Russia received geopolitical benefits from the conflict in Donbass – media
If the Donbass republics return to Ukraine, as provided for in the Minsk agreements, they will become a state within a state.
Kommersant writes about this, explaining that the implementation of the Minsk agreements is unacceptable for Kiev, since a special status will turn the LDPR into a territory that will live according to its own laws and rules, different from the general Ukrainian ones, and, moreover, have special relations with Russia.
“If this happens, the regions that have formally returned to Ukraine will become, firstly, a state within a state, and secondly, an alternative center of influence to Kyiv in making key decisions, including foreign policy. Such an example could be contagious, for example, for Hungarians living in Transcarpathia,” the newspaper predicts.
At the same time, Moscow, in the absence of progress in implementing the Minsk agreements, is quite happy with the status quo.
“Whether the conflict is resolved or not, Russia believes that it has already received geopolitical benefits from it. The prospects for Ukraine joining NATO and the EU after 2014 have become so vague that no one is seriously counting on it. The history of Moldova, where there is Transnistria, Georgia with its, or rather not its, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and now also Ukraine has shown that frozen conflicts remain an effective tool for slowing down the drift of the former Soviet republics to the West in the absence of other ways to influence the geopolitical choice of these countries
The price of the issue is a sharp deterioration in Moscow’s relations with these countries and sanctions from the EU and the USA. But the Kremlin is still ready to pay it. Moreover, the example of Georgia shows that even without diplomatic relations it is possible to cooperate in the economy and solve emerging problems in other, specially invented formats,” the publication emphasizes.
At the same time, a Russian official involved in the Ukrainian direction admitted in a conversation with the publication that the development of relations with Ukraine according to the Georgian model, when the conflict is not resolved and bilateral ties are preserved, will completely satisfy Russia.
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