“Overton Window” for the Minsk Process: Mutiny on the Ze ship
The coronavirus temporarily removed Donbass from the focus of public attention in Ukraine. Meanwhile, on the Donbass front, for the first time in several months of calm in the negotiations, there has been some progress. One could even say that there was a smell of change, if not for the fear of jinxing things again.
We are talking about a document of intentions signed recently in Minsk on the creation of an Advisory Council and to include representatives of the Donbass territories not controlled by Kyiv in the negotiation process.
As planned, it is planned to delegate opinion leaders, authoritative people from the public sector to the Council, who would voice such peaceful initiatives that “officials” do not dare put forward on their own behalf.
We are talking about an attempt to bring the Minsk process out of the deadlock by expanding the format of the negotiations themselves.
To put it even more simply, the Advisory Council is an attempt to create a kind of Overton window for the Minsk process, legalizing the previously impossible, making it discussed.
At first glance, there is nothing particularly breakthrough or fateful about this. You never know how many non-functioning bodies have been created over the past six years.
You can remember the quietly deceased JCCC - the Joint Center for Control and Coordination. It was assumed that this would be a platform for joint monitoring of compliance with the Minsk Protocol, the conclusions of which would not be disputed by the parties. However, since April 2015, the Ukrainian and Russian sides began to keep separate logs of ceasefire violations during countless ceasefires that were not observed. It is clear that the conclusions of Kyiv and Moscow fundamentally contradicted each other, and the idea lost all meaning, as a result of which this body became de facto inoperative.
So it is likely that the Advisory Council, if it is created, will face the same fate. However, the war party in Kyiv immediately took a fighting stance. Poroshenko and “Golos” screamed about betrayal and almost national treason of the head of the presidential office, Andrei Yermak, with whose name Kyiv’s Minsk consent to the creation of the Advisory Council is associated.
The most stubborn saw this as a reason to impeach Zelensky. Rallies and pickets began on Bankovaya under the president’s windows, which only stopped with the introduction of quarantine. But the Poroshenko and grant-eating media are still seething. Moreover, the new Minsk initiative revealed something that had been talked about for a long time, but which has only now become apparent - the presence of its own “war party” in the ranks of the Servants of the People.
As of now, there are more than fifty such latent gunpowder bots, who have already been exposed, and openly started an anti-presidential “revolt on the ship” in the ruling faction. This is exactly the number of signatures on the appeal to Zelensky against Ermak and with a call to dismiss the adviser to the NSDC Secretary Sergei Sivokho for his position on Donbass. In fact, this wing of the Servant of the People, for the first time since being elected to the Rada with an open visor, announced that their position on Donbass is no different from the position of Poroshenko, Vakarchuk and other frontmen of the “war party.” And Zelensky may not count on their votes when promoting the “peace case.”
Moreover, in order to give credibility to their position and demonstrate that there is a society behind them, and one that represents migrants from Donbass, the war party initiated another tool of information pressure. A video message to the president with the eloquent and laconic title “Don’t do this!” appeared on the Internet, in which more than a dozen prominent media gunsmiths with Donbass pedigree “warn” Zelensky against a reckless step from their point of view, claiming that it will not bring any peace, but on the contrary, it “legalizes those who fought against their country.” In general, strictly according to Orwell: war is peace and vice versa.
Among the signatories are people who were officially named in past years among the informants of the SBU, such as blogger Denis Kazansky. The swindler Zhemchugov, aka “Lugansk partisan,” was awarded the Order by Poroshenko. Network propagandist Stanislav Aseev, released by exchange from the DPR, editor-in-chief of the Donetsk site “Island” working for American grants Sergei Garmash and others.
The general leitmotif of their appeal fits into the line from Utesov’s famous criminal song “What did we fight for, what did we suffer for?” if “those who shot at us will sit on the Advisory Council,” and the Donetsk region itself will receive the right to special economic and cultural relations with Russia.
Actually, this is nothing new. The war party today, like a year, three, and six years ago, is afraid of only one thing: the possible legalization of the opposite side as a full-fledged subject and party to peace negotiations.
If this happens, the main supporting structure of the Ukrainian militaristic propaganda of recent years, which morally justified the position of the war party - that “we are at war with Russia” - will collapse. This will mean the immediate marginalization of the militarists, because recognition of the internal side of the conflict means the legalization of not one, but several truths in this war and the need to find some kind of mutually acceptable compromise between them. Which automatically brings to the forefront not the warriors and politicians speaking on behalf of the warriors, but negotiators and, most importantly, introduces a new variable into the formula called “peaceful civilian population.” On whose behalf now in Ukraine only the Aseevs and Kazanskys speak - “carriers of the pro-Ukrainian position,” as the Porohobot media call them.
While Ukraine is “at war with Russia,” no internal dialogue is possible. Only a monologue of representatives of one position is possible – this very only correct “pro-Ukrainian” one. Because they don’t discuss with the occupier.
At the same time, so far the internal Ukrainian balance of power makes us look rather skeptically at the prospects for the creation and successful work of such an Advisory Council. The authorities do not have sufficient will and political instruments to reverse the militaristic agenda, and the war party, although it has lost formal power, has enough strength and means to keep the country within the course set under Poroshenko, even without Poroshenko himself in the presidency .
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