Crisis in Ukraine
Events in Ukraine are the result of a dialectical process involving amongst other things: the imperialist rivalry between Russia and the West; the economic collapse of Ukraine; the struggle for power between the oligarchs who dominate Ukrainian political life and various ethnic tensions. Since the fall of the Soviet Union the EU and NATO have sought to expand their sphere of influence into the former Soviet Bloc, while Russia has tried to retain influence, and where possible restore its dominance there, through the Eurasian Customs Union (ECU). The balance of power has long been in the West’s favour. Russia could do little or nothing as one by one Eastern European countries, including the Baltic states, signed up to the EU and NATO. By 2009 12 former communist states had joined NATO, 11 of them also joined the EU.
The rivalry of these regional economic blocs is an expression of the economic competition that exists between them. At stake are vast resources and markets. Each bloc is compelled to seek maximum competitive advantage against its rival in Russia’s “near abroad” to strengthen its competitive position in the world market. None of the states involved, however, fall neatly into one economic sphere of influence or the other. They all have conflicting interests in both Russia and its ECU partners, as well as in the EU. Most are heavily dependent on Russian gas and energy supplies. They are, like the principle rivals themselves, highly interdependent on one another.
Despite this the rules of both “partnerships” preclude membership of both blocs. The impact of the world economic crisis of 2008-9 on trade and rising deficits combined with rapidly depleting reserves greatly increased the pressure on the ruling classes of states outside the main trading blocs to seek “partnerships” deals or membership status, whatever the costs. Both Russia and the EU have attempted to use this to shape the economic, administrative and, to some extent, the political structures of these states, albeit by different means, and with differing degrees of success. In Marxist terms, we are back to the classic analysis of imperialism – the development of economic competition between blocs of capital – and military rivalry between states. Most people on the Left will agree with accusations of imperialism by the West, however, some would dispute the same accusation being made against Russia. I will, therefore, deal with this in some detail later in my talk when I look at the situation in Ukraine today. Ukraine gained its independence from the USSR in a strugglei, involving both western and eastern Ukrainians that lasted from 1989 to1991. In the subsequent referendum on independence the turnout was 84%. Even in the industrial regions in the east, such as Donetsk and Luhansk, where the majority were Russian speakers and which had the highest number of ethnic Russians, support for independence did not dip below 83%. The one exception was Crimea where support for it fell to 54%.
The hopes inspired by independence, however, were dashed on the rocks of the shock therapy and hyperinflation that followed it. Annual inflation for the period 1993-5 averaged 2,001% per year. The figure for Russia for the same period was 460% per year. Living standards plummeted and lifetime savings and pensions evaporated. Ukraine is the only Eastern European state whose level of production stands at pre-1993 levels. A minimal recovery was followed by the 2008 crisis: world steel prices fell; national debt on vast foreign loans mushroomed and reserves disappeared. The economy contracted by 15% and the currency lost 40% of its value. The per capita income of Ukrainians in 2013 was 3,900 (US dollar equivalent) compared to 13,432 in Poland and 14,612 in Russia. Male life expectancy was 63.78 (61.2 in east Ukraine) compared to 71.73 in Hungary; 72.74 in Poland and 64.37 in Russia. Faced with this crisis elements of the ruling class in both the east and the west of Ukraine used divide and rule tactics to maintain and build support. Russian speakers in Ukraine were portrayed by Ukrainian nationalists as colonisers, who belonged to a foreign fifth column bent on destroying Ukraine’s culture and its language and who were guilty by association with the famine and the purges of the 1930sii.
On the other hand the politicians who looked to Russia portrayed the Ukrainian speakers in the west as filthy Galician Nazi collaborators. The result of all this was a marked increase in the proportion of the population who were concerned about ethnic conflict. Between 2009 and 2014 it rose from 37% to 73%, having fallen from 50% in 2002 to 37% in 2009. All this helped the rise of Svoboda.
It is important, therefore, to remember that there are other factors that unite people across the ethnic divide. Between 2003 and 2010 the percentage of bilingual people has risen from 18.9% to 40.3%. Over a vast swathe of Ukraine, including the east, ethnic Ukrainians speak Russian, intermarry with ethnic Russians and converse in both languages at home, work and with friends and neighbours. Similarly, the most important issues for young Ukrainians were: the right to work; the right to education; freedom from arbitrary arrest; freedom of speech; freedom of movement and freedom of conscience; not ethnic divisions.
By the end of 2013 the Ukrainian ruling class was desperate. The Central Bank had two months of foreign reserves left and Ukraine was judged twice as likely as Greece to default. Ukraine desperately needed a bailout from the EU, the IMF or Russia. President Yanukovych had been trying to balance between the EU and the ECU. He had sought observer status in the ECU while at the same time negotiating the Association Agreement with the EU. The looming economic crisis, however, and the “take or leave it” terms presented by both Russia and the EU would not allow this balancing act to continue. After some hesitation Yanukovych turned to Russia and refused to sign the Association Agreement that had been negotiated with the EU.
It was this action that triggered the Maiden protests, which began in the autumn of 2013. The students who made up the initial protests looked to the market, Europe and the West for an alternative to the corruption of the Ukrainian elite and a way out of the economic collapse of Ukraine. However, the protests could never develop into a national movement involving eastern Ukrainians as long as their demands were hitched to the EU and the West. By the end of November the protests were on the wane. Yanukovch’s decision, however, on 30 November to use the Berkutiii to clear the square, rather than ending the protests, had the opposite effect, Demonstrations of tens of thousands were transformed into ones of hundreds of thousands and more, By early December up to half a million demonstrated. As the demonstrations got bigger the motivation of the demonstrators changed. When asked to choose which three political demands they most supported, signing the EU Agreement came fourth, with less than half the protestors including it as a demand. First, by a significant margin, was the release of those arrested on the Maiden and an end to repression; second was the dismissal of the government and third came the resignation of Yanukovych and early presidential electionsiv.
Confrontations and demonstrations continued through the winter. Rather than backing down the government on 16 January passed a series of anti-protest measures which became known as “the dictatorship laws”v. These triggered a further wave of mass protests against which the Berkut launched its most murderous onslaught. Over 100 protestors were killed. The protests, however, continued, in the end Yakunovych fled and the ruling Party of the Regions all but collapsed as its oligarch supporters and deputies deserted it. The beneficiaries of this were the pro-Western politicians who brought the fascists of Svoboda and the Right Sectorvi on board, appointing them to key ministerial positions. It is, of course, extremely worrying that the far right has played such a prominent part in the Ukrainian crisis, but this does not mean that events in Ukraine were a right-wing putsch from beginning to end as some on the left have argued. It was not Svoboda, the Right Sector or the pro-Western politicians who turned the early demonstrations into mass protests. The decision by Yanukovych and his supporters to use extreme force did this, and therefore he brought about his own downfall.
His flight left a vacuum that the pro-Western politicians stepped into. The West threw its support behind these politicians and disgracefully ignored the reactionary character of the regime and the role of Svoboda and the Right Sector. This support continued through the massacre of anti-Kiev nationalists in Odessa on 2 May and also ignored the over 3,000 people killed and the million displaced in eastern Ukraine as a result of the so-called “Anti Terrorist Operation”. In the struggle with the separatists in the east the Kiev Government was forced to use the Right Sector and other nationalist military forces because of the disaffection within the Ukrainian military and their families, and the delapidated state of the Ukrainian armed forces. In June 2014, for example, one of these groups, the Azov batallion, was assigned by the Interior Ministry to keep control of Mariupol after it captured the city from Russian-backed insurgents. The nature of the Azov battalion is clearly shown by the fact that their base in Mariupol was covered with swastikas.
Nevertheless it would be a mistake to see the struggle of the separatists or Russia’s involvement as anti-fascist, or any less reactionary than its counterpart in the west. We only have to think about the character of Putin and the people around him to realise that this view is difficult to sustain in reality. Anti-fascist rhetoric by Russia has a long Stalinist and reactionary pedigree. It had been used: to condemn men, like Bukharin, in the ‘Show Trials’; to discredit the East German Uprising of 1953 and the Hungarian Revolution of 1956; and to justify the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968.
Since the end of the 1980s the government has used the charge of “national fascism” to whip up Russian antagonism towards the independence movements in the former Soviet Republics. When Yanukovych fell and Ukraine turned West Putin was forced to use Russia’s geopolitical advantage and military resources to destabilise Ukraine, in order at the very least, to prevent it from integrating fully into a Western economic and military alliance. Russia has always drawn red lines around its bordering states: Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan and Kazachistan. Ukrainevii is, by far, the most important of these and it joining the ECU was essential to Putin’s regional economic project. Without Ukraine the ECU would just consist of Russia, Belarus and Kazachistan, an altogether reduced project, and one that other states would have less incentive to join. If Ukraine were to slip out of Russia’s orbit altogether, Russia’s regional and global position would be immeasurably weakened. Russia’s strategy over Ukraine followed the pattern of intervention it had adopted since the 1990s.
Apart from the invasion of Chechnya after it declared its independence, Russia has avoided becoming militarily involved in neighbouring statesviii. Instead Russia has fostered national and ethnic conflicts that destabilised these neighbouring states and made them dependent on Russia’s goodwill. This policy led to a series of bloody conflicts across Russia’s near abroad in which Russia played a key role. These included the separatist conflicts between Georgia and the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia; Moldova and its pro-Russian breakaway Transnistria and the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the enclave of Nogorno-Karabakh. Rather than committing large number of troops and armour in these areas, Russia relied on volunteers, often highly trained, experienced middle ranking military and intelligence officers, to lead and direct local forces on the ground and to provide a conduit for Russian arms and logistical supplies. The strategy enjoyed great success in 2008 when Russia humiliated the West in a short five day war to prevent Georgia from joining NATO.
In the course of these conflicts there emerged a layer of deeply reactionary Russians who were motivated by dreams of restoring the Russian/Soviet Empire. Many of these figures gravitated around the far-right “Eurasianist” movement led by the fascist Alasandr Duginix, the anti-Semitic newspaper Zavtra (Tomorrow) and the news network Den (the Day) led by the far right reactionary Alekdandr Prokhanov. They were part of an alliance of Stalinists, great Russian chauvinists and outright fascists whose leading figures were cultivated at arms length by the Kremlin. Dugin is seen as the driving conceptual force behind Putin’s decision to annex Crimea. Crimea houses Sebastopol which is Russia’s vital naval base on the Black Sea, but is leased from Ukraine. It had been the touchstone for Great Russian chauvinists since the 1980s. Year after year there have been demands, including from within the Kremlin and the Russian parliament, to annex it. This has never had anything to do with the right to self determination of an oppressed minority. It has only ever been about exerting Russian dominance, not only over Ukraine, but across Russia’s entire periphery. The networks who had earned their military spurs in previous proxy conflicts helped to build a political bridgehead for Russia in Crimea. These included the deeply reactionary Sergei Aksyonovx who took the post of Crimean prime minister, despite his party only getting 4% in the 2010 election: and Igor Girkinxi, Alexander Borodaixii, Igor Bezierxiii and Vladimir Antyufevxiv. They were all veterans of previous conflicts, particularly in Transnistria. Antyufev, the lesser known, but possibly the most significant figure served as security chief in Transnistria and he was involved in a failed coup in Latvia in 1991. Girkin, Borodai, Bezler and Antyufev have all been active in eastern Ukraine. Their connections were critical in ensuring a flow of arms, supplies and volunteer fighters from Russia.
There is no doubt that the separatists have won an important level of support because of their political opposition to the government in Kiev and the slaughter initiated by Kiev in the east. This does not alter the fact, however, that they can only exist as a proxy for Russian interests in Ukraine. In fact while the separatists secured substantial passive support against Kiev they were never able to mobilise a mass uprising or sustain their occupations beyond some towns and cities in the two regions where the ethnic Russian population is highest. Active support for the fighters has been limited. Girkin, himself, complained vehemently of this, accusing the east of being cowards. In fact a few weeks before the NATO summit in Newport during September 2014 the separatists of eastern Ukraine had appeared to be on the verge of defeat and Putin faced humiliation in Russia’s “near abroad”. He was unable to intervene because he was afraid that the fantasies of the mainly Russian leadership of the separatists of restoring the Russian empire were dragging Russia into becoming a permanent occupying force in eastern Ukraine. He managed, however, to reassert his authority over his own proxies, e.g. Borodai stepped down as P.M. of the DPR and was replaced by Plotnisky.
With a leadership more compliant to Moscow Putin committed the logistical support and the detachments of Russian troops necessary to turn the tide. In mid-August the separatists were able to mount a successful counter offensive, equipped with Russian weaponry and supplies. The Ukrainian government claimed that Russian soldiers spearheaded the attack. Whatever the precise combination of forces the Ukrainian army and its militias were thrown into retreat. Newly elected Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko was forced to agree to a ceasefire, the Minsk Protocol, on 5 September. Elections for Parliament followed in Octoberxv. By January 2015 the ceasefire had broken down. After heavy fighting, on 21 January, DPR forces captured the symbolically important Donetsk International Airport, and the last part of the city of Donetsk that had been under Ukrainian control. By late January the separatists were mounting an offensive on the important railway and road junction of Debaltseve, which they took control of on 15 February. Meanwhile after talks with Poroshenko and Putin, on 7 February Merkel and Hollande put forward a new peace plan. It was similar to the Minsk protocol and was agreed on 12 February. Under its terms Ukraine’s parliament was supposed to officially recognize a special status for the separatist controlled DPR and Luhansk People’s Republic. Disputesxvi about the implementation of these proposals now threaten the fragile peacexvii. The West has not been able to offer overt military support because of the strength of the anti-war movement there and NATO’s problems of overstretch. Russia also has difficulties of its own. The war in Afghanistan and the first war in Chechnya aroused massive opposition in Russia and the legacy continues to hang over Russian foreign policy today. Its military re-equipment is extremely uneven and beset with problems. Russian growth has stalled and however popular Putin’s warmongering in eastern Ukraine appears on the surface, this is deceptive for a number of reasons. It is true that when polled over 50% of Russians said Russia should give support to the separatist leadership and the fighters in Donetsk and Luhansk, with 20% opposed and 20% unsure, but while 40% supported sending troops 45% were opposed. Another indication of the potential opposition to Putin is the anger among families and relatives at the secrecy and intimidation surrounding the scores of deaths of Russian soldiers in Ukraine while “on holiday”. Some 50,000 people demonstrated in Moscow against war a day before the Crimean referendum. The demonstrators not only opposed war but many, possibly a majority, opposed the annexation of Crimea itself.
For these reasons, in spite of the continuing posturing of the West and Russia, we are not on the brink of war, but this is not a conflict that will blow over and the rivalry over Ukraine poses real dangers and presents a serious challenge to the left and the anti-war movement. Clearly the starting point for revolutionaries and anti-war activists in Britain is to oppose any intervention by NATO in Ukraine.
However socialists should not downplay the character of the conflict or Russia’s role in it. Opposition to our own imperialists does not rest on having to disguise the role of its rivals. It is essential not to confuse inter-imperialist conflicts between rival imperialist powers with conflicts between major powers and subordinate and oppressed states. Russia is not Iraq or Afghanistan. It is a contender, albeit a weaker one than the US, in the imperialist world system. Russia occupies a vast territory and is still the world’s second nuclear power. It has its own imperialist interests, both in its own region and in other parts of the world including the Middle East. The solution to the Ukraine crisis lies not only on the anti-war movement in the West preventing military intervention by the West, but also on the reconciliation of western and eastern Ukrainians and the growth of opposition to Putin stopping further interference by Russia. It is only by insisting on the imperial nature of the conflict that there can be any chance of achieving all three things.
The working classes in those countries have to be convinced that the real enemy is their own government. The ultimate aim for socialists is not only to oppose war, but to turn the war between nations into a civil war between classes and to unite the workers of every country against the international “gang of robbers”. We obviously cannot do this by supporting our own government, but we equally cannot do this by supporting the government of the opposing side in any conflict between major imperialist powers.
NOTES
(i) The struggles began with strikes by miners who occupied their town squares, including in Donetsk. They were joined by miners in the heartlands of western Ukrainian nationalism. This inspired students who occupied the Maiden in 1990. Independence was secured when a large column of workers from Kiev’s largest factory, a core part of the Soviet military industrial complex, employing 10,000s marched on Parliament in support of the students. This forced the Soviets to hold a referendum on independence in 1991.
(ii) Svoboda’s rise had been helped by the predecessors of the current pro-Western politicians who had come to power after the Orange Revolution of 2004. When faced with the crisis of 2008 they employed a divide and rule strategy with a vengeance. The President Viktor Yushchenko promoted an ultra-nationalist reworking of history. The Nazi collaborators of Stephen Bandra were rehabilitated and Bandra himself was awarded the title of “Hero of Ukraine in 2010. Meanwhile the mainstream media gave increasing coverage to the Nazis of Svoboda. None of this helped Yushchenko. Totally discredited he got only 5% in the Presidential elections of 2010. It did however help Svoboba, who won 37 parliamentary seats in 2012.
(iii) The Berkut (Golden Eagles), the notorious interior ministry troops, were paid double the wages of the ordinary police and had a deeply anti-Semitic culture. Their roots lay in the Soviet OMON, which was formed at the end of the 1980s, to take on the miners and the independence movements.
(iv) In a poll of 1037 demonstrators in and around Maiden square on 7-8 December, 70% said they had come to protest against the police brutality on 30 November; 53,5% in favour of the EU Association Agreement; 59% to change life in Ukraine and 40% to change the power in the country. Only 17% said they were protesting against Ukraine entering Russia’s Customs Union or against the possibility of a turn back towards Russia. A negligible 5.4% said they had answered the calls of opposition leaders.
(v) The “Dictatorship Laws” included ten year jail terms for blockading government buildings, one year for slandering government officials or “group violations of public order”, amnesty from prosecution for the Berkut and law enforcement officials, and a host of other measures.
(vi) The Right Sector is a coalition of far right nationalist parties. It originated in November 2013 as a paramilitary confederation at the Euromaiden protests in Kiev, where its street fighters fought against riot police. The coalition became a political party on 22 March 2014, at which time it was estimated to have perhaps 10,000 members. It sees itself as continuing the tradition of Ukrainian partisans, such as the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, which fought in the Second World War against the Soviet Union and both for and against the Axis. Yarosh, Right Sector's leader, has trained armed nationalists in military exercises since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Right Sector has received some financing from the Ukrainian diaspora.
(vii) It is no accident that competition between the EU and Russia came to a head over Ukraine. Ukraine is the largest country entirely in Europe. It shares borders with Hungary, Slovakia and Poland in the west; Belarus to the north; Russia to the north and east and Romania and Moldova and its pro-Russian breakaway Transnistria to the south. As the annexation of Crimea highlighted, Ukraine has a key strategic coastline on the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, across which lie Turkey and the Caucasian states of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan (all subject to their own rivalries and conflicts). Beyond this area lie the Caspian Sea, Central Asia and China.
(viii) Even in Chechnya Putin took great care to foster a strong local Chechen regime under a former rebel, the brutal Kadyrov who was succeeded after his assassination in 2004 by his equally brutal and corrupt son.
(ix) Dugin is a Russian political scientist known for his fascist views and calls to hasten the “end of times” with all out war. He has close ties with the Kremlim and the Russian military having served as an advisor to the State Duma speaker Sergei Naryshkin a key member of the ruling United Russia party. Dugin was the leading organiser of the National Bolshevik Front and Eurasia Party. He wants the restoration of the Russian Empire through the unification of Russian speaking territories. In the Kremlin Dugin represents the “war party”. He believes war between Russia and Ukraine is inevitable and that a fifth column has been working for two decades to destroy Russia’s sovereignty. In 2014 he proposed that all dissidents should be stripped of their citizenship and be deported from the country.
(x) Aksyonov was suspected of criminal activities before he became involved in Crimean politics in 2008. In that year he became a member of “Russian Community of Crimea” and a member of the organisation “Civic Asset of Crimea”. He then borrowed almost $5 million from Kirilchuk, a former Crimean minister of industry, to develop the ‘Russian Unity’ party. Since 2009 he has been co-president of the Coordinating Council “For Russian Unity in Crimea” and leader of the political movement ‘Russian Unity’. In 2010 he became a deputy of the Supreme Council of Crimea as a member of Russian Unity which gained 4% of the vote giving it three seats in the Crimean parliament. On seizing power Aksyonov has promised that Ukrainian would cease to be an official language if Crimea joined Russia. He has led efforts to stamp out dissent among Crimean Tatars over annexation saying, “All activities aimed at non-recognition of Crimea’s joining to Russia and non-recognition of the leadership of the country will face prosecution under the law and we will take a very tough stance on this. He has also said that homosexuals, “have no chance” in Crimea and that “we in Crimea do not need such people,” He also promised that if gays tried to hold public gatherings “our police and defence forces will react immediately and in three minutes explain to them what kind of sexual orientation they should stick to.”
(xi) Girkin’s political views are close to Russian nationalism, monarchism and the White Movement. They are strongly influenced by the Russian Orthodox Church. He believes that Russia is driven by spirituality and in fact is “the only big, Christian country left in the world that is able to resurrect Christianity”. Girkin thinks that foreign conspirators have made attempts to destroy the Russian Empire. These included the Russian Revolution in 1917 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. They were made because the West needed Russian natural and human resources to continue its “age of hedonism”. These attempts will continue and so currently Russia is “at state of war with the whole Western civilisation attempting to destroy it”.
(xii) Boradai is a Russian citzen. In the 1990s he edited the Russian newspaper Zavtra run by Alexander Prokhanov. On 7 August 2014 he announced his resignation and was succeeded by Alexander Zakharchenko. Together they co-founded the “patriotic” Web TV channel Den-TV. Den-TV’s programming has regularly included Konstantin Dushenov, who has been imprisoned for anti-Semitic incitement. He worked as an adviser to Aksyonov, the prime minister of the Republic of Crimea. Boradai claims to have worked as a “political Strategist” during the annexation of Crimea and has stated that the political forces that facilitated the takeover are the same as those active in the Dontetsk Republic: “Naturally the people who set up these popular movements … are the same people, they are connected to each other … So when I finished the work in Crimea I automatically … came here to work in southeast Ukraine. On 16 May he was appointed Prime Minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic. He resigned as P.M. on 7 August 2014. He said, “I came here as a crisis manager, a start-upper if you want. I’ve managed a lot in the past several months, the DPR has been estblished as a state”.
(xiii) According to ‘Reuters’ Igor Bezler is one of the leaders of Horlivka - a self proclaimed militia. He was born in Simferopol in Crimea in 1965. He served in Afghanistan and was awarded the Order of the Red Star. Until 2002 he was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Russian intelligence agency GRU, but a few years ago he retired and settled in the Gortovka region of Donetsk. He became active in the Self Defence forces that took over Crimea. He has been prominently involved in the separatist movement, particularly in the People’s Republic of Donestsk.
(xiv) Antyufeyez is a former OMON major and Riga police deputy chief of criminal investigation. He served as Riga OMON commander in 1990-1. He was heavily involved in the KGB failed pro-unity coup attempt in Latvia. After its failure Antufeyev fled to Moscow. In September 1991 he travelled to Tiraspol to take part in the Transnistrian independence movement. Adopting the new name of Vadim Shevstov, he played a key role in forming the internal and security organisations of the Transnistarian government, especially the Ministry of State Security. In 2012 he was dismissed by the president and a criminal investigation was launched against him, alleging abuse of power, misappropriation of funds and destruction of documents. He returned to Moscow. He said he worked on security in South Ossetia, Abkhazia and Crimea. In July 2014, he appeared in eastern Ukraine as the ‘deputy prime minister’ of the Donetsk People’s Republic. The DPR head Alexander Boradai had met him in Moscow. He was put in charge of the rebel security forces, internal affairs, and courts of justice.
(xv) In the late October 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary election Yarosh the Right Sector’s leader won a parliamentary seat by winning a single-member district with 29.76% of the votes. In the same election Right Sector spokesperson Boryslav Bereza standing as an independent candidate also won a seat with 29.44% of the votes. Svoboda, however, lost 31 of their 37 seats. The decline in support was due to the negative assessments of the activities of the local governments that included Svoboda members. In its former stronghold Lviv Oblast Svoboda won no constituencies. On 12 November 2014 the party's ministers in the Yatsenyuk Government resigned (they became acting ministers till a new Government was formed). The parties governors of Poltava Oblast. Temmopil Oblast and Ravine Oblast also resighned and were formally dismissed by President Poroshenkom on 18 November 2014.
(xvi) On 13 March the leaders of the DPR and the LPR, Alelsandr Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnisky respectively, jointly called on Hollande and Merkel to “put pressure” on Kiev to implement the deal agreed in Minsk, Poroskenko submitted a draft law that outlines the boundaries of particular areas under separatist control which was registered late on 14 March. But a Russian Foreign Ministry statement said the proposals put before Ukrainian MPs included “additional terms never previously discussed”, and that Poroshenko had “totally ignored” the Minsk provisions calling for dialogue with the separatists on arrangements for local elections and the regions”. The main issue seems to be the demand that the elections should take place before the granting of special status which means they would be controlled by the Ukrainians.
(xvii) In the wake of the Ukraine crisis NATO is establishing a “rapid reaction force” in the Baltic States and Eastern Europe. The Baltic states and Poland have demanded permanent NATO bases as opposed to the current temporary ones. Russia for its part has announced large-scale strategic exercises this September and has reminded the West that “Russia is one of the most powerful nuclear nations. This is a reality not just words”.
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