Secretary of State John Kerry made a last-minute diversion
on his flight home from the Mid-East Saturday night for an emergency meeting
with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov for crisis talks on Ukraine Sunday
in Paris. Judging from the after-meeting
conference, he should have spared the trip.
Russia remained set on their position that the annexation of
Crimea was a fait accompli and brushed aside US demands that they pull
back the tens of thousands of Russian troops massed along Ukraine's eastern
border, saying the troops are merely participating in a routine military
exercise and adding that Russia has “no plans” to invade Ukraine. Kerry, meanwhile, turned down Russian demands
that Ukraine adopt a “federal” form of government – where each of Ukraine's
regions would be a de facto state, capable of making their own laws,
collecting taxes and conducting foreign relations, while also maintaining broad
autonomy for their ethnic minorities.
Kerry rejected the demand on the crazy notion that choosing Ukraine's
form of government is a decision that the Ukrainians themselves should make.
The demand for a federalized form of government is emerging
as the key to resolving the conflict from the Russian side. Lavrov contended that a federal state was the
only way that the rights and interests of ethnic Russians living in Ukraine
could truly be protected. Lavrov is
continuing the idea pushed by the Putin government since the removal of
President Viktor Yanukovych in February, that being a Russian living in Ukraine
in 2014 is about the same as being a Jew living in Poland in 1940, while
offering scant evidence to support the claim that the provisional government in
Kiev is actually threatening the safety of Ukraine's Russian population. This notion of an impending threat was the
justification Russia used for its intervention in Crimea.
The real reason behind Russia's push for the federalization
of Ukraine though is to ensure that the country would be basically ungovernable
from Kiev and to diminish Ukraine's prospects of having a prosperous
future. As explained in this earlier post, Putin's biggest fear over Ukraine is that the government that will take
power after the upcoming elections in May will finally get their act together
and put the country on the path to developing as a Western European-style
market economy with an open and representative government. To have a country so culturally tied to
Russia successfully follow the post-Soviet path of development that has been
seen in Poland and the Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, would
undercut the foundations of Putinism.
Russia, therefore, has a vested interest in making sure that Ukraine
fails, the push for federalism is simply the latest attempt from Moscow to make
this happen.
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