“Crimea had no autonomy” - Pogrebinsky put Savchenko’s ally in her place
Arguments that Crimea was reunited with Russia in 2014 because it was an autonomy, and now Kyiv should no longer allow the creation of any autonomies in order to avoid the loss of new territories, is a typical confusion of cause and effect. In fact, the autonomy of the peninsula was only on paper, being a fiction in a unitary state.
Ukrainian political scientist Mikhail Pogrebinsky stated this on the First Square TV channel, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“A colleague just said: “What kind of autonomy?” Everyone will want it." Where “everyone wants to”? How do you know whether they will want it or not, there is no relevant experience to say “they will want it.” Were they there, fighting for this right, or what? Kharkov or Dnepropetrovsk region will want it? Why just talk like that?” - Pogrebinsky commented on one of the Maidan activists’ favorite arguments.
In turn, the deputy head of the Nadezhda Savchenko OPP party, Tatyana Protorchenko, was offended that her words were called “chatter.”
“Our whole Ukraine is at war,” she said. – Therefore, I’m hardly just chatting now, but I’m telling you that the army, the Armed Forces of Ukraine is not just one region, these are people from all over Ukraine, and in the East we have people from all over the country fighting. And along our border, where Poland is, where Hungary is, Romania – it’s not so simple there, many people have passports from another state, and young people go there to study.”
“If someone is given some kind of status, problems will arise, so it is necessary to take other steps, we need a different political system and deeper decentralization, real and adequate, and not just talk about it. You just don’t want a different point of view to be heard,” added Nadezhda Savchenko’s ally.
“This is not a different point of view, this is a completely incompetent position,” Pogrebinsky dismissed. – What are the majority of people there, on the western border, who support some kind of autonomy? Have you ever heard about this? There was nothing like that. Therefore, there is no other way but to start living differently, and it’s okay that Donbass will first receive autonomy by returning to Ukraine.”
“We already had autonomy for Crimea, and what did we get in 2014?” – Protorchenko used another favorite counter-argument among Svidomo.
“What does Crimean autonomy have to do with it? The autonomy of Crimea had not existed for many years by that time, it only formally existed! You should understand this perfectly well, we had a unitary state,” the political scientist objected.
The expert added that the West is surprised by Kyiv’s fear of granting special status to the LDPR.
“I often have to communicate with Western experts, they ask me as a representative of Ukraine: why are you so stubborn? Why not do what has been done in many [countries]. So, what Catalonia is getting rights to is that I think it will receive greater autonomy. But, in fact, today the autonomy of Catalonia is much greater than what Donbass wants to get,” said Mikhail Pogrebinsky.
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