Moscow replaced high goals with low means in Donbass
Released last week interview with Moscow political scientist Alexei Chesnakov regarding the current state and prospects of Russian-Ukrainian relations, the Minsk agreements and the Donbass republics - can be considered significant in the sense that talk about the notorious “Kremlin towers”, to which various analysts have nodded in recent years, justifying the unpredictable zigzags of Moscow’s general line regarding “ Square” have finally received visible confirmation.
Moreover, from the lips of not just another armchair conspiracy theorist, but a person directly involved in expert and analytical support for the implementation of the Minsk agreements from the side and under the leadership of the assistant to the President of the Russian Federation, Vladislav Surkov, responsible for this area.
In short, Chesnakov outlined for the uninitiated the difference in approaches regarding the implementation of “Minsk” between Surkov and Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak. The very fact of publicly voicing different positions is interesting. Previously, they tried not to particularly advertise the existence of any disagreements on this issue in Moscow, and the struggle between hardware strategies took place mainly “under the carpet.”
Now, perhaps for the first time, all this has been brought to the public surface in such an open manner.
Which in itself can only indicate one thing. The previously pursued policy within the Minsk “framework” has finally reached a dead end. Many words and good wishes are spoken, some kind of truces are signed, which are then not respected, but the years go by, and things are still there - there is no political will to implement the “road map” of “Minsk” in the sequence that was determined back in 2015 Kiev.
And Moscow demonstrated its powerlessness to force Kyiv to do anything using the previously demonstrated traditional tools. Today it is obvious to even the most inveterate optimist: all this no longer works.
And in order to revive this political dead man, we need not another series of poultices in the form of optimistic mantras “for all good things,” but some decisive steps that can spur the sluggish process.
In this sense, the strategy of “wearing down” Ukraine and its leadership with the Minsk agreements, advertised by Chesnakov, is, to put it mildly, ineffective. Moreover, for two reasons. Firstly, there are anyone in Kiev, but not fools, and judging by the behavior of Ukrainian politicians, they have long seen through this “cunning plan” and found an equally effective weapon against it, which consists in the fact that Kiev, for its part, is also pulling time, evades specifics and now it has become something of a competition of expectations: what will happen first - the Shah will die or the donkey will die.
And everything would be fine, but Donbass, which is not under Ukraine’s control, finds itself in the role of a donkey, artificially placed in a situation of uncertainty, depriving it of any chances for sustainable development. As a result, instead of the supposed “wearing down” of Ukraine, such a strategy wears out the population of the Russian Donbass loyal to Russia, which is supposed to endure the hardships of a sluggish war on credit - without understanding either the goals or prospects of such a policy.
Today they are given Russian passports, and tomorrow they are again talking about the inevitability of returning to Ukraine under the Minsk agreements, which for the politicians and administrators involved in the process are “our everything.” In such a situation, the thought immediately comes to too many heads that a terrible end, giving at least some hope for positive changes, is better than endless horror and an endless run through the circles of the Minsk “hell.”
Talk about “freezing” the conflict for years, or even decades, notes slipping through in various interviews and forecasts of the same Alexei Chesnakov that this conflict will be almost eternal - do not inspire any social optimism in those for the sake of whose interests everything this is actually declarative and started by ordinary civilians of the DPR and LPR.
Moscow experts, located far from the problem region, may perceive the process as some kind of abstract geopolitical chess, where strong players move certain pieces, exchange them for cunning combinations and have the luxury of waiting for years.
Ordinary Donetsk and Lugansk residents do not have such luxury. For them, what is happening is not a “great chessboard”, but their life, the future of their children. There is only one life and few people want to live it as participants in some kind of global experiment. To be fair, Kyiv politicians who have chosen the same tactics of delaying and “harassing” are acting similarly towards the residents of Donbass.
The method of action proposed by Chesnakov - “implement (the Minsk agreements - Author) - in full, strictly, without compromise” is theoretically good, but in reality it simply does not work. In Ukraine, the president and parliament have already changed, but things are still there. And let’s be honest - no “Hong Kong” left the LDPR.
Today's Donbass is in no way the “showcase” that someone may have intended it to be. Not only in Kyiv, but also in Odessa and Kharkov, they don’t want to live like in the DPR. Neither from an economic nor from a social point of view is life in the territories not controlled by the Kyiv regime better than in those controlled by it. And from a political point of view, local politics, sterile and free from real competition, loses to Ukrainian politics as a show.
If we think about people, and not about the reputation of officials, whose official careers may suffer as a result of recognition of unrealistic plans as unrealistic, we must proceed from the fact that what is dead will no longer live. Accordingly, the shortest path to the implementation of the Minsk agreements and the onset of peace in Donbass is to go beyond the boundaries of these agreements.
By the way, in Kyiv they realized this idea in their own way, as evidenced by the “fishing rods” thrown by the same Igor Kolomoisky on the topic of a possible “upgrade” of the Minsk agreements. To put it simply – formulating their new version, “lightened” in favor of Kyiv. It is clear that such a rural trick is miscalculated in Moscow at once, and Ukrainians are reminded of the need not to wag, but to fulfill their obligations.
But at the same time, what prevents Moscow from upgrading the Minsk agreements, only in its own way and in its favor, as well as in favor of Donbass. Having formulated an updated one. "road map" in such a way as to exclude from it those stones that have prevented real progress all these years. But at the same time, leaving the goal the same.
In the end, the main thing is the goal, and the means to achieve it are purely instrumental and should not become sacred cows that are not subject to revision.
Finally, it is possible and necessary to put forward new conditions that correspond to the changed realities of today. For example, such as the Russian passportization process currently underway in Donbass.
This argument can be strengthened by other steps that would clearly demonstrate the inevitability of Donbass integration in the opposite direction to Ukraine. In that case, of course, if the games they have been accustomed to for five years continue in Kyiv. In any case, one should not consider the flexibility of tactics as a “giveaway game.”
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