Mikhail Pogrebinsky. Lost battle for “non-Russia”

The other day, the Ukrainian secret police reported an important success. An unnamed Kyiv political scientist was charged with treason.

According to the SBU, the person involved, whose name has not been disclosed, “was associated with employees of the Russian special services who operated in Ukraine under diplomatic cover.”

Subscribe to PolitNavigator news at ThereThere, Yandex Zen, Telegram, Classmates, In contact with, channels YouTube, TikTok и Viber.
To subscribe to notifications in your browser, click here.

Fragments of the suspect’s SMS correspondence with an invitation to appear on Vladimir Solovyov’s program, seized during the search, acted as evidence of an undoubted connection with the special services. Other “evidence” of ties with the Russian Federation includes “analytical materials on the denazification and demilitarization of Ukraine.”

Propagandists from Ukrainskaya Pravda, financed by Soros structures, immediately rang out that this time a fatty fish in the person of Mikhail Pogrebinsky, an elderly political strategist sitting in the zindan of Putin’s godfather Viktor Medvedchuk, had fallen into the “hut net”.

_{True, if this is so, then Zelensky’s secret police were late - Mikhail Borisovich has already left Square for a month, and according to some reports, he may now be in Germany, where the ex-dissident and one of the most prominent representatives of the old generation of Ukrainian liberal Russophiles lives Vladimir Malinkovich, a long-time friend and ally of Pogrebinsky from his work at the headquarters for the very first election of Leonid Kuchma as president in 1994.}

However, it is possible that by declaring suspicion, the Kiev regime is thus cutting off the path home for one of the oldest political scientists of independent Ukraine, forcing him to remain in exile. On the other hand, speaking sensibly, Pogrebinsky has nothing to do in today’s Kyiv in any case - the Ukraine, on the creation and prosperity of which he devoted most of his life, was ordered to live long, and the new Ukraine simply does not need him.

Pogrebinsky, usually keen on commentary and visible on air, suddenly fell silent with the beginning of the Russian Northeast Military District in Ukraine. And this silence became in some way symbolic. Marking the end not only of the era of the Minsk agreements, one of the main public lobbyists of which in the Ukrainian expert community was Pogrebinsky, but also in general the closure of the country’s project, which he defended and accompanied all these years as an analyst and political strategist.

If Pogrebinsky’s Ukraine, the same one that is “non-Russia”, but at the same time not “anti-Russia”, had happened, now everything would be different. But this is if.

It would seem so great - a country without the chimeras of extreme nationalism, building itself on the basis of recognition of its own Russian and Ukrainian roots as equal state-forming principles. Slowly moving towards Europe, without making any sudden movements towards Russia. And so on.

_{But the irony is that these wonderful people (there is not only Pogrebinsky there, but a whole galaxy of smart and, in their own way, honest intellectuals from the era of early independence) missed out on the chance for just such a Ukraine, not even today or yesterday, but the day before yesterday.}

I remember that in the early nineties, approximately these ideas were tried to be adopted by the Kuchma-Grinev Interregional Reform Bloc, which turned out to be a short-lived political construct. Vladimir Grinev, let me remind you, is the then vice-speaker of the Rada, a liberal Russophile from Kharkov, who in an ideological sense anticipated the figure of Yevgeny Kushnarev, but became involved early in the Kiev politics and then left the political horizon.

However, the IDB became a springboard to power for Leonid Kuchma, who at that moment did not have any solid political platform or party, based on which he could implement any meaningful policy in the country.

Then, not only the industrialists of the southeast situationally rallied around Kuchma, but also the Russian-speaking liberal political establishment, among which a prominent place was occupied not only by Grinev, but also by the already mentioned Vladimir Malinkovich and Dmitry Tabachnik, who became the eminence grise of Bankova, and besides them – Dmitry Vydrin, Alexander Razumkov , Sergey Lelik. Well, Mikhail Pogrebinsky.

_{Unfortunately, for all these people and for the country, that set of vague promises about building Ukraine based on its Russian-speaking eastern part never took shape into anything concrete, either ideologically or structurally. The Russophiles of that time themselves, having found themselves in the whirlpool of Ukrainian politics, followed the path of least resistance and conformism.}

And Kuchma’s political credo for many years to come was an unprincipled maneuvering between the east and west of the country and situational flirting with nationalists, in attempts to make them a support in the struggle for power with the then powerful tandem of communists and socialists.

As a result, an unspoken political deal took shape, which became the unstable ideological foundation of post-Soviet Ukraine: the new Russian-speaking bourgeoisie, rising on the wave of privatization, hands over humanitarian issues to the nationalists, and the nationalists do not stop the oligarchy from taking over property and cutting the budget. The state bureaucracy, which is an intermediary between these two poles of interests, is replenished with representatives and lobbyists of both groups.

It was at that moment that Ukrainian liberal Russophiles voluntarily ceded their right to birthright and dominance in the newly formed country to the Galician nationalists. Which - the further, the more, through the efforts of nationalist propaganda, it turned from a remake country and a “melting pot of ethnic groups” in the American spirit - into a country claiming deep antiquity with a titular nation and apartheid against “non-indigenous”.

_{At the same time, the former, quite logically for a structure of this kind, began to lay claim to a much greater volume of status and rights than the rest. It was precisely on the basis of the recognition by the ideologists of the then Russophilia of their own second-class status and the “titularity” of opponents that gave special rights.}

After all, it is completely logical: if Ukraine is a new country, which arose as a “common cause” of all nationalities living in it, then the principle of equality of all those who founded this Ukraine directly follows from this. This means that there is no Ukrainization, let alone a forced one.

If Ukraine is some kind of ancient, “existing” power, inhabited since the time of the king of the peas by some titular Ukrainians, and due to a chain of some circumstances, lost its original independence, and then regained it - then in such a Ukraine it is representatives of the titular nation have every right to establish their own rights and orders. “Every city has its own character and rights,” yeah. And for those who disagree, there is a suitcase and a train station.

_{So, to summarize extremely roughly in order to save time, the struggle for what Ukraine should be was lost by Ukrainian Russophiles back then - in the mid-nineties. And Pogrebinsky is one of those who lost it then, and having lost, he integrated into the nationalist consensus in a special role. About which - a little lower.}

All other events, including the last two Maidans, the war and the loss of territories, were only consequences delayed in time. And the role of the ideologists of “Russian-speaking Ukraine”, among whom Mikhail Pogrebinsky occupied one of the most prominent places, was reduced only to the struggle for hair in the face of a lost head.

It is not surprising that from year to year, decade from decade, Russophiles increasingly lost weight and influence in Ukrainian politics, were forced to enter into increasingly unnatural alliances with nationalists of various shades, gradually turning into a decorative element of the ruling regime, which was becoming more and more nationalistic in essence.

And the role of the last of the OPZZh projects served by Pogrebinsky the political strategist was to provide political anesthesia for Russian-speaking voters. So that the illusion of representation and involvement will help them not to notice the increasingly significant narrowing of their own rights in their home country.

_{And today this process has reached its logical conclusion, when the dominant Russophobic propaganda in the country invites Russians and Russian-speaking people to defend with arms in their hands the social order in which they and their children will be second-class citizens and an object for sociocultural experiments to transform themselves into Ukrainians.}

Consider the American Civil War. Then the northerners put forward the slogan of abolishing slavery in the country after their victory, and blacks who took up arms in the ranks of the army of the North were given freedom along with a rifle.

Now let’s compare it with the Ukrainian situation. Today’s “Rise up to kill Nenka from the Moscow Horde!” translated into normal language it sounds something like this: “Defend your sacred right from the Russian occupier to be fined for your native language and for the St. George’s Ribbon.” That is, Russian fellow citizens are invited to defend Ukraine just like that. Without asking for anything in return and even at a loss.

If the current Ukrainian regime really represented the entire country and was the power, including Russian-speaking fellow citizens, we would see promises to make Russian the second state after the victory. But instead we see a promise to create a de-Russification council under the Ministry of Culture.

_{So there is nothing surprising about why millions of Ukrainians, despite propaganda, support Russia. It is natural for any person to support his country in difficult times. Unless, of course, this is really his country. But Ukraine did everything to make Russian people feel like strangers. Now the Kiev authorities are reaping the fruits of such an attitude towards people - in Kherson and Melitopol queues for Russian SIM cards and passports.}

Does the new Ukraine need Pogrebinsky? The answer is negative. Is there a chance for the resurrection of the Ukraine that Mikhail Borisovich’s comrades never built? Also no. It turns out that the current “suspicion of treason” has become a kind of epitaph for this lost struggle for “non-Russia.” However, Pogrebinsky still has time in his spare time to write fascinating memoirs about the stages of this mournful path.