DPR and LPR-held territories must be observed by the OSCE to be deemed legitimate.[39] LPR leader Igor Plotnitsky followed the DPR by scheduling elections in the territory that he controlled for 1 November 2015.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue
- Queen Elizabeth II}

by eurogreen on Fri Jan 13th, 2023 at 03:02:26 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Merkel's Explosive Interview Die Zeit | 96 comments (96 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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