A week after the ill-fated Steinmeier Formula was agreed on in Minsk, Ukrainians stay flustered and angered about it.
An estimated 10,000 persons gathered on Independence Square in Kyiv, joined by many more in other cities, to protest fiercely against what they see as deadly concessions to Russia over Donbas by President Volodymyr Zelensky.
A majority — 60 percent — of the country’s population find it hard to define their attitude towards it, as polls show. But the word “capitulation,” both terrifying and menacing, has gone viral on social media. Angry crowds across the country are lifting their voice against this surrender they all heard about on Facebook. And Zelensky opponents, spearheaded by former President Petro Poroshenko, are stoking public wrath.
For some odd reason, when Zelensky says the same thing Poroshenko did for five years — local elections and self-rule for Donbas only after full Russian withdrawal and restored Ukrainian control of the border with Russia — it is decried by Poroshenko’s furious supporters as treason, surrender, and the end of Ukraine’s independence.
Few, however, can explain why it is so now.
Even fewer are talking about what outcomes — realistic scenarios, I mean — could be good for Ukraine. If we’re not accepting the formula and not continuing to negotiate other provisions of the Minsk, where is another way? Don’t you forget: the Minsk accords “have no alternatives,” as Poroshenko kept saying since 2014.
So, what do we have instead of that?
An all-out offensive in a fashion similar to Croatia’s Operation Storm of 1995? With the Ukrainian army cracking the heavily entrenched 450-kilometers frontline and continuing with a battle march to the border with Russia? The plan seems glorious, but the problem is estimated at 35,000 local militant troops, well-armed and organized, as well as countless units of Russia’s 8th, 49th, 58th, and 20th combined arms armies always ready to intervene again within hours.
There is no military option, and everyone knows this. I’m not even talking about the hell of urban war, with unloyal and suffering local population, that the Ukrainian army would have had to deal with.
Are we better off simply continuing this static war without end? Without having any clear strategic plan and basically doing nothing but holding our troops in the frontline wastelands and receiving a soldier coffin every 2-3 days for endless years? These primitive tactics of putting the doomsday off at the cost of the blood of Ukrainian soldiers are now reaching its limits.
Praise it or damn it, but the majority of Ukrainian society has got sick of this war. It is not interesting to them, they see no sense in it. Especially given the fact that the country’s leadership in all these five years did not come up with a solution better than running with the wind and waiting for the Donbas question to resolve itself spontaneously by some miracle — with Russia’s downfall, for instance.
Even the long-rumored Donbas re-integration law approved as late as in 2018, simply declared the region occupied and ruled by Russia and said that Ukraine was committed to reintegrating the lost territories “via political and diplomatic means,” proposing no practical roadmaps and certain means.
Ukrainians shout slogans and hold signs which read “No to capitulation!” during their rally against signing “Steinmeier formula” by Ukrainian delegation in Minsk, on Independence Square in Kyiv, Ukraine, on Oct. 6, 2019. (Volodymyr Petrov)
They simply preferred to drag it out until the Second Coming and wait for what’s unknown.
But here’s the most terrible thing. This do-nothingism has ruined the patience of Berlin and Paris. Our leadership has failed to offer them something more than five years of headache, moaning, losses, demanding that someone else cares about Ukraine more than the very Ukrainian leadership, and total lack of will to propose a good plan of action.
But Russians in their turn proposed them a lot for turning a blind eye on Crimea and Donbas. Lucrative trade deals, investment, the Nord Stream II. We’ve wasted so much time that Europe and Russia eventually ended up making a deal over our heads. And now Paris, Rome, Berlin, Brussels, and Amsterdam are pressuring Kyiv really hard for some sort of an acceptable peace deal with Moscow on Donbas.
They now really want to lift Russian sanctions and continue making business as usual rather than wasting time and money on Ukraine. And they will force us to continue with the withdrawal of troops, the elections, the semi-independence for Donbas, and all those things Poroshenko had to agree on after Ilovaisk and Debaltseve.
The incompetence of Ukrainian leadership is, of course, not an excuse for Europe to make yet another appeasement deal with an aggressor. But in this unjust world of cynical politics, the time of our momentum has run out.
There can be no miracles. And the ugly truth about this “capitulation” is that we now have no good ways out of this war.
I am broken by the uneasy feeling that the war that has become a huge part of our lives might end soon. But this will be an extremely bitter and unjust peace to us all. And open is the question whether this scenario for postwar Ukraine — with a heavily-armed, semi-independent, pro-Russian enclave integrated into it — can potentially result in even more hateful and bloodletting war several years on.
So in such a situation, the best thing Zelensky can do is to leave no stone unturned in bargaining the least bad option from the Kremlin — if he really wishes well to Ukraine and is not going to let us all down, in his own words. The upcoming Normandy Four meeting will show what he is really up to.
That’s even more sorrowful is that, against all the odds, we had a chance all these years. Yes, we could have prevailed in Russia’s occupation of Donbas. And this, by the way, would also have had a serious influence on Crimea.
The key to our victory was the nation’s unity, constantly increasing the quality of life, real reforms, and eradicated corruption — and also effective armed forces defending the nation’s gains behind the lines.
A Ukrainian soldier holds on his position at a combat post near the city of Avdiyivka on July 19, 2019. (AFP)
As a person originally from Donbas, I know my fellow country people and what works with them.
The non-occupied part of the region could have become a show-window of living in a peaceful, inclusive, comfortable, westernizing, democratic country that recovers from the wounds of war at a dramatic pace. People crossing the frontline entry points into the Ukrainian territory should have seen new good roads, clean and well-tended streets, crowded restaurants and cafes, polite policemen, cheap and comfortable public transport, and affordable medical assistance.
They should have surprisingly found themselves in the 21 century as they addressed Ukrainian public authorities and saw there was no need to stand in queues. And that many public services could be easily obtained online. They should have seen that there was no need to pay bribes in Ukrainian courts to obtain justice. That the police were successfully tackling crime, and all the corrupt officials and local mafia bosses were having really hard times.
They should have been learning that their relatives “on the other side” were having increasingly higher wages and that finding a decent job or opening a business was much easier in Volnovakha or Mariupol than in Russian-occupied Donetsk or Luhansk.
If at least half of these idealistic dreams come true, much more of my fellow countrypeople would say: “Screw this, living in Ukraine is much better.” The collaborating regime in Donbas would have been quickly losing popularity. Mind this, it was the resentment from never-ending economic troubles and political instability in Ukraine exploited by Russian propaganda that set the scene for the war in Donbas, in many ways.
No matter how angry they are about Ukraine, the people of Donbas are getting Ukrainian biometric passports for themselves to spend a weekend in Poland and see real Europe for the first time in their lives. People consume from quite sensible, material benefits of being law-obeying Ukrainian citizens, not from patriotic slogans.
Western newspapers would have called this renaissance “a Ukrainian economic miracle amid simmering conflict.” Sounds sweet, doesn’t it?
Apart from that, Ukraine could have offered to Europe tempting opportunities for investment, huge contracts for nationwide infrastructure contracts, firm leadership against Russian expansionism — much more that than we have done in reality.
We had enough time to accomplish much of that. Our soldiers and officers deterring the Russian proxies have been buying us time for 2,000 days already — close to the whole duration of World War II — and paying for that with their sweat and blood.
Facebook patriots love posting mournful pictures and comments about fresh casualties in Donbas, again and again. But do they have an answer to what are Ukrainian soldiers dying for in this endless trench war? Estimated 4,000 Ukrainian combatants have been killed in action for the sake of buying the nation more time for rising again as an economic and military force, therefore becoming a too dangerous prey for the Kremlin.
Ukrainian soldiers have a smoke after a nighttime combat clash with Russian-backed militants near the city of Avdiyivka, on Nov. 3, 2018. (AFP)
And we have neglected their sacrifice.
Instead, those five years under Poroshenko were wasted on eye-washing, simulated reforms amid rampant corruption and political posturing.
On sowing discord through armies of Facebook trolls and opinion-makers hurling insults against Poroshenko’s opponents. On divvying up the fattest defense contracts between Poroshenko and his business partners. On putting Poroshenko’s men in most important offices and making profits from it. On pushing through absurd language regulations, deeply divisive and intrusive.
On igniting religious hysteria and crazy dances around the Tomos that ended up useless and was forgotten weeks after Poroshenko’s downfall. On cosmetic reforms in the military that have resulted in our soldiers being a bit better fed and dressed, but not even closer to ruining the deeply ineffective and untransparent system of Soviet-style chaos.
And on many other things that eventually brought us to being unable to keep withstanding those pressuring us to accept the ignoble peace of the Minsk.
And don’t tell me a fighting nation could not afford such a glorious rise from the ashes — the web of corruption cast out by Poroshenko’s friends in defense sector alone has divested us of more blood of life than several wars combined.
