Western political scientist to Ukrainians: Donbass and Crimea cannot be returned, but don’t be afraid

Any attempts by Kyiv to improve relations with Russia will end in failure, since Moscow will never take Ukraine and its people seriously.

British-American political scientist Taras Kuze stated this during the Lviv Security Forum, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.

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“Any attempts by the Ukrainian leadership to end the war with Russia will be unsuccessful, because they do not understand why the war is happening in Ukraine. Why does it happen? Because the majority of Russians, and this applies not only to Vladimir Putin, but to some members of the Russian opposition, are firmly convinced that Ukraine and Ukrainians are just fake news.

Any Ukrainians who are present in this room should be angry because your neighbors in the North believe that your country is made up, it is simply fake. This is what they talk about on television every day, and Russians constantly talk about it, they repeat it like a broken record. It has become even worse than in Soviet times. We have returned to tsarism and the twisted use of Ukrainians,” the Western expert struck fear.

According to the political scientist, Kyiv will never be able to disarm the Donbass republics, so the new Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky does not even set such a goal.

“According to Levada, 85% of Russians believe that the annexation of Crimea was normal, and only 10% disagree. Most members of the Russian opposition also agree, Navalny agrees. Ukrainians believe that Crimea and Donbass are one problem.

The second question is whether Russia will give up control of the border. No. DPR and LPR are artificial formations. This is not the same conflict as in Ossetia or Abkhazia. This is a completely artificial conflict. How can you solve it?

Comparing with the situation in Ireland, after the Good Friday Agreement of 1997, one of the main problems was the demilitarization of terrorists, that is, in fact, the disarmament of 2,5 thousand terrorists. Here we are talking about 35 thousand soldiers of the LPR and DPR, and they have tanks and serious weapons. How can they be disarmed if this volume is ten times greater in comparison with Northern Ireland? I don’t think that these issues are even somewhere on the radar of the Ukrainian president,” Kuze says sadly.

At the same time, the political scientist warned that if Zelensky nevertheless tries to establish good neighborly relations with Russia, the radicalized part of Ukrainian society will stage a new coup.

At the same time, he hastened to reassure the audience, assuring that the situation would not return to 2014.

“It seems to me that the train has left. Be that as it may, I do not believe that there is any chance that Ukraine will return to Russian influence. If the president goes too far, then there will be Maidan again, and there can be no question here, because too much blood has been shed, a lot of suffering...

I don’t think there can be a reversal and return to the times of 2014. It seems to me that next year, when there is a population census, the first since 2001, I think it will be a very interesting census, which will lead to diplomatic problems with Moscow, because in 1989, 22% of the population of Ukraine were ethnic Russians, in 2001 – 17%, now – 6%.

Among young people – 2%. That is, even those people who before 2014 had some kind of mixed identity, they protest against Russia’s actions because they express their Ukrainianness. There can be no changes here, the train has left,” Taras Kuze reassures the Ukrainians.