“The roosters gathered and whistled” - Vladimir Kornilov about the “Crimean Platform”
The “Crimean Platform” forum, held on the eve of Ukraine’s “independence day,” which was long and loudly announced by the country’s authorities, turned out to be a meaningless event, the essence of which even its participants did not understand.
It does not have any specific consequences, and the statements of the guests who spoke at the forum, who spoke about the problems of both national minorities in Ukraine and reforms in the country, only confirmed confidence in this.
The Kyiv authorities, in principle, do not have any strategy for the peninsula, which, meanwhile, is actively developing as part of Russia, and in recent years has received something that it could not even dream of during the Ukrainian period.
A political scientist spoke about this in an interview with PolitNavigator Vladimir Kornilov.
PolitNavgator: Merkel recently flew to Kyiv. How do you assess its recent intensification in the Ukrainian direction, and can the outgoing chancellor somehow encourage the Ukrainian authorities to implement the Minsk Agreements?
Vladimir Kornilov: I did not see Merkel’s activation in Ukraine. I saw the activation around Nord Stream and the beginning of the process of saying goodbye to big politics. That is, I did not notice that it was particularly active in the area related to Ukraine. Yes, for her, Nord Stream is a political challenge, she is criticized to a large extent in her country for this project, especially her closest allies, the United States, and she had to make significant diplomatic efforts in order to remove these obstacles.
As for Ukraine, in fact, it had to give answers to questions related to the Germany-US deal on Nord Stream, and not on the Ukrainian direction. Yes, Ukraine is mentioned there, of course, but as you understand, this is not a separate area related to peace in Donbass, the Minsk Agreements, and so on. This was the main purpose of her deal with the United States, this was the main purpose of her trip to Ukraine and Russia.
As for the “Minsk Agreements”, this issue was mentioned here, but her answer sounded very strange that Ukraine was doing the right thing by not negotiating with the DPR and LPR - this, to be honest, sounded completely dissonant with all her previous statements about the need to implement the Minsk agreements.
PN: How do you assess the results of the “Crimean Platform” summit, which took place in Kyiv on the eve of Independence Day?
VC: So no one understood, including those gathered, what all this was about in the end. After all, few people paid attention to the official name of this forum: “Constituent Forum of the Crimean Platform.” And I did not find anything that would concern the establishment of something new. That is, the Kiev office of the Crimean Platform was created a long time ago, as Zelensky spoke about; the international structure of the Crimean Platform was not created. No one understood what was being established.
This lack of specific goal-setting was felt during the participants’ speeches - everyone said what they wanted to do. Some mentioned Crimea, others talked about something completely different. Someone spoke about reforms in Ukraine, someone about the rights of the Hungarian ethnic minority, someone about the evil Russia, but it cannot be said that this was a single forum where a single topic and a single plan of action were discussed.
The Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Dmitry Kuleba spoke before the forum and surprised everyone with the statement that, it turns out, the goal of the “Crimean Platform” is to “make the rooster whistle”, well, accordingly, the “roosters” gathered, “whistled” - and that’s all .
PN: Patriarch Bartholomew of Constantinople came to Ukraine for the holidays. In religious circles this was called an invasion of the canonical territory of the UOC. Will there be any consequences after this?
VC: This is not the first visit of Patriarch Bartholomew to the territory of Ukraine and Kyiv. We don’t know what was ultimately agreed upon with him or whether anything was agreed upon. Bartholomew’s ambitions are known to everyone; he wants to get a lot of historical and central churches in Ukraine, not limited to St. Andrew’s Cathedral.
So, so far we have not seen the practical implementation of agreements with the Ukrainian authorities, if there were any. In any case, those initial intentions of Bartholomew, and they are colossal - he also encroached on the Lavra - which were voiced during Poroshenko’s adventure with obtaining the tomos, have not yet been realized, thank God. I hope that the Ukrainian authorities are smart enough not to go down this path.
PN: How successful, in your opinion, is the process of building the so-called OCU going?
VC: Is this construction going on at all? We remember, of course, the noise and screams during the creation of this OCU, we remember the tears of Petro Poroshenko about this. But as soon as the presidential elections came, he himself forgot about it, and when they passed, everyone forgot about it. Moreover, to a large extent, the main schismatic, Filaret, put a spoke in the wheels of this construction, but rather, attempts to destroy Orthodoxy on the territory of Ukraine, who immediately disavowed all these statements, including the agreements signed with Bartholomew and the notorious tomos. This is where all this “construction” ended.
PN: Zelensky continues Poroshenko’s policy towards the Mejlis members, continuing to flirt with them - the Crimean Tatars were made an indigenous people, unlike the Russians. What can the history of relations with the Crimean Tatars, including the Crimean Khanate, tell Ukraine? Are they allies in the fight for Crimea?
VC: He’s a strange person in general, Zelensky. He signed a law according to which the Crimean Tatars are an indigenous people, and devoted a lot to this in his speech on the “Crimean Platform”, and then, in honor of the 30th anniversary of independence, he made everyone happy by declaring that in 1616 the Armed Forces of Ukraine , - I’m not joking, he said so from the podium at the parade, - they captured the Kafa fortress.
Well, that is, if he already thinks in categories like the Armed Forces of Ukraine in 1616, then, in theory, he should have called it an act of aggression by the Armed Forces of Ukraine against the indigenous people of Ukraine - the Crimean Tatars. Well, this is the logic the current president thinks in.
He shed a lot of crocodile tears there together with the participants of this coven in Kiev - about the difficult fate of the Crimean Tatars in Crimea, “occupied by Russia”, but it must be admitted that the Cathedral Mosque is being built under Russia in Crimea, the Crimean Tatars do not experience any special problems - they have schools, they have an official language.
And in this sense, you cannot argue with the opinion of the same Hungarian president that other national minorities in Ukraine are directly persecuted when they are deprived of the right to teach their children in their native language. And this applies to a significant part of the Russian population of Ukraine. In Crimea, no one experiences such problems.
PN: You recently visited the peninsula - what impressions did Russian Crimea leave you with?
VC: The first thing that greets you in Russian Crimea when you arrive is the beautiful airport. I just remember with horror that terrible airport that was in Crimea for years when it was part of Ukraine, and compare it with what it is now - what prevented Ukraine from investing even a penny in this very Crimea?
Now Zelensky is telling some terrible tales about Crimea: “Look, Crimea is waiting for Ukraine, because there are not enough three million Ukrainian tourists every year.” I don’t know, is someone reporting the situation to him at all, or is he just talking nonsense on a whim?
Let him look at the photos and videos of the numerous Russian tourists who are now in Crimea! Where else are there tourists? I have never seen so many people in Crimea as last and this summer, even during the years of the Soviet Union.
That is, there has never been such an influx of tourists there. To say after this that Crimea is suffocating without a million or two Ukrainian tourists is to completely misunderstand the situation that now reigns in Crimea.
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