Taras Kuzio, University of Alberta
Last month’s release of
Ukrainian air force pilot Nadia Savchenko after 709 days in
illegal Russian captivity came on the same day a group of us were returning
from the front line of Ukraine’s Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) to Kiev. During
the longer than usual train journey we compared notes about why Russian
President Vladimir Putin had taken this step, what he hoped to achieve and how
Savchenko would impact upon Ukrainian domestic politics.
Putin was not showing mercy.
The day after Savchenko was released, a Russian court sentenced Ukrainians Mykola
Karpyuk and Stanislav Klykhto to 22 and a half and 20 years respectively on
bogus charges of fighting alongside Chechen separatists. And this by a country
that has been arming separatists in eastern Ukraine for three years. Another 28
Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar political prisoners are incarcerated in Russian
jails.
Instead, Putin had two goals
in releasing Savchenko.
The first was to appease European
opinion ahead of discussions about extending EU sanctions against Russia. US
and EU officials said sanctions would not be lifted until Russia fulfils the
February 2015 Minsk Accords. These increasingly look to be a non-starter. Putin
warned that warfare would continue in the Donbas until Ukraine agreed to
Moscow’s long-standing demands for special status for the two separatist
regions and local elections.
Ukrainian leaders, backed by
the US, have repeatedly ruled these out until Russia fulfils the Minsk Accords,
withdraws its troops from Ukraine and returns control over the border to Kiev.
If Putin took these steps he could no longer provide a security guarantee to
the separatists, who would be defeated by Ukrainian forces. If Poroshenko
succumbed to Putin’s demands, Savchenko would back the Ukrainian military we
heard in the ATO talking of taking radical steps to stop them.
Poroshenko feels threatened by
nationalist volunteers and by the military and veterans who are a new force in
Ukrainian politics and make up 15 per cent of voters. In the ATO, the National
Guard roadblocks check half-heartedly if volunteers are carrying weapons and
after volunteers return home they are visited by the police. But weapons get
through to Kiev and there are no checks on the intercity train that we took
from Ukrainian-controlled Donbas.
Putin’s second, more
important, reason is to add to existing political instability in Ukraine. A new
poll showed a majority of Ukrainians believe that Poroshenko should resign after the Panama
documents scandal revealed he had an offshore company.
The Fatherland party led by
Yulia Tymoshenko is now re-energised by the addition of Savchenko and, together
with Self-Reliance, led by Lviv Mayor Andriy Sadovyy, refused to join the
governing parliamentary coalition. Both parties are opposed to the granting of
separate status and the holding of local elections.
Poroshenko’s ratings are
declining, which is dangerous for a commander-in-chief in wartime. Tymoshenko
is Ukraine’s most popular politician and according to a new poll would be elected
president if there were to be pre-term elections.
Savchenko’s first press
conference after her release was highly critical of Putin. She is a member of
the parliamentary committee on national security and defence, so she will have
the ears of the military and security forces. Not a single officer or soldier
we talked to in the ATO supported Poroshenko, instead hurling insults and
threats to unseat him. Ukraine’s soldiers are not fighting for their country’s
leaders, who they despise as much as they do Putin.
The soldier’s disgruntlement
is in three areas.
First, is a desire to
‘complete the revolution,’ an idea backed by Savchenko, who was a Euromaidan
protester. Ukrainian citizens and soldiers have no confidence in Poroshenko’s
commitment to three core principles of the Euromaidan: justice, fighting
high-level corruption and imposing the rule of law. There have been no criminal
prosecutions of former President Viktor Yanukovich and his cabal and there is
continued tolerance by the Ukrainian leadership of widespread corruption.
Nearly two thirds of
Ukrainians negatively view the appointment of Yuriy
Lutsenko, the fourth lacklustre prosecutor-general since the Euromaidan. Of the
15 former Soviet republics, only three in central Asia are ranked as more
corrupt than Ukraine by Transparency
International.
Second, soldiers on the front
line are supplied by volunteers, such as Natali Prilutskaya who we travelled
with, making twice-monthly deliveries of uniforms (ex-British army), boots,
sleeping bags, medicines, food, night and heat vision to the ATO. Ukrainian
citizens contrast the poor level of provisions and corruption in the high ranks
of the military with the estimated $11.7bn that is sent offshore from Ukraine each year.
Third, the current state of
‘no war and no peace’ is debilitating for soldiers. Ukrainian soldiers and
middle ranking officers in the ATO have no trust in senior generals in Kiev,
who never visit them and are blamed for massacres of Ukrainian troops at
Ilovaysk and Debaltseve in August 2014 and February 2015 respectively. Soldiers
lack clear-cut guidelines from the president at a time when the Minsk process
has failed.
Poroshenko’s playing for time
by not changing the rules of the game is fast running out of steam as he is
under pressure from Russia and1 the west to cut a bad deal and from bSavchenko,
civil society and soldiers and veterans who seek to finish the revolution and
halt any sell-out.
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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