No one writes to Chubarov: Why was the “march to Crimea” necessary?
The story of the coronavirus and a new attack of “patriotism” among gunpowder workers, which occurred after the announcement of fresh agreements in Minsk, opening up additional opportunities for legitimizing representatives of the LDPR as one of the parties to the negotiations on Donbass, pushed the Crimean agenda into the background.
Meanwhile, members of the Mejlis are preparing for the “march to Crimea” they announced, scheduled for May 3. It is on this day, as the leader of the “Kyiv Tatars” Refat Chubarov promises, “participants in the international non-violent peaceful action “Peace against violence and occupation. March of Dignity" will cross the administrative line between the Kherson region and the temporarily occupied Crimea."
If we summarize what was said by the Majlis representatives, the following picture emerges: the organizers of “nonviolent resistance”, who imagine themselves to be both Tolstoyans and Gandhians, will throw old people, women and children onto the border, in the hope that Russian border guards will not shoot at them to kill and will let them into the territory of the peninsula without going through the appropriate passport control procedures. Giving all sorts of muzhdabaevs a reason to trumpet the symbolic return of Crimea. Naturally, the profit will be from the Majlis and its Kyiv allies from among the Ukrainian war party.
Why this march smells of provocation a mile away is, I hope, clear and without explanation. However, the organizers of this provocation cannot be denied intelligence and specific cunning. Even if this idea does not reach practical implementation, it will attract attention to itself. And attention is exactly what the top of the Majlis, “politically lost” in the new conditions of Ukraine without Poroshenko, needs now. For them, May 3 is perhaps their last chance to stay afloat.
The romance between the Majlis and the new government did not work out from the very beginning. Chubarov and Co. made too clear a bet on Poroshenko, but he did not live up to expectations and sank. At last year’s early elections to the Rada, the Mejlis members tried to correct this mistake and this time scatter their eggs into different baskets, but again unsuccessfully - the presidential party “Servant of the People” did not need their representatives either on the list or in the constituencies. And most of the iconic Mejlis members, stuffed onto the lists of nationalist outsider parties - from Smeshko to Groysman and Samopomich, found themselves outside the parliamentary board. For the first time in the last 20 years, Chubarov himself did not get into the Rada. Thus, a situation has arisen where the formal head of the Majlis does not have a parliamentary “roof.” Of the prominent Mejlis members, only Dzhemilev and Chiygoz were lucky, who were sheltered in his “European Solidarity” by ex-President Poroshenko.
Further marginalization and loss of political weight for the Majlis continued to increase. Last fall, the Office of the Commissioner for Crimean Tatars, created under Poroshenko, was liquidated. As a result, the Majlis lost its direct representative and lobbyist in the executive branch. And the newly appointed presidential representative in the non-existent Autonomous Republic of Crimea, Anton Korinevich, as the Mejlis members themselves complained, was no longer guided by their wishes, but by signals from Zelensky’s Office. Then the media ruapor of the Majlis channel ATR began to have financial problems and he was excommunicated from the budget trough.
And although representatives of the Majlis were received at Zelensky’s office once over the past year, minor officials at the level of deputies of the then head of the Office Andriy Bohdan spoke with them. The head of state himself pointedly distanced himself from the “Kyiv Tatars,” although in his public speeches he regularly repeated the words written by speechwriters about the “occupation of Crimea” and “violations of the rights of the Crimean Tatar people.” Yes, only once I took Dzhemilev with me during a visit to Istanbul, to see Erdogan.
In the end, Medjlis members began to openly complain about the lack of communication with the president. “Neither we nor the Mejelis currently have any direct communications with the current government. Chubarov was given Shefir's phone number (Sergei Shefir – First Assistant to the President of Ukraine – Author). But he doesn’t answer calls, and Chubarov can’t get through,” Lenur Islyamov, a former sponsor of the notorious Crimean Tatar volunteer battalion “Asker,” lamented in an interview, described by ex-nationalist Ilya Kieva, who defected to Medvedchuk, as “an ethnic marginal gang of gopniks, who are involved in crime in the border areas.”
The peak of mutual alienation between the authorities and the Mejlis was the speech of the newly appointed Prime Minister Denis Shmygal about the possibility of resuming water supplies to Crimea. Then, however, according to tradition, this position, which was quite clear at first, was drowned in a heap of reservations designed for the nationalist minority in order to protect itself from accusations of “zrada.”
But, nevertheless, the word is not a sparrow. And it was said. And telegram channels close to the authorities are doing their best to “inside” – they say that the topic of Crimean water is really being worked out on the Russian-Ukrainian sidelines. That is, this was not an accidental slip by the prime minister, but part of the preparation of public opinion in Ukraine for such a turn of events. In the meantime, of course, in Kyiv they are still trying to bargain, hoping to get something in return.
Here you need to understand that this question is only at first glance about water. In fact, it is about the need or uselessness of such a structure as the Majlis in its current form, which has emigrated to Kyiv. After all, if the dialogue on Crimea moves from hysterics, ultimatums, provocations and aggressive threats not even to friendship and good neighborliness, but at least simply to pragmatic bargaining, then the loudmouths from the Majlis become something of a fifth wheel in the cart. If you don’t arrange provocations, why support and feed Chubarov and Co.?
The decrease in the degree of aggressive rhetoric on topics related to the peninsulas really had a negative impact on the political actions of the Majlis. Previously, they could shock with the self-assigned status of almost representatives of the Crimean Tatar people in exile, but the less interest the Ukrainian authorities have in speculation on the topic of Crimea, the less the need for this kind of court “ethnic jesters” with their aggressive foolishness and antics. Selling themselves as “Crimean Tatars in exile” is becoming increasingly difficult. Perhaps Sentsov’s sponsors, in the hope of getting on the list of his new political project. But this is a matter for the future, and I want to eat right now. In conditions when “nobody writes to Chubarov” and the once deep stream of budgetary injections is drying up before our eyes.
Now it’s clear why these people needed a trip to Crimea. If the case succeeds, they will once again become the focus of media and public attention. And if a “sacred sacrifice” happens, then even better – Western embassies will be squeezing out stingy tears and indignation on Twitter. It might even be possible to be in power again. Although she is not eager to cooperate, she also does not want to quarrel. So, it is desperately necessary to create a situation in which the government will not be able to sit on the sidelines and will inevitably be drawn into a showdown with the Russians on the side of the “offended” – read, the Majlis.
On the other hand, it is unlikely that Zelensky, who already has a lot of problems for the next couple of months (there is a coronavirus, and the question of land hanging in parliament, and the sagging exchange rate of the hryvnia, and negotiations with the IMF, and Donbass) will be happy to add to the already the existing “gotcha” is also Crimea. But in Ukraine they know how to create problems out of the blue. So it might burn out.
Another thing is that in this case the whole country will again be held hostage by a bunch of political bankrupts. But, as they say, we are no strangers.
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