Ukraine: Undesirable Prospects

Ukraine’s interim Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk yesterday accused Russia of wanting to start World War III by supporting the separatist insurrection in the eastern part of the country, and asked the international community to unite against Russian aggression. For its part, the United States warned that it is preparing to impose more sanctions on Russia for its actions in Ukraine and that European leaders agreed to coordinate steps with Washington in order to implement new punitive measures against Moscow. Meanwhile, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, placed the blame on Western governments.

The tense international circumstance resulting from the ongoing conflict in the European nation makes the promising meeting, which took place just last week in Geneva, seem very far away. During the meeting, representatives of Russia, the European Union, the United States and Ukraine reached a preliminary agreement whereby Russia committed to aid the disarmament of the pro-Russian militias that had taken public buildings in the east and south of Ukrainian territory — in the provinces of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kharkov and Kherson. Kiev’s provisional government agreed to undertake a political reorganization with a federalist orientation and to respect the rights of the national minorities within Ukraine, particularly those of Russian speakers.

However, while the prospect of an international conflict like what Yatsenyuk predicts is still hypothetical, these days in southeastern Ukraine a civil war scenario is palpable — a byproduct of Kiev’s actions against the pro-Russian separatist groups, but also against the broad moderate Russian-speaking sectors whose demands do not necessarily rise to secession of their provinces from Ukraine, but for the adoption of a federalist model of government that respects regional autonomy. Presently, the greatest tension is concentrated in the town of Sloviansk, to the north of Donetsk, where the initiation of Kiev’s military operations provoked five deaths last Thursday and has been criticized by international humanitarian organizations.

For now, the prospect of a violent escalation internationally between the two leading geopolitical blocs — the United States and the European Union on one side and Russia on the other — appears further away, to the extent that such a scenario does not suit either of the two. In any case, Moscow’s presumed expansionist desires have found a fundamental incentive from Western governments themselves, which originally encouraged the Euromaidan movement that culminated with the toppling of Viktor Yanukovych and the subsequent uprising in Crimea and Ukraine’s southeastern provinces. [Western governments] are currently fanning the fire through threats, like those formulated by Washington the day before and military exercises like those North Atlantic Treaty Organization is developing.

At present, all actors are betting on reviving the nascent process of resolution for the destabilized former Soviet republic as the most effective form of warding off bad outcomes, such as those warned of by Yatsenyuk. To that end, it is necessary that Russia, as well as the United States and the European Union, hold off on the support that they have offered to the conflicting groups within Ukraine’s territory and that the international community pressures Kiev’s government to curb the military operations developing against opponents of its government, and also to work toward reaching internal agreements that allow for assuring coexistence between all groups and minorities which make up the country’s population.