All opinion polls on next year’s elections show that ending the war is a priority for voters in Ukraine. There is little question therefore that this will feature prominently in populist rhetoric by “pro-European” and “pro-Russian” political forces as a way of attacking President Petro Poroshenko.
Both Yulia Tymoshenkoand Anatoliy Grytsenko have claimed, most recently at the September Yalta European Strategy (YES) forum, they have plans to end the war but, neither has outlined any strategy or steps they would take that are different to those of Poroshenko. BBC Hard Talk presenter Stephen Sackur asked Tymoshenko about her weakness in the eyes of Ukrainians who believe she would be willing to do deals with Putin. Grytsenko is more circumspect about his strategy to end the war and it is doubtful he has one except to use force. Neither Tymoshenko or Grytsenko have ever visited the Donbas front line.
To pre-empt anti-war populism, Poroshenko undertook an unusual step for a Ukrainian politician step and apologized for not fulfilling his 2014 election pledge to end the then ATO (Anti-Terrorist Operation) within a few months. Poroshenko’s aim to end the war quickly by defeating Russia’s proxy forces was thwarted by Russian artillery bombardments in July and military invasion in August 2014. Since then, any talk of quickly ending the war has been cheap populism by ignoring the fact NO Ukrainian politician can unilaterally end it.
The ONLY politician who can end the war is Russian President Vladimir Putin. Although Ukrainians would like the war to end they are not optimistic about it ending soon. 72% believe there will be no changes in the next three years, 52% in the next 3-5 years and 47% in 5-10 years. The latter figure is more optimistic because Ukrainian voters are more mature than their politicians and associate the war with Putin whose current term in office ends in 2024.
But, Ukrainian voters ignore Putin is Russian president for life. 73% of Ukrainians see no normalisation of relations with Russia as long as Putin is Russian president and therefore any attempt by Yuriy Boyko, Vadym Rabinovych or Tymoshenko to do deals with him would have serious domestic ramifications, including a possible third Maidan.
The Donbas is a low intensity conflict rather than a frozen conflict as neither side has won or been defeated. Ukrainian politicians are reluctant to lay out their scenarios available for the Donbas, but there are only 4 possible options.
The first option is capitulation when the Ukrainian president would agree to Russia’s demands for the return of occupied Donbas in return for Ukraine agreeing to recognise Russian sovereignty over the Crimea. Viktor Pinchuk suggested this option in the Wall Street Journalin December 2016 which I severely criticised.
An opinion poll last month asked who in their eyes, Russia wanted to see as the next Ukrainian president? 46% said Yuriy Boyko, 28% Vadym Rabinovych and 28% Yulia Tymoshenko. Tymoshenko has sought to deny her pro-Russian instincts and willingness to do deals with Putin. Nevertheless, as seen when she was asked by BBC’s Sackur at the YES summit, she still has not been able to gather up the courage and honesty to apologise to Ukrainians about her terrible 2009 gas deal that massively increased Ukraine’s government debt.
Boyko, Rabinovych and Tymoshenko in seeking to compromise with Putin, would be playing with fire by going against Ukrainian public opinion. 75% of Ukrainians see any normalisation of relations with Ukrainians as only possible after Russia ends its aggression against Ukraine, returns to Ukrainian sovereignty the occupied territories, compensates Ukraine for damages, and agrees to non-interference in Ukrainian affairs. 75% of Ukrainians reject any compromise on the Crimea, state structures and European integration.
As I witnessed in talk shows with Opposition Bloc deputies on ICTV (Svoboda Slovo) and 112 (Puls) channels, pro-Russian politicians have no policies to deal with Russia except capitulation by trading the Crimea for Putin’s word on the Donbas. Together with Tymoshenko, they claim that Poroshenko wants the war to continue because he is making money from it and refuse to condemn Putin and Russian aggression. Ukrainian voters have cause for concern because like with US President Donald Trump, Tymoshenko cannot seem to find the words to ever criticise Putin. This is as true today as it was a decade ago when Tymoshenko squashed any protests by Batkivshchyna to protest against Russia’s invasion of Georgia.
On Puls talk show, I asked Opposition Bloc deputy Nestor Shuvfrych why he did not understand that Ukraine had only two foreign policy options. A non-bloc status was adopted when Viktor Yanukovych and the Party of Regions were in power, but it did nothing to prevent Russian military aggression in 2014. The only other alternative is NATO membership.
Immature squabbling between President Viktor Yushchenko and Tymoshenko in spring 2006 prevented the formation of an Orange coalition that could take advantage of U.S, President George Bush’s visit to Ukraine and invitation to join a Membership Action Plan at NATO’s Riga summit. Yushchenko and Tymoshenko’s petty squabbles prevented Ukraine entering a MAP which would have led to NATO membership by 2010. As a NATO member, Russia would not have attacked Ukraine in 2014.
The second option is associated with Grytsenko, veterans of the Donbas war and nationalist groups and would use the security forces to attempt to retake back the occupied territories. Such a step would have two consequences; first, it would ignite a full-blown war with Russia and second, it would end Western sanctions against Russia as Ukraine would be blamed for “destroying” the Minsk agreement. Grytsenko would be negatively seen by the West in the same manner as Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili in 2008 after he intervened in South Ossetia.
The third option is unlikely but has been proposed by U.S. scholar Alexander Motyl and some west Ukrainian intellectuals. This would be to renounce sovereignty over the occupied Donbas and to accept the contact line as the new Ukrainian-Russian frontier. This proposal has the advantage of undermining Putin’s plans to integrate separatists trojan horses into Ukraine to maintain Russia’s influence. But, the downside is that no elected president could go renounce his or her constitutional duty of being the guarantor of Ukraine’s territorial integrity. Plus, such a step would end the need for the West to continue sanctions against Russia.
The last and best option is a continuation of Poroshenko’s policies. No other candidate is supporting Poroshenko’s policies on the war because they believe that anti-war populism is the route to winning the presidency.
There are three “advantages” to Poroshenko’s policies.
First, it gives Ukraine time to undertake reforms, integrate into Europe and build up its military and security forces. If the 2019 elections are won by reformers, as in 2014, Ukraine by the 2024 elections will have reached a point of irreversibility. As Putin is ending his current term in office, Ukraine would be holding a requiem mass on the Russian World.
The second is that Ukraine will be more able to move Westwards out of the Russian World and make this process irreversible without the 16% (3.75 million) voters that are under Russian occupation and without the 27 single mandate districts lying in Russian-occupied Donbas and Crimea. 87% of these Ukrainians voted for Viktor Yanukovych in 2010 and over 90% for the Party of Regions and Communist Party in 2012. A political party based on the eastern Ukrainian vote can no longer win the presidency and cannot win a parliamentary majority. If these voters had been under Russian occupation in 2010, Yanukovych would have been defeated by Tymoshenko by 45 to 55%.
The third positive factor is that the current policy is the only one of the four discussed above that leads to the continuation of Western sanctions against Russia.
Anti-war populism should be seen by Ukrainian voters for what it is, lies and cheap rhetoric. Only Putin can end the war. In 2019, Ukrainian voters can choose from three options to end the war. The Belarussian option is associated with Boyko, Rabinovych and Tymoshenko, the Georgian option is associated with Grytsenko and Poroshenko with the continuation of the current policies.
