Last Sunday Ukraine held elections to local
councils and city mayors that the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in
Europe described as "competitive and well organized overall" adding
that "the campaign generally showed respect for the democratic process".
The holding of a third democratic election in
Ukraine since last year's Euromaidan revolution in a region where free
elections are uncommon is one of many signs of how far Ukraine is moving away
from Russia and to what extent the actions of Vladimir Putin, Russia's
president, have accelerated this process.
Russia's increasingly 'hard authoritarian' state
and its support for re-Sovietisation and re-Stalinization can be contrasted
with democratisation, removal of Soviet monuments and Communist symbols and a
long-term de-Stalinization taking place in Ukraine. A majority of Ukrainians -
unlike Putin and many Russians - do not lament the disintegration of the USSR.
Russia's aggression in Ukraine has rebounded in
five ways.
Politically: following the disintegration of the
pro-Russian Party of Regions and the Communist Party, these parties no longer
command major support in the Ukrainian parliament. Since 2014, Ukraine has for
the first time had a constitutional majority of deputies who support European
integration.
Patriotism and national identity: Russian
aggression has inadvertently forged a new civic Ukrainian national identity and
integrated Ukrainian and Russian speakers. Russia's aggression in eastern and
southern Ukraine was defeated not by the Ukrainian state, which barely existed
in the first half of 2014, but by a people's war of Russian and Ukrainian
speaking Ukrainians, Jews and others. As an extension of the Euromaidan popular
protests, the people's war included soldiers, volunteers and civil society
support groups staffed largely by women.
Putin's authoritarian Russia finds it impossible
to comprehend how individuals can act autonomously without the authorities
issuing demands; indeed, when Russian citizens show initiative and backbone, as
vividly seen in the 2014 film Leviathan, they are crushed by the all-powerful
state.
A second unexplainable factor for Putin's Russia
is how the majority of Ukraine's Russian speakers showed themselves to be
Ukrainian patriots and opposed to the Russian World and Eurasian Union. Russia,
which portrays all Ukrainians opposed to joining these two bodies as
'fascists', finds it incomprehensible that separatists and Russian forces are
fighting against Russian-speaking Ukrainians and Jews. In Ukraine, the country
with the freest Russian-speaking media in the world, it is not surprising
Ukrainians do not believe language is a major concern, while 82 per cent of
Ukraine's Russian speakers say they do not feel threatened (the reason given by
Putin for his annexation of Crimea).
Religion and the Church: the Russian Orthodox
Church (ROC) is in irreversible decline in Ukraine, a country that, with
although only a third of Russia's population, had until 2014 the same number of
ROC parishes. Since 2014, the popularity of the ROC has collapsed while that of
its main rival, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church-Kyiv Patriarch is growing.
Patriarch Filaret enjoys the highest popularity of any Church leader in all
regions of Ukraine; Russian Orthodox leaders have the highest distrust of Church
leaders in Ukraine.
These trends will increase pressure for
recognition of autocephaly (ie independence) for Ukraine's Orthodox Church by
the Orthodox Patriarch in Constantinople (Istanbul), a step that would
dramatically reduce the worldwide influence of the ROC.
Attitudes to history: de-Stalinisation has been
taking place in Ukraine for nearly three decades and a majority of Ukrainians
view Stalin very negatively, unlike in Russia. Throughout Ukraine, including in
its east and south, a majority of the population view the 1933 artificial
famine (holodomor) that killed over 4m people as a 'genocide'.
A major impact of Russian aggression has been on
public attitudes to World War II. Ukraine and Europe celebrate its end on May
8, while Russia celebrates the 'Great Patriotic War' and Stalin as a great
wartime leader on May 9. A majority of Ukrainians for the first time feel
positively inclined towards the nationalist partisans who fought against the
Nazis and Soviets for a decade in the 1940s. The Organisation of Ukrainian
Nationalists and Ukrainian Insurgent Army, vilified by both the Soviet Union
and Russia, organised the largest partisan army in World War II using the same
self -organisation and creativity as found during the Euromaidan and the
people's war fighting Russia today.
Foreign policy: a majority of Ukrainians for the
first time support Nato membership. Forty-nine per cent of Ukrainians support
closer ties to Europe and only 8 per cent to Russia, while 64, 50 and 45 per
cent of Ukrainians respectively hold positive views of the EU, the US and Nato.
Public support for integration into the Russian-led Customs Union has collapsed
from 40 per cent in 2011 to 17 per cent today.
A monument to Putin is unlikely to go up any
time soon in Kiev. Although Ukrainians are grateful for these unintended
consequences, they will also be saying its now time for Putin to leave them
alone.
Taras Kuzio is a research associate at the
Centre for Political and Regional Studies, Canadian Institute for Ukrainian
Studies, University of Alberta and non-resident fellow at the Center for
Transatlantic Relations, School of Advanced International Relations, Johns
Hopkins University.
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