Federalization Means Destabilization

That the Russian Federation should demand, in categorical fashion, that Ukraine change its political system to a federal one and give its regions “wide powers,” is a manifestation of arrogance and brazen cynicism.

Why does Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov think he has the right to say, as he did last Sunday in an interview on Russian television’s Channel One, that “if the present authorities in Kiev insist on rejecting the idea of delegating powers to the regions — and we are convinced that this can only be done successfully through federalization — and if the Russians and the Russian language continue to be ignored, I think that nothing will come of Ukraine’s constitutional reform, which has already begun in some form?”

By what right does Minister Lavrov demand that governors in Ukraine’s regions be elected by their inhabitants? And the point here is not that the Russians, with their imperial sense of superiority, wish to interfere in the internal affairs of a sovereign state — something to which they obviously have no right. An elementary sense of decency should incline the Kremlin to be silent on those very issues, given that Russia, which should be a federation according to its constitution, is not one in the least today. It’s the pot calling the kettle black.

Russia was a federation in the days of Boris Yeltsin, who instructed the regions composing it to “take as much sovereignty as they are able to digest.” Yeltsin, however, was also unfaithful to this formula: When Dzhokhar Dudayev “took,” Russian tanks rolled into Chechnya.

For Putin, in turn, the “federalization” that his chief of diplomacy would like to apply to Ukraine is just an empty slogan. During his nearly 15 years in power, Putin has been working arduously to unify the state, building within it a vertical power structure subordinated to the center and depriving Russia’s regions of their political and financial independence.

As early as 2004, today’s Russian president decided that governors would not be elected by the inhabitants of their regions but de facto appointed by the Kremlin.

Following the “white” protests in the winter of 2011–2012, Putin somewhat restored the election of the heads of administration in the gubernias. But this rule did not apply to “difficult” regions. In the North Caucasus, with its strong separatist tendencies, regional leaders are still “elected” — or rather nominated on Moscow’s cue — by local self-governed bodies loyal to the Kremlin, not by the citizens.

Crimea, which Russia has just taken over, will be run just like the Caucasus. The peninsula’s citizens will not be given the right to choose — a right that Lavrov is so ardently seeking for the inhabitants of Ukraine’s regions.

Sneering comments can be heard in Moscow that the Russians living in Crimea, now that they have been “reunited with the Motherland,” didn’t win the right “to speak Russian as much as the right to be silent in their mother tongue.”

It will be interesting to see if, following the incorporation of Crimea, schools with Ukrainian as the language of instruction will continue to operate there. If so, they will be the first such schools in Russia, which is home to at least 2 million Ukrainians.

Why does Moscow recommend that the Ukrainians adopt federalization, which the Kremlin fears like the devil fears holy water? It seeks to apply this “treatment” to its neighbor because, in reality, it wishes to retain the key to Ukraine, so that Russia’s president will always be able, at a convenient moment’s notice, to take advantage of the right, which Parliament has already given him, to “use the military on the territory of a neighboring state.”

It is worthwhile remembering that the Council of the Federation gave the president a “license to intervene” until the “situation stabilizes” in Ukraine. And if the Ukrainian regions in the east and south obtain the independence that Putin took away from the inhabitants of his own gubernias, it will be easy to destabilize the situation there, to stoke separatist sentiments there, and to hear from there a plea for military assistance for the purpose of “defending the Russian-speaking population.”

The Kremlin realizes only too well how dangerous this could be. It is no coincidence that in late December, Putin signed a decree calling for stricter punishment for separatist agitation.