Both crime and error
If toddlers were interested in politics, even they would give out unmistakable predictions about the next round of negotiations in the Minsk format. Starting last year in Paris, where Merkel and Hollande sternly pointed out Poroshenko to the correctness of the Russian position regarding the need to fulfill the signed agreements, rather than reinvent their own Ukrainian interpretations, Kiev is engaged in outright sabotage.
Not only Europeans, but also Americans were unable to break the reluctance of the Ukrainian authorities to implement the peace plan. Neither the threat to deprive of funding, nor the promise to lift sanctions from Russia helped.
At first, in Kiev, they do not fully believe that the West will be able to quit them. Their confidence is no longer as strong as it was a couple of years ago. But, nevertheless, the Kiev authorities continue to seriously overestimate the importance of the Ukrainian project for the West. In particular, they do not understand that the West needed not any Ukraine, but a capable one, and critically failed to take into account the time factor. Any project can be implemented only in a certain period of time. People say that "road spoon for dinner."
Second, the no matter how painful and even deadly for Ukraine is the deprivation of funding, no matter how offensive Kiev “European integrators” suddenly see the EU shaking their long-stretched Russian hand over their heads, but for the regime leaders their own shirt is closer to the body. Even if they did not study the example of Somalia and South Sudan, they intuitively understand that the population can die out and the state crumble, but some leading representatives of this state can become rich in parallel and feel very good. At the same time, the beginning of the implementation of the Minsk agreements carries the danger of physical liquidation for the top of the regime.
Even Russian patriots love to build theoretical constructions that suggest that impoverished and endangered Ukraine is able to stabilize and exist forever, by growing radishes in private plots and heating of country houses by dung.
Interested Ukrainian politicians and experts are even more optimistic in this regard. The same people who three years ago claimed that the people would not tolerate the “corruption regime” of Yanukovych, since life does not improve at a rapid pace, now no less zealously prove that the corruption regime of Poroshenko, in which life is rapidly deteriorating, the people are willing to endure This is pleasing, since the climate in Ukraine is better than in Yakutia.
In general, when there is no way out, people prefer to hope for the best and are afraid of making sharp movements that can destroy the already shaky Ukrainian power structure.
Therefore, neither Russia, nor Germany, nor France, nor the United States, nor all of them together, will succeed in breaking the stubbornness of Ukrainian politicians. They rightly believe that as long as the authorities in Ukraine, at least nominally, are in their hands, no serious sanctions (even the confiscation of foreign property) threaten them. If they lose power, they can lose not only assets, but also life.
The fact that Washington, Moscow or the Franco-Germans will send an army, they do not believe - who should conquer the ashes in which they turned Ukraine? And their own Nazis are afraid of fire. Militants are the only real power in Ukraine. Neither the police, nor the army, much less the people (even its maydanny part) will not protect the ruling camarilla hated by everyone from armed to teeth, well-organized, having a branched structure and infiltrated into the power structures of the Nazi insurgents (the Azov regiment and its "civil corpus "- the most prominent, but not the only example).
Since the leaders of the Ukrainian regime do not play chess, but in politics, they are not formally obliged to make moves under the conditions of zugzwang. So they try to do nothing. Mantras about the “freezing” of the conflict in the Donbas, heard from Kiev from the beginning of 2014, changed the sign from minus to plus. If earlier Russia was accused of wanting to freeze the conflict in order to have a lever of pressure on Ukraine, now Kiev itself declares that it would be better to leave everything as it is until better times.
All requirements of Western partners to start at least imitation of the implementation of the peace process are ignored. All repeatedly postponed the start of the process of constitutional amendments have passed. In the position of Kiev, nothing changes. And it will not change. The level of intellectual security of the regime does not allow not only to look for a third way out, among the two bad ones, but even to foresee the results of one’s own inaction.
The fact is that in politics the absence of a move is also a move, so passivity does not improve Kiev’s position, but worsens it, since the Ukrainian authorities voluntarily abandoned the initiative and switched to a response to external stimuli. Strategically, this position is absolutely losing even for a player with absolute resource superiority. For Ukraine, the resource base of which is so vanishingly small that it is already beginning to strive for negative values, this is a sure and quick collapse.
Consider only aspects related to the Minsk agreements. What did Kiev have at first?
The coordinated position of the world community, which stated that the DPR / LPR is a part of Ukraine, which is obliged, albeit under special conditions, to return to its constitutional space. There was only one difficulty - by the time the Minsk agreements were reached, Kiev had already managed to make war in the Donbass, thousands of people had already died, cities and enterprises had been destroyed, thousands had taken weapon. Between Kiev and the DPR / LPR, in addition to the initially existing ideological abyss, blood, hatred and mistrust were laid. In order to begin to overcome the consequences of civil conflict, the Minsk Agreement provided for:
-ceasefire;
- withdrawal of heavy weapons;
- gradual dilution of troops of the parties;
- exchange of prisoners in the "all for all" format;
-amnesty to all combatants;
-the lifting of the economic blockade of the Donbass;
-the renewal of its budget financing;
-Restoration of destroyed at the expense of Kiev.
- withdrawal of heavy weapons;
- gradual dilution of troops of the parties;
- exchange of prisoners in the "all for all" format;
-amnesty to all combatants;
-the lifting of the economic blockade of the Donbass;
-the renewal of its budget financing;
-Restoration of destroyed at the expense of Kiev.
Only then should the constitutional process begin and only at the last stage, after the provision of security guarantees absolutely complete with the Donbass, could Kiev have the opportunity to participate in the political processes taking place in the region, and also formally, by incorporating the power structures of the DPR / LNR into the general Ukrainian, get control above the border. It was not a victory of one of the parties, but a compromise, which allowed to formally preserve the territorial integrity of Ukraine, as of the beginning of April 2014 (without Crimea).
The Ukrainian authorities were given the opportunity to get out of a state of civil conflict without territorial losses, by reducing the weight of the central government, transferring basic powers to the regions and establishing joint control over administrative mechanisms, controls and foreign policy by pro-Western and pro-Russian forces.
At the same time, all those who illegally took up arms (on both sides) could not fear criminal prosecution. The exceptions were crimes against humanity and war crimes. Since they are subject to international criminal prosecution without a statute of limitations, any guarantees for them cannot be absolute, since the prosecution may be initiated in another country and after a long period of time (for example, Spain began criminal prosecution of Pinochet). But at that time, the number of people who could be subjected to persecution under these articles was less than half a thousand people on both sides, and less than a hundred of the most prominent activists, as well as senior Kiev officials and officers of the armed forces who gave up illegal orders.
This is not to say that this plan was easy to implement. But, according to such a scheme, civil wars stopped, stretching for decades and taking hundreds of thousands of lives. Obviously, the Ukrainian crisis could be withdrawn from the acute phase according to the same scheme. And then, in the framework of political struggle, the future of Ukraine could be multivariate, the main thing is that the solution would be reached without blood, through long negotiations and within the framework of the constitutional process.
It would hardly have been possible to preserve its unity, but the variant of the Czechoslovak divorce is clearly preferable than the Yugoslav one.
As we know, Kiev formally accepted the Minsk plan, but in reality it sabotaged. Moreover, the Ukrainian leadership and the media, inadequately assessing what is happening and counting on unconditional support from the West, as well as the imminent collapse of Russia, launched a campaign to discredit the Minsk agreements. They were presented to Ukrainian society as a military trick that allowed them to gain time and better prepare for war. Virtually any supporter of the execution of Minsk was declared a traitor. The year of such propaganda closed for Kiev the possibility of changing the position. The authorities are no longer able to explain to the people why he (the people) suffered so much, if what was a betrayal yesterday is today a vital necessity.
But Kiev has driven itself into another trap. Even if we ignore the fact that low-intensity military actions, including shelling of residential areas of the cities of Donbass, continued all this time, which means that the gap in Donbass’s hatred for Ukraine did not decrease, but grew, we must take into account that Donbass simply could not live in complete economic conditions. blockade. Already by the autumn of 2014, a humanitarian catastrophe broke out in the territories of the DPR / LNR, which only massive humanitarian supplies from Russia allowed to reduce the urgency. However, in order to finally overcome its effects, the DNR / LC needed to restore its own economy.
Similarly, it was necessary to recreate the administrative vertical, reanimate public utilities, restore the work of schools and universities. It was necessary to register births and deaths, issue diplomas, certificates and passports.
Provided that Ukraine would start the implementation of Minsk, all these processes would occur in its legal field and with its participation. But Kiev categorically refused such an approach, hoping that the population in the DPR / LNR would not withstand the difficulties and fall in love with Ukraine that killed it.
As a result, the republics were forced to actually integrate into the ruble zone. Their foreign trade (even with Ukraine) is also carried out through Russia (albeit with the use of the “Ossetian window”). They could not get the issuance of Russian passports, but began to issue their own documents, in fact, recognized by Russia. Over the past year, Donbass imperceptibly technically departed from Ukraine further than as a result of military actions. And each new step increased the number of difficulties in its reintegration into the Ukrainian legal space.
War hardened people, but practice stories testifies that such bitterness is relatively quickly surmountable after the onset of peace. But Kiev’s refusal to implement the peace plan led to the creation of a new system divorced from Ukraine. In fact, the same thing happened with the republics of the USSR, after the collapse of the Union. In the first couple of years, the political and economic systems of the new states did not differ much. At first, people didn’t notice any boundaries and citizenship could be changed simply by moving from city to city. It seemed that a simple political decision was enough, and the next day a single country would reappear.
But gradually, each state has developed its own legal system and, one fine day, it became clear that even with a strong desire to implement even economic integration initiatives, it is not so simple. Too many conflicting private and corporate interests appeared.
Here and Donbass imperceptibly for Kiev from the self-proclaimed state became unrecognized. The difference in one word. But, while the republics only fought off the volunteer battalions, continuing to preserve the Ukrainian administrative vertical, Ukrainian documents, the Ukrainian financial system, etc., they were actually part of Ukraine, which did not recognize the legitimacy of the Kiev authorities. That is, the change of power in Kiev, or the ability to achieve recognition of its legitimacy (albeit at the expense of serious concessions) easily turned the independent republics into autonomous regions of federal Ukraine.
As soon as the republics created new political, military, financial and economic structures, divorced from Ukraine and focused on Russia, a huge number of private and corporate interests arose, for which the restoration of Ukrainian power, even on the basis of confederative relations, became unacceptable. The funny thing is that these interests are present not only in the DPR / LPR and not only in Russia, but also in Ukraine and even in the EU and the USA, whose structures occupy the place left by the Donbas in the Ukrainian market.
For one and a half years of sabotage of the Minsk process, Ukraine itself made it difficult for the republics to return to the same legal space as Kiev, and at the moment has made this almost impossible.
The best substantiation of the last thesis is another sharp change in the position of the West during the last unsuccessful meeting of the foreign ministers of the "Norman Four". It was openly stated to Kiev that he had exhausted the credit no longer with trust, but with the patience of his European partners, that he had one last chance to start to fulfill Minsk urgently and that if he did not use this chance the West, at whose disposal “only ten small minutes "" strips off responsibility for the life of Your Highness. "
Such a tough public demonstration of the usually streamlined West (which, with Yanukovych two hours before his overthrow and prepared murder, continued to be flattering) was caused not only by irritation by arrogant Ukrainian sabotage, but to a greater extent by the understanding that the process of Ukraine’s disintegration and rejection of the DPR and LPR from it went so far that the “ten little minutes” in fact has already expired and the “life of Your Highness” is not worth a penny.
The Kiev regime managed to commit both a crime (by starting a civil war) and a mistake that is worse than the crime itself. He self-isolated and proceeded to self-destruction.
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