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Ukraine: Putin Offers A Truce
The President of the Russian Federation keeps pressing for a peaceful solution in Ukraine:
We think the most important thing now is to launch direct dialogue, genuine, full-fledged dialogue between the Kiev authorities and representatives of southeast Ukraine. This dialogue could give people from southeast Ukraine the chance to see that their lawful rights in Ukraine really will be guaranteed.
In this context, we appeal too, to representatives of southeast Ukraine and supporters of federalisation to hold off the referendum scheduled for May 11, in order to give this dialogue the conditions it needs to have a chance.
The announcement was made in a press conference with OSCE President Didier Burghalter.
I understand this to be an offer for truce which will be followed as long as the coup government is willing to actively negotiate with the federalists. It will be canceled should the coup government be unwilling to talk and continue with its "anti terrorist" campaign.
The offer is likely part of a more complex deal negotiated through the OSCE. The coup government has made zero progress. The federalist movement is growing after the Odessa massacre in which at least 36 of them were killed by a right wing mob. The coup government has little to gain but much to lose, half of the country, should it reject a deal.
But what are the external interest behind the coup puppets? The U.S. may like to continue and even escalate the confrontation while core European country have interests to calm everything and everyone down. Who of those will win?
The strategist – imperialist pov and analysis. Encircle Russia, etc. I don’t dispute it.
However, all this came about for a large part because Ukraine as a ‘buffer’ state was going to collapse. After independence, it was run by a clique of quarreling oligarchs and kleptocrats, with ersatz political parties (masks for clientelism exploiting chauvinism.)
They managed to squander the USSR inheritance (infrastructure, industry, etc.) and pretty much did nothing but steal, borrow, and play different interests against each other. Both Russia and the W supported Yanuko, as a Pres. who was at least fairly elected and as belonging to the Party of Regions, a majority one (which name already spells things out!)… Yanuko was but the last, the one who got hit with the crunch.
The offers for help he received were mingy and ridiculous, be it from the IMF (who negotiated for *years* with Ukr. and lost quite a lot of cash, it simply fell into a black hole), the EU, US, Russia. (This may have been deliberate, though not I think by the IMF which is very rule-bound.) Nobody wanted any part of this mess.
Enter the coup-ists, stage right. Ka-boom. They took an opportunity, saw their moment. Note 1.
Now what? Problem: while strategists may want to weaken Russia or oppose US-EU aggression, nobody wants to act in, or be responsible for, the Ukraine. One might even say that part of the coup-Gov does not want the East! Why? It is too expensive.
If Putin does not want the Crimeans to starve (which he cannot let happen) it is going to cost him a good chunk of Russian GDP. Even as things stand (the election results were fiddled imho) say half the Crimeans are waking up with a gigantic headache, and in any case they are in for a sharp recession and some tough times. Putin can’t afford more, has stated often that he is non-aggro on further expansion. Nobody else is interested.
Putin wants a Federation as a sort of status quo ante, and as a ‘viable’ solution.
That is, with Oblasts or ‘new’ Regions (with higher self-gov) having different ties to the outside. He conserves influence in the East, etc. (Note the Kiev junta has been nominating regional governors! – like Morsi did.) Ukraine remains a buffer-state and is in a more healthy position.
However, this proposition leaves intact the question of the form of the Central or Federal Gvmt. It implies (but has not been said in public) giving up the present political structure and starting afresh – after, and provided that, local hot heads can be contained. Points of rupture: negotiations that will be confusing, tough, etc. and the crazies on the ground who are on both sides of the aisle with paramilitary, ex-military, etc. and supporters. (Not to mention possible oligarch forces.)
To sum up, there is a small chance that a ‘Federalist’ prop. may gain ground. That implies the US is ready to give up a ‘make it or break it’ stance. (The EU would be relieved or follow.)
N.B. the other classical solution, Partition, is not mentioned at all, the very word is taboo.
1. “It is clear that NATO ‘strategists’ who planned the putsch were only thinking about weakening Russia militarily and gave no thought to the political, economic and social costs of sustaining a puppet regime in Kiev when Ukraine had been so dependent on Russian markets, loans and subsidized energy. Moreover, they appear to have overlooked the political, industrial and agricultural dynamics of the predictably hostile Eastern regions of the country. Alternately, Washington strategists may have based their calculations on instigating a Yugoslavia-style break-up…” James Petras
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article38442.htm
Posted by: Noirette | May 8 2014 13:11 utc | 137
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