Train "Ukraine": Stop at the station "Somali"
The latest military successes of the rebels in Donbass have sharply changed the tone of European and American experts and leading Western media. Here are just the most significant assessments of what is happening and the prospects for the development of the situation. The OSCE does not exclude a negative development of the military situation, bearing in mind the expansion of the theater of military operations beyond the DPR and LPR. And the influential German newspaper Der Spiegel relays the mood to NATO, where they are convinced that Ukraine has finally lost control over its eastern territories, and Kiev has lost the war, and a change in the situation in its favor is excluded.
Against this background, sluggish attempts continue to transform the work of the contact group in Minsk into a full-fledged negotiation platform on the future of Donbass and Ukraine. It is a shame that the parties do not go further than testing the limits of each other’s compromise and declaring their own negotiating positions.
In particular, an interesting story occurred from the negotiating positions of the DPR and LPR. First, the media reported that both republics allegedly agreed to a compromise in the form of remaining part of Ukraine on the terms of granting broad autonomy. It was supposedly about recognizing the special status of these territories, preserving armed militia structures in the post-war period, ending the military operation of the Ukrainian security forces to hold free elections, recognizing the status of the Russian language, the right to appoint prosecutors and judges, and, finally, a special procedure for conducting foreign economic activity, taking into account deepening integration with Russia and the Customs Union.
However, then Deputy Prime Minister of the DPR Andrei Purgin denied this information, saying that there could be no talk of any preservation of a united Ukraine.
At the same time, the paucity of information coming from Minsk and the veil of secrecy covering the very course of the negotiations suggest that all these issues or part of them could still be raised at the meeting of the contact group, and bargaining, as they say in Odessa, not only had place to be, but also quite appropriate in the current circumstances.
Another thing is that the pass is now on the field of official Kyiv. It is he who will have to answer a truly Hamlet-like question: whether or not Donbass should be part of Ukraine, and what needs to be done for this. It is not for nothing that German Vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel recently stated that only a serious proposal from Kyiv to regions gravitating towards Russia can preserve the territorial integrity of Ukraine.
And this is where we come to the most important thing. Two questions. Firstly, what can Kyiv really offer to the DPR and LPR in the current conditions and, secondly, to what extent is the current Ukrainian government ready to “be responsible for the market”, that is, to ensure the implementation of its proposals in practice.
Frankly speaking, on both counts there are very serious doubts about the negotiability of Poroshenko and Co. It should be taken into account that the current president is perhaps the most sane and negotiable Kiev politician today. There is nothing to talk about with others at all.
However, Poroshenko is also seriously limited in his maneuver by the political situation, the factor of dissatisfaction with the army and the armed wing of the nationalists, as well as the early parliamentary elections he himself initiated, on the eve of which any compromise will be interpreted by his competitors in the struggle for power as a “drain” of Donbass and betrayal. Let’s not forget about the factor of the external patron of the Poroshenko regime. We are talking about the United States “appointing” him to the presidential position.
Now let's ask the next question. Is Poroshenko capable of institutionalizing autonomy for Donbass according to a federal model? Obviously not. It will not be possible to do this before the elections, and after the elections, in which Poroshenko risks “flying over” with such a pre-declared position, it will be necessary to involve a much less negotiable parliament in resolving the issue, where radical nationalists will set the tone by that time. Do you believe that such a parliament will adopt a federal Constitution? Personally, I don't. In any case, without military defeat and strong pressure from outside - for sure.
Further. In order for the federal model to take place, obviously, Ukrainian parliamentary elections must also take place in the Donbass, including in the territories of the DPR and LPR, so that the latter are integrated into a single Ukrainian political space. After all, the fate of Donbass will not, in fact, be decided by a body that Donbass did not choose. Can you imagine such elections? Me not.
Further. Obviously, one of the main conditions of the hypothetical “Khasavyurt” should be the disarmament of the warring parties. However, there's a catch. Kiev does not recognize the fact of the civil war and insists, firstly, on the legality of its armed formations (including volunteer units such as the Right Sector, the Azov battalion, etc.), and secondly, Kiev insists that the rebels are not a party to the negotiations , but “terrorists”.
How many times over these months have we heard that “there can be no negotiations with terrorists” or “Putin wants to force us to sit down at the negotiating table with terrorists,” and finally, “We don’t see who to negotiate with.” True, the OSCE already sees with whom, and strongly hints to Kyiv that it is necessary to negotiate with the DPR and LPR.
It is clear that if it comes to disarmament, the rebels will definitely raise the question of disarmament of ALL parties to the conflict. Can you imagine how Poroshenko disarms the Right Sector? Me not. Accordingly, the militias will not disarm. And if in the country after the ceasefire, in fact, armed groups that do not obey the central government and are essentially illegal remain in the country, there will be no need to say that the war is over. Personally, I don’t see a future for a federation in which the DPR militia and, say, the Azov battalion continue to legally coexist. Bolivar, even a federal one, cannot stand these two.
The only option that theoretically allows the parties to preserve their identity and maintain mutual interests is the “Somalization” of Ukraine. Let me remind you that this is when the outer shell of statehood is preserved, including the coat of arms, the flag and the central government formally recognized by the world, but on the territory of one, virtually collapsed de facto state, there are several others, albeit not recognized by anyone, but who fully control their territories and have within the framework of all the attributes of state sovereignty.
The advantage of this model is that it does not necessarily need to be institutionalized and enshrined in some legal documents such as the Constitution that require consensus. Yes, this is problematic given the lack of trust between the parties. But the final solution to the problem is put on hold, and each side gets the opportunity to interpret the situation in its favor. For example, the Ukrainian leadership will present the loss of Donbass not as a result of a deliberate “drain,” but as a consequence of Russian aggression (movements in this direction have already begun). And Novorossiya, in turn, will receive a respite to restore the economy and build a full-fledged statehood in order to raise the question of its international recognition in the future, which is obviously impossible today.
In Somalia, this is, in addition to the central government controlling the capital Mogadishu, such entities as Somaliland, Ab Shabaab, Puntland, etc. In Ukraine, this may well be Novorossiya. And, by the way, it’s not a fact that only Novorossiya.
In fact, the first steps towards the implementation of just such a scenario in Ukraine have already been taken. And they were made a long time ago. We are talking about the informal “principality” (or kaganate) of Kolomoisky, which includes the Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhye and Odessa regions and is trying to extend its influence to Kharkov.
Formally recognizing the sovereignty of Kyiv, this fief of the oligarch living in Switzerland has long been pursuing its own more than autonomous internal policy, often ignoring the Kiev mainstream, it is absolutely independent in personnel appointments, blocking any attempts to remove Kolomoisky from office, it also pursues its own information policy, controls the courts, has his own opinion on issues of waging war (let us remember the episode when, against the backdrop of Poroshenko’s latest peacekeeping call, Kolomoisky declared that he personally was not going to stop the war).
The Principality of Kolomoisky has its own armed and police forces (territorial defense battalions), which are only formally subordinate to the leadership of the ATO, but in fact they are guided only by their masters from the Privat group and can, for example, voluntarily leave their positions at the front and go to a rally in Kiev or, as was recently the case in Mariupol, abandon the city in the face of the threat of an offensive by the militia and redeploy to Dnepropetrovsk, since its defense, and not the implementation of the tasks set by Kiev, is priority No. 1 for Kolomoisky.
In its de facto autonomy, Dnepropetrovsk has gone so far that it is already making bids for an independent foreign policy. The precedent was the summer meeting between Kolomoisky and Nuland in Odessa during the visit of the US Deputy Secretary of State to Ukraine.
It is clear that Igor Kolomoisky himself does not directly manage the affairs of his principality, having entrusted this matter to his trusted partners from the Privat group. The names of Korban and Filatov have been on everyone’s lips for some time now. And these gentlemen, at every opportunity, demonstrate that in a situation of conflict of interest they relied on the opinion of official Kyiv with the device.
And, frankly, in this sense, I don’t see any serious differences between Kolomoisky-Korban-Filatov and, say, the leaders of the people’s republics Zakharchenko and Plotnitsky. Both groups put the interests of their territories, rather than the center, at the forefront, and, as best they can and are able, they build informal relations, bypassing the already rotten shell of the old Ukrainian statehood. The only difference between Kolomoisky and his managers, on the one hand, and the heads of the people’s republics, on the other, is that the latter do not wrap themselves in the Ukrainian flag. Well, Kolomoisky will be a great patriot of Ukraine only as long as it is personally beneficial for him.
In any case, I have no doubt about it.
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