President Poroshko. Image Source: Demotix / Oleksandr Ratushniak

Ukraine’s presidential elections last Sunday, 25 May, produced a victor who said that he would take control over the troubled country. Billionaire Petro Poroshenko has promised to sell his chocolate making concern Roshen, to ‘focus on the well-being of the nation.’ Even with the best of intentions, this might be rather difficult.

One third of the voters in Ukraine’s eastern regions were not even aware of the May 25 elections taking place.

Having taken 56 percent of the vote with 55 percent voters’ turnover, the new president actually represents slightly more than 30 percent of Ukraine’s electorate. In the restive Donbas region, only 12 percent of the voters showed up, while near 2,000 polling sites remained closed. According to the official data, elections did not happen in 23 cities and six regions of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, which, together with the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic had formed a Novorossiya union in the south-east of the country last Saturday. The two regions represent 16 percent of the total population of Ukraine (without Crimea) and, in an open challenge to both Kyiv and Moscow, have recently voted for independence. One third of the voters in Ukraine’s eastern regions were not even aware of the May 25 elections taking place.

For a country where there are practically no households without a TV set, this may serve as a conspicuous measure of alienation. The main task for the president-elect is therefore clear: to heal the wounds separating Ukraine’s east from the rest of the country; to stop the ongoing civil war in the south-east; and to negotiate with the separatist leaders, for the sake of preserving territorial unity and sovereignty of Ukraine. Can he deliver? What will be his next steps as a leader?

A recipe for disaster

In a recent interview, Mr Poroshenko said that he saw no alternative to the continuation of what the government in Kyiv calls the anti-terrorist operation in the east. This means that the eastern cities blockaded by Ukraine’s National Guard and army units will continue suffering the consequences of the blockade. Ukrainian forces will endure further losses. The killing of 16 troops near the Blahodatne village on May 22 by the pro-Russia separatists is a bad enough omen for the still worse things to come. Of course, the separatists will die, too, creating a new martyrdom cult for those Russian nationalists in Ukraine who will survive.

This is a recipe for disaster. The May 2 killings of the pro-Russian demonstrators in Odessa, and the heavy fighting in Mariupol on Russia’s Victory Day (May 9) have allowed the Donbas separatists to rally scores of undecided around their new flag. Ukraine’s authorities responded by intensifying the anti-terrorist campaign in the east; and this escalation of the conflict has received the full blessing (and material support) of the West.

Russia is still being blamed for everything that happens in Ukraine

The Russian position

Russia is still being blamed for everything that happens in Ukraine; Ukraine’s own Russia-sympathising activists are represented as either criminals paid for by the Kremlin or Moscow’s mindless puppets. At any rate, behind Ukraine’s official, and Ukraine-sympathetic Western presentations, one idea seems to be reigning supreme: if forces loyal to the government in Kyiv were to be successful in killing all the ‘terrorists’ in the east, the rest of the population would fall docile. Presumably, this strategy also posits that a freshly pacified eastern Ukrainian population would then embrace whatever initiatives, aimed at the progressive squeezing of the Russian language and culture from Ukraine’s soil, the new Poroshenko government would offer.

Should we then be surprised that Donbas locals continue to fight?

Should we then be surprised that Donbas locals continue to fight? The Western press has not yet produced a single material fact to confirm that Russian Special Forces are active in Ukraine. The occasional Cossack or Chechen volunteers do not prove the existence of any Russian ‘master plan:’ had those men been sent on Moscow’s orders, it stands to reason they would not identify themselves as Russian citizens when questioned by CNN.

Ukrainian nationalism

Meanwhile, anti-Russian nationalism in Ukraine is on the rise. Quite unfortunately for the country’s unity, it increasingly targets Ukraine’s own ethnic Russians and Russophones. For a country where Russians constitute close to 20 percent of the population, and Russophones double that number, any policy except full constitutional accommodation would be ruinous. However, this was not the path chosen after Ukraine’s independence. The monocultural, monolinguistic, assimilationist model was adopted instead.

In the city of Lviv, which used to boast 24 schools with the Russian language of instruction, only 5 remain today

Over the last quarter century, hundreds of Russian schools have been closed in all regions of Ukraine. By the turn of the century, the number of such schools was cut by more than one-third nationally, and to the point of virtual extinction in the country’s western regions. In the city of Lviv, which used to boast 24 schools with Russian language instruction, only five remain today. Not a single Russian school survived in Ivano-Frankivsk, Kyiv, Rivne, Vinnytsia, Volyn, and Ternopil oblasti, where more than 170,000 Russian-speaking Ukrainians lived at the time of the last census. For the Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Chernivtsi and Khmelnytsky regions, with an average population of 1.0-1.3 million each, only one Russian-language school exists per region.

The very first act of legislation after the February 2014 Maidan revolution was to cancel the law that gave non-Ukrainian languages restricted local rights. Although vetoed by interim President Turchynov, the legislation did its damage. Unfortunately, the Maidan politicians did not stop there, and invested significant efforts and resources in the demonisation of both Russia as a country, and Ukraine’s ethnic Russians as Moscow’s ‘fifth column.’

The endgame

Crushing Donbas separatism by force will only start a guerilla war in Ukraine’s east

President Poroshenko’s first priority must be to normalise Kyiv’s relations with Donetsk and Luhansk, not Moscow. With each new killing, the situation grows worse, while the opposing sides find it more and more difficult to compromise. Only negotiations with whoever controls the situation on the ground can resolve this bitter conflict, not military action, for it is local separatists and not Vladimir Putin or anyone from his entourage who control the situation in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Crushing Donbas separatism by force will only start a guerilla war in Ukraine’s east, and, judging by all indications, it may eventually grow no less bloody than the one fought by Ukrainian nationalists against the Soviets 70 years ago.

Such a turn of events may still provoke a full-scale military intervention by Russia. While the Kremlin does fear Iran-style sanctions, and does not want to risk everything for yet another stretch of land across the border, events in Ukraine’s ‘Novorossiya’ may quickly snowball and force Putin’s hand even against his better judgment. This should be prevented.

While local opposition to the formal annexation by Russia in Crimea could be foreseen as minimal, it would not be negligible in Donbas

The Kremlin’s strategists are fully aware of the substantial differences between the Crimea and the Donbas regions. While most people in the Crimea were willing to join with Russia in one form or another, most people in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions supported a unified Ukraine not so long ago. While most people in the Crimea define themselves as Russians, most people in Ukraine’s east self-identify as Ukrainians. Moreover, while local opposition to the formal annexation by Russia in Crimea could be foreseen as minimal, it would not be negligible in Donbas. Finally, the punishment that Russia has suffered over Crimea is unpleasant; the sectoral sanctions that would follow the annexation of Donbas would be ruinous.

That is why Putin called on separatists to postpone a controversial move toward self-rule, even though he spoke in vain. The referendum proceeded as planned, with the reported turnout of near 70 percent (in reality, probably closer to 40 percent of the registered voters), of which the majority voted for separation. Russia or not Russia, vast numbers of people in the self-proclaimed People’s Republics do not want to be ruled by the authorities that continue treating them as criminals.

President Obama’s vision of ‘Russian-backed separatists seeking “to disenfranchise entire regions”’ is sorely off the mark

For anyone with an understanding of ethno-political realities in Ukraine, President Obama’s vision of ‘Russian-backed separatists seeking “to disenfranchise entire regions”’ is sorely off the mark. It is not disenfranchisement that Donbas separatists seek but empowerment. They want the voice of Eastern Ukraine to be heard, and count. The profound mistake that the West has made, is still making, is working from the premise that the Ukrainians are one people, and all Ukraine’s troubles have their roots in Moscow. The root of Ukraine’s troubles is in Ukraine. Western Ukrainians and Eastern Ukrainians, Ukrainian-speakers and Russian-speakers in Ukraine are de facto two separate ethnic nations under the umbrella of one state. Ukraine’s problems can only be resolved if these two constituent parts of one political Ukrainian nation are acknowledged as such, and their rights are fully protected – in the East as well as in the West of the country.

The idea that a civil war in Ukraine can only be stopped by moving swiftly to a genuine dialogue between the authorities in Kyiv and supporters of federalisation in Ukraine’s east and south, is finally taking root. Such a dialogue must take place without prejudice or preconditions. It should precede the second round of the four-party talks between the US, Russia, Ukraine and the EU. Further changes to the existing Constitution of Ukraine should be expected to facilitate the centre-east dialogue, and in the implementation of its agreements.

The underlying message of both the Maidan and anti-Maidan movements is simple: Ukraine does not think with one mind

Whether or not these changes will constitute a federal Ukraine or a unitary state with significant devolution of powers to the regions is less important than the fact that all voices from all regions must be heard. The underlying message of both the Maidan and anti-Maidan movements is simple: Ukraine does not think with one mind, and those who try to force on her geopolitical orientations and values shared by one half of the population, which are rejected by the other half, will sooner or later fail.

The Crimean precedent has breathed a new divisive life into politics inside Abkhazia. Against the background of the Ukrainian crisis and the growing role of Russia in the former countries of the Soviet Union, in Abkhazia the idea of integration with Russia is once again being put forward. The culmination of this debate was the thousands-strong ‘people’s assembly’ on 27 May in the capital Sukhumi, which concluded with an attack on the presidential palace, and an attempt to seize government buildings. The demands of the assembly were clearly articulated – the resignation of the president, government, general prosecutor, and the heads of administrations of Abkhazia’s three eastern regions.

According to the daily Nuzhnaya Gazeta, the protest attracted about 5% of the tiny republic’s population.

Representatives of opposition movements and parties, the intelligentsia, village elders, and parliamentary deputies took part in the march. According to the daily Nuzhnaya Gazeta, the protest attracted around 10,000 people, which is about 5% of the tiny republic’s population.

The people’s march, which had been more than a month in the making, was preceded by sharp polemics in the country’s media on the question of а formal association with Russia, a debate in which public figures and representatives of official government organs had been involved.

Participants in Sukhumi's 'People's Assembly' which ended in an attempt to seize government buildings. CC abh-ng.ru

The source of these sharp polemics was an interview with the President of the International Association of the Abkhaz-Abazin People, and former people’s deputy of the USSR, the political analyst Taras Shamba, which was published at the end of May 2014 in a Russian publication. In the interview, Shamba spoke out in favour of a formal association with Russia, for Abkhazia.

A house divided against itself

For the most part, neither Shamba’s statement nor the objections voiced by the Abkhazian opposition are anything new. The same arguments have long gone back and forth. But today, given the events in Ukraine, the question of strengthening integration with Russia and ‘the price of Russian help’ is now all the more acute in Abkhazia.

‘We won the war, but the reality is, that we are losing the peace.’

‘We won the war [of independence from Georgia], but the reality is, that we are losing the peace. The country swims with the current, depending solely on hand-outs and help, without any understanding or a development plan in site. You can’t be a sovereign country, while filling two-thirds of your budget with hand-outs from another state’ said a participant of the march.

The route of Abkhazia’s problem lies in the make-up of Abkhazian society. While in South Ossetia the overwhelming majority of the Republic’s population supports unification with Russia, (the exception is a small fraction of the ‘elite’, who worry only about preserving their own positions) Abkhazia is presented with an entirely different situation.

58.9% of the population favour maintaining independence, while 28.4% are for unification with Russia.

According to a social survey carried out by the Prague agency ‘Medium-Orient’ in 2013, 58.9% of the general population favour maintaining independence, while 28.4% are for unification with Russia. At the same time, only 5.8% of those surveyed expressed a desire to see Abkhazia as an EU member and another 6.8% found it difficult to express an opinion on the issue.

At the same time, it is worth mentioning that the stratification of these results among ethnic groups shows that there are proponents of unification of Abkhazia with Russia among every group, including the titular ethnicity – the Abkhaz. The most pro-Russian minded, unsurprisingly turned out to be Russians – 60% of the ethnic Russian population. In second place came the Abazins, with 50% of the ethnic group being in favour. Among Armenians, the figure for those expressing support for unification with Russia is 46%. Among Georgians it is 23% and among Abkhaz – 18.3%. 

The ‘titular ethnicity’

This sociological gap demonstrates the problem facing the country when it comes to nation-building: society in Abkhazia is far from united on such fundamental questions as the future of Abkhazia and the republic’s foreign policy course. The foundations of the republic’s political structures (laws on citizenship and the constitution) were decided immediately in the wake of an inter-ethnic conflict that ended 20 years ago. In these circumstances there was a clear move towards ethnic nationalism, and the domination of the ‘titular ethnicity.’ But unlike Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia is not homogenous.

Only ethnic Abkhaz may occupy the post of President of the Republic.

Ethnic Abkhaz constitute only a little more than half of the republic’s population, even after the mass exodus of Georgians and the gradual depletion of the country’s ethnic Russians, and even Abkhaz themselves, as they leave the state’s borders. Armenians, Russians and Georgians (Mingrelians) are never going to be happy with a constitutional situation, (article 49 of Abkhazia’s Basic Law) which allows only ethnic Abkhaz to occupy the post of President of the Republic. Moreover, this situation exists when the economic activity of Armenians far from decreasing is actually picking up steam. 

A burnt out armoured vehicle from the Abkhaz-Georgian War in 1994. (c) Vladimir Vyatkin/RIA Novosti

For this very reason, anything that appears in the media that even remotely touches on this controversial question can become an impetus for bitter debates in Abkhaz society. The Crimean precedent has merely thrown the issue of ethnic division into even sharper relief. 

Statehood at Moscow’s pleasure

In light of events in Ukraine, Moscow has once again clarified its position in relation to Abkhazia’s political status (recognition without unification), but in the self-proclaimed republic there is now a fear that Moscow’s position could change. What is more, in Georgia the internal political situation is also changing against the background of the worsening situation in Ukraine; pro-Russian groups, whose voices were never previously listened to in Tbilisi, have become more and more active. If Russia and Georgia were to start enjoying a rapprochement, the Abkhaz question in Russia could be revisited; Abkhazia could lose its relevance for the Russian elite.

Sukhumi has neither the means nor the resources to resist the will of its powerful neighbour.

Sukhumi has neither the means nor the resources to resist the will of its powerful neighbour. Moscow has serious economic levers it can use against Abkhazia; the most important of them is the reduction or cutting off of investment.

This has already happened once before, when Moscow directed significant sums for the construction of the Olympics in Sochi, yet at the same time neglected to invest in Abkhazian territory. Today, a similar situation could arise in connection with Crimea’s annexation; Abkhazia’s tourist industry is particularly vulnerable to any favourable bias that Moscow might show towards its new possession; a significant part of the inhabitants of Gagra, Pitsunda, Sukhumi and other coastal regions of Abkhazia depend on Russian tourists. If Moscow decides to redirect the tourist stream to Crimea, small and medium sized businesses in Abkhazia will have nothing left. If one also takes into account the fact that Russia has taken Abkhazia under full military control, and that Abkhazia owes Russian creditors billions of roubles, the possibility for resisting Russia’s will drops to practically zero.

In Abkhazia, it is well understood that sooner or later Moscow will demand something in return. Perhaps because of this, and despite the whole-hearted condemnation of Shamba’s proposal for a ‘formal association,’ one can still glimpse the likely form of co-operation between Moscow and Sukhumi; for example, in the framework of the Customs Union, the EEC, or the proposed Eurasian Union. In particular, one notes that the united Abkhazian opposition (The Coordinating Council of Parties and Social Movements of Abkhazia), nothwithstanding its condemnation of the initiative for greater association with Russia, nevertheless called for integration in the framework of the organisations listed above.

Commenting on this situation, the notable Abkhazian journalist Inal Khashig, from the radio station ‘Ekho Kazkaza,’ wrote in his blog that his country’s elite were so corrupt that Moscow could easily manipulate them if necessary: ‘If Moscow suddenly took the notion to change things, finding the right buttons to push wouldn’t be difficult. It could be done by a single ally, a lobbyist, a local centre or support group. One wave of the [Russian] hand, and the previous unity on the idea of an inviolable Abkhazian statehood among the Abkhazian elite would go up in a puff of smoke.’ 

In Abkhazia, the danger emanating from Russia, which in the recent past was such an invaluable ally to the little republic, is well understood. Looking at a possible Russian annexation, the ethnic Abkhaz would loose their political supremacy, although their economic future would seem, in this set of circumstances, to likely be better. Together with six years of economic stability and peace, this is a powerful argument in Russia’s favour. 

A billboard featuring President Bagapsh from 2012 - 'Strength of mind and wisdom will save our nation' CC Maxim Edwards

All in all, the majority of ethnic Abkhaz would agree with the statement of former Abkhazian president Sergei Bagapsh, which he made in an interview in November 2009. Answering a question on the influence of the Kosovo precedent on independence, he said ‘Thank God it happened.’

The next presidential elections are scheduled, in accordance with the law, to take place in 2016. Aleksandr Ankvab,the current President of Abkhazia, who clearly has plenty of troubles already, has announced that he intends to seek a second term; how (and if) he answers his country’s main question – ‘Where are we heading and who are we with?’ – will decide his fate and the fate of Abkhazia. But, in truth, neither the Abkhazian opposition nor the current authorities in Abkhazia can provide a concrete answer to that question. Today, Abkhazia finds itself in a political dead,end, and it is looking unlikely that it will be able to choose a way out of it, certainly not on its own.

Foreigners who read Turkmenistan’s official media might well get the impression that everything in the country is just fine: stable economic growth, new infrastructure, achievements in education, science and sport. Local media outlets never publish critical material, especially anything critical of the government; there are no statistics on crime, corruption, or other negative phenomena, even natural disasters. But that does not mean these things do not exist. 

Minders prohibited documentary filmmaker Tom Vaes from capturing any signs of disorder at Ashgabat's bazaars. Photo cc: MunnekeIn January of this year, a mother killed her young children in the district capital of an eastern region of Turkmenistan. She killed them in a particularly brutal fashion, using a construction drill. She then killed her husband and then herself. Apparently, she was hearing voices…. The whole town is talking about the case, and the police are investigating, yet not a single word has appeared in the press. In any other country such an event would have been headline news, and TV programmes would have invited psychologists, psychiatrists, politicians, social workers, and the family’s neighbours into the studio to discuss the incident. But not in Turkmenistan – here, everything has to be just fine.

Keeping schtum

We like to boast that people in Turkmenistan do not pay for drinking water but we remain silent about the fact that two out of five regions regularly go without running water for days on end, and that the quality of water is such that people who can, prefer to buy bottled water. We like to talk about the newly-built dental surgery in Ashgabat that is shaped like a tooth but we keep schtum about the fact that a third of the surgery’s patients who undergo serious operations leave with Hepatitis C. 

Hospitals have not been renovated since Soviet times, and they regularly lack water to wash the floors, and bathe patients.

Indeed, there is much to talk about when it comes to healthcare in Turkmenistan. The State is busy building grandiose hospitals and polyclinics decked out with the most advanced Western equipment but the doctors who work there do not know how to operate it, and thus the equipment sits around in its packaging, collecting dust. Anyway, these modern medical facilities are meant only for the capital and for the regional administrative centres. In rural areas – where foreigners hardly ever set foot – hospitals have not been renovated since Soviet times, and they regularly lack water to wash the floors, and bathe patients. Despite an acute shortage of trained medical staff, the Deputy Minister for Healthcare Murad Mamedov repeatedly tells doctors at meetings that there is no need to go abroad for experience as ‘we’re clever enough ourselves.’ It is for this very reason apparently that foreign medical specialists are not invited to Turkmenistan. The real reason for the ban on doctors, however, is well-known: it allows bureaucrats to prevent the leaking of unfavourable information about infectious diseases, child and maternal mortality rates, and health epidemics. In Turkmenistan, everything has to be just fine…

The entrance to a hospital in the village of Esenguly. Hospitals in rural areas often lack even basic necessities such as water.
Over the 20 odd years since independence, Turkmen society, especially the younger generation, has received only one-sided, embellished and adulterated news from an official media divorced from reality, and under the thumb of President Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedov. It is just like it was in the Soviet Union: readers are monotonously fed one viewpoint, the viewpoint of one person. Other views and opinions simply cannot exist, and if someone somewhere says the truth, then this alternative view is treated as rumour, gossip and speculation, and the person who dared to express it is automatically painted as a detractor, a libeller, or an outcast. 

The fear of being imprisoned or vilified by society has encouraged people in Turkmenistan to keep their mouths shut.

Over these last decades, an entire generation has grown up which, like the media and the authorities themselves, is forced to be jubilant, to look only at the façade of life, trying to ignore the negatives. Even when these negatives affect someone personally, people collectively remain silent, convincing themselves that it is just an aspect of life, and hardly the end of the world. The fear of being imprisoned or vilified by society has, over time, encouraged people in Turkmenistan to keep their mouths shut, to distance themselves from anything that the authorities might not like, and which might damage their own reputation; and to refrain from reading or taking in anything that might diverge from the official line. Nonetheless, despite the constant internal fear and the denial of all things negative, there are readers who carefully follow independent news about Turkmenistan, published on social media. Moreover, such people are, fortunately, growing in number all the time.

Censorship and control

Freelance journalists for foreign media outlets are kept under almost 24-hour surveillance.

There is no independent media in Turkmenistan. Official journalists carefully filter the topics for their articles through an internal censorship system, editors remain vigilant, and are actively censored by the government agencies that own the various newspapers. Teacher’s Newspaper, for example, is owned by the Ministry of Education while the newspaper Spravedlivost’ [Justice] is owned by the Ministry of Justice. These ministries have a captive audience – they force all their employees to subscribe to their newspapers. No-one cares whether they read them or not, but every month a certain sum is deducted from their salary to cover subscription costs.

The opulence of former President Niyazov's tomb is in stark contrast to the rural hospital pictured above. Photo cc: Krasowski

Freelance journalists for foreign media outlets are kept under almost 24-hour surveillance. The rare trips made by Western journalists to the country are like a breath of fresh air; it is through their reports that foreign audiences can get to see the real Turkmenistan. In spring of last year, one such reporter was Belgium’s Tom Vaes. The Turkmen authorities officially invited him to visit the country, and to tell his audience how wonderful it is. But Vaes began to have doubts about the trip before it even began. The invitation letter he received from the Turkmenistan embassy in Belgium included a minute-by-minute schedule for Tom and his film crew. During the trip they were forbidden from filming the President, poor people, the dilapidated buildings, and… donkeys! In the resulting 45-minute-long documentary, these journalists showed the true nature of Turkmen state censorship: from banning the filming of an empty hotel breakfast room to the absurd control measures of Turkmen intelligence agents at an Ashgabat bazaar where they hurriedly covered up the unsightly (according to the agents) stalls in green cloth. The journalists also filmed their vigilant minders, all dressed in identical black suits, as they pinched the hips of elderly women to get them out of the frame of the camera. Another group of ‘security guards’ frantically removed out of sight, all basins, buckets, cloths, and brooms. Words cannot do justice to this spectacle – it must to be seen to be believed.

Foreign print media have been banned in Turkmenistan since the beginning of 2002, which is why every family has its own satellite dish, and sometimes two or even three. People pick up alternative news sources from Russian, Turkish or European TV channels, while more tech-savvy citizens manage to get around the state internet filtering systems and find news online. As people in Turkmenistan say, too many sweeties, meaning state TV where everything is just fine, can quickly make you sick.

ATN (Alternative Turkmenistan News)

People write about everything: cases of injustice, the arbitrary behaviour of security agencies, about rampant corruption.

In response to this barren media landscape, an offshore civic media initiative called Alternative Turkmenistan News (ATN) was created in February 2010 Initially its goal was to act as an information resource to readers within the country, as all other online media were being controlled by the sole internet communications operator, ‘Turkmentelecom’, a state-owned company. On a weekly basis, ATN would copy news from different websites into a single file, and then send it as an email to 300 or so people inside Turkmenistan. In a short period of time the number of subscribers increased tenfold and readers themselves began sharing facts and their own observations. This information provides the basis for what has become a unique news source. People write about everything: cases of injustice, the arbitrary behaviour of security agencies, about rampant corruption, lack of water, the illegal demolition of housing, illegal requests for money to buy textbooks, damaged roads; and about having to assemble goodness knows where at four or five in the morning to meet the President who will invariably only arrive at around midday. 

Just a few years ago, it was very rare to hear about such things in Turkmenistan, especially about cases of torture and injustices in the prison system. But now people have an outlet where they can share their problems, in the hope that someone might hear them and provide help. Despite the real fear of retribution for saying too much, Turkmen citizens – fed up with the excesses, incompetency and couldn’t-care-less attitude of Turkmenistan’s bureaucrats – are trying to find justice via independent media such as ATN and human rights organisations.

In President Berdimuhammedov's Turkmenistan media censorship is rife. Photo cc: Thiery EhrmannThey are not journalists, neither do they deliberately seek out ‘dirt’ – they have a need to tell the authorities about their problems. For this, however, they are attacked, threatened with job loss or expulsion from university. They are also emphatically advised not to communicate with ‘detractors’ or to like articles and photos published on social media sites which the authorities believe give a bad name to Turkmenistan and its people. People are dissuaded from communicating via the internet as their careers, the well-being of their children –  indeed of all their relatives –  are at stake if they fail to heed the advice of the security services. The Soviet practice of collective punishment flourishes in Turkmenistan to this day.Just a few years ago, it was very rare to hear about such things in Turkmenistan, especially about cases of torture and injustices in the prison system. But now people have an outlet where they can share their problems, in the hope that someone might hear them and provide help. Despite the real fear of retribution for saying too much, Turkmen citizens – fed up with the excesses, incompetency and couldn’t-care-less attitude of Turkmenistan’s bureaucrats – are trying to find justice via independent media such as ATN and human rights organisations.

The Soviet practice of collective punishment flourishes in Turkmenistan to this day.

Recently, the Turkmen Service of Radio Svoboda (a project of Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty) has been providing an additional outlet for people to speak out. They communicate with de facto illegal radio journalists: brave reporters, many of whom have been previously detained and subjected to ‘preventive conversations.’ These journalists work without official accreditation – radio journalists in Turkmenistan cannot get accreditation, despite what the law might say. Nevertheless, more and more voices are being broadcast across the radio waves, and some people are even prepared to talk on camera. Fed up with their lot, they feel they have nothing left to lose and they want to be heard. 

Bearing roses, Turkmenistan's communications ministers visit the tomb of their former President. Photo cc: Vein

Today, ATN’s project has expanded in scope and reach. Besides informing people inside Turkmenistan, we try to provide objective news about the country for a foreign audience. This is done with the help of our readers – engaged individuals including civil servants, entrepreneurs, students, and foreign diplomats. The quantity and quality of our sources, as well as their geographic distribution across the entire country, means that we can cross check any facts from Turkmenistan and produce our own independent news. 

One of our goals is also to bring information about cases of human rights violations to people and organisations that have the power to influence them. ATN actively cooperates on this with several international human rights organisations, and where possible runs advocacy events together with representatives of the European Union, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and international financial institutions, among others. Since last year, we have also been providing a new translation service. We translate material from Radio Svoboda from Turkmen into Russian so that people outside the country might learn more about Turkmenistan. We also translate foreign-language resources for our Turkmen readers. Indeed, we translated Tom Vaes’ 45-minute-long film into Russian so that people in Turkmenistan might see a different representation of their country. After all, they will not be showing the film on TV in Turkmenistan – here, everything is just fine.  

Due to the dangers of voicing criticism against the Government in Ashgabat (as outlined in this piece), the author has asked to remain anonymous.

Photo 2: (c) ATN

Lyudmila Belan’s father was in the Soviet Army and served in, among other places, the Primorsky Krai, Russia’s far eastern seaboard, where Lyudmila spent her childhood. Then he was posted to Ukraine. The family arrived there as Soviet nationals, but when the USSR broke up they all found themselves citizens of a completely different country. As Lyudmila says, they didn’t choose to be Ukrainians; and although she has spent more than half her life in Ukraine, completed her education, got married and had a son there, she always wanted to go back to Russia.

Under Russian law, it covers not only former Soviet citizens but even residents of the old Russian Empire.

The resettlement scheme

In 2009, Belan found out about a Russian government resettlement scheme that had been set up two years earlier for people, like her, who had ended up in the wrong country.  The scheme is open to anyone recognised by Russia as a ‘compatriot,’ a definition that applies to an enormous number of people, especially as, under Russian law, it covers not only former Soviet citizens but even residents of the old Russian Empire, which collapsed in 1917. So someone resident in any former Soviet republic – Tajikistan or Uzbekistan for example – could be a compatriot, and so could the descendent of someone who emigrated from Russia a century ago. 

The programme is aimed at former compatriots in post-Soviet states, but could theoretically apply to almost any Russian-speaker.

The scheme is open to anyone recognised by Russia as a ‘compatriot.’

The definition rests on the concept of a ‘common culture,’ though the law does not define exactly what is meant by that term. Essentially, the main criterion for inclusion in the scheme is an ability to speak Russian; ethnicity is not a factor. Moreover, compatriots can bring their extended families – wives, husbands, children, brothers, sisters, and parents – to Russia with them. 

The re-settlers have to pay all their own expenses for travel and transportation of their possessions. But the big attraction of the scheme is that they are fast tracked for Russian citizenship, which they can receive after only six months. While they are waiting they have the same employment rights as Russian citizens, and their children have the right to free places at schools and pre-school facilities.

This is a big concession: normally, Russian citizenship is granted only after six years of residence, and aspiring citizens have to apply separately for a work permit and a temporary residence permit, and pay income tax for these six years not at the usual 13% rate, but 30%, like any other foreigner in Russia. 

The downside

The big attraction of the scheme is a fast track to Russian citizenship after only six monthBut the resettlement programme is not quite so simple or attractive as it seems: people joining the scheme cannot choose just anywhere in Russia that they want to be resettled. Forty-five regions out of eighty-five (including Crimea and Simferopol) are open to them, but Moscow and St Petersburg do not feature on the resettlement list. The compatriots then have to stay in their chosen region for a minimum of two years; and they can be turned down by the regional authorities if their skills do not match demand in the area.

The authorities, however, generally get their information about employment opportunities from government jobcentres, where work in schools, hospitals, industrial plants and factories figures prominently. Large private companies, looking for middle and senior managers, software engineers or programmers, are much more likely to use private recruitment firms. So a compatriot coming to his local Russian embassy to apply for resettlement will usually hear that Russia needs machinists, riggers, packers, electricians, teachers and medical staff, often in rural areas.

The programme aims to boost migration to Russia's rural areas, which have depopulated sharply since 1991. CC Svpressa.ru

A professor of history was told he would have to work as a teacher in a village school.

At Russia’s Federal Migration Service (FMS), which is in charge of organising resettlement and applications for citizenship, they admit that there have been cases such as that, for example, of a professor of history who was told by the authorities in his chosen region that he could not come to Russia if he wanted to submit his doctoral thesis at a university, but could receive citizenship if he agreed to work as a teacher in a village school. When journalists Yelena and Oleg, from Tajikistan, visited their Russian embassy, their profession was not even included in the list of accepted occupations for the city of Tver, 160km from Moscow. In general, they were told, the region needed ‘dairy workers, packers and electricians.’ Furthermore, resettled compatriots are often not simply given temporary accommodation – they have to find it for themselves. 

The results

The aim of the scheme is not to return all former Russian citizens to the motherland, nor is it designed to create a new USSR. The return of compatriots is an attempt by Russia to solve its internal problems: to halt its less than rosey demographic forecast; its major population drain from regions such as the Far East; to find people to do unpopular and often low paid work, and to be less reliant on illegal migrant workers. But the restrictive conditions of the scheme have been a disincentive, and fewer compatriots are returning than the authorities expected. As a result, only 50,000 people on average have used the opportunity in each of the last few years, half of the projected figure. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the far eastern regions remain among the least popular for resettlement; returning compatriots prefer areas closer to Moscow.

The return of compatriots is an attempt by Russia to solve its internal problems.

The Far East of Russia has also been particularly badly hit by a population haemorrhage, with numbers in 2013 down by 15% compared with 2012. Resettlers are not even filling the unpopular jobs available; many compatriots change employer not long after they arrive. When Lyudmila Belan and her husband arrived from Ukraine they initially got work at the Ussuriisk paper and board mill, but soon left because the wages were so poor. Lyudmila is now the manager of an outdoor clothing and equipment shop, and her husband is working for the oil transportation giant Transneft. 

Who is joining the scheme

Russia, of course, is an attractive destination for people from other impoverished parts of the former Soviet Union. Figures published by the FMS show that in September 2013 there were 11.3m foreign nationals in Russia. Many of them come for seasonal work and then go back home. The resettlement programme is of course aimed at people who want to stay, but as Vitaly Yakovlev, head of the Service’s Compatriot Resettlement Department, stressed in an interview with me for Vlast magazine, ‘we aren’t forcing anybody to leave again, but we are ready to help anyone who decides to do so.’

A Russian lesson in Vladivostok. Students attempt to conjugate the verbs 'to repair' and 'to paint.' (c) RIA/Vitaly Ankov

The people keenest to take advantage of the resettlement scheme are citizens of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Moldova and Ukraine. People whose first language is Russian want to leave Central Asia because of the decline in Russian spoken in the region, and the increasing difficulty of finding Russian language-based education for their children. Educational opportunities in general are declining: in Uzbekistan, for example, children now have only nine years of schooling, rather than eleven, as before. In addition, a lot of cities do not have either adequate lighting or heating, and so people understandably want better living conditions.

Russian speakers in Central Asia want their children to have their education in Russian.

For people from Armenia and Ukraine, resettlement is more about low wages and unemployment at home than any heartfelt need to live in Russia. Those who came from Ukraine before the present political crisis also usually mention the political and economic instability there. Sergei, a former resident of the Ukrainian city of Vinnitsa, for example, says that his family lost their business after the 2008 crisis, and he could not see any further prospect for development in his own career, either in business or his main profession as a doctor.

Officials at the FMS say the number of Ukrainians wanting to join the scheme has gone up since the start of the present unrest there, although the statistics suggest the increase is insignificant. According to figures published on 15 April by Russia’s Ministry for Regional Development, there have been 1900 applications for resettlement from Ukraine since the beginning of this year, while 15,000 people left the country for Russia in 2013. The Ministry has already asked regional authorities to process applications more quickly. 

Bypassing the scheme

But Ukrainians, both before and after the present crisis, have generally preferred to move to Russia under their own steam, without official help and without being tied to the conditions of resettlement. FMS figures show that almost 3000 Ukrainians have applied for temporary Russian citizenship since the start of 2014, and over 15,000 have applied for temporary residence, itself a stage on the way to citizenship. 

Officials in Russia’s Rostov region, which borders on Ukraine, also told me that those Ukrainians who applied to them for Russian citizenship in the wake of Ukraine’s change of government had either been living and working in the Rostov area for years or have close relatives – parents or children – living there. So there were no queues at the border, and the sanatorium beds specially freed up for the expected refugees were left empty. 

The trickle of resettlers does not compare with the stream of illegal migrants.

There have been very few applications for resettlement from compatriots living in Western Europe. The largest number has come from Latvia – 674, with 472 people applying from Germany and 204 from Israel. The FMS is keen to stress that this is not a repatriation programme like those in Germany and Israel, where Germans and Jews respectively are helped to relocate. Russia, on the other hand, is a multi-ethnic country. But not everyone is welcomed back. The scheme does not cater for highly educated professionals; for compatriots with an established career abroad, the only thing that they would receive of any possible benefit to them is citizenship. Nor does it solve the problem of illegal migration – or at least not yet; the trickle of people who have taken advantage of the scheme does not compare with the stream of illegal migrants.  

For the resettlement scheme to work, Russia will have to drop all its current restrictions and make the process less bureaucratic. Above all, it needs to decide what type of resettlers it needs more – people whose one advantage is that they have the right ancestry, or people who can contribute to the economy..  

Kiev, Ukraine: Petro Poroshenko, Ukraine’s so-called ‘Chocolate King,’ was the clear winner of the presidential elections that took place here on Sunday, May 25. The Organisation of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) – the flagship international election monitoring organisation – declared the elections free, fair, and in line with international standards in all of Ukraine, with the exception of the separatist controlled districts of Luhansk and Donetsk.

Russia did not send official observers to participate in the OSCE mission. OSCE representatives bemoaned Russian non-participation when the election observation results were announced at a press conference following the Sunday elections, because Russian participation would have been a foundation for building dialogue and repairing the strained relationship between the two countries. At the press conference, João Soares, the Special Coordinator appointed to lead the short-term OSCE observer mission, proudly announced that during his short time in Odessa he had encountered Russian opposition members of the Duma who were there to observe the elections in an unofficial capacity. ‘So you see, there were at least two Russian observers in Ukraine,’ Soares quipped.

What Soares, and other high level officials who dropped in on the elections, missed was that there were actually not just two unofficial Russian election observers in Ukraine, but more than 200 Russian civil society observers, working officially in nine regions across Ukraine. They were brought in by Russian civil society activists from Golos, previously known as GOLOS – the independent civil society election monitoring watchdog that was effectively shut down in Russia, in 2013, under the country’s ‘foreign agent’ law. Golos (now written without the capital letters to distinguish it from its banned predecessor) remains active in Russia albeit in a greatly reduced capacity – it no longer calls itself an NGO or association but rather a movement of independent citizens.

‘Some [of the observers] tried four times to get in: by car, train, bus… even through the Belarus border.’

Golos had intended to bring in over 800 civil society observers – a mix of students, journalists, and other professionals – but according to Roman Udot, the Golos coordinator of the election observation mission, most of them were turned away at the border. ‘Some [of the observers] tried four times to get in: by car, train, bus… even through the Belarus border. One observer got held up at Kyiv airport, and we spent all night trying to get him out. In the end, only 200 got through the cracks. Most of them used their own funds to come,’ said Udot.

Once they got in, Golos observers spread out across the country, making it to the most western regions – the heartland of Ukriane. In Lviv, the supposed epicentre of Ukrainian ultranationalism, the two Golos observers I spoke with said that they were treated ‘like honoured guests.’ Misha, a Russian observer from Moscow, spent two days in Lviv. ‘I kept insisting on speaking Ukrainian,’ he said when we met upon his return to Kyiv, ‘but people kept offering to answer in Russian to make it easier for me. I was really looking forward to practicing my Ukrainian.’

In everyday life, beyond the propaganda, Ukrainians and Russians can find common ground.

Misha’s experience, while anecdotal, goes against the oft-presented image of a linguistically divided Ukraine in which the Bandera-loving nationalists in the west of the country despise Russians and Russian speakers. In everyday life, beyond the propaganda, Ukrainians and Russians can find common ground. For foreign policy strategists, the lesson to be learned from the Golos observers’ experiences is that Ukraine’s future lies in facilitating an open dialogue between Ukrainians and Russians, who share more in common than recent events would lead us to believe.

Shortly after Russia’s annexation of Crimea on 18 March, Jean-Claude Juncker, former Premier of Luxembourg, and top candidate to become the next president of the European Commission, opined that the EU ought to take specific action to prevent Moldova from becoming ‘the next victim of Russian aggression.’ As he saw it, there is a real chance that the breakaway region in the eastern part of the country, the Transnistrian republic, might follow in the footsteps of Crimea and be accepted into the Russian Federation as a new federal subject.

How realistic is this scenario? As Aleksandr Zhelenin pointed out (in Russian), once the taboo on grabbing territory from another state has been breached, an important psychological barrier has been removed and it can happen again – as events in Eastern Ukraine seem to indicate.

Crimea – setting a new precedent

Some of the arguments Vladimir Putin used in his address to the Russian Federal Assembly on 18 March to justify the Crimean annexation were quite general and could, without too much creative interpretation, be applied also to other cases. For instance, he claimed that, in organising a referendum on independence from Ukraine, the Crimeans had availed themselves of their right to self-determination, a right enshrined in the UN Charter. While such a principle does exist, few legal scholars would agree that it gives ethnic groups or regions in a state a right to secede.

Putin maintained that Russians are one of the largest ‘divided nations’ in the world.

Even so, many people, also in the West, share Putin’s interpretation of this principle. Moreover, Putin, in the same speech, maintained that Russians are one of the largest ‘divided nations’ in the world, if not the largest; and, since the majority population in the Crimea is ethnically Russian, the peninsula should be allowed to become a part of Russia, as this would reduce the dividedness of the Russian people. However, there are today millions of ethnic Russians living outside Russia also in other countries; by this yardstick, not only Crimeans but all compact communities of the Russian diaspora could be covered by the same principle. Indeed, this is how Putin’s speech was received by pro-Russia activists in Donetsk and Luhansk; and in the Transnistrian republic.

Map of Transnistria, the breakaway republic and de facto state sandwiched between Moldova and Ukraine, 2008. cc Serhio

The Transnistrian drive for unification

The Transnistrians have already conducted two referenda on self-determination: in 1991, and 2006, both showing overwhelming support. The first time, the Transnistrian population were asked if they were in favour of state independence for their break-away region; the second time the question was formulated somewhat differently: ‘Do you support the course towards independence for the Transnistrian Moldovan Republic and its subsequent free unification with the Russian Federation?’ With 78% turnout, 97% voted in favour. The Transnistrians were clearly willing to forgo their non-recognised independence and join another state – provided that that state was Russia.

Transnistrians kept edging closer and closer to the coveted union with the Promised Land.

The 2006 Transnistrian referendum expressed only a pious wish, since Moscow at the time clearly did not see it as being in its interest to welcome Transnistria into the Russian fold – in fact, Russia has not even extended de jure recognition to this de facto state. Its stance did not change even after the Russo-Georgian War in August 2008 when Russia recognised two other post-Soviet break-away regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Nevertheless, Transnistrians kept edging closer and closer to the coveted union with the Promised Land. Economically and socially, their country gradually became more integrated into Russian structures. Transnistrian pupils use textbooks produced in Russia, and study Russian history; Transnistrian students move to Moscow and St Petersburg to study. More than 200,000 residents of Transnistria hold Russian passports, and very many receive their pensions from there (though 150,000 hold Ukrainian citizenship and many thousands have taken Moldovan citizenship).

Flag of Transnistria Republic giving prominent place to the communist symbol of the hammer and sickle. cc Dl.goe

Hundreds of Transnistrian firms are owned by Russian companies; including many of the biggest ones. Like Ukraine, Transnistria is totally dependent on Russian gas and has just as often failed to pay its bills. In fact, the Transnistrian economy is to a large degree kept afloat by direct and indirect Russian subsidies and loans.

In late autumn 2013, the Transnistrian parliament passed, at the first reading, a bill to the effect that all Russian legislation is automatically to become part of the legal code in Transnistria, much as EU laws are incorporated into the legal framework of the member-states of the European Free Trade Association (currently the European Union and Iceland, Liechtenstein and Norway). Somewhat earlier, plans were made to introduce the Russian rouble as a second parallel legal tender in the country. All this amounted to a unilateral drive for unification, although neither of the decisions was implemented.

For quite a while, these overtures did not elicit much reaction in Moscow but, after the Crimean referendum on 16 March, new opportunities seemed to open up. The Transnistrian parliament decided to strike while the iron was still hot, and athe very same day sent an appeal to the Russian president, pleading to be accepted into the Russian Federation.

Transnistria is a Russuphone region

While Transnistrian state propaganda had previously made much out of the allegedly unique Transnistrian identity as a basis for state-building, now the emphasis was on underlining the Russian character of Transnistrian statehood. Transnistria has three official languages – Russian, Ukrainian and Moldovan (with Cyrillic script) – but in their letter to Putin the Transnistrian legislators mentioned only the official status of the Russian language.

‘Transnistria is a Russophone region; more than 90% of the Transnistrians talk and think in Russian.’

The legislators also added (correctly, but rarely admitted officially) that Russian is totally dominant as the de facto language of business correspondence and interethnic communication. ‘Transnistria is a Russophone region; more than 90%of the Transnistrians talk and think in Russian.’ Other social, cultural, economic, and political ties between Transnistria and Russia were also emphasised. To back up this official plea, almost 200,000 signatures were collected from the Transnistrian public.

Copies of the letter from the Transnistrian parliament were sent to the UN and the OSCE but, unsurprisingly, international sympathy was not forthcoming. The European Parliament condemned it as ‘a dangerous and irresponsible act;’,in Moscow, however, at least, some politicians and parties reacted with alacrity. Both the Communist Party of the Russian Federation and Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s Liberal-Democratic Party (LDPR) have come out strongly and boisterously in favour of welcoming in the Transnistrians; LDPR Duma Deputy Roman Khudyakov, himself a native of Transnistria, has initiated a campaign to collect signatures in the State Duma in support of a parliamentary resolution on this issue.

The ostensibly social-democratic (but in practice pro-Putin) party ‘A Just Russia’ drafted a bill intended to simplify procedures for accepting new members into the Russian Federation, but the legal text was apparently so sloppy that it could have ended up making things more complicated instead. This legal initiative was withdrawn, but it nevertheless signalled firm readiness to support the Transnistrian supplicants.

International observers from Russian pro-Kremlin youth organisation 'Nashi' camp at 2006 referendum, Transnistria, cc Romanstr

The pro-Putin party ‘United Russia,’ by far the largest party in the State Duma, has remained conspicuously silent.

However, the pro-Putin party ‘United Russia,’ by far the largest party in the State Duma, has remained conspicuously silent. The reason for this unusual reticence is probably that they are waiting for clear signals from the Kremlin, which have not been forthcoming.

The Kremlin position

Putin has appointed Dmitry Rogozin, the nationalist enfant terrible of Russia’s government, as his special envoy to the Transnistrian republic. Rogozin has been in the region several times, but his statements after these visits have been deemed rather bland, not least given his reputation as a person who rarely minces words.

Putin himself, in August last year, commented on the Transnistrian question, in one of his informal Q&A sessions at the pro-government Seliger youth camp. He declared, rather non-committedly, that the situation in Transnistria was ‘among the most complicated problems caused by the collapse of the Soviet Union (…) Roughly half-a-million people live there, and they are oriented towards Russia. In Transnistria there are many Russian citizens, and they have their own perceptions about how they want to build their future. If we allow people to do what they want, that will simply be an expression of democracy.’

Likewise, Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov has approached the Transnistrian issue in a rather careful manner. In a TV talk show on 21 April this year. he explained: ‘in the modern world some countries at certain points in time become attractive for other peoples and begin to function as a magnet, socially, economically and otherwise.’ Russia is now becoming such a magnet to some peoples, Peskov claimed. This self-congratulatory analysis, however, did not hold out any promises to the Transnistrians: ‘Each specific request to be admitted into the Russian Federation must be assessed extremely carefully.’

Annexation

Despite the apparently strong similarities between Crimea and the Transnistrian situation, several issues put a damper on Russian enthusiasm for admitting the Transnistrians into the Russian Federation. For one thing, it would undermine some of the arguments Russia has used to justify the Crimean operation. In his 18 March speech, Putin not only said that the Crimeans had a right to self-determination, but also that they had a right to rebel against Kyiv because the new authorities were putschists and Fascists, hence devoid of legitimate authority. In an ad hoc interpretation of the Responsibility to Protect, Russia also assumed the right to intervene in the peninsula, in order to protect Russians there against alleged violations of their basic rights, such as the right to use their language. None of this is applicable to Transnistria, where the people have been running their own affairs for more than 20 years; and not even the Kremlin questions the legitimacy of the Moldovan state.

Not even the Kremlin questions the legitimacy of the Moldovan state.

More pragmatically, a quick glance at the map will suffice to show that it would be far more difficult to administer Transnistria from Moscow than Crimea. While the Crimean peninsula can be reached from Russia by sea, and it has been decided to build a bridge to the mainland across the Kerch Strait, Transnistria can be reached only by air or by road over the territory of other states that will not recognise Transnistria as Russian territory.

Until now, transport communications between Transnistria and both Moldova and Ukraine have been remarkably smooth and unimpeded, incomparably better than in any other de facto state – but that is bound to change, should Russia make such a drastic move as to annex the region. Transnistrian politicians may have claimed that Ukraine has recently instituted a blockade of Transnistria, but this seems to be hyperbolic language intended to elicit sympathy in Moscow. Only males of fighting age holding Russian citizenship, and trucks with Russian license plates, have been held back, in an attempt to stem an influx of paramilitary supporters of the pro-Russian separatists in the east and south of Ukraine.

A street in Tiraspol, the Transnistrian capital, with an Orthodox church in the background. Photo: cc flickr.com/photos/minamie

Finally, in the tug-of-war over Moldova’s soul between Russia and the EU, Russian annexation of Transnistria would inevitably drive the Moldovans into the embrace of Brussels. All political factions in Chisinau, including the Communists, are united in their determination to defend the territorial integrity of Moldova. The Kremlin would immediately lose whatever leverage it may still have in Moldovan politics.

Russian annexation of Transnistria would inevitably drive the Moldovans into the embrace of Brussels.

The president of the Transnistrian de factostate, Evgeny Shevchuk, has been cautious in his comments on the issue. In an address to the Transnistrian public on 7 April, he stated: ‘our dream is a blossoming, independent Transnistrian state, together with Russia.’ Apparently, Shevchuk has realised which way the wind is blowing, and has no desire to embarrass the Russian president by using the equivocal signals given in his 18 March speech against him.

Without support from the Kremlin, the most likely scenario for Transnistria is that it will remain a de facto state more or less in the same way as it has done for the last 23 years.

Parallel provinces

Crimea and Nagorno-Karabakh have shadowed each other for several decades. In Soviet times they shared the curious status of both being autonomous regions, which were each part of one of the 15 Union Republics of the USSR, but shared a strong affiliation with another Union Republic. Russian-majority Crimea, after 1954, belonged to Ukraine while Armenian-majority Nagorno-Karabakh was situated inside Azerbaijan.

Armenia has carried out a de facto annexation of Karabakh.

Once the USSR began to split apart, that double allegiance was a recipe for trouble. In 1988, the Armenians of Karabakh were the first rebels to shake the architecture of the Soviet Union, when, encouraged by their compatriots in Yerevan, they demanded unification with Soviet Armenia. Then, in December 1989, the soviets of Azerbaijan and Nagorno-Karabakh jointly declared unification. Following the Armenian victory in that conflict, confirmed by the 1994 ceasefire, Armenia has since carried out a de facto annexation of Karabakh, Meanwhile, the territory sticks to a declaration of independence made in 1991, but recognised by no one except its fellow de facto states in the region – Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria.

Nagorno-Karabakh forces in 1992. Today Armenia and Azerbaijan have more formidable weapons. CC Kalabaha1969

In the early 1990s, there were fears that Crimea would follow the example of Karabakh, Abkhazia or Chechnya, and seek secession, thereby provoking yet another conflict. In Crimea, however, the ‘Karabakh precedent’ was a dog that didn’t bark. To general relief, the peninsula proved to be a damp tinderbox. Either it was because Russians and Ukrainians were too intermingled and too similar, or it was that the Crimean Russian elite was too corrupt or too passive, but Crimea avoided conflict even as other Soviet-era autonomous regions were fought over.

In Crimea, however, the ‘Karabakh precedent’ was a dog that didn’t bark.

Until 2014, that is. The bizarre chain of events in Ukraine, in February and March, led to the Russian Federation annexing Crimea, tearing up half a dozen international treaties, and creating a new territorial dispute almost out of thin air. In this context, people are wondering not about whether Karabakh creates a precedent for Crimea but whether it works the other way round. The truth may be that Crimea has placed Karabakh in a new vicious circle of destructive politics.

Russia’s role

Armenia immediately made its choice. David Babayan, adviser to the Karabakh Armenian president, called Crimea’s vote in March a good precedent for Nagorno-Karabakh.

'You are now entering free Artsakh' (Armenian for 'Karabakh'), CC oDR

Hrant Apovian, one Armenian expert amongst many, wrote, ‘The Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh is a full fledged democratic entity. It will survive and will be recognized as such in time. The cases of Kosovo and Crimea will reinforce and not hinder its march toward independence.’

Evidently under Russian pressure, Armenia was forced to abandon its tradition of ‘complementarity,’ and was one of a very small (and generally disreputable) group of 10 countries which supported Russia’s capture of Crimea, at the United Nations, along with Belarus, Bolivia, Cuba, North Korea, Nicaragua, Sudan, Syria, Venezuela and Zimbabwe.

Russia is an official mediator in the conflict and – in contrast to its much more direct involvement in Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria – has interests on both sides. Its only military base in the South Caucasus (outside Abkhazia and South Ossetia) is in Armenia. It has strengthened its economic and security relationship with Armenia, which is now on course to join Russia’s Customs Union.

An Azerbaijani soldier keeps watch. Both sides are often only 100 metres from each other. CC Azerbaijan-irs.com

But Moscow also continues to build up its relationship with Azerbaijan, the largest and by far the wealthiest country in the South Caucasus. In May, Russia made a new weapons sale to Azerbaijan, which the Armenian defence minister, through gritted teeth, called a normal development.

Sergei Markov, Kremlin adviser (one time US employee in Moscow, and now Washington’s biggest bête noire), told Azerbaijan that only Russia, not the United States, could guarantee Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity.

This display of realpolitik and the on-going confrontation between Russia and Western countries over Ukraine mean that it will be much harder to see a concerted three-country push for a Karabakh peace agreement, as happened in 2011.

Some Western commentators argue that Russia obstructs the resolution of a Karabakh peace process.

Some Western commentators argue that Russia obstructs the resolution of a Karabakh peace process. There is little evidence of this. In a decade and a half following the conflict, I have known half a dozen US mediators, representing the OSCE’s Minsk Group. Each of them has said that the three co-chairs, France, Russia and the United States, have worked in close coordination over that entire period. When former president Dmitry Medvedev tried to forge a deal in a meeting in Kazan in 2011, he did so with the full support of Barack Obama and Nicholas Sarkozy.

Azerbaijani military parade. Azerbaijan's military budget is now exceeds Armenia's total government budget. CC Sevda Babayeva

Yet Vladimir Putin, Medvedev’s patron, successor and predecessor, has not continued the high-level diplomacy that ended in Kazan. The failure there probably only confirmed the cynicism and indifference with which he is said to regard the Karabakh peace process. This cynicism, rather than active manipulation of the conflict, is Russia’s main fault. But it should be said that Putin has reason to be cynical.

An enduring rivalry

Over the past two decades, both Armenia and Azerbaijan – and particularly the latter – have grown much stronger as states. The two presidents of each country, currently Serzh Sargsyan and Ilham Aliyev, have grown correspondingly more powerful vis-à-vis the mediators of the Karabakh conflict, and now it is they who conduct the negotiation process, seek to set its exceedingly slow tempo and, especially in the case of Azerbaijan, blame the mediators for lack of progress. 

The conflict between independent Armenia and Azerbaijan is similar to that between India and Pakistan.

Laurence Broers has argued convincingly that the conflict is better seen as one of ‘enduring rivalry’ between independent Armenia and Azerbaijan, similar to that between India and Pakistan, than a post-Soviet conflict about autonomy and self-determination.

The takeover of Crimea, the crisis in Ukraine, and the black-and-white political realities that have resulted from them have only accentuated difficulties that had already made the Karabakh conflict even more intractable.

Nagorno-Karabakh troops clean their weapons in their trench on the 'line of contact' (c) RIA Novosti/Ilya Pitalev

One is the increased militarisation of the 'line of contact,' the ceasefire line of 180km that runs through de jure Azerbaijani territory. On each side are 20,000 Armenian and Azerbaijani troops, dug into first world war-style trenches sometimes only 100 metres apart. Snipers with long-range rifles cause casualties a long way back from the line. Heavy weaponry has built up, with the Azerbaijanis now spending more than £1.8 billion a year on their military budget on items such as drones, multiple-rocket launchers and attack aircraft. Some military analysts say that this has created a deterrent effect, but we can be certain that a new conflict, however small, would be vastly more destructive than that of the 1990s.

There are 20,000 Armenian and Azerbaijani troops, dug into first world war-style trenches sometimes only 100 metres apart.

Even if none of those new weapons are fired, the militarisation has been accompanied by even more bellicose rhetoric from the losing side, Azerbaijan. The rhetoric is, of course, a symptom of 20 years of frustration, but it also erodes hopes of forging a relationship at the negotiating table, which might produce a peace deal. In his recent Independence Day speech President Aliyev declared: ‘Therefore, if the Armenian people want to live in peace with neighbours they must first of all get rid of their criminal, blood-thirsty and illegal regime and send it to the annals of history.’ It was not a speech likely to persuade President Sargsyan to engage in meaningful negotiations on the surrender of captured territory.

A burned out APC on the road to Kelbajar in 2014. Twenty years since the ceasefire, reminders of the conflict abound. CC oDR.

At the same time, in the last few months, the Azerbaijani Government has cracked down even more severely on civil society organisations and those few activists engaged in Track II dialogue with Armenians. In April, Azerbaijani journalist Rauf Mirkadirov was arrested for alleged espionage on behalf of Armenia, his crime being collaboration with Armenian non-governmental colleagues. Last month, the country’s two most prominent activists for human rights and dialogue with Armenians, Arif and Leyla Yunus, were prevented from leaving the country, had their passports confiscated, and are under similar threats.

Conflict management

In parallel, the international mediation efforts of the Minsk Group have stayed at the same level. Although they do not say so out loud, French, Russian and US diplomats send the signal that they do not believe there is a chance of a peaceful breakthrough in the negotiations, but that they will continue to manage the negotiations and the ceasefire monitoring mission, while hoping for better times. It is not so much conflict resolution as conflict management.

It is not so much conflict resolution as conflict management.

In his speech last month in Washington marking the 20th anniversary of the ceasefire, US Minsk Group ambassador James Warlick, again set out the fundamental rationale for a peaceful agreement. He more or less hinted that if – and only if – the parties to the conflict are serious about it, the United States government is prepared to commit more resources to the peace process. ‘It is the presidents who must take the bold steps needed to make peace,’ he reminded his audience.

Unfortunately, in the world that has been re-drawn following the take-over of Crimea, the leaders of Azerbaijan and Armenia see even fewer incentives to take those bold steps than before.

Local government in Crimea has pretty much ground to a halt. It is still unclear whether the region’s judges have completed the process of re-registering their credentials so that they can practise Russian federal law, while Crimean prisoners, tried in Ukrainian courts, have not been informed whether their existing sentences will stand or not. Meanwhile, Crimean drug addicts, who have been receiving treatment with methadone substitution therapy (MST), are worried that supplies will soon run out – the drug is banned in Russia – and they will have to fall back on morphine or heroin.

Paralysed

Vladimir Putin had barely finished making his momentous announcement about the annexation of Crimea and Sevastopol, when the problems began. The first one concerned the courts, which had been working under Ukrainian law. Disagreements over questions of procedure have paralysed the local judiciary: criminal, administrative and civil cases have all been frozen as judges try to work out what legal process they should be using.

Crimeans wait to exchange Ukrainian licence plates for Russian ones. Not all changes are as comparatively smooth.

Disagreements over questions of procedure have paralysed the local judiciary.

It got to the stage where Crimean judges’ verdicts could not be recognised under Russian law because there were no official stamps available to validate them. On 24 April, Kommersant newspaper reported a case where a regional judge fined a Crimean resident 5,000 roubles (£100) for a drugs offence, in accordance with Russian law, but used a stamp with a Ukrainian crest to formalise it. As local civil rights campaigners pointed out, he had no alternative, since there were no stamps bearing Russia’s crest.  

Another legal problem that arose was that Crimean judges were not authorised to deliver verdicts based on Russian law, since they were ruling about Ukrainian, not Russian, citizens. Ukraine also has separate categories of administrative and commercial courts, which have no equivalent in Russia. The special working party set up by the Russian Duma to harmonise the two legal systems is still at a loss to see how these bodies can be adapted to function within a Russian legal framework. In the end, local judges have had to just drop cases founded on Ukrainian law.

Crimea may be de facto Russian territory now, but serious legal issues remain. (c) Demotix/Gabriel Fortin-Harvey

At first, it was assumed that the question of the status of judges, lawyers and notaries public would be, at least partly, resolved by 19 April. The Russian Government decided to give all Crimea’s judges immediate Russian citizenship, so that they could at least deliver verdicts that would be recognised in the Russian Federation; as for Russian law, they would be expected to get their heads round it as they went along. But as that date approached, it turned out that just having Russian citizenship still would not give them the right to practise in the Russian Federation: they would have to go through a re-attestation process as laid down in the law ‘On the Status of Judges in the Russian Federation.’ This process has several stages: the selection and nomination of a candidate is followed by a qualifying examination, and scrutiny by a Qualifications Board.

To speed up the process, the Crimean judges were given a concession in the shape of a simplified exam.

So by the end of April, all Crimean judges were expected to have passed the complex examination taken in Russia by any applicant for a licence to practise law as a solicitor, barrister or notary public. To speed up the process, the Crimean judges were given a concession in the shape of a simplified exam: usually, for example, anyone wanting to qualify as a barrister would have to answer a minimum of 100 questions on civil, administrative and criminal law, but the Crimean applicants had to answer less than half that number; and they were examined by specially selected members of Russia’s Law Society.

We still do not know whether the Crimean judges and lawyers passed their exam; the Russian Government has not announced any results. The only thing that is clear is that it will be at least a year before the package of bills regulating Crimea’s courts, passed by the Duma on 11 June, will start to be implemented, so the problems will not disappear any time soon. The politicians have, however, ruled that existing judges should have priority for jobs, and selection will made by the Higher Judges’ Qualifications Board.

Addicts without a legal fix

Differences in drugs legislation between Russia and Ukraine have created much greater problems for Crimean drug addicts, and in particular those who have been benefitting from a methadone substitution therapy programme. Eight hundred users in Crimea and Sevastopol are being treated with methadone or buprenorphine to help wean them off their addiction to hard drugs, in a programme set up by the Ukrainian authorities. But in Russia substitution therapy is banned, as is methadone itself, which is on the same list of banned drugs as heroin – the country’s Federal Drug Control Service (FSKN) is strongly opposed to its use. After the annexation of Crimea, when many Ukrainian health officials left the peninsula for good, local users and drug specialists warned that their supply of methadone would soon run out, and asked that they be allowed to continue the programme on an experimental basis. Otherwise, they say, many users who, thanks to the scheme, have been able to reintegrate in society, may go back to using hard drugs.

While methadone is commonly used therapeutically throughout the world, in Russia it is a banned substance. CC John Kelly

In Sevastopol, the MST programme has been in operation for around five years, and according to both Ukrainian Government research and local human rights organisations, has had considerable success. In 2012, Ukraine’s Ministry for Internal Affairs Academy, the Odessa-based Veritas human rights group and the Ukrainian Institute for Public Health Policy Research carried out a joint study of the success of substitution therapy in preventing drug related crime. Their research showed that 26.5% of Ukrainian Police officers polled had noticed a reduction in crimes relating to drug trafficking, and 22.1% had registered a drop in general crime.

Since the methadone programme began, police have noticed a drop in both drug-related and general crime.

According to the study, before accessing the programme, 50% of addicts were spending about 200 Hryvnia (£10) a day on drugs, 40% spending up to 500 Hryvnia (£25), and 10%, spending more than 1000 Hryvnia (£50). 77% of those enrolled in the programme also reported that they no longer had to find money for a fix – in other words, the drugs experts pointed out, they no longer had to commit crimes in order to survive.

The Russian FSKN is, however, deaf to the experts’ calls. Methadone, they repeat, is banned in Russia, and so it should also be banned in Crimea. Nevertheless, the Russian Health Ministry has decided to allow the distribution of methadone to continue on the peninsula for the time being, announcing that ‘methadone will remain available to those who are enrolled on the programme.’ But who knows how long this temporary reprieve will continue?   

Prisons and prisoners

The legal vacuum in which Crimea and Ukraine found themselves after Russia’s annexation has also affected both prisoners serving sentences in Crimean camps, and people being held in pre-trial detention. Despite the fact that the Russian Federal Penal Enforcement Service (FSIN) is already operating in the peninsula, local prisoners are still not subject to Russian law.

Some prisoners have been convicted under Ukrainian laws that have no equivalent in Russia.

The problem is that the 3000 people serving time in Crimea’s three prison camps were tried under Ukrainian law, which has no judicial force in Russia. Some of them have been convicted under articles of the Ukrainian Criminal Code, which have no equivalent in Russian law; and the Russian FSIN and Ministry of Justice have yet to decide whether these prisoners can look forward to a review of their cases and sentences. One thing, however, is clear – no one will want to free prisoners, wherever they were sentenced. In Crimea, at this moment, judges, drug addicts and prisoners all find themselves in the same company – in a legal limbo.

Standfirst image (c) RIA Novosti/Taras Litvinenko    

After 20 years of carefully navigating negotiations over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the US made a critical misstep last month by embracing — as official US policy — a futile settlement proposal. Advocating such a poor plan for peace only makes another Caucasus war more likely.

Ambassador James Warlick’s 7 May speech at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace was as shocking as it was disappointing. The US negotiator to the OSCE Minsk Group, charged with facilitating a peaceful resolution to the conflict, announced that the vague six-point plan originally proposed in 2007 by the Minsk Group to the Presidents of Azerbaijan and Armenia as the ‘Madrid Principles,’ would no longer be a proposal, but US policy; this is a major blow to the peace process. 

Madrid Principles

Advocating such a poor plan for peace only makes another Caucasus war more likely.

Just days prior to the twentieth anniversary of the 1994 Nagorno-Karabakh ceasefire agreement, and only eight months into his current post, Warlick laid out six key elements of a settlement. These points, which he stated ‘in no particular order,’ essentially call for a Nagorno-Karabakh with Soviet borders, and a corridor with Armenia, protected by ‘international security guarantees that would include a peacekeeping operation.’

The region’s final legal status would be decided at some unspecified point ‘in the future,’ by an ill-defined ‘legally binding expression of will.’ In the meantime, Nagorno-Karabakh would ‘be granted an interim status that, at a minimum, provides guarantees for security and self-governance.’ Under this policy, the Armenian-controlled buffer territories would be transferred to Azerbaijani control, and internally displaced persons and refugees would have the right to return to their homes.

This plan, however, was dead on arrival. It fails to adequately address the very root of the conflict — Nagorno-Karabakh’s status; a key issue it evades, rather than confronts. Even more, the elements of the deal are as ambiguous in Warlick’s speech as they were in 2009, the last time the Minsk Group revised the Madrid Principles. Considering the vacuum of trust between the Armenian and Azerbaijani leadership, such imprecision leaves too much room for manipulation.

However bad the status quo may be, it is better than a bad peace.

Warlick said that, ‘the current state of affairs is unacceptable, and unsustainable.’ Yet, however bad the status quo may be, it is better than a bad peace. Unfortunately, Washington’s new policy on Nagorno-Karabakh is promoting just that; and the consequences of such an error could soon have grave consequences for not only Armenians and Azerbaijanis, but the wider European and Eurasian region as well.

Lacking a viable peace plan, the threat of renewed warfare over Nagorno-Karabakh is now even greater. Greater too are the risks of dangerous spillover effects that another war would bring, including the destruction of oil and gas pipelines crucial to European energy security, and further instability in Russia’s already volatile North Caucasus region.

Off the mark

Warlick was off the mark when he said that, ‘the sides have come to a point where their positions on the way forward are not that far apart.’ This is hardly the case. The ‘well-established compromise,’ he mentioned is, in fact, an illusion. The sides are further apart than they have ever been since 1994.

The greatest omission in this new US policy is that it fails to appreciate that Nagorno- Karabakh’s independence has reached a point of no return. 1991 — the year that the Nagorno-Karabakh Republic declared independence from Azerbaijan — is as holy to Armenians as 1776 is to Americans, and of no lesser value. 

Nevertheless, while the elements proposed by Ambassador Warlick call for the Armenians to make territorial concessions to Azerbaijan, they make no guarantee of Nagorno-Karabakh’s independence. This is unacceptable for the Armenian side, especially considering that, just last month, Azerbaijan's President, Ilham Aliyev, declared that, ‘self-proclaimed Nagorno-Karabakh will never be granted any legal status.’

This new policy is a bad deal, not a fair deal. The security environment in which Nagorno -Karabakh exists is very different from when the ceasefire was signed in 1994. Rather than take steps over the last two decades to build confidence with Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, Azerbaijan has done the opposite, engaging in massive defence spending, sabre rattling, and an aggressive sniper policy on the 'line of contact' between Armenian and Azerbaijani forces. 

This is not the behaviour of a losing side seeking reconciliation, but of a losing side seeking revenge.

This is not the behaviour of a losing side seeking reconciliation, but of a losing side seeking revenge; and this is why the buffer territories which form Nagorno-Karabakh’s perimeter are so important to its security. Geographically, they provide a mountainous bulwark protecting its northern border with Azerbaijan. The Armenian-controlled eastern area in and around the former city of Aghdam, prevent it from once again becoming a staging ground for Azerbaijani artillery in easy reach of Nagorno-Karabakh’s capital, Stepanakert. The buffer territories between Nagorno-Karabakh and Armenia likewise prevent Azerbaijani forces from driving a wedge between the two Armenian states.

In his speech, Warlick said that Nagorno-Karabakh would have to relinquish these strategic buffer territories to Azerbaijan, and instead, take up its vulnerable former Soviet borders. But in exchange for what? Only assurances that Nagorno-Karabakh’s final legal status would be determined at some unspecified point in the future, while placing its safety in the doubtfully reliable hands of a peacekeeping operation.

Stalin's cartography

Nagorno-Karabakh’s Soviet borders were drawn by Joseph Stalin, who purposefully made them indefensible. With these borders, Nagorno-Karabakh’s boundary with Azerbaijan would roughly double in length, while it would meanwhile lose the needed security benefits of the buffer territories. What is more, the source of most of Nagorno-Karabakh’s water exists outside of its former Soviet borders. 

Nagorno-Karabakh’s Soviet borders were drawn by Joseph Stalin, who purposefully made them indefensible.

Clearly, it would be twice as hard for the Karabakh Armenians to defend themselves under such a scenario. Nagorno-Karabakh’s borders must take into account the security realities of 2014, not Stalin’s cartography of 1923. Perhaps this would be more apparent to the Minsk Group if Stepanakert were to return to its seat at the negotiating table with Yerevan and Baku, which it held until 1998. 

While Ambassador Warlick drew attention to the avoidance of all-out war since the ceasefire was signed 20 years ago, he was making a big assumption when he said that, ‘we must also agree that the current state of affairs is unacceptable, and unsustainable.’ There is no such universal agreement on Nagorno-Karabakh’s status quo. On the contrary, as we witness an Azerbaijan that is increasingly aggressive against not only Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh, but also its own citizens, the status quo, despite its imperfections, may actually be the best way of moving forward.

When the leaders of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus gathered in Astana for the historic establishment of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU) on 29 May, one could not help but get the impression that Armenian president Serzh Sargsyan and his Kyrgyz counterpart Almazbek Atambayev, sitting in the first row among the audience during the ceremony, were eager to join them on stage. 

Already on the following day, Moscow and Bishkek agreed on establishing a development fund worth $1 billion for investment projects in the Central Asian country along with a $200m grant used for the implementation of a roadmap to join the Customs Union. But in Kyrgyzstan’s neighbour to the west, Uzbekistan, the political leadership has a very different take on the creation of a common market on post-Soviet territory.

Uzbekistan's strongman, Islam Karimov will always privilege regime stability over economic opportunity. CC Reinis Inkēns

Shifting alliances

This concern over the loss of sovereignty is at the heart of the foreign policymaking of Uzbekistan.

According to reports, President Islam Karimov strongly questioned the rationale and intention of the integration project: ‘Tell me, can there be political independence without economic independence?’ This concern over the loss of sovereignty is at the heart of the foreign policy-making of Uzbekistan. The country has never demonstrated a stable and predictable foreign policy direction; and its leadership has played foreign actors off against each other rather than pursing a constant alignment with Russia, China or the West. Just as the US saw their military presence in Uzbekistan suspended after expressing criticism of the Andijan Incident in 2005, Russia got a taste of Uzbekistan’s turnaround foreign policy in 2012, when Tashkent decided to withdraw from the Moscow-led military alliance CSTO, only six years after re-joining it.  

The normative foundation for this behaviour is best underlined in the foreign policy concept of 2012, stating that, as a sovereign entity, Uzbekistan has the right to enter or withdraw from alliances and inter-state communities as it pleases. The practical implication of this belief is that the country would not commit to any multilateral agreements if it perceives its interests to be compromised. Uzbek diplomats and politicians have expressed their unwillingness to take part in multilateral talks on various occasions, expressing their doubts about the efficiency and usefulness of such consultations. 

Sovereignty and survival

However, while Karimov and his advisers put forward the cause of national interest as a reason to justify any action on the international stage, their real underlying motivation lies with their concern for regime survival. Silencing political opposition, muzzling the media, and controlling the security services apparatus are all domestic aspects of regime security; and maintaining state sovereignty in international affairs is one further aspect of political stability. This also implies that dependency on other countries in terms of national security and economic prosperity can severely undermine regime legitimacy, and potentially spark societal pressure. Relying on the benevolence of Russian energy providers or financial assistance from Western development donors (as it is generally the case with Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan) is thus out of the question for Uzbekistan’s political elite.

Last year, Karimov called Uzbek labour migrants in Russia ‘lazy.’ 

The EEU, as Russia’s spearhead of economic integration, is of particular concern for Karimov and his inner circle since its main aim of guaranteeing the free movement of capital, labour and goods would constitute a threat to Uzbekistan’s pursuit of economic sovereignty. In 2012, remittances sent by Uzbek labour migrants from Russia to Uzbekistan amounted to $5.7 billion, a 12% share of GDP. Even the country’s huge cotton sector is largely outperformed by these figures. Uzbekistan’s participation in the EEU would most likely be followed by an increase in labour migrant flows to Russia, making it extremely hard for the country to be a self-assertive economic actor. In a moment of rare public indignation last year, Karimov called Uzbek labour migrants in Russia ‘lazy,’ thereby revealing that labour migration is a high-ranking concern.

'Lazy' Central Asian workers clean moscow's freezing streets. (c) RIA Novosti/Maksim Blinov

Uzbekistan’s trade strategy is, in fact, strictly opposed to a free trade regime as advocated by the three EEU founder states. A policy of import substitution lies at the core of the country’s protectionist tendencies, aimed at sparking domestic production. Since July 2013, imported food, personal care products, computer and office equipment require Uzbek language labelling, and the Government is eager to localise production of chemical, energy, pharmaceutical and other goods at the expense of international trade.

Analysing Tashkent’s view of economic integration through the prism of regime security also demonstrates that there is little concern for the social challenges currently faced by the country’s population. Even though the EEU’s eventual economic benefits remain arguable, the intention to coordinate agricultural production could well contribute to food security in landlocked Central Asia, an issue that is particularly prominent in Uzbekistan.

The Asian vector

But how successful has Uzbekistan been so far in maintaining political independence and achieving economic success? The state’s grip on the economy helped the country perform less badly than its neighbours after the disintegration of the Soviet Union, because price liberalization was only slowly and cautiously pursued. The cotton sector, an important source of state income and also elite rents, remains highly centralised, with prices set through a state procurement system. Bangladesh and China import the bulk of raw cotton from Uzbekistan; and South Korean companies invest in textile processing facilities in the double-landlocked country. The ‘Asian vector’ is of particular importance for Tashkent as Chinese and, to a lesser extent, South Korean companies substantially invest in Uzbekistan’s energy, automotive and chemical industries. In contrast to Russia, Uzbekistan’s remote Asian trade partners do not pursue political integration projects, thus posing as yet little threat to the political leadership.

Uzbekistan's economically vital cotton fields have provided the basis for Uzbekistan's 'Asian vector' CC Shuhrataxmedov

Under the current Uzbek leadership, then, prospects for joining the EEU are unlikely.

Under the current Uzbek leadership, then, prospects for joining the EEU are thus unlikely. This might change in a post-Karimov Uzbekistan, but one can safely assume that any presidential successor would continue the policy of economic sovereignty in order to appease the political factions controlling the Uzbekistani ministries; and that only the failure of the current economic strategy would initiate a rethink.  

The loss of Slavyansk to Ukrainian government forces has placed the so-called People’s Republics of Donetsk (DNR) and Luhansk (LNR) in a quandary. Can the war be continued from the main regional centres, and, if so, for how long? Is there a realistic hope of substantial military aid from Russia? Has the balance of power changed irrevocably for the separatist forces? And how should the Ukrainian leaders proceed?

Though the separatist forces, until recently, were far from united, perhaps the clearest enunciation of the priorities of the DNR – the most prominent of the two republics – was provided on June 12 by the press centre of the ‘South-East’ movement, coordinated by Oleg Tsarev. It listed several main objectives, the first of which was the creation of a union state with Russia, which would provide a common security system, contractual relations with Ukraine, and a state with full language rights for all citizens.

The action plan

The action plan envisaged compensation payments by the end of August for families and victims who had suffered ‘from the aggression of the Kiev junta,’ and material assistance for those with destroyed property. It also ‘guaranteed’ the prompt payment of wages, pensions, and social benefits, and proposed to cancel a 200% rise in tariffs for gas, electricity, and public utilities, announced by the government in Kyiv. Wages were to rise in factories owned by oligarchs (most notably those of Rinat Akhmetov), and there would be a transitional period during which Ukrainian institutions would fall under DNR control. The acquisition of Russian citizenship was also to have been permitted.

These policies fall under the heading of federalism as defined by the Russian leadership of Vladimir Putin. Notably they do not include foreign or security policy, in which respect they are not dissimilar to the sort of vision for the Donbas that Mikhail Gorbachev had devised for the former Soviet Union through his abortive Union agreement in 1991. Like Gorbachev’s Union Agreement, they appear to be unworkable.

These policies fall under the heading of federalism as defined by the Russian leadership of Vladimir Putin

According to a pro-Russian source, the leaders of the DNR, based in Donetsk, in the face of the sustained attacks from the Ukrainian army, were inclined to reach a compromise that would have signalled the end of the republic. In the view of this same author, the negotiations that took place between the aforementioned Rinat Akhmetov, the renegade leader of the Vostok battalion Aleksandr Khodakovsky, the pro-Putin Ukrainian oligarch Viktor Medvedchuk, and Russian officials such as Vladislav Surkov, the former First Deputy Chairman of the Presidential Administration in Moscow, would have led to the sacrificing of Igor Strelkov, the ‘Defence Minister’ of the DNR; and removed from regional decision-making Aleksey Mozgovoy (leader of the ‘People’s militia’ in Luhansk), and also Pavel Gubarev (‘People’s Governor’ of the DNR). The conciliatory position reflects in part the ‘substantial influence’ of Akhmetov over the Donetsk-based leadership of the DNR.

Kutuzov

Many assumed that Strelkov would die a hero’s death in the defence of Slavyansk

Strelkov, however, scuttled all these plans, when he arrived in Donetsk over the past weekend, declaring that he wished to put an end to the contradictions – what the above mentioned pro-Russian author called ‘grave digging’ because of its defeatist attitude – and unite all forces under a single command. Prior to that, many assumed that Strelkov would die a hero’s death in the defence of Slavyansk. Instead, according to one source, he departed ‘like Kutuzov,’ a reference to the calculated retreat of the Russian general in the face of Napoleon’s Grande Armée in the war of 1812. His arrival in Donetsk, and assumption of command appears akin to a coup d'état, replacing the hitherto uncoordinated leadership of the DNR.

Kutuzov with his Generals on Poklonnaya Hill outside Moscow, Aleksei Kivshenko, 1893. Photo CC 
In an interview with Lifenews.ru, Strelkov stated that he left Slavyansk to protect the lives of peaceful residents and his militia. In order to cover his retreat, a diversionary attack was organised, but the group commander bungled it, and most of the troops involved perished. Nonetheless, it allowed Strelkov to depart with 90% of his troops and most of his weapons intact. On July 7, he established the Central Military Council, which included all the main field commanders, with himself in the key position as commander of the Donetsk garrison. Shortly afterward, Strelkov appeared in Luhansk for a meeting with Valery Bolotov, the leader of the LNR, to coordinate activities.

Escalation

The loss of Slavyansk to the DNR forces can hardly be underestimated. It was, as DNR supporters acknowledge, the key point of the breakaway republic’s defensive structure, with over 60 heavy guns in place. By July 7, however, the city had no electricity or water supply, and the ATO (Anti-Terrorist Operation) had disabled the nearby power station at Mykolaivka, with a shell. The retreat appears to have been much less orderly than described. This raises the question of where the DNR goes from here, and how it will be affected by the change of leadership.

Strelkov’s arrival will likely escalate the conflict

Strelkov’s arrival will likely escalate the conflict. He has never made any secret of his commitment to the war, which he perceives as one for the ‘liberation’ of Ukraine, not merely the southeast. Under his command, whatever his difficulties, compromise with Kyiv is highly unlikely. That leaves a major decision to be made by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, namely, whether to continue the attack, thereby raising civilian casualties even further, in order to bring about a united Ukraine. Moreover, what would be Putin’s response to the destruction and ‘occupation’ – from the Russian perspective – of the DNR and LNR?

In an interview with Bloomberg on July 7, Ian Bremmer, head of the Eurasia Foundation, maintained that Putin would not be ‘the loser in Ukraine.’ He (Putin) wants ‘at the very least a federal Ukraine’ with its own foreign and economic policy (as we have noted, this was not on the DNR agenda). For Bremmer, this ‘federalism’ constitutes a ‘red line’ beyond which Putin will not move. It includes ‘Russian’ retention of the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk. Nevertheless, in his view, the Russian President need not rush to attain his goals in southeast Ukraine because the latter is facing an economic crisis that will only get worse as winter approaches, and which has been exacerbated by the high number of migrants coming from the conflict regions of the Donbas 
 Strelkov returns to the Russian Civil War as a White Army officer in a military re-enactment. Photo via vk.com

Virtually no one now believes that Ukraine will disintegrate or that the concept of Novorossiya is viable

Compromise

Yet the division of forces in the southeast is looking increasingly complex, and many players remain in place, not least Akhmetov, who are looking for a way out. The size of the ‘Novorossiya’ faction, which favours union with Russia, is dwindling. Other than Strelkov’s small band of forces, virtually no one now believes that Ukraine will disintegrate or that the concept of Novorossiya is viable. On the other hand, it is clear that for large swathes of the Donbas population, full control by the present Ukrainian administration is as undesirable as a Russian invasion and, Ukrainian media reports aside, the general sentiment after the arrival of the Kyiv army is likely to have been one of relief at the end to fighting rather than triumphalism and liberation.

In other words, there is significant scope for compromise, though any agreement would need to distinguish between regional autonomy and Putin-style federalism or ‘power sharing.’ An autonomous or semi-autonomous Donbas within Ukraine is a logical alternative and, moreover, it might appeal to the population at large, even to some of the pro-separatist elements that voted in the contentious referenda last May. But Ukraine could not tolerate a new Transnistria or Abkhazia in its eastern territories, which would continue to destabilize the country. The removal of Strelkov and his forces is, therefore, the key prerequisite to any progress; and they are increasingly isolated.

'Rights are earned in battle'. The Russian tricolour flies over the Donbas. Photo: vk.com/donbass_res 
Some degree of autonomy, then, might be the way forward. In Western Ukraine during the Euromaidan protests, regional governments were functioning as virtually autonomous structures. A federal system has worked successfully in countries such as Germany and Canada – in the latter case with the retention of priority for the French language in Quebec. In Ukraine, it is imperative that the Donbas region be adequately represented in the Cabinet and in parliament generally, when Ukrainians go to the polls in the fall; and full language rights must be retained for Russian speakers.

Vladimir Putin is also looking for an exit plan, having run out of options

This proposal makes one assumption, namely that Vladimir Putin is also looking for an exit plan, having apparently run out of options, and fallen foul of more militant hawks in Moscow. Already, as we have seen above, the Russian President was prepared to sacrifice Strelkov, indicating limits to the expansion of ‘the Russian world.’ This scenario, of course, offers a very different interpretation of where Putin stands, from that of Ian Bremmer. But, as things stand, it does seem that the Russian President might have lost this particular chess game.

Russkiy mir

In 2006, Russian nationalist historian Mikhail Smolin condemned former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma’s book Ukraine is not Russia,arguing that Ukraine was a 'sickness,' and Ukrainians were 'South-Russian separatists,''traitors to Orthodox civilisation and Russian unity.' To a greater or lesser extent, this view of the Ukrainian people is shared by the entire Russian political establishment and underpins many of the Kremlin’s responses to developments in Ukraine. 

The notion of 'Russian unity' or russkiy mir (literally, Russian world) would seem to imply the existence of a transnational community of people and societies committed to Russian culture and language. The idea was adopted by Putin as early as 2006, and is obviously imperialistic, but it also reveals a deeper and probably more important insight into Moscow's domestic and international politics. Since Putin’s regime correctly recognised Western-style liberal democracy as an existential threat to the well being of its elites (not the people), it has crushed democracy in Russia and successfully convinced a large number of Russian people that Western-style democracy is destructive (look back at the 1990s, they say) and essentially alien to them. To compensate for the rejection of liberal democracy and, therefore, becoming part of the West, the Kremlin and its loyal opinion-makers have offered the Russian people the belief that they are a unique civilisation in its own right: you do not need Western values because you are different; Russian culture is not only different but superior to Western culture.

President Putin meets with members of the 'Night Wolves' a Russian Orthodox motorcycle gang. via Kremlin.ru

Russkiy mir is an, 'unwesternisable' and 'unmodernisable' community.

Moscow proclaimed the uniqueness of Russian culture to justify both the rejection of Western-style democracy and Western modernisation. But the Kremlin – unlike China – has failed in its attempts at authoritarian modernisation, and Russian culture, as intrinsically understood by Putin’s regime, is about not modernising at all. Russkiy mir is an, 'unwesternisable' and 'unmodernisable' community. This is why Putin’s Russia is not fascist, as some commentators suggest: both Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany strove for an alternative modernity rather than rejecting the idea of modernisation altogether.

Obviously, no society should be forced to modernise along Western lines unless it so wishes. However, the danger of the Kremlin’s 'non-modernisation,' driven by the elites' urgent need for self-preservation, is that it clashes with Russia’s natural progress towards social modernisation, which is determined by globalisation. Thus, the Kremlin’s 'non-modernisation' agenda is not only to conserve the existing traditionalist elements of Russian society, but also to suppress those who embrace Western-style modernisation. This suppression has resulted in almost all the social conservative policies that Putin’s regime has produced so far, showing disdain for – if not openly persecuting – human rights and environmental activists, social, cultural and sexual minorities, progressive artists and musicians, etc.

Another danger of the Kremlin’s refusal to modernise is that the uniqueness of the 'unwesternisable'russkiy mir needs constant corroboration, meaning that hindering the progress of Westernisation and democratisation in the countries that are allegedly part of russkiy mir is crucial for continuing to substantiate the 'non-modernisation' thesis to the Russians. Putin’s attempts, first to sabotage Ukraine’s democratic revolution, and then to undermine the country’s post-revolutionary development were aimed at Russian citizens, to prevent them from observing Ukraine’s successful democratisation; otherwise, if those Little Russians did it, why can’t we?

Belonging to russkiy mir

It is essential to stress that russkiy mir is not a community of ethnic Russians or societies committed to Russian culture. The Kremlin’s flirtation with Russian nationalism, although convincing, is inherently a means to secure the rule of the political and financial elites in Putin’s Russia. To be part of russkiy mir is to fit their agenda: disdain for liberal democracy, suppression of human rights, and undermining the rule of law. This explains why liberal citizens of Russia, or ethnic Russians in Ukraine who supported the democratic revolution, do not belong to russkiy mir; they are 'national traitors' or 'Russophobes.' It also helps to explain why the defenders of russkiy mir in Eastern Ukraine are racists and homophobes; and why the best friends of russkiy mir in the West are corrupt politicians and undemocratic political parties.

Russkiy mir is not a community of ethnic Russians or societies committed to Russian culture.

In May 2014, an 'epic thread'appeared on the Facebook page of the Right Sector, a far right Ukrainian movement that emerged at the beginning of the Euromaidan protests in November 2013. A photo of Conchita Wurst, the extravagant Austrian winner of 2014 Eurovision Song Contest, was posted with the comment: 'Do we need this kind of ‘Europe’? Or would it be better to restore the real Europe at home and build a strong national state that would be free not only from Moscow imperialists but also from Western liberasts?!'. This post became a disaster for the Right Sector, as the overwhelming majority of the commentators – many of them actual subscribers to the Right Sector Facebook page – condemned the homophobia and intolerance of the post. One commentator said: 'You have Putin’s view of Europe… Europe is different and Conchita demonstrates that people are different... And, with the kind of attitude that you demonstrate, you’d better go to a referendum and join Russia.’ Another comment was no less devastating: 'If you're homophobes, then don't turn on the TV. Go and visit neighbouring fascist Russia – they think the same way you do. Shame on you.' Apart from comparing the Right Sector to Putin’s Russia, some comments also denounced its isolationism: 'Do you want Juche [North Korean autarchy) ideas in Ukraine or do you want Ukraine to be a full member of the world community? If you want Juche, then you are enemies of Ukraine; if you don’t, then stop this silly hysteria and talk about self-isolation. Simply put: stop talking nonsense. Glory to Ukraine!'

'I will return Crimea to Ukraine!', - slogan from Oleh Lyashko's presidential campaign. (c) RIA Novosti/Aleksandr Maksimenko

Written in Ukrainian and Russian, comments like these affirm that Ukraine’s departure ('South-Russian separatism') from russkiy mir or the sphere of influence of Putin’s Russia is not about creating an unbridgeable ethno-cultural cleavage between the Ukrainians and Russians. It is about rejecting what Putin’s Russia apparently stands for: intolerance, illiberalism, and isolationism.

Far right… and far far right

Unfortunately, the annexation of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, and the proxy war that the Kremlin has waged against Ukraine in eastern parts of the country have created the conditions for some elements of Ukrainian society to evolve in the direction of russkiy mir. The natural feeling of humiliation deriving from the loss of territory and military failure, resulted in a psychological need for the deceptive comfort of populism and its simplistic rhetoric and actions. Similar attitudes were to be found in Russia after the defeat in the first Chechen war – attitudes that contributed to the rise of Putin. 

Another presidential candidate, Oleh Lyashko, obtained 8.32% of the votes and finished third.

After Ukraine’s presidential election in May 2014, many journalists and experts on Ukraine, who highlighted the pathetic results of the two 'official' far-right candidates, Svoboda’s Oleh Tyahnybok (1.16%) and Right Sector’s Dmytro Yarosh (0.70%), completely ignored the strong electoral performance of another presidential candidate, Oleh Lyashko, who obtained 8.32% of the votes and finished third. In his political programme, peppered with 23 exclamation marks, Lyashko presented a textbook example of unabashed populism, while, during his campaign, he postured in a military uniform promising to 'return Crimea to Ukraine!' In the run-up to the presidential election, Lyashko praised militarism and bragged about unlawfully questioning a captured separatist. However, not only have the Ukrainian authorities ignored Lyashko’s criminal actions, but society has largely failed to condemn his behaviour.

Social-National Assembly (SNA)

Lyashko worked with Right Sector extremist elements, namely the Social-National Assembly (SNA); and by spring 2014 had effectively managed to lure them away from Right Sector. The SNA is a neo-Nazi movement, which has always been too extreme for the Right Sector. According to its official documents, its 'nationalism is racial, social, great-power imperialist, anti-systemic (anti-democratic and anti-capitalist), self-sufficient, militant and uncompromising'. Its ideology 'builds on maximalist attitudes, national and racial egoism,' while glorifying the Ukrainian nation as part of the 'White Race.'

Fighters of the Azov battalion under the flag of the SNA featuring a wolf's hook. via forum.omsk.com

Lyashko's Radical Party nominated several SNA members as candidates in the May 2014 Kyiv city council elections: Oleh Odnorozhenko (its ideologue), Ihor Mosychuk, Ihor Kryvoruchko, and Volodymyr Shpara. It seems plausible to suggest that SNA members will also be included in Lyashko’s party list in the early parliamentary elections possibly taking place in autumn 2014. 

The Azov battalion includes members of Misanthropic Division, an international neo-Nazi movement.

The SNA was also behind the formation of the Azov battalion, a volunteer auxiliary police unit that was armed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine as part of the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) launched against the (pro-)Russia separatists in Eastern Ukraine. The Azov battalion does not consist solely of SNA members (although there are unverified reports that all the volunteers are required to sign up to the SNA before joining the battalion), but the SNA leader Andriy Biletsky is its commander, with Mosychuk as his deputy. The battalion includes members of Misanthropic Division, an international neo-Nazi movement, whose Ukrainian 'branch'– mostly based in Kharkiv – is affiliated with the SNA. The Division considers that, rather than liberating Eastern Ukraine from illiberal and undemocratic (pro-)Russia separatists, their 'black squadrons are fighting in the ranks of the pagan battalion Azov against the residues of modern society represented by khachi [racist slur for natives of the Caucasus region], chavs, communists, liberals, Asians and other Untermenschen.'

Media coverage

The SNA’s participation in the ATO in Eastern Ukraine, and Lyashko’s cooperation with the neo-Nazis, run in parallel with mainstream Ukrainian media according the SNA a degree of legitimacy by proclaiming them 'defenders of the Ukrainian motherland.' They are almost never presented to audiences as SNA members, but specifically as fighters of the Azov battalion. In the same manner, RT (formerly Russia Today) presents members of European far-right parties who support the Kremlin’s agenda, as simply European politicians, without mentioning their undemocratic doctrines.

Recently, SNA members have appeared on Ukrainian TV, and interviews with them have been published by respected media outlets. Their ideology was very rarely questioned although sometimes they took the liberty of appearing on TV wearing clothes with dubious symbols. Regretfully, the same media that provided objective coverage during the Maidan revolution were now legitimising the SNA by refusing to regard their ideology and activities as problematic.

In one episode, a journalist of Hromadske went so far as to show a video in which Mosychuk was humiliating a captured separatist.

Hromadske TV, for instance, invited Biletsky, Mosychuk and Kryvoruchko to its studio as the commanders of the Azov battalion. In one episode, a journalist of Hromadske went so far as to show a video in which Mosychuk was humiliating a captured separatist. The journalist failed to provide even moderate criticism of Mosychuk's actions – in what way was he any different from the Russian state journalists who questioned, detained and abused Ukrainian security officers?

In another episode, Roman Skrypin, a journalist for Hromadske, evidently unwillingly asked Biletsky, who was wearing a black paramilitary polo with a chevron saying 'Black Corps'– a clear reference to Das Schwarze Korps, the official newspaper of the SS – about the claims that the SNA was a neo-Nazi movement. When Biletsky, for obvious reasons, decided not to give a direct answer, Skrypin disavowed his question.

Ukrainska Pravda, LB, The Insider and other influential Ukrainian media outlets have regularly published comments from and interviews with the SNA leaders, as well as sympathetic coverage of their actions. Novoye Vremya, a new media project of Vitaliy Sych, former editor of the popular magazine Korrespondent, has even named Biletsky among the 10 people 'who are taking a stand for Ukraine’s independence in Donbas.' It may be worth remembering that Sych declared Svoboda’s Oleh Tyahnybok 'the person of the year 2012.'

Ihor Mosychuk in the studio of Hromadske TV, wearing a t-shirt produced by the neo-Nazi brand Doberman Aggressive. via YouTube

How different, then, are they all from the media in Putin’s Russia that serve as a platform for disseminating the illiberal and intolerant views of Russian ultranationalists such as Aleksandr Dugin, Aleksandr Prokhanov and many others? Ukrainian humanistic and liberal voices are few. In Ukraine, they are often slammed as 'pacifists,' although neither humanism nor liberalism equals pacifism. In Russia, liberal journalists are condemned as the 'fifth column.' 

Conflict as a test of Ukrainian democracy

Russia’s proxy war against Ukraine now serves as a perfect excuse for legitimising the fringe Ukrainian neo-Nazis as 'defenders of the Ukrainian motherland.' Those who are involved in this process – especially the Ministry of Internal Affairs that arm them and Ukrainian mainstream media that uncritically take their 'patriotism' at face value – fail to understand that neo-Nazis pose a real threat to Ukrainian society. 

Neo-Nazis pose a real threat to Ukrainian society.

The Constitution of Ukraine unequivocally states that 'Ukraine is the sovereign and independent, democratic, social, legal state' (Article 1). For some Ukrainians, the Russian threat to their country’s sovereignty and independence has obscured the rationale of being sovereign and independent – that is to secure the democratic, social and legal state. Furthermore, the Constitution unambiguously recognises, 'the human being, his or her life and health, honour and dignity, inviolability and security' as the highest social value. At the same time, the main duty of the state is 'to affirm and ensure human rights and freedoms' (Article 3). 

It is absurd to assume that the neo-Nazis who 'are taking a stand for Ukraine’s independence' are doing this in the name of Ukraine’s highest social values or to reinforce the main duty of the state as stipulated by the Constitution. Rather, they are arming themselves, learning how to fight and kill, as well as recruiting new members. Their 'ideal Ukraine' is not only different, but is the direct opposite of a democratic, social and legal state. To ignore these values, to override them for the sake of sovereignty and independence, is to move closer psychologically in the direction of Putin’s russkiy mir without even acknowledging it. Ukraine’s rapprochement with the EU should mean something different, because EU member states have partially sacrificed their sovereignty and independence at the altar of supranational democracy, more secure social order and the stronger rule of law.

In the beginning of July, Mayor of Kyiv Vitali Klitschko used the conflict in Eastern Ukraine as an excuse for discarding what should be the fundamental values of the democratic Ukrainian state. On 5 July, the Ukrainian LGBT community was going to hold a March of Equality in Kyiv, under the slogan 'Ukraine is united and we are part of it,' but Klitschko called for its cancellation on the grounds that 'when military operations are taking place and many people are dying,' it would not be  'appropriate to hold entertainments.' Klitschko seems completely to misunderstand the meaning of democracy: the March of Equality is not an 'entertainment' but a means of drawing attention to the fact that the state should 'affirm and ensure human rights and freedoms' of all its citizens.

What will Klitschko do when the neo-Nazi gang from the Azov battalion returns to Kyiv to fight against various 'Untermenschen'?

The March of Equality has been cancelled but the reasons for cancelling it are most disturbing: the police told the organising committee that 'they could not secure the safety of participants in the face of expected far-right counter-demonstrators.' What will Klitschko do when the neo-Nazi gang from the Azov battalion – officially armed by the Ministry of Internal Affairs – returns to Kyiv to fight against various Untermenschen? The failure to protect the participants of the March of Equality from Ukrainian right-wing extremists in Kyiv is no different from the failure to protect East Ukrainian civilians from (pro-)Russia separatists, because 'all people are free and equal in their dignity and rights', while 'human rights and freedoms are inalienable and inviolable' (Article 21). 

Giving in to bullies only makes them stronger; retreating from any enemy of democracy – be they militants of intolerant and isolationist russkiy mir or Ukrainian neo-Nazis – is to open up even more space for injustice, and cede even more territory to anti-European forces. Every time Ukraine’s authorities infringe the rights of its citizens, Putin gives a welcoming smile.

The President of Russia has successfully annexed Crimea, weakened the Ukrainian state, and played havoc with security in the region. He has been building up a war scare, and is now monitoring the takeover of key administrative and police buildings in Eastern Ukraine. He is denying Russia's direct military intervention, but the identity of the masked, highly prepared special units fool nobody. The large-scale use of propaganda in all media is the clearest demonstration of the subversive nature of the Kremlin's methods. Vladimir Putin has created a climate of fear, uncertainty and unpredictability that may be usefully reinforcing his hand at home, but is also triggering resentment and distrust in many countries, not only in Europe. Will he not become an outcast in international relations, albeit a powerful one? Spoiling too much may soon backfire, and produce corrosive damage to Russia’s reputation, economic performance and international influence.

The timeline is well-known: an embargo on many Ukrainian exports in July 2013; further pressures on the corrupt Viktor Yanukovych to walk out of the association agreement to be signed with the European Union in Vilnius on 28 November; the unexpected and peaceful Maidan revolution; Russia’s direct involvement in the bloody crackdown in Kyiv in February 2014; Crimea’s expedient and illegal ‘referendum’ and annexation to Russia; and further destabilisation of Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv by means of economic subversion (gas prices at a hike), propaganda roller (Kyiv government consists of 'fascists' and 'extremists'), and military scare (40,000-plus troops stationed at the border with Eastern Ukraine); and finally armed aggression and occupation.

Had Moscow ‘contented itself’ with seizing the small autonomous republic of Crimea, already under de facto Russian control, then grudgingly established relations with the new authorities in Kyiv might have led Europe and the United States to swallow the bitter pill, and resume business as usual with Russia. 

But this ‘we just want Crimea back!’ option was never the gameplan.

But this ‘we just want Crimea back!’ option was never the gameplan. For what Putin has been pursuing during his months-long battle against Ukraine’s economy and society is the semi-collapse and semi-implosion of the Ukrainian state, with its 46m inhabitants – a failing country that would fall into oblivion, and surrender itself to the control of Russia-monitored networks and oligarchs.

That was the hoped for scheme: victory over Kyiv without having to conquer more people or territory, and without having to wage a traditional war. Many in the West and beyond would have applauded Putin’s self-restraint and turned a blind eye to the Ukrainian defeat. Putin’s urgent priority was to deter the West from rescuing Ukrainian sovereignty, and supporting a strong democratic, anti-corruption, pro-Europe strategy.

Vladimir Putin’s own strategy at first appeared strong and well devised. It now looks bold and risky..

Vladimir Putin’s own strategy at first appeared strong and well devised. It now looks bold and risky. Ukrainian society at large is resisting subversive destabilisation. The deployment of spetsnazy (Russian special units) and provocateurs in a few cities of Ukraine has not succeeded in sparking off internal strife, but the danger has risen with the recent attacks on administration and police buildings in several Eastern cities, that the interim government had to fight off. The latter has named the reconquest of official buildings 'anti-terrorist' defence, which may be an inappropriate mimicking of the Kremlin’s constant 'terrorism scare.' But, all in all, it is faring relatively well, given the extraordinary dangers and challenges of all kinds, economic, social, political and military. They are responding to provocations with political determination and a policy of trust-building with Europe and America. How many times have Russian leaders and officials announced a ‘civil war’ in Ukraine, emphasising the impossibility of reconciling ‘Russian speakers’ in the east of the country with ‘Ukrainian speakers’ in the west. Ukraine is, indeed, a large and diverse country, but then so is France, which has quite as many local and regional idiosyncracies.

Ukrainians did not fall into the trap of initiating their own civil war.

In other words, Ukrainians did not fall into the trap of initiating their own civil war, which would have called for the often heard dismissive interrogation in similar cases: ‘But what side really started it all, aren’t responsibilities shared evenly?’

Ukrainians did not start a ‘new Cold War’ either. But Russia is threatening Europe with burning conflicts, and is losing what was left of its reputation as a 'responsible power.' NATO countries, most notably the USA, and the EU are using economic threats, military deterrence, targeted sanctions, and offers of negotiation, as a way of imposing restraint on Russia. The Council of Europe has stripped the Russian deputies of their voting rights in the Parliamentary Assembly; and the G8 is now back to its original G7.

Sanctions and public reprobation have so far proved efficient, in that regular Russian troops have not yet invaded Ukraine, yet the destabilisation of Ukraine by subversive means may prove even more dramatic than a classic intervention, and makes it more difficult for the West to react. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is now insisting that the Russian military will not overstep, and implies that NATO is the villain, because it is preparing for possible retaliations. However, Vladimir Putin several times has said that military defence of ‘the Russians’ in Ukraine was still a possibility, ‘if need be.’ Both men have played with everybody’s nerves in recent months, and now arouse exasperation and profound distrust.

The United Nations’ repeated disapproval of Moscow’s actions marked the beginning of Russia’s counter performance. On 3 March 2014, the Security Council expressed strongly worded denunciations of Russia’s policies. The British, French, American and Lithuanian Ambassadors did not mince their words. And none of the 14 member states, not even China, supported the fifteenth member, Russia. On 27 March, Moscow was further humiliated by the General Assembly vote on a resolution reasserting Ukraine’s territorial integrity and condemning Crimea’s annexation. The results were not good for Moscow: 100 states voted for Ukraine, 58 abstained, and only 11 voted against: Russia and the ‘usual suspects,’ Syria, Sudan, Zimbabwe, North Korea, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Bolivia, Belarus and Armenia. Hence, only two of the ex-Soviet republics aligned with Moscow. China abstained, but did not hide its irritation at Russia’s anti status quo policies. Similarly, it had not welcomed Moscow’s ‘recognition of independence’ of Abkhazia and South Ossetia after the 2008 war in Georgia. On 13 April, the Security Council held another emergency meeting on Ukraine and Russia’s subversive involvement was once more vigorously denounced (The Geneva quadripartite negotiation, scheduled for 17 April, has not yet been confirmed).

The political and economic costs of the Crimean adventure are heavier than Putin expected, and the returns look modest

Furthermore, sanctions against a number of high-level officials and oligarchs, a few of them belonging to Putin’s inner circle, have sewed the seeds of distrust and anxiety inside Russia’s ruling economic elites, which have quite a lot to lose in a long standoff between Moscow and the West, where they have secured much of their wealth and corporate assets, and, for many, settled their families. Economic recession is looming in Russia, even though oil and gas prices remain high. Can the country afford to be marginalised in an ever more globalised and competitive world? The political and economic costs of the Crimean adventure are heavier than Putin expected, and the returns look modest, except for a new surge of populist chauvinistic emotions inside Russia.

In the longer run, Putin’s stubborn preference for force instead of negotiation, and his challenge to European security, may well help the EU to devise a common strategy on energy and the Eastern Partnership, and also rejuvenate NATO and transatlantic solidarity. For their sake, and ours, we must support Ukrainians in their defence against aggression, and in holding free and fair elections on 25 May.

For its massive information war waged against the Euromaidan protests and the consequent revolution that has toppled the authoritarian regime of pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych, the Kremlin presumably mobilised all its lobbying networks in the West. This revealed what experts have long suspected, namely that today’s European extreme right parties and organisations are the most ardent supporters of Putin’s political agenda. 

Today’s European extreme right parties and organisations are the most ardent supporters of Putin’s political agenda

Moscow money talks

Crimea, 16 March. Here they are: international ‘observers’ at the illegal and illegitimate ‘referendum’ held in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea occupied by the Russian ‘little green men.’ The overwhelming majority of the ‘observers’ are representatives of a broad spectrum of European extreme-right parties and organisations: Austria’s Freiheitliche Partei (FPÖ) and Bündnis Zukunft, Belgian Vlaams Belang and Parti Communautaire National-Européen, Bulgarian Ataka, French Front National, Hungarian Jobbik, Italian Lega Nord and Fiamma Tricolore, Polish Samoobrona, Serbian ‘Dveri’ movement, Spanish Plataforma per Catalunya. They were invited to legitimise the ‘referendum’ by the Eurasian Observatory for Democracy & Elections (EODE) – a smart name for an ‘international NGO’ founded and headed by Belgian neo-Nazi Luc Michel, a loyal follower of Belgian convicted war-time collaborationist and neo-Nazi Jean-François Thiriart. Presented by Michel as ‘a non-aligned NGO’, the EODE does not conceal its anti-Westernism and loyalty to Putin, and is always there to put a stamp of ‘legitimacy’ on all illegitimate political developments, whether in Crimea, Transnistria, South Ossetia or Abkhazia. Moscow’s money talks.

Yet the EODE is only a drop in the ocean of extensive co-operation between the Kremlin and the European far right. Front National’s Marine Le Pen now visits Moscow on a seemingly regular basis: in August 2013 and April 2014 she had meetings with Vice Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin and Speaker of the Russian parliament Sergey Naryshkin. Le Pen’s adviser on geopolitical matters Aymeric Chauprade participated, as an ‘expert’, in the meeting of the Committee for Family, Women and Children Issues in the Russian parliament to endorse the laws banning adoption of Russian orphan children by LGBT couples. Several former members of the Front National run ProRussia.TV, an extension of the Kremlin’s international PR instruments such as Russia Today and the Voice of Russia.

Front National’s leader Marine Le Pen and Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin in Moscow, 2013

The Paris-based, Russian Institute of Democracy and Co-operation (yet another smart name) co-organised a conference in Leipzig on ‘family issues’, featuring speakers such as Thilo Sarrazin who is known for his attacks on multiculturalism, Jürgen Elsässer, chief editor of the far-right Compact magazine, and Frauke Petry, a spokesperson of the Eurosceptic party Alternative für Deutschland. 

Jobbik’s leader Gábor Vona gave a lecture at Moscow State University at the invitation of Russian right-wing extremist Aleksandr Dugin; according to Vona, it would be better for Hungary to leave the EU and join the Russia-dominated Eurasian Union. Dugin himself gave a talk in the United Kingdom at the invitation of the far-right Traditional Britain Group and wrote a letter of support to Nikolaos Michaloliakos, the now jailed leader of the Greek neo-Nazi Golden Dawn, whose political programme urges Greek society to turn away from ‘American Zionists’ and ‘Western usury’ towards Russia. Just a few days ago, Bulgarian Ataka’s leader Volen Siderov launched his party’s European election campaign in Moscow.

Notorious Norwegian mass murderer and terrorist Anders Breivik called Putin ‘a fair and resolute leader worthy of respect’

The list of the instances of the Kremlin’s co-operation with the European far right could be continued, but it seems more important to discuss the underlying motifs of this co-operation as well as the dangers that this co-operation poses to European democracy.

European extreme right perspectives

First of all, the European extreme right parties and organisations respect the Kremlin for its might and vigour. In his manifesto, the notorious Norwegian mass murderer and terrorist Anders Breivik called Putin ‘a fair and resolute leader worthy of respect’. Italian far-right Forza Nuova salutes Putin’s Russia as ‘a new beacon of civilisation, identity and courage for other European peoples.’ FPÖ’s Andreas Mölzer hails Putin as a hero who ‘has managed to steer the post-Communist, crisis-ridden Russia into calmer waters.’ For the European extreme right, Putin is a powerful leader, who has challenged the political status quo of the West and has questioned the global role of the US, which the European extreme right openly loathe. The allegedly anti-globalist agenda of the Kremlin – which, in reality, is a concealed attempt at seizing and securing the position of the global superpower for Russia itself – attracts the European far left too, especially in Germany, France, Greece, Portugal and the Czech Republic.

Eurasianist ideologue Aleksandr Dugin and Jobbik’s leader Gábor Vona in Moscow, 2013

Russia’s rise as an anti-Western power is seen by the European extreme right as an amazing example of national sovereignty and self-determination. These ideas are most prominent in today’s Eurosceptic rhetoric of the extreme right parties based in the EU, ‘a technocratic monster that only serves the interests of bankers’ (Le Pen), from which, according to Geert Wilders of the Dutch far right Partij voor de Vrijheid, European nation-states should ‘liberate’ themselves. Forza Nuova even calls upon Putin to destroy ‘the Europe of technocrats.’

Weakened global security may be interpreted as an excuse for enforcing the anti-immigration agenda 

European neutrality, which verges on national isolationism as the logical consequence of self-determination driven to extremity, is also a popular idea among the European extreme right. It serves as a euphemistic argument in favour of ‘Fortress Europe’ and justifies non-interference in international matters outside Europe. Moscow’s smart trick that prevented the US military from crushing Bashar al-Assad’s murderous regime was celebrated across the broad extreme right spectrum. Preventing the West from stopping the most brutal regimes is presented as promoting multipolarity, but this multipolarity is a sham: its only aim is to undermine democracy globally. In Putin’s Russia, European right-wing extremists see a force that can indeed hamper the world’s democratic development. Less global democracy means less global security, and weakened global security may be interpreted as an excuse for enforcing the anti-immigration agenda.

Russia’s authoritarian conservatism is yet another source of attraction for the European extreme right that consider Russia a country where ‘traditional’, ‘family’ and ‘Christian values’ have triumphed. For Jobbik’s Vona, Russia is ‘a better Europe’ because it ‘preserves its traditions and does not follow the culture of money and the masses’. Russia’s anti-gay laws, in particular, were a hit among many European ultranationalists, especially in France and in Italy, where the far-right Fronte Nazionale expressed its support for Putin’s ‘courageous position against the powerful gay lobby’ (as well as anti-EU and pro-Assad stances) through dozens of posters in Rome.

‘I agree with Putin!’, the poster campaign launched by the Fronte Nazionale in 2013

On a more prosaic note, European right-wing extremists seem to benefit financially from their co-operation with the Kremlin. While no direct evidence exists that the Kremlin provides financial support to its extremist allies in the EU, it would be ridiculous to suggest that they are not paid for their lobbying services – and the extreme right are indeed engaged in lobbying Russia’s interests in the EU.

Kremlin perspectives

Putin’s Russia is a far-right political system characterised by authoritarianism, nationalism and populism – all these characteristics are intrinsic to the European extreme right, so co-operation between them seems like a natural process. Obviously, there are differences between the European extreme right parties – they differ in their radicalism and positions on particular issues. The Front National may be willing to co-operate with the Partij voor de Vrijheid or FPÖ, but not with Jobbik or Ataka. Even in one national context, far-right parties may be unfriendly to each other, so, for example, it is hard to imagine any fruitful co-operation between Italy’s Fiamma Tricolore and Forza Nuova. However, Putin’s far-right government is eager to co-operate with any European ultranationalist party unless it is critical of Russia for historical or other reasons. Thus, the ideological affinity between Putin’s regime and European extreme right parties is one reason for their co-operation. 

Ataka leader Volen Siderov and Duma Speaker Sergey Naryshkin. Siderov was invited to Moscow to celebrate Putin's 60th birthday

Second, as the ideological approach of the majority of the European ‘observers’ at the Crimean ‘referendum’ demonstrated, right-wing extremists are the main pool of EU-based politicians who can legitimise Russian actions domestically and internationally. When reporting on the work of the international ‘observers’, the Russian state media never mentioned their ideological positions. On the contrary, they were presented in a boringly neutral way: FPÖ’s Johann Gudenus was simply ‘an MP from Austria’, Front National’s Aymeric Chauprade – ‘a political scientist’, neo-Nazi Enrique Ravello – ‘an observer from Catalunya’, etc. These trivial representations were needed to reassure the Russian audience that the Crimean ‘referendum’ was perfectly legitimate. The European Parliament said it was not? Well, there were members of EU-based parties, among them MEPs, who concluded that it was.

Putin’s far-right regime is eager to cooperate with any European ultranationalist party unless it is critical of Russia

Internationally, too, extreme-right politicians were always most supportive of Putin’s actions. Who praised Putin’s Russia – after ‘observing’ the unfair parliamentary elections in Russia in 2011 – for having ‘a robust, transparent and properly democratic system?’ Nick Griffin, MEP and leader of the extreme-right British National Party. In this sense, the European right are a magic talking mirror from Brothers Grimm’s Snow White, always ready to confirm the fairness of the Evil Queen.

Nick Griffin, leader of the British National Party, as an observer at the 2011 parliamentary elections in Russia.

In 2013-2014, European right-wing extremists were the most vocal in defending the Russian interference in and, later, invasion of Ukraine. They did not even have to convince the international audience fully of the legitimacy of the Russian actions; they only needed to contribute to the disruption of the narrative of the overwhelming majority of democratic leaders and major international organisations that condemned Putin’s actions.

Third, despite the far-right nature of Putin’s regime, it is only a façade hiding a corrupt, self-serving and elitist system, for which cooperation with the European far right is one of the means of furthering and securing its business interests in the West. In his most recent book (‘System of the Russian Federation in the war of 2014’), Gleb Pavlovsky argues that there are two authorities in Putin’s Russia. One is the actual, visible state that is very weak with deliberately inefficient political and administrative institutions;  the other is a parallel state, or what Pavlovsky terms the ‘RF System’. The latter has secured absolute power in Russia, but it cannot operate openly because it is straightforwardly unfair and corrupt. Because of this, the ‘RF System’ needs the weak actual state to hide its activities. As Ivan Krastev wrote, ‘Russia clearly has elections, but no rotation of power. [...] In the Russian system elections are used as the way to legitimise the lack of rotation’. As the Russian parliament is virtually a rubber-stamp assembly (‘the parliament is not a place for discussions‘) for legalising the decisions of the parallel state, so Russian nationalism, social conservatism and populism – for the ‘RF system’ – are just instruments for controlling society by feeding its prejudices and phobias.

There are two authorities in Putin’s Russia…the actual, visible state..with inefficient institutions.. and a parallel state, the ‘RF System’

In the European context, Putin’s Russia uses the extreme right also as tools to undermine and weaken EU political institutions. Stronger EU institutions restrain the Kremlin’s westward corrupting advance in terms of economy, politics and international relations. The strong democratic West is eventually the only obstruction to Putin making Russia the global superpower. Since Russia is unable to win over the West by fair-and-square competition, i.e. by advancing economy, technology, culture, human capital, etc., it can only become the superpower by weakening other actors. Consolidated democracy and good governance, seen as the essential prerequisite for the West’s economic prosperity, are, therefore, one of the first targets for the ‘RF System’. The inherently anti-democratic extreme right (and extreme left) are, thus, natural allies of Putin in his anti-democratic crusade against the EU. Although there is no reason to idealise EU mainstream parties, they are less prone to corruption than the extreme right, or – looking at Germany’s former social democrat chancellor Gerhard Schröder, now the chairman of the board of Nord Stream AG and a top lobbyist for the Kremlin – the extreme right may simply be less expensive to corrupt.

Gas politics

As oil and gas revenues account for more than 50% of Russia’s federal budget, the Kremlin needs to secure its position as a major supplier of gas to the EU.  The map of South Stream, a planned gas pipeline to transport Russian gas – deliberately avoiding Ukraine – to the EU, shows that every country on the route has either a pro-Russian government or a far-right party represented in parliament and openly pro-Kremlin: Bulgaria (pro-Russian government, Ataka), Serbia (pro-Russian government), Hungary (Jobbik), Austria (FPÖ, BZÖ), Greece (Golden Dawn), Italy (Lega Nord). The only exception is Slovenia where the far-right Slovenska Nacionalna Stranka is insignificant, and the current political establishment is democratic and pro-EU. Given the cooperation between the Kremlin and the European extreme right, it is no wonder that, for example, Jobbik prefers the South Stream pipeline to Nabucco, another planned gas pipeline aimed at reducing the EU’s dependence on Russian energy.

Map of the South Stream route in Europe

The Kremlin’s cooperation with the European extreme right, while reflecting the ideological affinity between the two parties, is a marriage of convenience for Putin who would be ready to dump his partners when he no longer needs them to implement his political and economic agenda. The Kremlin’s ‘ideal version’ of the EU is not a homogeneously white, pious, socially conservative union, but more of a corrupt, ‘Berlusconized’ Europe or, even better, a corrupt, ‘Bulgarianised’ Europe.  In 2008, Russia’s then Ambassador to NATO Dmitry Rogozin called Bulgaria ‘Russia’s Trojan horse in the EU’;  it was recently described by President of the European Commission José Manuel Barroso as a country where some elements of political establishment ‘are agents of Russia.’

The Kremlin needs continuously to attach and re-attach Western countries by permeating their economies with Russian (clean or dirty) money, in order to reach the point where Russia, as a business partner of the West, would be ‘too big to fail.’ In this situation, the democratic consensus of the West – in the face of Putin’s anti-democratic crusade – would be shattered by pragmatic considerations. This is why the corruptible, Eurosceptic and anti-democratic nature of the extreme-right parties is more important to the Kremlin than their racism and ultra-conservatism. Today, the far right (and the far left) seem to be the most convenient partners for Putin. The European elections in May will make clear how far Putin will have advanced towards his goal of corrupting and weakening the EU.

It is commonly assumed that the main economic challenge facing Ukraine is its dependence on energy supplies, especially natural gas, imported from Russia. Russia, it is true, has a powerful lever that it can use to extract political concessions from Kyiv‚ as it did when President Viktor Yanukovych was forced to renege on his pledge to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union last November.  

Ukraine inherited from the Soviet Union an economy hooked on cheap hydrocarbons.

But Ukraine's dependency on Russian gas is only half the story. Equally troubling has been Ukraine's dependency on cheap gas; gas that just happens to be from Russia. Ukraine inherited from the Soviet Union an economy hooked on cheap hydrocarbons. Until last week's price increases, residential consumers only paid about 25% of what the gas is worth on the European market: industrial consumers pay about 75%. At the same time, coal produced in Ukraine's Donbas is sold to domestic customers at about half the extraction cost. 

This cheap energy, together with the existence of parallel markets for energy, has generated a huge flow of economic rents, up to 5% of the country's GDP (approximately £3.5 billion) in peak years, which Ukraine's political and economic elites were able to capture for themselves. The rents have been turned into hard cash either through the re-export of Russian gas to European customers, or through the manufacture of energy-intensive products such as steel or fertilizers for export. 

This flow of rents produced a political class, both in Ukraine and Russia, who were unified in their collective self-enrichment, and whose common interest lay in preserving the status quo.

Over 20 years of independence, Ukraine's political class made no serious effort to reduce their dependence on Russian gas.

The disputes with Russia that disrupted gas supplies in 2006 and 2009 were more about the division of these rents between groups in Moscow and Kyiv than about the price that Ukraine would be paying. 

Over the 20 years of Ukraine's independence, Ukraine's political class made no serious effort to reduce the country's dependency on Russian gas. The proportion of Ukraine's energy imported from Russia fell only slightly from 1991 to 2012, from 50% to 40%.

The first real attempt to correct the problem came after massive increases in the price of gas imports from Russia, resulting from a much-criticised March 2010 contract with Gazprom signed by then Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. It was Yanukovych's subsequent efforts to seize more of the energy rents for himself that caused the oligarchs to withdraw their support for him during the Euromaidan crisis.

Adding to this failure to address Ukraine's gas problem, the political class has also done little to build functioning institutions, such as rule of law or honest political parties, which would attract the loyalty of Ukrainians. 

Ukraine suffers from many of the features of the 'resource curse‚' even though it does not itself produce any oil or gas.

Ukraine suffers from many of the features of the 'resource curse‚' even though it does not itself produce any oil or gas, but is merely able to exploit its position as a transit country. Neighbouring Belarus is in a similar situation, except that in Minsk a single individual, Aleksandr Lukashenka, has managed to establish control over the flow of rents, using them to consolidate his dictatorial regime, while in Ukraine they are fought over by a small group of oligarchs.  

The Ukrainian people have received some modest benefits from this rent-based economy, in the form of cheap gas and electricity. But in the long run, ordinary Ukrainians are paying the price of being trapped in an economic model that depends on rent-extraction rather than investment in competitive industries. Ukraine is saddled with an economy whose carbon intensity is 0.89 kg CO2/GDP, twice the world average, while much of its rich arable land lies unused. 

Essentially the same group of people has remained in power for the past 20 years. For all the talk of Euromaidan as a revolution, the leaders of the new provisional government are the very same figures who formed the government that emerged from the Orange Revolution a decade ago. Yulia Tymoshenko was Prime Minister, Oleksandr Turchynov was Tymoshenko's deputy, Petro Poroshenko was Secretary of the National Security Council, and Arseniy Yatsenyuk was Economics Minister.

The main factor that caused the breakdown of the post-Orange reform government was disagreement over who would control the energy rents. How realistic is it to expect them to behave any differently this time around?

Why, then, does the IMF expect such a government to dismantle the energy rent regime – the one thing that holds the political class together? The provisional government in Kyiv is under pressure to rely on regional oligarchs to win back the loyalty of Eastern Ukraine, precisely the men whose fortunes depend on the preservation of the old energy rent regime. 

Yet, the IMF has made liberalisation of energy prices a central condition for the release of its £10 billion rescue package. The provisional government has taken a first step in this direction by announcing a 50% increase in the price of gas from 1 May. It is unlikely that they will be able to enforce this price increase. Even if patriotism trumps profit, and the government sticks with the reform, popular dissatisfaction with the price increases will likely erode the legitimacy of the government.

This is not the only problem with the IMF programme, which the Financial Times described as 'egregiously optimistic' in its growth projections for this year and next, especially given the occupation of Crimea and the mayhem being sown by Moscow in Eastern Ukraine.

The crisis currently engulfing Ukraine is not just about a predatory Russia. It is also a question of how to ensure Ukraine emerges from the present crisis as a functioning state, capable of earning the loyalty of all its citizens. The question we should be asking is: why are we waiting for the IMF package to fail, before concerned countries come up with a realistic plan to rescue the Ukrainian economy, and stabilise the country?

Superpowers are bad losers. The Sovietsphere lost in Afghanistan, and then in Poland, Hungary and East Berlin in the 1980s. The Anglosphere lost in Iraq and Afghanistan after 2000. Now the Eurosphere is losing in Ukraine. In all cases, the end result is a turning back to introspective domestic politics and scratchy, unconfident foreign policy.

German business intervention 

After appearing to wallow in schadenfreude over the US-EU divisions in handling the Ukraine c\risis, Vladimir Putin says that he is pulling back from all-out confrontation. Russia’s president will have read the unambiguous language from the director of the Federation of German Industries, Markus Kerber, the bosses’ boss, who states that the ‘annexation of Crimea by Russia was a gross violation of international law. This is something that German industry cannot tolerate. It undermines the system of international government that was established after the fall of the Soviet Union, which has contributed to peace and stability in Europe for more than two decades.’

Kerber’s intervention carries far more weight than the windy neo-cold warriors like John McCain or Liam Fox. The German industry chief adds that ‘German businesses will support Ms. Merkel if she decides that sanctions are the only way to make President Vladimir Putin comply with international law.’

This is language that Putin understands. One cannot imagine the head of the CBI making such a clear statement. Putin reads German, and it is hard to imagine such a clear threat being conveyed in the name of German business without full consultation with the Kanzleramt and Angela Merkel herself.

The spectre of chaos

This warning en clair adds to the spectre of violent chaos on Russian borders, with the possibility that, if more mass murders take place, as in Maidan or Odessa, Ukrainians will decide to flee for sanctuary to neighbouring Russia or to the West, like the 2m who fled the wars between Milošević’s Serbs and Croats, Bosnians and Kosovars, and the retaliatory violence against Serbs in 1990-1999.

Solidarity with the Euromaidan, Paris 2013. CC Artem KononenkoWhere does that leave Putin? Having pocketed Crimea, and contributed to the increasing image of Ukraine as a failed state that will not easily find its way to any political or economic settlement, Putin can now say to both the Eurosphere and to Washington, ‘Look what a mess you’ve made of this. It’s your problem. Solve it if you can and I bet you can’t.’ He offers a tactical hint of ‘de-escalation,’ the fashionable new geopolitical word, by saying he doesn’t support East Ukraine independence plebiscites; and then does a 180 degree turn by stating that the May 25 presidential election can, after all, help resolve the situation.

Never have so many clichés been deployed to so little purpose in so few weeks.

Poor RT (Russia’s shiny English-language television service) and all the Putin apologists in the Eurosphere now left with egg on their faces, for they have been spouting the approved Moscow line that the presidential elections were a provocation and should be put off. What are they going to say now? One of the problems with the Ukraine discussion is the poverty of language or descriptive terms to explain what is going on. Never have so many clichés been deployed to so little purpose in so few weeks.

Bittersweet oranges 

The Ukraine of the Orange Revolution descended into a permanent fight between its leading figures, notably Yulia Tymoshenko and Viktor Yushchenko. Russia intervened blatantly, with the gas crisis of 2009. The European Union, meanwhile, was devoured by its financial crisis after 2008, and the United States sought to reset relations with Russia after the military years of President George Bush Jr. It was almost with relief that Ukraine – and by extension the world – accepted Putin’s candidate, Yanukovych, and voted him in as president in 2010.

Alas, Yanukovych had no more idea what to do than the defeated President Yushchenko. His mistakes were numerous: he imprisoned, after a fake trial, Tymoshenko, and instantly turned her into a global heroine; he was unwilling to reform the oligarch economy, instead devoting time and energy to promoting his son and other family members to the ranks of the oligarchs.

Ukraine and the EU 

The EU had very little idea what to do about Ukraine, and no obvious ambitions. There could be no question of the 46m Ukrainians joining the EU in any conceivable future. The EU had no money for its own programmes so the idea that it could offer anything substantial to Ukraine was fanciful. Nor was there any conviction that Ukraine should enter NATO. Yes, since 2009, the EU had had what it called its Eastern Partnership process, which was its attempt to build a better relationship with Ukraine, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. But the EU was suffering from enlargement pains, with the rise of major political movements opposing the free movement of people, which campaigned against the admission of Bulgaria and Romania.

Back to Germany

As the German industry boss, Markus Kerber, wrote, ‘The root cause of the Ukrainian crisis is Mr Putin’s failure to understand what caused the Berlin Wall to fall. It was destroyed not from the West but by millions of people leaning against it and pushing with their bare hands.’

Yanukovych, like Milošević, Ben Ali or Mubarak had to go and go he went.Like Serbia’s Milošević, Tunisia’s Ben Ali or Egypt’s Mubarak, Yanukovych could no longer remain in power; and his people refused to be cowered by the Maidan killings, and instead came together in one force and made clear he had to go. It was neither a coup nor a putsch, and the EU and US were not much more than cheering bystanders, as they were in Belgrade, Tunis or Cairo. Yanukovych, like Milošević, Ben Ali or Mubarak had to go, and go he went. But he has left a nation on the point of disintegration with no sense that a politics of compromise and tolerance can emerge.

While some in Washington look on with pleasure at Russia and Putin being revealed as neo-Soviet bullies, much of the rest of Europe looks with horror at the sheer hate and violence that has been unleashed. It seems clear that Europe is faced with another Yugoslavia as Ukraine slides into disintegrative chaos.

Putin has played a good hand. How, then, does the West fight back? The military spenders have been in force demanding more budgets. In response to the Ukrainian events, at a recent NATO meeting a Lithuanian general demanded more defence spending but did not explain why Lithuania’s defence budget was the lowest in Europe in terms of share of GDP spent on defence. It is not clear that having several NATO armoured divisions in situ on Ukrainian borders or a big US naval presence in the Black Sea would have made an iota of difference in the present crisis.

'Decide your children's future for yourself! Come to the Maidan!' Warsaw Old Town, 2014. Photo: Maxim Edwards  There is conflict fatigue in Europe. Germany, in particular, longs for a return to the Genscher era of foreign policy when the Free Democrat foreign minister, under both Helmut Schmidt and Helmut Kohl, sought to be friends with everyone from Washington to Moscow to Beijing.

Berlin today wants to be pro-America, pro-Russia and pro-Kyiv. 

Berlin today wants to be pro-American, pro-Russian and pro-Kyiv; however, to govern is to choose; a pity that Berlin would prefer not to choose. Other countries like, for example, those who support the South Stream gas pipeline linking Russia to Bulgaria, and then upwards to Austria and Hungary via Serbia, want to hide under the duvet, and hope that Putin’s anger with Ukraine’s rejection of his man, Yanukovych, does not turn into the fight that the neo-cold warriors in Moscow and Washington appear to relish.

The British government has refused to lift a finger even to question the provenance of the money which has flowed to London; and Putin capitalism provides easy revenue for the City, PR firms, wine merchants, Savile Row, estate agents, the LSE and private schools. 

The US Congress has passed into law the Magnitsky Act but, despite a unanimous House of Commons resolution, the British government ignores the will of MPs, and sends out a reassuring signal to Putin that he can get away with what he likes as far as ‘Londongrad’ is concerned.
Putin capitalism provides easy revenue for the City, PR firms, wine merchants, Savile Row, estate agents, the LSE and private schools.

William Hague is no Palmerston; he talks the talk but if he is not prepared to move on the issue of naming and denying visas to some vicious but minor state functionaries who killed the employee of a British firm, why should Putin take him or Britain seriously?

Disintegrative forces 

Europe’s real weakness is not in the level of its defence spending but in the collapse of confidence, growth, economic hope and sense of direction of the entire EU. On the same day as the proposed Ukrainian presidential elections, there will be the European Parliament elections. This is likely to see a surge in exactly the nationalist, disintegrative forces that are tearing Ukraine apart. 

Historians may come to see Ukraine as representing the moment in European history when the post-1945 efforts to build a new Europe finally came to an end. Whoever is elected on 25 May, as president of Ukraine will have little authority to impose his or her will across the nation. Similarly, whoever wins the European Parliament elections that same week, few expect the Second Coming of a Eurosphere leadership able to take Europe into a new era of growth, jobs and social justice.

The endgame 

Putin has no need to invade, Ukraine or anywhere else. Europe has neither the money nor the political will to deal with this crisis, whereas Putin can offer an alternative vision of an authoritarian fusion of state power and post-liberal capitalism under the banner of assertive national identity. Putin has taken Russia into the heart of global capitalism, and the old guard of pre-Putin global capital who thought they had sorted out history after 1990, haven’t the faintest idea of what to do.

Putin has no need to invade, Ukraine or anywhere else.

If the first decade of the 21st century saw the West profoundly weakened by the Anglosphere adventure in Iraq and Afghanistan, the second decade is seeing the Eurosphere, headed by the anti-Iraq powers of Germany, France and Belgium, governing without any strategy or even minor tactics to handle the increasingly violent disintegration of one of Europe’s biggest states.

Ukraine solidarity demonstration, Munich February 2014. CC Blu-news.orgYet the Eurosphere must never forget the aspirations of the young people of Ukraine, wherever they live. They want a European future, and were ready to protest and camp out in freezing weather, and even be killed for their right to a better life. In that sense, Europe is to blame. By offering, since the 1980s, a world vision in which hundreds of millions can live in peace, make money, be gay, not be tortured to death on a US prison gurney, or killed in a Moscow prison for daring to challenge the state; and argue out their differences in a free media and via ballot boxes, Europe has offered Ukrainians more than it can deliver.

Ukraine’s future can no longer be decided by old men flying in to Geneva from Washington and Moscow. 

Ukraine’s future can no longer be decided by old men flying in to Geneva from Washington and Moscow, to redraw borders, like Bismarck, Clemenceau or Wilson. Putin perhaps does not understand this, which is why, even as he is causing the European and NATO democracies to trip over themselves, he also has no real answer; a Ukraine, like Yugoslavia, with regions falling into disintegration, violence, no state power, and endless chaos and propaganda wars, is a contagious nightmare.

But until Europe recovers its confidence and finds a way forward, this crisis will not come to an easy end.

This article is based on a talk given by Denis MacShane in Berlin, on 5 May 2014

(Standfirst image: Euromaidan in Kyiv, 1st December 2013. CC Ilya, Wikimedia Commons)

The crisis in Ukraine, and Russia’s annexation of Crimea have highlighted the limits of the EU’s attempts to shift the boundaries of its economic and democratic project eastwards. Split between the choice (and necessity) of accommodating Russia’s interests, and the goal of extending the European peace and economic project to its eastern neighbours, the EU has failed to provide an assertive and sustainable prospect for the countries in the region. Moreover, Russia’s recent actions in Ukraine have underscored the EU’s inability to go to the lengths required to salvage its eastern policy or propose a new viable solution. On the other hand, Russia has not presented a project of its own in the region, but merely mirrored the EU’s actions by offering an opposing model based on short term economic incentives. 

In this context of a bipolar ‘post-Soviet space,’ where both the EU and Russia seem unable or unwilling to implement effective strategies, the [unwelcome] drive for renewal might come from China. China’s recent focus on the region and its seemingly unconditional model of economic development has the potential in the medium term to pressure the EU into rethinking its eastern policy and becoming more assertive. 

European Neighbourhood Policy

Since 2004, with the creation of the European Neighbourhood Policy, the EU has been aiming for a central role in promoting economic development and democracy in the countries situated on its borders. This has taken the form of dangling the carrot of economic benefits, and wielding the stick that requires the development of democracy and rule of law in the EU’s near abroad. In the absence of any strong opposing power, the EU has had virtually a free hand in promoting its project through asymmetric economic arrangements. 

In practice, the EU has only been able to offer its eastern neighbours an ambiguous and cautious project

However, the EU’s policy towards those countries to its east has very frequently encroached upon Moscow’s sphere of interest. Coupled with the choice of some member states to also accommodate Russia, this has meant that in practice, the EU has only been able to offer its eastern neighbours an ambiguous and cautious project, which was bound to cause frictions with Moscow. The EU has been frequently criticised for pursuing a one-sided approach towards its eastern near abroad; its preference for investment in consumer industries rather than the modernisation of its neighbours’ infrastructure, points to a lack of commitment towards the sustainable development of the region. 

Some of the EU’s eastern neighbours, such as Ukraine, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and even Georgia, have sought at times to play Russia and the EU against each other, hoping to extract from each as many economic benefits as possible. Russia has been overtly more assertive, and more hegemonic in offering short term incentives to the countries in its near abroad; these have taken the form of preferential energy prices, loans, investment or support for corrupt elites. The Customs Union and the Eurasian Union are a direct response to the EU’s eastern policy, and an effort on the part of Russia to maintain a buffer zone with the EU and China. How successful that policy is, however, very much depends on what happens in Ukraine, for without Ukraine, there is no buffer, and the success of the Customs Union and the Eurasian Union must be in doubt.

A ‘New Silk Road’

China’s involvement in the region could transform this stalemate. China has already started to move its economic borders westwards: last autumn it launched the 16 Plus 1 Economic Forum in Bucharest, in which China stated its commitment to develop and invest in Central and Eastern Europe, and to cooperate with the countries in the region, especially in the areas of energy, infrastructure and manufacturing. Moreover, China is seeking to double its trade with Central and Eastern Europe by 2018, whilst also creating a ‘New Silk Road,’ which would engulf the whole ‘post-Soviet space.’ 

China’s economic model for the region offers a different type of understanding of international relations, which neither the EU nor Russia yet seem to fully grasp. China’s model might not deliver more democracy or a less corrupt political system, as Ukrainians have articulated for the past five months, but, drawing on the African example, it will certainly contribute to a higher level of economic development. But, while China seems more willing at this point to offer an alternative pathway to the EU’s eastern neighbours, it is clearly expecting significant economic and geopolitical returns. Bearing this in mind, together with the fact that Ukraine has highlighted the limits of the EU’s engagement in the Eastern Neighbourhood, the key question now is whether and how the EU will step up and propose a new and more assertive model for the region, in response to China’s involvement. 

President Poroshko. Image Source: Demotix / Oleksandr Ratushniak

Ukraine’s presidential elections last Sunday, 25 May, produced a victor who said that he would take control over the troubled country. Billionaire Petro Poroshenko has promised to sell his chocolate making concern Roshen, to ‘focus on the well-being of the nation.’ Even with the best of intentions, this might be rather difficult.

One third of the voters in Ukraine’s eastern regions were not even aware of the May 25 elections taking place.

Having taken 56 percent of the vote with 55 percent voters’ turnover, the new president actually represents slightly more than 30 percent of Ukraine’s electorate. In the restive Donbas region, only 12 percent of the voters showed up, while near 2,000 polling sites remained closed. According to the official data, elections did not happen in 23 cities and six regions of the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, which, together with the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic had formed a Novorossiya union in the south-east of the country last Saturday. The two regions represent 16 percent of the total population of Ukraine (without Crimea) and, in an open challenge to both Kyiv and Moscow, have recently voted for independence. One third of the voters in Ukraine’s eastern regions were not even aware of the May 25 elections taking place.

For a country where there are practically no households without a TV set, this may serve as a conspicuous measure of alienation. The main task for the president-elect is therefore clear: to heal the wounds separating Ukraine’s east from the rest of the country; to stop the ongoing civil war in the south-east; and to negotiate with the separatist leaders, for the sake of preserving territorial unity and sovereignty of Ukraine. Can he deliver? What will be his next steps as a leader?

A recipe for disaster

In a recent interview, Mr Poroshenko said that he saw no alternative to the continuation of what the government in Kyiv calls the anti-terrorist operation in the east. This means that the eastern cities blockaded by Ukraine’s National Guard and army units will continue suffering the consequences of the blockade. Ukrainian forces will endure further losses. The killing of 16 troops near the Blahodatne village on May 22 by the pro-Russia separatists is a bad enough omen for the still worse things to come. Of course, the separatists will die, too, creating a new martyrdom cult for those Russian nationalists in Ukraine who will survive.

This is a recipe for disaster. The May 2 killings of the pro-Russian demonstrators in Odessa, and the heavy fighting in Mariupol on Russia’s Victory Day (May 9) have allowed the Donbas separatists to rally scores of undecided around their new flag. Ukraine’s authorities responded by intensifying the anti-terrorist campaign in the east; and this escalation of the conflict has received the full blessing (and material support) of the West.

Russia is still being blamed for everything that happens in Ukraine

The Russian position

Russia is still being blamed for everything that happens in Ukraine; Ukraine’s own Russia-sympathising activists are represented as either criminals paid for by the Kremlin or Moscow’s mindless puppets. At any rate, behind Ukraine’s official, and Ukraine-sympathetic Western presentations, one idea seems to be reigning supreme: if forces loyal to the government in Kyiv were to be successful in killing all the ‘terrorists’ in the east, the rest of the population would fall docile. Presumably, this strategy also posits that a freshly pacified eastern Ukrainian population would then embrace whatever initiatives, aimed at the progressive squeezing of the Russian language and culture from Ukraine’s soil, the new Poroshenko government would offer.

Should we then be surprised that Donbas locals continue to fight?

Should we then be surprised that Donbas locals continue to fight? The Western press has not yet produced a single material fact to confirm that Russian Special Forces are active in Ukraine. The occasional Cossack or Chechen volunteers do not prove the existence of any Russian ‘master plan:’ had those men been sent on Moscow’s orders, it stands to reason they would not identify themselves as Russian citizens when questioned by CNN.

Ukrainian nationalism

Meanwhile, anti-Russian nationalism in Ukraine is on the rise. Quite unfortunately for the country’s unity, it increasingly targets Ukraine’s own ethnic Russians and Russophones. For a country where Russians constitute close to 20 percent of the population, and Russophones double that number, any policy except full constitutional accommodation would be ruinous. However, this was not the path chosen after Ukraine’s independence. The monocultural, monolinguistic, assimilationist model was adopted instead.

In the city of Lviv, which used to boast 24 schools with the Russian language of instruction, only 5 remain today

Over the last quarter century, hundreds of Russian schools have been closed in all regions of Ukraine. By the turn of the century, the number of such schools was cut by more than one-third nationally, and to the point of virtual extinction in the country’s western regions. In the city of Lviv, which used to boast 24 schools with Russian language instruction, only five remain today. Not a single Russian school survived in Ivano-Frankivsk, Kyiv, Rivne, Vinnytsia, Volyn, and Ternopil oblasti, where more than 170,000 Russian-speaking Ukrainians lived at the time of the last census. For the Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Chernivtsi and Khmelnytsky regions, with an average population of 1.0-1.3 million each, only one Russian-language school exists per region.

The very first act of legislation after the February 2014 Maidan revolution was to cancel the law that gave non-Ukrainian languages restricted local rights. Although vetoed by interim President Turchynov, the legislation did its damage. Unfortunately, the Maidan politicians did not stop there, and invested significant efforts and resources in the demonisation of both Russia as a country, and Ukraine’s ethnic Russians as Moscow’s ‘fifth column.’

The endgame

Crushing Donbas separatism by force will only start a guerilla war in Ukraine’s east

President Poroshenko’s first priority must be to normalise Kyiv’s relations with Donetsk and Luhansk, not Moscow. With each new killing, the situation grows worse, while the opposing sides find it more and more difficult to compromise. Only negotiations with whoever controls the situation on the ground can resolve this bitter conflict, not military action, for it is local separatists and not Vladimir Putin or anyone from his entourage who control the situation in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Crushing Donbas separatism by force will only start a guerilla war in Ukraine’s east, and, judging by all indications, it may eventually grow no less bloody than the one fought by Ukrainian nationalists against the Soviets 70 years ago.

Such a turn of events may still provoke a full-scale military intervention by Russia. While the Kremlin does fear Iran-style sanctions, and does not want to risk everything for yet another stretch of land across the border, events in Ukraine’s ‘Novorossiya’ may quickly snowball and force Putin’s hand even against his better judgment. This should be prevented.

While local opposition to the formal annexation by Russia in Crimea could be foreseen as minimal, it would not be negligible in Donbas

The Kremlin’s strategists are fully aware of the substantial differences between the Crimea and the Donbas regions. While most people in the Crimea were willing to join with Russia in one form or another, most people in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions supported a unified Ukraine not so long ago. While most people in the Crimea define themselves as Russians, most people in Ukraine’s east self-identify as Ukrainians. Moreover, while local opposition to the formal annexation by Russia in Crimea could be foreseen as minimal, it would not be negligible in Donbas. Finally, the punishment that Russia has suffered over Crimea is unpleasant; the sectoral sanctions that would follow the annexation of Donbas would be ruinous.

That is why Putin called on separatists to postpone a controversial move toward self-rule, even though he spoke in vain. The referendum proceeded as planned, with the reported turnout of near 70 percent (in reality, probably closer to 40 percent of the registered voters), of which the majority voted for separation. Russia or not Russia, vast numbers of people in the self-proclaimed People’s Republics do not want to be ruled by the authorities that continue treating them as criminals.

President Obama’s vision of ‘Russian-backed separatists seeking “to disenfranchise entire regions”’ is sorely off the mark

For anyone with an understanding of ethno-political realities in Ukraine, President Obama’s vision of ‘Russian-backed separatists seeking “to disenfranchise entire regions”’ is sorely off the mark. It is not disenfranchisement that Donbas separatists seek but empowerment. They want the voice of Eastern Ukraine to be heard, and count. The profound mistake that the West has made, is still making, is working from the premise that the Ukrainians are one people, and all Ukraine’s troubles have their roots in Moscow. The root of Ukraine’s troubles is in Ukraine. Western Ukrainians and Eastern Ukrainians, Ukrainian-speakers and Russian-speakers in Ukraine are de facto two separate ethnic nations under the umbrella of one state. Ukraine’s problems can only be resolved if these two constituent parts of one political Ukrainian nation are acknowledged as such, and their rights are fully protected – in the East as well as in the West of the country.

The idea that a civil war in Ukraine can only be stopped by moving swiftly to a genuine dialogue between the authorities in Kyiv and supporters of federalisation in Ukraine’s east and south, is finally taking root. Such a dialogue must take place without prejudice or preconditions. It should precede the second round of the four-party talks between the US, Russia, Ukraine and the EU. Further changes to the existing Constitution of Ukraine should be expected to facilitate the centre-east dialogue, and in the implementation of its agreements.

The underlying message of both the Maidan and anti-Maidan movements is simple: Ukraine does not think with one mind

Whether or not these changes will constitute a federal Ukraine or a unitary state with significant devolution of powers to the regions is less important than the fact that all voices from all regions must be heard. The underlying message of both the Maidan and anti-Maidan movements is simple: Ukraine does not think with one mind, and those who try to force on her geopolitical orientations and values shared by one half of the population, which are rejected by the other half, will sooner or later fail.

The Crimean precedent has breathed a new divisive life into politics inside Abkhazia. Against the background of the Ukrainian crisis and the growing role of Russia in the former countries of the Soviet Union, in Abkhazia the idea of integration with Russia is once again being put forward. The culmination of this debate was the thousands-strong ‘people’s assembly’ on 27 May in the capital Sukhumi, which concluded with an attack on the presidential palace, and an attempt to seize government buildings. The demands of the assembly were clearly articulated – the resignation of the president, government, general prosecutor, and the heads of administrations of Abkhazia’s three eastern regions.

According to the daily Nuzhnaya Gazeta, the protest attracted about 5% of the tiny republic’s population.

Representatives of opposition movements and parties, the intelligentsia, village elders, and parliamentary deputies took part in the march. According to the daily Nuzhnaya Gazeta, the protest attracted around 10,000 people, which is about 5% of the tiny republic’s population.

The people’s march, which had been more than a month in the making, was preceded by sharp polemics in the country’s media on the question of а formal association with Russia, a debate in which public figures and representatives of official government organs had been involved.

Participants in Sukhumi's 'People's Assembly' which ended in an attempt to seize government buildings. CC abh-ng.ru

The source of these sharp polemics was an interview with the President of the International Association of the Abkhaz-Abazin People, and former people’s deputy of the USSR, the political analyst Taras Shamba, which was published at the end of May 2014 in a Russian publication. In the interview, Shamba spoke out in favour of a formal association with Russia, for Abkhazia.

A house divided against itself

For the most part, neither Shamba’s statement nor the objections voiced by the Abkhazian opposition are anything new. The same arguments have long gone back and forth. But today, given the events in Ukraine, the question of strengthening integration with Russia and ‘the price of Russian help’ is now all the more acute in Abkhazia.

‘We won the war, but the reality is, that we are losing the peace.’

‘We won the war [of independence from Georgia], but the reality is, that we are losing the peace. The country swims with the current, depending solely on hand-outs and help, without any understanding or a development plan in site. You can’t be a sovereign country, while filling two-thirds of your budget with hand-outs from another state’ said a participant of the march.

The route of Abkhazia’s problem lies in the make-up of Abkhazian society. While in South Ossetia the overwhelming majority of the Republic’s population supports unification with Russia, (the exception is a small fraction of the ‘elite’, who worry only about preserving their own positions) Abkhazia is presented with an entirely different situation.

58.9% of the population favour maintaining independence, while 28.4% are for unification with Russia.

According to a social survey carried out by the Prague agency ‘Medium-Orient’ in 2013, 58.9% of the general population favour maintaining independence, while 28.4% are for unification with Russia. At the same time, only 5.8% of those surveyed expressed a desire to see Abkhazia as an EU member and another 6.8% found it difficult to express an opinion on the issue.

At the same time, it is worth mentioning that the stratification of these results among ethnic groups shows that there are proponents of unification of Abkhazia with Russia among every group, including the titular ethnicity – the Abkhaz. The most pro-Russian minded, unsurprisingly turned out to be Russians – 60% of the ethnic Russian population. In second place came the Abazins, with 50% of the ethnic group being in favour. Among Armenians, the figure for those expressing support for unification with Russia is 46%. Among Georgians it is 23% and among Abkhaz – 18.3%. 

The ‘titular ethnicity’

This sociological gap demonstrates the problem facing the country when it comes to nation-building: society in Abkhazia is far from united on such fundamental questions as the future of Abkhazia and the republic’s foreign policy course. The foundations of the republic’s political structures (laws on citizenship and the constitution) were decided immediately in the wake of an inter-ethnic conflict that ended 20 years ago. In these circumstances there was a clear move towards ethnic nationalism, and the domination of the ‘titular ethnicity.’ But unlike Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia is not homogenous.

Only ethnic Abkhaz may occupy the post of President of the Republic.

Ethnic Abkhaz constitute only a little more than half of the republic’s population, even after the mass exodus of Georgians and the gradual depletion of the country’s ethnic Russians, and even Abkhaz themselves, as they leave the state’s borders. Armenians, Russians and Georgians (Mingrelians) are never going to be happy with a constitutional situation, (article 49 of Abkhazia’s Basic Law) which allows only ethnic Abkhaz to occupy the post of President of the Republic. Moreover, this situation exists when the economic activity of Armenians far from decreasing is actually picking up steam. 

A burnt out armoured vehicle from the Abkhaz-Georgian War in 1994. (c) Vladimir Vyatkin/RIA Novosti

For this very reason, anything that appears in the media that even remotely touches on this controversial question can become an impetus for bitter debates in Abkhaz society. The Crimean precedent has merely thrown the issue of ethnic division into even sharper relief. 

Statehood at Moscow’s pleasure

In light of events in Ukraine, Moscow has once again clarified its position in relation to Abkhazia’s political status (recognition without unification), but in the self-proclaimed republic there is now a fear that Moscow’s position could change. What is more, in Georgia the internal political situation is also changing against the background of the worsening situation in Ukraine; pro-Russian groups, whose voices were never previously listened to in Tbilisi, have become more and more active. If Russia and Georgia were to start enjoying a rapprochement, the Abkhaz question in Russia could be revisited; Abkhazia could lose its relevance for the Russian elite.

Sukhumi has neither the means nor the resources to resist the will of its powerful neighbour.

Sukhumi has neither the means nor the resources to resist the will of its powerful neighbour. Moscow has serious economic levers it can use against Abkhazia; the most important of them is the reduction or cutting off of investment.

This has already happened once before, when Moscow directed significant sums for the construction of the Olympics in Sochi, yet at the same time neglected to invest in Abkhazian territory. Today, a similar situation could arise in connection with Crimea’s annexation; Abkhazia’s tourist industry is particularly vulnerable to any favourable bias that Moscow might show towards its new possession; a significant part of the inhabitants of Gagra, Pitsunda, Sukhumi and other coastal regions of Abkhazia depend on Russian tourists. If Moscow decides to redirect the tourist stream to Crimea, small and medium sized businesses in Abkhazia will have nothing left. If one also takes into account the fact that Russia has taken Abkhazia under full military control, and that Abkhazia owes Russian creditors billions of roubles, the possibility for resisting Russia’s will drops to practically zero.

In Abkhazia, it is well understood that sooner or later Moscow will demand something in return. Perhaps because of this, and despite the whole-hearted condemnation of Shamba’s proposal for a ‘formal association,’ one can still glimpse the likely form of co-operation between Moscow and Sukhumi; for example, in the framework of the Customs Union, the EEC, or the proposed Eurasian Union. In particular, one notes that the united Abkhazian opposition (The Coordinating Council of Parties and Social Movements of Abkhazia), nothwithstanding its condemnation of the initiative for greater association with Russia, nevertheless called for integration in the framework of the organisations listed above.

Commenting on this situation, the notable Abkhazian journalist Inal Khashig, from the radio station ‘Ekho Kazkaza,’ wrote in his blog that his country’s elite were so corrupt that Moscow could easily manipulate them if necessary: ‘If Moscow suddenly took the notion to change things, finding the right buttons to push wouldn’t be difficult. It could be done by a single ally, a lobbyist, a local centre or support group. One wave of the [Russian] hand, and the previous unity on the idea of an inviolable Abkhazian statehood among the Abkhazian elite would go up in a puff of smoke.’ 

In Abkhazia, the danger emanating from Russia, which in the recent past was such an invaluable ally to the little republic, is well understood. Looking at a possible Russian annexation, the ethnic Abkhaz would loose their political supremacy, although their economic future would seem, in this set of circumstances, to likely be better. Together with six years of economic stability and peace, this is a powerful argument in Russia’s favour. 

A billboard featuring President Bagapsh from 2012 - 'Strength of mind and wisdom will save our nation' CC Maxim Edwards

All in all, the majority of ethnic Abkhaz would agree with the statement of former Abkhazian president Sergei Bagapsh, which he made in an interview in November 2009. Answering a question on the influence of the Kosovo precedent on independence, he said ‘Thank God it happened.’

The next presidential elections are scheduled, in accordance with the law, to take place in 2016. Aleksandr Ankvab,the current President of Abkhazia, who clearly has plenty of troubles already, has announced that he intends to seek a second term; how (and if) he answers his country’s main question – ‘Where are we heading and who are we with?’ – will decide his fate and the fate of Abkhazia. But, in truth, neither the Abkhazian opposition nor the current authorities in Abkhazia can provide a concrete answer to that question. Today, Abkhazia finds itself in a political dead,end, and it is looking unlikely that it will be able to choose a way out of it, certainly not on its own.

Foreigners who read Turkmenistan’s official media might well get the impression that everything in the country is just fine: stable economic growth, new infrastructure, achievements in education, science and sport. Local media outlets never publish critical material, especially anything critical of the government; there are no statistics on crime, corruption, or other negative phenomena, even natural disasters. But that does not mean these things do not exist. 

Minders prohibited documentary filmmaker Tom Vaes from capturing any signs of disorder at Ashgabat's bazaars. Photo cc: MunnekeIn January of this year, a mother killed her young children in the district capital of an eastern region of Turkmenistan. She killed them in a particularly brutal fashion, using a construction drill. She then killed her husband and then herself. Apparently, she was hearing voices…. The whole town is talking about the case, and the police are investigating, yet not a single word has appeared in the press. In any other country such an event would have been headline news, and TV programmes would have invited psychologists, psychiatrists, politicians, social workers, and the family’s neighbours into the studio to discuss the incident. But not in Turkmenistan – here, everything has to be just fine.

Keeping schtum

We like to boast that people in Turkmenistan do not pay for drinking water but we remain silent about the fact that two out of five regions regularly go without running water for days on end, and that the quality of water is such that people who can, prefer to buy bottled water. We like to talk about the newly-built dental surgery in Ashgabat that is shaped like a tooth but we keep schtum about the fact that a third of the surgery’s patients who undergo serious operations leave with Hepatitis C. 

Hospitals have not been renovated since Soviet times, and they regularly lack water to wash the floors, and bathe patients.

Indeed, there is much to talk about when it comes to healthcare in Turkmenistan. The State is busy building grandiose hospitals and polyclinics decked out with the most advanced Western equipment but the doctors who work there do not know how to operate it, and thus the equipment sits around in its packaging, collecting dust. Anyway, these modern medical facilities are meant only for the capital and for the regional administrative centres. In rural areas – where foreigners hardly ever set foot – hospitals have not been renovated since Soviet times, and they regularly lack water to wash the floors, and bathe patients. Despite an acute shortage of trained medical staff, the Deputy Minister for Healthcare Murad Mamedov repeatedly tells doctors at meetings that there is no need to go abroad for experience as ‘we’re clever enough ourselves.’ It is for this very reason apparently that foreign medical specialists are not invited to Turkmenistan. The real reason for the ban on doctors, however, is well-known: it allows bureaucrats to prevent the leaking of unfavourable information about infectious diseases, child and maternal mortality rates, and health epidemics. In Turkmenistan, everything has to be just fine…

The entrance to a hospital in the village of Esenguly. Hospitals in rural areas often lack even basic necessities such as water.
Over the 20 odd years since independence, Turkmen society, especially the younger generation, has received only one-sided, embellished and adulterated news from an official media divorced from reality, and under the thumb of President Gurbanguly Berdimuhammedov. It is just like it was in the Soviet Union: readers are monotonously fed one viewpoint, the viewpoint of one person. Other views and opinions simply cannot exist, and if someone somewhere says the truth, then this alternative view is treated as rumour, gossip and speculation, and the person who dared to express it is automatically painted as a detractor, a libeller, or an outcast. 

The fear of being imprisoned or vilified by society has encouraged people in Turkmenistan to keep their mouths shut.

Over these last decades, an entire generation has grown up which, like the media and the authorities themselves, is forced to be jubilant, to look only at the façade of life, trying to ignore the negatives. Even when these negatives affect someone personally, people collectively remain silent, convincing themselves that it is just an aspect of life, and hardly the end of the world. The fear of being imprisoned or vilified by society has, over time, encouraged people in Turkmenistan to keep their mouths shut, to distance themselves from anything that the authorities might not like, and which might damage their own reputation; and to refrain from reading or taking in anything that might diverge from the official line. Nonetheless, despite the constant internal fear and the denial of all things negative, there are readers who carefully follow independent news about Turkmenistan, published on social media. Moreover, such people are, fortunately, growing in number all the time.

Censorship and control

Freelance journalists for foreign media outlets are kept under almost 24-hour surveillance.

There is no independent media in Turkmenistan. Official journalists carefully filter the topics for their articles through an internal censorship system, editors remain vigilant, and are actively censored by the government agencies that own the various newspapers. Teacher’s Newspaper, for example, is owned by the Ministry of Education while the newspaper Spravedlivost’ [Justice] is owned by the Ministry of Justice. These ministries have a captive audience – they force all their employees to subscribe to their newspapers. No-one cares whether they read them or not, but every month a certain sum is deducted from their salary to cover subscription costs.

The opulence of former President Niyazov's tomb is in stark contrast to the rural hospital pictured above. Photo cc: Krasowski

Freelance journalists for foreign media outlets are kept under almost 24-hour surveillance. The rare trips made by Western journalists to the country are like a breath of fresh air; it is through their reports that foreign audiences can get to see the real Turkmenistan. In spring of last year, one such reporter was Belgium’s Tom Vaes. The Turkmen authorities officially invited him to visit the country, and to tell his audience how wonderful it is. But Vaes began to have doubts about the trip before it even began. The invitation letter he received from the Turkmenistan embassy in Belgium included a minute-by-minute schedule for Tom and his film crew. During the trip they were forbidden from filming the President, poor people, the dilapidated buildings, and… donkeys! In the resulting 45-minute-long documentary, these journalists showed the true nature of Turkmen state censorship: from banning the filming of an empty hotel breakfast room to the absurd control measures of Turkmen intelligence agents at an Ashgabat bazaar where they hurriedly covered up the unsightly (according to the agents) stalls in green cloth. The journalists also filmed their vigilant minders, all dressed in identical black suits, as they pinched the hips of elderly women to get them out of the frame of the camera. Another group of ‘security guards’ frantically removed out of sight, all basins, buckets, cloths, and brooms. Words cannot do justice to this spectacle – it must to be seen to be believed.

Foreign print media have been banned in Turkmenistan since the beginning of 2002, which is why every family has its own satellite dish, and sometimes two or even three. People pick up alternative news sources from Russian, Turkish or European TV channels, while more tech-savvy citizens manage to get around the state internet filtering systems and find news online. As people in Turkmenistan say, too many sweeties, meaning state TV where everything is just fine, can quickly make you sick.

ATN (Alternative Turkmenistan News)

People write about everything: cases of injustice, the arbitrary behaviour of security agencies, about rampant corruption.

In response to this barren media landscape, an offshore civic media initiative called Alternative Turkmenistan News (ATN) was created in February 2010 Initially its goal was to act as an information resource to readers within the country, as all other online media were being controlled by the sole internet communications operator, ‘Turkmentelecom’, a state-owned company. On a weekly basis, ATN would copy news from different websites into a single file, and then send it as an email to 300 or so people inside Turkmenistan. In a short period of time the number of subscribers increased tenfold and readers themselves began sharing facts and their own observations. This information provides the basis for what has become a unique news source. People write about everything: cases of injustice, the arbitrary behaviour of security agencies, about rampant corruption, lack of water, the illegal demolition of housing, illegal requests for money to buy textbooks, damaged roads; and about having to assemble goodness knows where at four or five in the morning to meet the President who will invariably only arrive at around midday. 

Just a few years ago, it was very rare to hear about such things in Turkmenistan, especially about cases of torture and injustices in the prison system. But now people have an outlet where they can share their problems, in the hope that someone might hear them and provide help. Despite the real fear of retribution for saying too much, Turkmen citizens – fed up with the excesses, incompetency and couldn’t-care-less attitude of Turkmenistan’s bureaucrats – are trying to find justice via independent media such as ATN and human rights organisations.

In President Berdimuhammedov's Turkmenistan media censorship is rife. Photo cc: Thiery EhrmannThey are not journalists, neither do they deliberately seek out ‘dirt’ – they have a need to tell the authorities about their problems. For this, however, they are attacked, threatened with job loss or expulsion from university. They are also emphatically advised not to communicate with ‘detractors’ or to like articles and photos published on social media sites which the authorities believe give a bad name to Turkmenistan and its people. People are dissuaded from communicating via the internet as their careers, the well-being of their children –  indeed of all their relatives –  are at stake if they fail to heed the advice of the security services. The Soviet practice of collective punishment flourishes in Turkmenistan to this day.Just a few years ago, it was very rare to hear about such things in Turkmenistan, especially about cases of torture and injustices in the prison system. But now people have an outlet where they can share their problems, in the hope that someone might hear them and provide help. Despite the real fear of retribution for saying too much, Turkmen citizens – fed up with the excesses, incompetency and couldn’t-care-less attitude of Turkmenistan’s bureaucrats – are trying to find justice via independent media such as ATN and human rights organisations.

The Soviet practice of collective punishment flourishes in Turkmenistan to this day.

Recently, the Turkmen Service of Radio Svoboda (a project of Radio Free Europe/ Radio Liberty) has been providing an additional outlet for people to speak out. They communicate with de facto illegal radio journalists: brave reporters, many of whom have been previously detained and subjected to ‘preventive conversations.’ These journalists work without official accreditation – radio journalists in Turkmenistan cannot get accreditation, despite what the law might say. Nevertheless, more and more voices are being broadcast across the radio waves, and some people are even prepared to talk on camera. Fed up with their lot, they feel they have nothing left to lose and they want to be heard. 

Bearing roses, Turkmenistan's communications ministers visit the tomb of their former President. Photo cc: Vein

Today, ATN’s project has expanded in scope and reach. Besides informing people inside Turkmenistan, we try to provide objective news about the country for a foreign audience. This is done with the help of our readers – engaged individuals including civil servants, entrepreneurs, students, and foreign diplomats. The quantity and quality of our sources, as well as their geographic distribution across the entire country, means that we can cross check any facts from Turkmenistan and produce our own independent news. 

One of our goals is also to bring information about cases of human rights violations to people and organisations that have the power to influence them. ATN actively cooperates on this with several international human rights organisations, and where possible runs advocacy events together with representatives of the European Union, the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe, and international financial institutions, among others. Since last year, we have also been providing a new translation service. We translate material from Radio Svoboda from Turkmen into Russian so that people outside the country might learn more about Turkmenistan. We also translate foreign-language resources for our Turkmen readers. Indeed, we translated Tom Vaes’ 45-minute-long film into Russian so that people in Turkmenistan might see a different representation of their country. After all, they will not be showing the film on TV in Turkmenistan – here, everything is just fine.  

Due to the dangers of voicing criticism against the Government in Ashgabat (as outlined in this piece), the author has asked to remain anonymous.

Photo 2: (c) ATN