The Ongoing Disorientation Brought on by the Anxiety about What Will Come Next

This blog has fallen victim to the current state of uncertainty brought on by Russian meddling in eastern Ukraine and the ongoing question of whether Putin will intervene directly.  On the face of it, that ought not to be a big issue for a blogger writing some 7000 miles from the scene, especially one who tries not to traffic too much in speculation.  Yet, it is hard not to get away from how a sudden term of events gets in the way of the long-term.  A week ago, after giving considerable thought I was on the verge of writing a piece on the way so much of Ukraine's future depended not on Ukraine but on Putin with a comparison of Putin's current mode of governing with that of Slobodan Milosevic.  Then I came home Sunday afternoon to the alarming news about the seizures of buildings in Kharkiv, Donetsk, and Luhansk.  Suddenly that was more important and I was following every moment and the scarce time I had to bang out the  planned Putin piece disappeared into thin air.  

I write this not just to justify the long gap between now and my last post, but to illustrate the broader impact of Putin’s current efforts to destabilize Ukraine.  For if a small time blogger far removed from the events is thrown of stride, it is not difficult to imagine how people and institutions in Ukraine are unsettled.  In the aftermath of the Russian seizure of Crimea I have heard reports of shortages of basic items like sugar and flour, as people stock up in case of a disruption of supply networks should full-fledged war break out.  The need to deal with the anti-government protests naturally also distracts the government as it attempts to implement changes that will reduce corruption and promote responsible economic development.  

More broadly, as instability lingers the perception that Ukraine cannot manage its affairs grows leading people in the west to thinking that supporting Ukraine may not be worth the effort.  Indeed, Ruslana Lyzychko, the pop singer and effective moral leader of the Euromaidan, expressed that concern following her trip to the US this week, and not without cause.  On Tuesday Rachel Maddow used the brawl between Svoboda and the Communists in parliament as a punchline to a brief exposition of disfunctional government in a way as to suggest that maybe between that brawl and events in the East Ukraine cannot really manage its own affairs.  She did not explain the context; however, like the fact that the Communists had a long codependent relationship with the corrupt Party of Regions party and will be luck to be represented after a new parliament is elected, and that that same fate may also await Svoboda. 

In the great scheme of things losing Maddow for a day is not a huge thing.  She may be MSNBC’s most popular presenter, but she is on cable, and so her audience is small.  Still, she is an important voice on the American left, which as noted previously has to sadly been a weak link in the chain regarding support for Ukraine, largely because of a combination of Russia’s effective use of buzz words like fascism and right-wing extremism combined with a general and understandable desire not to get too involved in someone else’s business, as well as the prominence of well-known left-leaning commentators like Stephen Cohen who talk authoritatively about Ukraine, whether or not they really are. That means that were she to take the lead in promoting informed discussion about Ukraine she could provide a valuable service, and I am not talking just about propaganda here in the pejorative sense, I mean providing useful information that could help her audience honestly assess the current situation.

A week or two ago, Maddow seemed on the verge of doing just that.  In one of her thoughtful meanderings that are part of her program she specifically referenced Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands as valuable for understanding the background. Yet, from my monitoring (and I must admit I cannot watch her everyday due to scheduling conflicts) she has not built on that by Snyder or other informed observers, leaving that to other less popular presenters like Lawrence McDonnell, although to my knowledge Snyder has yet to be brought on as a guest).  PBS has been better, and that same evening provided a much more thoughtful analysis, but I fear as we look at this as an issue defined by identifying with Russia v. identifying with Ukraine we lose sight of the deeper sources of instability, which is the threat the new government poses to the networks that have long profited from the corrupt environment that successive Ukrainian governments have allowed to flourish in the East.  As such a whole way of life is under threat, and while we who have been sympathetic to the Euromaidan see the new era as ushering in new long-term stability, the fact remains that those very advantages mean profound changes for how the economy in Eastern Ukraine works. 

The Twilight of Ethnonationalism?

For some reason, this took quite a while to get banged into shape, but as you can see, I have not ceased thinking about the situation in Ukraine.  

Ever since the Euromaidan began, Ukraine has been a giant social experiment, and for the most part results have been positive.  We have seen a people cowed by an increasingly authoritarian and mercurial government rise up on the principle that they are collectively responsible for the kind of state they live in.  Now thanks to Vladimir Putin, Ukraine has become ground zero for a new social experiment in which the relative effectiveness of two diametrically opposed conceptions of the nation are being tested: the völkisch ethno-nationalist vision Vladimir Putin has invoked to justify his decision to annex Crimea, which can easily be applied elsewhere, including Eastern Ukraine on the one hand, and the open, inclusive civic nationalism of symbolized by the the Maidan protests on the other. The stakes are huge.  If Putin succeeds in dividing Ukrainians along ethnic and linguistic grounds, we will likely be in for years of misery, and a return to civil war on the European continent.  Worse, it will destabilize the Baltic states, and Kazakhstan, and even perhaps Belarus, where Putin’s recent aggression has even begun to worry the Kremlin’s long-standing ally Aleksander Lukashenko.  If Ukraine survives intact save Russia’s de facto control of Crimea, then we can truly begin to speak of putting the darkness of Europe’s twentieth century behind us.

Twentieth century history tends to make the first and more pessimistic scenario seem more likely.  As conventional wisdom goes, the appeal to tribe is powerful and once unleashed inexorable.  Throughout the twentieth centuries from population exchanges of Greeks and Turks after at the end of WWI to the ethnic cleansing that occurred in east central Europe during and after WWII and occurred again in Yugoslavia, we have seen how escalating ethnic tensions create a logic of their own that countervailing tendencies like mixed marriages, inter-ethnic friendships, and cooperation on a local level become unable to resist.  This is the road to civil war, and unrest in the major eastern cities of Ukraine, like Donetsk, Kharkiv, and Luhansk it is all too plausible right now.  Never mind that there is increasing evidence that pro-Russian demonstrations in those cities are dependent on Russian agitators crossing the border, because what matters is not how divisiveness takes hold, but whether or not it takes hold.  If such provocations work, then they will have served their purpose and Putin will intervene.  Sadly even if the provocations do not work, and for the moment they do not seem to be, except in the now alternate universe of the Russian media, Ukrainians will not be able to rest easy.  For Putin and his media spin doctors have now created a worldview where the Russian soul can only be satisfied by redeeming Russians from foreign rule, which if repeated often enough in an environment where Putin has little option other than to attack Ukraine ostensibly to save Russians from fascists and divide the community after the fact as has happened in Crimea.  

Bleak as that possible future is, however, we should not resign ourselves to the notion that history will repeat itself. Indeed, far from marking the descent into the ugly narrative we know so well from the past century, Putin’s recent aggression may mark the bitter twilight of an awful era of European history in which nations were understood defined first and foremost by ethnicity, rather than shared political interests grounded in living within the same state. 

Nationalists think of nations as grounded in ancient ethnic bonds, but the reality is that our understanding of nations as political communities is modern, and the shape of nations determined more by states than ethnic ties.  Indeed, if we look around the world today, the reality is that all nations are heterogeneous, and most quite openly so precisely because it is understood that above all nations function to bind a political community.  While some nations feel compelled to sweep that diversity under the rug in the name of today national unity, the number of nations that are defined primarily by ethnicity is quite rare, otherwise, there would be thousands of them.  Yet, the dirty secret is that while the rhetoric of shared language and culture is what generally attracts people’s attention, even those ethnic nations owe their positions to the actions of states, are often seen as reflecting a distinct ethnic heritage. This insight also explains the curious concentration of ethnically defined nations in central, eastern, and southeastern Europe.  For in the nineteenth century when nations first began taking shape these regions were ruled by large empires, which were unable to establish cultural hegemony of the language of the state.  In the Balkans this can be traced back to the millet system the Ottoman state used to govern peoples according to their religion, something that was complicated further by the Orthodox Church’s support of local vernaculars.  Further north the key factor was the partition of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

We will never know whether if left to its own devices, the Commonwealth would have cultivated a modern national identity that would have incorporated all the peoples living in the Commonwealth, whose descendants we today identify as Poles, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Lithuanians, and Jews.  It certainly seems possible, as that is what their respective elites had already done.  We do know, however, is that all the partitioning powers found incorporating the Polish-speaking elites problematic.  As a linguistically largely homogenous state with a comparatively small number of Poles, Prussia and then Germany managed this reasonably well at least until the 1880s, but the Habsburg and Russian Empires both struggled to find a way to incorporate the Poles and bring them to accept the state language as their own.  As a result they each followed the path of divide and rule, recognizing other lesser nationalities to offset the prominence of the Poles.  In our modern world with its emphasis on diversity the path taken in Habsburg Austria were a multi-cultural society was emerging by fits and starts is particularly appealing and is destruction by World War I especially poignant.  In Russia, divide and rule politics proved sufficient to preserve Russian dominance until the crisis brought on by World War I.  Nonetheless, the old regime state provided enough nourishment to various nationalists that when the Bolsheviks took over Lenin too felt some kind of recognition was necessary.  Stalin aborted that project and revived the imperial order albeit without formally discontinuing the Soviet Union’s nominal national federal structure of Soviet Republics, Autonomous Republics, and Autonomous regions that nonetheless affirmed the mystical importance of nationality.  

No wonder that when that day came, there was grave concern that radical nationalists would be the great problem of post-Soviet space as they sought to assert control of ethnically diverse political communities in the name of titular nations.  In the case of Ukraine, independence did not lead to significant bloodshed until this year, but by no means did this naturally lead to the kind of inclusive understanding of identity that has been the hallmark of the Euromaidan protests.  The Soviet legacy was as engrained in Ukraine as any republic, perhaps more so given that the Ukrainian nationalist movements’ activities before and after WWII, and many of the problems still faced by Ukraine today, especially the sense of an east-west divide, can in part be traced back to the Soviet conception of nations first and foremost as cultural communities.  Thus, as the Soviet Union collapsed it was simply understood that now all people living in Ukraine should participate in that community by speaking the language of the titular nationality.  

Given that at the time of independence ethnic Ukrainians were by far the largest single ethnic group making up about 72%  of the population while the ethnic Russian minority was circa 20%, not including Russian-speaking Ukrainians or other minorities, 20% at the time of independence and no other group made up more than 1%, the expectation that all people learn Ukrainian may not seem unreasonable.  Nor was it perceived as such at the time of independence, whether out of naiveté or just out of shock. Still, that thinking almost immediately created a divide in the society between those, especially among the educated, who felt comfortable speaking Ukrainian and used it as their main language, and those who did not with a mild, though generally unspoken, aura of shame being associated with speaking Russian.  As a result, the former group became identified with being less Soviet, and often with the best of intentions felt it was their duty to evangelize Ukrainian identity among those who used Russian.  

No one likes to feel ashamed, especially when one feels one had done nothing wrong.  Nor did it help that the bulk of Ukrainian speakers came from the west of the country, which was seen as underdeveloped, and where the survival of Ukrainian was associated with deep-seeded resistance to the Soviet project, the very project people of the East attributed their economic status to. On that basis the very real differences between East and West solidified into the East-West political divide.  By 1994, frustration over the law making Ukrainian the only legal language was already and an issue, and would remain so through the 2010 presidential election, creating a distraction that the oligarchs used seize control of Ukrainian business.  

For all the inequities and criminal activity that accompanied Ukraine’s privatization, however, there was an upside to the emergence of the East-West divide. Too big, and its economy too diversified for one group to seize control, but not so large that total control was impossible, Ukraine’s political culture remained pluralist to an extent no found in any other Soviet successor state outside of the Baltic states.  That in turn nurtured a belief that elections should be free and fair, and that orderly transfers of power were possible, a point testified to by the 2004 Orange Revolution when outcry over rigged voting led to a rerun of the run-off election, and the subsequently smooth 2009-10 elections.  This condition lasted long enough that a generation of people have grown up in the east, west, north and south of the country with a connection to the Ukrainian state and be shaped by its institutions.  It also made the political systems people encountered when they went to Poland or countries in western Europe seem familiar, making comparisons between those countries and Ukraine’s progress seem more valid.  Thus they had taken Yanukovych’s promise to lead Ukraine into Europe as a dividend for his corruption, and they felt a responsibility to keep Ukraine on that track when Yanukovych decided to back out of the association agreement with the EU in November.   This sense of collective responsibility became even stronger following the government’s crackdown, and as has been noted time and again by commentators, the Euromaidan protests cut across lines that have so long been understood to divide Ukrainians.  Russian-speakers and Ukrainian speakers, West and East (even if the former was more widely represented at Independence Square in Kyiv), Jews and Gentiles, and even Muslims, not to mention all branches of the Orthodox faith.  

Putin, of course, seems to believe that this new unity of action can be sabotaged, and perhaps it can, but this suggests how little he understands what has been taking shape in Ukraine, even as he recognizes it poses a threat to his world.  He certainly did not understand it this fall and winter as he insisted on Yanukovych cracking down, and the power of the Maidan and Ukrainians’ belief in themselves has only gotten stronger now that they have overthrown Yanukovych and begun to organize to defend their country.  With the news in the south and east no longer run through the filter designed to promote Yanukovych and Putin the people are increasingly showing themselves to be ready and willing to firm for a united Ukraine.  If Putin knows what is good for him, he will leave things as they are. If he does attack Ukraine, he will bring on a bloody miserable guerilla war with brother Slavs he claims to be saving.  Then, the truth will slowly sink to undermine the lies of the official media, and bring him misery that will not be offset by the annexation of Crimea, or any other territories in Eastern Ukraine he might be able to bring under Russian control.  For the moment, however, we must watch and wait, to see what happens.  Perhaps a well placed bomb can create the discord Putin needs, but I am not betting on it, rather I’m betting on the power of shared political interest in a safe and open society reasonably free of corruption and Ukrainians’ will to work towards that.

Ukraine’s People and Military Model the Power of Resisting Violence

The more tense things become and the quicker events unfold in Ukraine the harder I find to sort out what is the information that non-specialists need analyzed.  This weekend saw me go from expecting a full-blown invasion after seemingly coordinated attacks on the regional government buildings in Kharkiv and Donetsk on Saturday following similar attacks in Crimea the day before, to breathing a sigh of relief that these events did not get the kind of support Putin may have expected.  Sunday’s protests in Russia against intervention, and not just in Moscow and St. Petersburg, were also heartening, for though they were small and some were arrested, they were more in line with popular opinion than the pro-intervention counter-demonstrations.  We know this because a poll released Monday indicated that 73% of Russians opposed intervention. Couple that with far less support for Russian protection coming from Ukrainians, and a more robust response from the rest of the world and Putin has been forced slow down and pretend that nothing bigger was in the works.

My first inclination was to frame this information in a treatment of Putin, but others have done that well, and one more column describing how Putin has boxed himself in will not make it even more true than it already is.  Instead, I think praise is in order to the Ukrainian people, the Ukrainian military and the new Ukrainian military.  Ukraine has no Gandhi or Martin Luther King, no prophet of civil disobedience and non-violence, and yet the strength of the Maidan was its peacefulness in the face of persistent provocation.  Nonetheless, there was a recognition by people with limited training in such things that concerted non-violence had to be disciplined and was essential because resorting to violence would provide justification for a crackdown.  Indeed, arguably the violence resistance that began on 19 January ultimately did provide justification for the crackdown that cost about 100 lives, although, I think it is clear that by 18 January Yanukovych would have used violence on regardless.  Further, we should not that when some finally succumbed to the temptation of violence in January, it came at a time when Yanukovych had tacitly admitted his weakness by not carrying out an all out crackdown on the peaceful demonstration.  

Throughout that struggle Ukrainian protestors had a largely unseen ally in the Ukrainian army, which consistently refused to side with Yanukovych and go against their own people.  Perhaps that reflects training Ukrainian officers have received via the NATO sponsored Partners for Peace program, or perhaps it simply reflected the awareness that the army itself was a fragile institution, and the realization that even attempting to carry out Yanukovych’s orders would not just break the army, but insure a civil war as brigades split up under the strain of being asked to follow commands that not all were prepared to obey.  In time, we may get more insight about what motivated the Ukrainian military command to act as they did, but in the meantime, they and their soldiers have garnered further reason for praise by remaining largely loyal to Ukraine.  This cannot be easy.  They know if fighting breaks out they will lose, and they are not well paid, indeed the one major defector, the newly appointed commander of the Ukrainian Black Sea fleet, allegedly appealed to his underlings to follow him on the basis that they would be paid better.  Yet, they have chosen to stand firm prepared to die, and defend themselves and their country if Russia opens fire.  At the same time, their awareness of the dangers of escalating events by firing the first shot is clear, and their discipline is to be lauded, as should the new Ukrainian government’s commitment to that strategy, and this is understood by the Ukrainian people as a whole.  Strikingly, the Right Sektor military group who were at the forefront of violent resistance to the Yanukovych regime have declared that they will not go to Crimea, a sign that they fully recognize the danger their presence so near Russian troops might pose to their country.  

At this point I think it is clear only Putin and his allies in the Kremlin really wants war.  The question is whether he can create a reason to justify it.  So far thanks to Ukrainian resolve, that has not yet happened, and woe to him if he manages to manufacture his justification.  Still for now though we are on pins and needles, but for Ukrainians and the world Ukraine is definitely not dead yet.  Mr. Putin you have been warned.

Understanding the Real Revolution: Yulia Tymoshenko and the Future of Ukraine

People seem to breathing easier in Ukraine.  While in some places like the Crimea and Kharkiv there is still some resistance to the new order, even die-hard supporters of the regime are now reasserting their commitment to the territorial integrity of the country. Yet in the eyes of many protestors, this revolution is only partly done.  While the corrupt and murderous Yanukovych is gone, the entire political class that includes both the former supporters of Yanukovych in the Party of Regions and the opposition parties now need to come to terms with the fact that the people did not stage this revolution simply to replace one leader with another.  The past three months have been and, likely for quite a while yet, will continue to be about Ukrainians demanding that they be treated as citizens rather than subjects.  

It was the centrality of this change that frustrated specialists as they followed the limited coverage of the events and in the Western media with its focus on dramatic moments that were, at least until the past few days, of limited relevance to the key developments of the protests.  Not that there weren’t images that did not reach the public consciousness.  The piano player on the Maidan did get noticed, but that only caught a glimpse of what was going on, which was the breaking down of a post-Soviet mindset and the forging of civil society.  In a certain respect this was also the rediscovery of ethical thinking and action, something that church leaders were quick to pick up on.  It is not that Ukrainians were not religious before, but the religion as it was practiced in most cases took a rather atomized form, a legacy of decades of repression.  

Admittedly such things are hard to capture in a soundbite, or even through an anecdotal reportage, because the extent of the attitudinal changes is not easily measured by one event or an interview or two.  Pictures can do somewhat better.  The pictures of the masses of people who converged more than once to the Maidan caught the fact that people cared about how the government’s use of violence to suppress dissent, as did the pictures of the fighters on Hrushevsky Street, but even these did not to mind convey the connection between people that has been developing.  In that respect, the exception for me was a picture of people standing on the tracks in Dnipropetrovsk to prevent a train full of riot police and civilian thugs from moving.  It is all the more meaningful because support for the Maidan came slowly in Dnipropetrovsk, and was only galvanized after the riot police and thugs in civilian dress attacked protestors in January.  

The best evidence of this revolution in how Ukrainians think about their relationship between themselves and their government has been the response to the release of Yulia Tymoshenko.  In the west Tymoshenko is known as the beautiful politician with the braids wrapped over the top of her head, who was the most visible force during the Orange Revolution almost ten years ago and since 2011 has been imprisoned following a conviction on corruption charges.  While there is no doubt this was a highly selective prosecution, Tymoshenko is no Aung San Suu Kyi, and is probably better compared to the late Benazir Bhutto, who was likewise a talented populist whose reputation is sullied by corruption. In Tymoshenko's case that includes her close association with Ukraine’s former prime minister Pavlo Lazarenko, and her accumulation of a vast fortune while heading a gas monopoly using the same combination of connections and lack of transparency used by other oligarchs.

Ironically, a decade ago that past and her populist skills made her an appealing political figure.  Then there was virtually no way to be politically consequential without being well connected to the business interests which had emerged as the old Soviet regime collapsed, and having been on the losing side of the battle between the so-called Dnipropetrovsk and the Donetsk clan, she not only had an axe to grind, but she had some ideas where the bodies lay, and understood the centrality to the secret deals in the gas industry to the rapid growth of oligarchs.  Put that together with an unmatched talent to speak to the people that was on display during the Orange Revolution, and her popularity was understandable.  What is more her 2009 deal with Russia, was actually transparent and helped expose the oligarch and Yanukovych backer Dmytryi Firtash as someone making money off the Ukrainian people.  Yet, the situation is different now, and were Ukrainians to see Tymoshenko as their political saviour they would be taking a huge step back, because were Tymoshenko to return, so too would the ugly pattern of politics driven solely by elite interests and kompromat, the compromising material that all the political elites had access to and used to protect their interests and reshape political alliances.  Further, Tymoshenko’s return would be the best way to confirm the Russian view that the past three months were all part of a plot orchestrated by the U.S. and the EU to replace Yanukovych with their own pawn. 

Fortunately, the protestors of the Maidan saw this.  They recognized the symbolic relevance of Tymoshenko’s release, but that was it.  Crowds did not shout out calling for her to take the reigns of power.  Rather, very quickly the talk was that people had not given their lives to install Yulia as president, and the clever poster-makers who have been an important part of the revolution were quick to make their contribution to spreading that word.  

Caption:  People did not die for this.

This skepticism, and its breadth among Ukrainians is true sign of the changes that have happened in Ukraine, and now after three months of persistently running behind the protestors at the Maidan, it is time for the established politicians do their part and recognize that they are no longer administrators of elite expectations they are observers of the people.

The Pace Quickens and Desperation Appears on the Increase

With due respect to the more than 100 people who have been killed of the past seventy-two hours, the events in Ukraine have taken on the quality of a gangster film at the point where the gangster is on the run and tension builds as his options narrowing rapidly and his desperation increases.  It will not be over until its over, but there are a few points that deserve note as we prepare for tomorrow.  

Today’s extraordinary session of parliament was a landmark.  In effect, as of today, Ukraine once again has something resembling a functioning parliament for the first time since 2010, even if nearly half its deputies were absent.  The question is how Yanukovych and other sectors of government will react to this?  Right now I place odds on the fact he will try to ignore them, and hopes that the army will finally see things his way.  As I write, the deputy chief of staff has resigned upset at Yanukovych’s efforts to draw the military into the conflict.  I applaud him for showing junior officers that they have an alternative to following illegal orders. (Incidentally, it is also worth noting that many of the officers have, thanks to the Partner for Peace program which emphasizes things like proper relations between the military and the civilian authorities and not following illegal orders.)  So we shall see how they stand up to increasing pressure from Yanukovych, right now based on experience so far just as I would put odds on Yanukovych trying to get the army to attack the protestors, I would put odds on the military finding ways to avoid doing so.

If the big question remains whether Yanukovych can draw the army into the conflict, there are two things to look for to judge where he stands or thinks he stands.  The first is who shows up to parliament tomorrow.  It was in the interest of Yankovych loyalists in the Party of Regions and Communists not to show up today in the hopes that they could prevent a quorum from being reached.  They failed, but if they come running back in large numbers tomorrow and try to reassert their authority, or to be more precise return toe parliament to irrelevance, then we know that Yanukovych still thinks he can shape events in the realm of conventional politics, which is not to suggest he would stop with that.  If the PR and Communist deputies are back, it will also mean that the rumors about large numbers of deputies leaving the country are false.  If, on the other hand, they do not return, it suggests that Yanukovych has lost his hold on them, and that in the way of criminals they are now busy saving their own skin.  Given multiple reports from everyday people that people in Mercedes are at Kiev's secondary airport, I think the latter is more likely than the former.

Second, if snipers return to attacking the protestors,  but nothing more drastic ensues, it likely means that Yanukovych is again trying to buy time and/or provoke the protestors into some kind of violence that he can claim represents terrorism, but has otherwise run out of ideas other than using terror himself, which, as we see, has not deterred the protestors. Regarding the snipers, one more point seems worth noting.  The mayhem caused by them has been terrible, but the cost of human lives today is nowhere what it would be the internal forces deployed a machine gun or two.  Some of my fellow experts disagree with me on this, but I see this as a sign that even among the ostensibly loyal internal forces there is a reluctance to use lethal force in the scale that could resolve the Maidan situation quickly. 

Beyond that we shall see.

Deja Vu All Over Again: The situation in Ukraine as of 7 pm (Ukrainian time) 18 February 2014

On Saturday news came that the protestors on the Maidan were ending their occupation of the Kyiv City Council building and that even Pravyi Sektor was dismantling some of their barricades such that Hrushevsky Street would be passable.  All this was part of a deal that would lead to the release of activists who have been detained by the authorities since 30 November 2013.  For this observer sitting some 5000 miles away, it was a hard to believe.  On previous occasions when the opposition had brought back news that an amnesty had been arranged, they had been booed and the protestors on the Maidan had not gone along.  Why had they gone along now?  Was this part of a much larger back room deal being quietly brokered that would lead to more dramatic announcements in the days to come?  Or was this just another just ploy to throw the protestors off guard, and were they just too tired to say no? 

We got our answer today, and all optimism that there were serious divisions in the Party of Regions, and that moderates would lead Ukraine out of its crisis by breaking entirely with Yanukovych has been dashed. Perhaps such people really do exist, although I am doubtful, but if they do they have been outmaneuvered by hardliners and Putin who created conditions that led to today’s violence.  I am writing today before the dust has settled, and so I will not speculate on who escalated to violence first, but the reported deployment of snipers on the roofs of buildings in the government district does not fit with the spirit inherent in an amnesty agreement.  At the same time, with the report today that Russia has agreed to release an additional 2 billion dollars of loans he had offered Yanukovych in December, we see who is the real provocateur in the Ukrainian crisis.  

Were the negotiations that led to the amnesty agreement, a manipulation by Yanukovych, or were they real and was Putin just so overcome by his imperial ambitions that he decided to throw good money after bad?   Only they know right now, and it really doesn’t matter. what does is that the traditional Ukrainian opposition, the U.S., and the EU all look stupid today.  They, in the end will be forgiven, but the same cannot be said for Yanukovych or Putin.  

Putin, of course, does not need to worry right now about being removed from power, but  it is very hard to see this ending well for Yanukovych.  If, as has happened on all previous occasions, the internal forces and Berkut are unable to clear the Maidan, the additional 2 Billion dollar loans will do little to restore his authority. The negotiations between the government and the opposition will continue tomorrow as scheduled, except Yanukovych will look weaker than ever, and his chances of getting yet another infusion of cash from Putin will be diminished further.  If forces loyal to Yanukovych do succeed in clearing the Maidan, however, his future does not look much better.  The more violent the clearing is, the worse he will look in the eyes of Ukrainians, and as such the violence will feed more demonstrations, even in the East.  Moreover, clearing the Maidan is a very different thing from reasserting control of the country, especially in the West of the country where his authority has been totally rejected.

There has been increasing anxiety about a civil war, and today’s events have done nothing to allay the fear that Ukrainians see no other way out than the destructive all or nothing option of war.  That said, there are reasons to believe that the clearing of the Maidan, if successful, will not push the country into civil war.  Here we can all be thankful that the regular army has refused to take sides or given any sign that it would allow either side to gain access to its weapons.  That, along with the the salient fact that people in Western Ukraine are not advocating separatism means that the comparisons with Yugoslavia circa 1990 are limited.  Of course, there is no guarantee that the current situation will continue to obtain and prevent a civil war, especially if Yanukoych decides to reassert control of Western Ukraine, but he would be a fool or desperate to do so before he has a firmer grip on the rest of the country, and that seems unlikely in the short-term.  The Euromaidan protestors have shown themselves to be amazingly creative in finding ways to carry on their protests, and damaging as the loss of the Maidan would be, new kinds of protests will appear that will keep Yanukovych scrambling.  For now though, we will have to see how events unfold in Ukraine during the next few hours and days. 

Where Things Stand as of 11 February 2014: The Significance of the Leak of Asst. Sec. Victoria Nuland’s Conversation

It has been nearly two weeks since I have checked in here.  Like everyone else I have been continuing to wait for something to happen,  With no further progress on a negotiated solution the big question on people’s minds is what Putin will do after Sochi is over, and while I remain skeptical that Putin will intervene militarily, I see no need waste ink on more speculation.

Thus, the most substantive event as far as the news cycle has been was the leak to Youtube of the private conversation between Victoria Nuland, the Assistant Secretary of State, and the Geoffrey Pyatt, the American ambassador, where they were talking strategy.  My initial impulse was not to comment on it, because, apart from the unwise wording regarding the EU, what I heard showed my tax dollars well spent.  The assessments Nuland and Pyatt made about the main opposition figures was accurate and corresponded to informed opinion among Ukrainians.  Nonetheless, the conversation has clearly raised alarm bells among people sincerely concerned that the U.S. is trying to manipulate events so some explanation seems appropriate.

First, as for the posting of the conversation, it was clearly calculated to do two things: 1) drive a wedge between the US and the EU, and 2) provide evidence to those inclined to distrust US that the Euromaidan protests are illegitimate and essentially part of a western plot to upend the eternally friendly relations between Russia and Ukraine.  Regarding the first point, the leak heartened me, because it suggested to me that, if as assumed Russia was behind the post, it suggested that Russian intentions in Ukraine were limited.  After all, the FSB, Russia’s intelligence agency, is likely well aware that a direct invasion of Ukraine by Russian forces would quickly trump the anger generated by the leak, so its effectiveness as a vehicle to sow discord between the US and the EU depends on Russia not getting overtly involved in Ukraine’s affairs.

Regarding the second, I doubt the leak has changed many minds in Ukraine or Russia. Based on how Russian media has portrayed events in Ukraine, the conversation simply confirmed what Russians already believed, and the same is true in Ukraine, except that most Ukrainians know enough not to believe that the Euromaidan is some kind of foreign intervention.  Likewise, in the west the leak appears to have had the most impact among people who were already suspicious of American foreign policy, often for good reason.  Certainly, hearing the strategizing about which opposition figure should enter a new government through roundtable talks does sound like Nuland and Pyatt are picking winners and losers, which they are, but not necessarily against the will of the Ukrainian people, assuming Ukrainians supporting the Euromaidan were to embrace a roundtable agreement.  

So what does it mean when Nuland and Pyatt say that only Yatseniuk (called Yats in the conversation) should go into a government and that Klychko (called Klych in the conversation)?  First, let us be clear this talk assumes that the new government would continue to operate with Yanukovych still in office as president, an arrangement that can only be accepted with a return to the Constitution of 2004 that limited the role of the president in order.  It is not attempting to remove Klychko from the scene.  Indeed having Yatseniuk as the only opposition leader in the transitional government would keep Klychko’s hands clean.  This would put him in a position where he could run against Yatseniuk in the 2015 elections claiming that Yatseniuk had sold out by cooperating with Yanukovych.  By contrast, insisting that Klychko take a position in any government would put him and Yatseniuk and a relatively even playing field. That might sound like the fairer thing to do, but it would also create conditions where the opposition vote would be more likely to split creating a means for Yanukovych, or his chosen Party of Regions successor to stage a comeback.  Whether Tyahnybok is included in the transitional government is less important, since he does not have a sufficient base in the East to run and win.

So does Nuland and Pyatt’s strategizing run against the interests of the Ukrainian people?  I think not.  At the start of the protests, Yatseniuk and Klychko were arguably on a level playing field for credible leader of an all-Ukrainian opposition.   Neither rose to the occasion in the way that Yulia Tymoshenko did during the Orange Revolution of 2004, however, but Yatseniuk has shown himself somewhat more tone-deaf to the mood of the Maidan than Klychko.  So even though Yatseniuk’s stock has risen some in polls about a prospective raise between him and Yanukovych, which at this point show that even Tyahnybok could win against a match up with Yanukovych, Klychko would still do even better.  Nonetheless, Yatseniuk has much more parliamentary experience and on that basis would likely be the more effective prime minister in the near term.  Further, if the balance of power between the President and Prime Minister return to what they were according to 2004 an electoral agreement where Yatseniuk backed Klychko for president in exchange for carrying on in the office of prime minister would hardly write Yatseniuk out of political power.  Whether the two men trust each other enough to do that is uncertain; although, current evidence suggests they do not.

If there is a weakness in Nuland and Pyatt’s thinking it is the failure to take the Euromaidan protestors into account.  While most Euromaidan activists recognize the need for some kind of negotiated agreement, and recognize that they have to live with the political establishment they have, they have their own goals -- not just the change of government but moves towards making Ukraine “a normal country.,” i.e. one where oligarchs do not have so much power and corruption is greatly reduced.  Sadly, when the Maidan chose representatives to meet with the government none of the leading activists several weeks ago, the opposition leadership managed to control the nominations in ways that excluded any of the Euromaidan’s leaders, of whom there were several possible candidates.  That has meant that when negotiating with Yanukovych they do so without someone to remind them of the mood on the Maidan, something that helped contribute to the outbreake of violence on 19 January.  If I were Nuland and Pyatt, I would be working on convincing the opposition to bring on one of the Euromaidan leaders, who could help smooth the way for a deal to be approved by the increasingly radicalized Euromaidan.  The last thing we need is for a reasonable deal to be reached that militant elements on the Maidan, like Pravyi Sektor (Right Sector) which is at the forefront of the fighting on Hrushevskyi Street, reject with the support of other members of the Maidan.