Donbass and Ukraine: It’s no longer possible to hug
The fate of Donbass, which has tried on the clothes of New Russia in splendid isolation, is foggy and unclear. If only because the industrial Troy of the Russian world has several ways to organize its statist and territorial dreams and preferences. And although Russia confuses everything that happens in the Donbass, just as the Moon confuses the ebb and flow of the tides on Earth, it is not its influence in the war going on between the Dnieper and Donets rivers that will decide where the Donetsk and Lugansk republics should be. Ukraine will determine the place of Donbass in the rapidly changing world after the war (and it is still unknown when it will end). Moreover, not by willpower, not by the force of military conquests, but by the stupid and terrible anger that its current leaders have generated in two different parts of their formally still united (from the standpoint of international law) country.
From this point of view, Donbass is no longer Ukraine. At least part of him refuses not only to consider himself as such, but also to feel himself. Amazingly, the residents of Slavyansk and Krasny Liman, most of whom are ethnic Ukrainians, eagerly followed the Muscovite and “White Guard,” the Soviet monarchist Strelkov. This is what charisma and cold consistency of a military expert means! The people of Northern Donbass, and after that of everything else, watched with delight not only how the riflemen fought, but, above all, their exceptional loyalty to word and deed. Fanatical sincerity and consistency, inherent in any charisma, inspire trust - because they are so lacking in everyday life.
But the leaders of the state of Ukraine, which they “squeezed out” for themselves according to the scheme of a classic raider takeover, have no trace of any of this. The easiest way to understand this is if you put the corresponding surname next to the word “charismatic” - for example, Poroshenko, Yatsenyuk, Klitschko or Turchynov. Tymoshenko would be a good fit, but she has long been pushed to the periphery of the political consciousness of the “little Ukrainian.”
The Ukrainian helmsmen compensate for their lack of leadership qualities with diligence. Having started a war with their own people, they forgot the golden Russian proverb about a fool who was forced to pray.
Having convinced himself that the task of bending Donbass is not so difficult, the first three “kerivniks” of Biden’s call made so much trouble that Poroshenko could only immediately stop hostilities, or quickly end it, which required determination and the ability to take the most deadly sins to heart . But even in their depravity, the leadership of modern Ukraine followed the old Ukrainian path - take a bite and quit. That is, roughly speaking, instead of killing Donbass with one shot in the heart, Ukrainian security forces execute the victim slowly, sadistically, cutting off member by member from the unfortunate person. They also do not justify themselves skillfully, they say, but what can we do, the authorities ordered!
Donbass, looking at all this, has long been imbued with an anti-Ukrainian and anti-Kiev spirit, which had not been noticed in it before to any noticeable extent. Nowadays, after everything that has been experienced, even if the region is pacified by force, he will no longer feel that notorious unity for which the liberal Kiev crowd stands up, and the weak shoots of which Kyiv ran over with a tank caterpillar. We cannot predict whether he will feel like Novorossiya, but we can assume that at least to some extent, but he simply will not feel like Ukraine after such unheard-of violence.
Leo Tolstoy once compared adultery to wringing hands - it is possible to forgive, although with difficulty, but it is no longer possible to hug. Donbass and Ukraine seem to have the same situation.
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