February 23, 2014 3:38 pm
For Ukraine’s revolutionaries: Beware a Russian backlash
“These are the times that try men’s souls,” wrote Thomas Paine as Americans embarked on the War of Independence against their British masters. “Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”
As Ukrainian protesters mourn their dead, celebrating the collapse of Viktor Yanukovich’s kleptocracy but uncertain of Russia’s next step, they are experiencing the intense emotions expressed so eloquently by Paine in 1776.
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- Lviv lays its dead to rest
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IN WORLD
Many Ukrainians yearn for their revolution to be a re-enactment of 1989 in Poland or 1991 in the Baltic states: a decisive turn in the direction of freedom, civic dignity, national independence and economic prosperity underpinned by close ties with the European Union.
But Ukraine’s internal divisions and strategic importance to Russia mean that there is a real danger that the revolution will produce no such clear-cut outcome. Yugoslavia, after the end of communism, descended into civil war. The 2011 Arab Spring, especially in Egypt and Libya, has not delivered on its promises of democracy, political stability and economic growth.
Here are five points to consider as Ukraine maps its future.
1. Now that Ukrainians have had the chance to see the offensive opulence of Mr Yanukovich’s estate outside Kiev, with its ostriches and fake Greek statues, it is impossible to see a political future for the deposed president. Even in his Russian-speaking stronghold of eastern Ukraine, where he appeared this weekend to be plotting resistance, he must now be seen as utterly corrupt. The fury of President Vladimir Putin of Russia and his “political technologists” at Mr Yanukovich can only be guessed at.
2. The discrediting of Mr Yanukovich will not remove the need, however, for a different politician or group of politicians to represent the interests, at national level, of eastern and southern Ukraine. These ethnic Russian or Russophone regions will not permit a reconstructed state dominated by the outlook of western Ukrainian nationalists.
3. If presidential elections are held in the next three months, they will probably result in a victory for either Yulia Tymoshenko, the western-leaning former prime minister, or Vitali Klitschko, the former boxing champion. Ms Tymoshenko has a poor record in power, and it was an ominous sign that the crowds in Kiev’s Independence Square whom she addressed on Saturday did not receive her with unqualified enthusiasm. Mr Klitschko is wholly inexperienced in government and is regarded with suspicion by the radical nationalists who have played an increasingly important role in the revolution.
4. Mr Putin cannot and will not give up on Ukraine because, without it, his trumpeted Eurasian Union is a hollow shell. More than that, a Russia without Ukraine in its orbit resembles an Asian power more than a European power. A repeat of the 2008 invasion of Georgia, which resulted in that state’s de facto dismemberment and Russian annexation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, is unlikely – if only because, as in Poland in 1981, the Russians would prefer the dirty work of suppressing a national revolution to be carried out by pro-Moscow forces in Ukraine itself.
5. Make no mistake, though: a Russian backlash is inevitable. A successful Ukrainian switch to democracy, independence and corruption-free public life will stir demands among Russians, as in the popular protests of December 2011, for freedom at home as well. That, from Mr Putin’s point of view, is the most unacceptable outcome of all.
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