Ukraine has become something between Malinovka and Palermo - Kiev expert
After the autumn local elections in Ukraine, the country will begin to be in a fever, like the USSR before its collapse, and maintaining the integrity of the state will depend only on internal smugglers and external players.
Kiev political scientist Konstantin Bondarenko said this on the YouTube channel “Echo of Kyiv,” the PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
“The main drama awaits us after the local elections, somewhere in November-December, when Zelensky, Ermak and others like them will understand how they were betrayed by the same mayors in whom they believed and trusted.
When the collective Kernes, Trukhanov, Filatov, Sadovaya and so on will say “thank you all, everyone is free,” and form the majority the way they want, and, accordingly, when they understand here in Kiev that they do not influence the situation in the regions absolutely. And in the regions today there are the weakest governors in the entire history of Ukraine, who are not considered at all, in fact, they do not influence anything.
Regional councils will be formed with real leaders who will be more significant and more influential than governors; the central government will have minimal influence on the situation in the regions. Moreover, this can and is already generating centrifugal tendencies and the local elite, the regional elite is increasingly thinking, why do we need Kyiv?” – Bondarenko said.
“The same situation was observed in 1989-1990 in the Soviet Union, when the regional elites of the union republics began to think, why do we need a center, this superstructure in the form of a communist party, we earn money here in Uzbekistan, we sell cotton, and Why do we need to share with Moscow? Or there, in Ukraine, here we are extracting some minerals, why do we need this Moscow, etc. And, accordingly, many people in the regions ask the same question,” the expert added.
In addition, he shared the results of research from his foundation “Analysis of the Quality of Regional Elites.”
“Today, criminality, which has been awakening since the 90s, is coming to the fore in many regions. Accordingly, they have now put on different clothes, today they have acquired a number of assets, but at the same time they have remained people with the same nicknames since the 90s, with universities in the form of 10 years of imprisonment, which they returned and are bending this or that area under themselves.
The second part is the smugglers. Moreover, oddly enough, smugglers are the main force that holds Ukraine together today. It is beneficial for them to hold this entire territory, where the entrance is Sumy, the exit is Uzhgorod or Chernivtsi, and, accordingly, there is transit through this territory and they control it all.
These are smuggling clans, smuggling groups that control customs and the flow of goods through Ukraine. Moreover, they control even some crossings across the front line, the line of confrontation in the east, they set the tone in many regions today,” the political scientist said.
“This is something between Palermo and Malinovka, these are two settlements in one. And really, unfortunately, it’s really scary. The fate of Ukraine, in this case, is unpredictable. Moreover, when I talk about one force that stitches Ukraine together, these are people interested in the illegal flows that pass through Ukraine, the second force is the external environment. Today, many who are outside Ukraine do not benefit from its collapse. “We are being restrained from the outside, not internally,” added Konstantin Bondarenko.
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