After Yanukovych backed off from signing
the agreement with the EU, pressure from
Moscow is now escalating to dictation how Ukraine’s president must handle the tens of thousands
protesters at Maidan in the center of Kyiv, who are demanding his resignation: Disperse them by violent crackdown with an
overwhelming force.
Previous attempts to do it with police
using clubs and sticks were unsuccessful, as the protesters responded in kind,
and the government was somewhat sensitive to worldwide condemnation of police
brutality. It is now pretending to seek a peaceful, negotiated solution. But
nothing is farther from the truth — in
the opinion of many skeptics.
While the standoff continues, Western
diplomats continue shuffling to Kyiv, trying to convince Yanukovych to
compromise with the opposition on key issues. While Yanukovych is maneuvering,
Russia’s President Vladinir Putin is becoming nervous and has already suspended
the next quarterly trunche of bailout loan.
A decisive full-scale assault on the
protesters by riot police is likely to use firearms. And what if, at some
point, the regime’s battalions or some of them refuse to shoot? Or, what if the
defensive organization of the protesters has acquired more protective
capability, so that the result becomes a soaked-in-blood-standoff? Such events are unpleasant to contemplate, but
banishing them from thought will not make the real world go away.
In the words we hear from Putin’s
adviser Sergey Glazyev, “Russia will act.” It would welcome a move to convert
Ukraine into a federal republic, meaning breaking up Ukraine as a nation. It
also means annexing at least part of it by Russia.
I shall return to this layout after a quick
detour to a gregarious leaked conversation about Ukraine issues between U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey R. Pyatt. The conversation had the qualities of a casual talk and
note-taking. Had it involved top priority action plans, rest assured it
wouldn’t be accessible to snooping.
As for language quirks, it is no secret
that diplomats, politicians and presidents (ask Putin) often use colorful epithets
when out of earshot. Nuland’s slip along this line was
inconsequential, even if European Union politicians later acted with staged indignation in
public.
More discouraging is the old
(unintentional) message the public received from that conversation, confirming
that neither the US nor EU have a plan B when dealing with Yanukovych at this
late hour. They continue to expect (or wishfully expect) some success in
persuading Yanukovych to compromise with the opposition on such issues as
composition of the government cabinet and changing the constitution to its year
2004 version (with lesser presidential powers). Presumably the regime’s consent can be achieved by economic
inducements and threats of personal sanctions.
It seems, however, that Yanukovych is
guided by a realization that the West is not committed to put up a stop sign
for Russia’s encroachments against Ukraine, although it could do so very
effectively if it looked at it as a high priority. He wants to be on the side
of what he sees as a winning hand, and is showing definite signs of being
committed to satisfy Moscow’s demands rather than risking unknown outcomes by
power sharing with the opposition.
Whether or not standing by Ukraine should
or should not be a priority for the United States is another issue. The
argument could be based on pointing out that Europe is the highest priority for
the US (outside own homeland), as it was
in World War II. It certainly is more compelling than, say, Afghanistan, the
cemetery of empires which the invaders historically tried to “stabilize” and
where trillions of US dollars disappeared over 13 years, with a huge drain on
America’s economy. Coincidentally, Europe’s security requires ability to stand
up vis-à-vis resurgent Russia, which becomes a mighty ravenous empire if it
swallows up Ukraine. No one knows it better than Poland, the Baltic states and
Finland.
In the case of Russian aggression, some
pundits say, NATO force will defend Europe. What NATO force? Europe’s defense
budgets stood close to zero for decades, relying mostly on the presence of
American ground and air power. With US forces committed in Asia, skeptics say
Russia’s trucks supported by armor and thousands of fighter aircraft could now
drive virtually unopposed to the English Channel. Never mind that Russia’s GNP
or GDP is puny in a comparison with Europe’s.
The US finds itself in its present
overextended position in Asian wars gobbling up a large military budget comparable to that during
the Cold War, and inflicting a huge social cost. Said Chuck Hagel, the new US
Secretary of Defense: “The Pentagon risks becoming a benefits agency if it
fails to tackle rising personnel costs from military pensions and healthcare”
(Financial Times, April 4, 2013). One-half of several million Iraq and Afghanistan war veterans are filing claims for disability
from combat injuries and post-traumatic stress disorder. The processing backlog
is about 1.3 million and takes about one year to catch up (The New York Times,
Sept 28, 2012).
The hyena benefiting from this mess is the
Kremlin, by getting a free hand in its “sphere of influence” defined by the
extent of Western powers’ engagements elsewhere.
And so, coming
back to a million-dollar question, who will defend Ukraine from an impending
assault launched by Ukraine’s virtual occupation regime, which is now in the
process transforming itself into Russia’s subsidiary? Yanukovych recently carried
out a reshuffle of the army’s top ranks and of the SBU (Ukraine’s Security
Service) to ensure their obedience. It
is clear that his underlings are able to target EuroMaidan resistance leaders, such
as Oleksandr Danylyuk, who had to flee the country, and Dmytro Bulatov,
mutilated and left for dead by hired thugs.
Still
another leader, Dmytro Yarosh, who
organized the Pravy Sector resistance group, described in a recent Time
magazine interview the growing capability of the resisters to repel large-scale attacks against EuroMaidan
protesters. Such capability, if real, seems to be the only existing shield for
the nation. Yes, this is incredible in a country that has been an independent
entity for almost a generation.
One would have to
go back to the 2010 presidential election to explain such an anomaly. And, yes,
the explanation is that the result of that election was itself an obscenity,
which must be ranked as an epochal massive poor judgment that handed power to
known crime boss albeit by a small margin.
Boris Danik is a retired Ukrainian-American living in North Caldwell, New Jersey.
