Grigory Yavlinsky’s web-site, 18.04.2021

Photo by Alexei Kudenko / RIA Novosti

To what condition have they brought the country, so that in 2021, literally, a possible war with Ukraine is all over the news? What had to be done with the people so that they could seriously discuss how the Ukrainian army could threaten Rostov-on-Don, Taganrog, and Belgorod? What did the media need to be turned into so that they whipped up an atmosphere of hatred from morning till night – not only towards Ukrainians, not only towards the West, but also towards their own citizens who dare to speak up against the regime and against the war?

In addition to international crimes such as the annexation of Crimea, unleashing and sponsoring the war in Donbass, Vladimir Putin is personally responsible for the propaganda of war. Bringing the country and people to war with their closest neighbour can be called in no other way, but a grave crime without a statute of limitations. And one can finger point at the Ukrainian leadership as much as one likes, one can shout as much as one likes that Russophobes in the United States and Europe are trying to annoy us and provoke an aggravation of the conflict in Donbass. Putin is the President of a country with enormous nuclear potential and ambitions to influence politics around the world – from South America to Central Africa. How it comes out that such a large and influential Russia cannot extinguish the war at its borders? Cannot contribute to the ending of the seven-yearbloodshed, which has already claimed the lives of over 13,000 people?

The answer is: no, it cannot. Because it doesn’t want to, it doesn’t wish to. It was Russia, Putin’s Russia, that unleashed this war in 2014 in order to maintain political control over Kyiv and by any means to prevent Ukraine’s European integration. All these years, it was Moscow that sponsored and supported the hostilities in the east of Ukraine. Because the simmering conflicts that flare up from time to time along the Russian borders constitute the very “instability belt” maintaining Russia’s levers of influence in the neighbouring territories (in Transnistria, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and Donbass). This policy has its own name: the imperial national chauvinism with the concept of “limited sovereignty”. For many years Russia has been trying to apply this doctrine of the post-war USSR to its closest neighbours.

Today, in order to divert attention from internal political problems and return the lost popularity to Vladimir Putin, as in the “Crimean” 2014, the Kremlin is frantically looking for populist solutions. They believe that even a mere loud sabre-rattling will make a great impression on the Russians, and the “small victorious war” will bring huge political dividends to the regime.

However, it is important to remember that a war seen through the Kremlin embrasure looks like a tool for strengthening the Putin regime. In fact, for Russia, the war with Ukraine is primarily a terrible crime, it is a mass murder of people, these are coffins in which soldiers on both sides of the border will return to their mothers, wives and children. War is complete isolation from the whole world. War has dire economic consequences for the entire country and every citizen. War is a grave trauma for a whole generation: just remember Afghanistan and Chechnya. Only bankrupt politicians, well-paid “political scientists”, and endlessly lying mass media can speculate on the topic of war.

As if there were no millions of dead, as if there was neither the collapse of the world on June 22, nor tears in the eyes on May 9. And today the [Russian] state propaganda, with all its might, is pushing for war “with little blood on a foreign territory”, and cheerfully sings again: “If tomorrow is war, if tomorrow we are marching out…”

Photo by Esquire.kz

Mass-scale and purposeful propaganda of hatred, which has swept through almost all Russian media, and incitement of deadly hatred in people are today targeted against Ukraine. This hatred will apparently return like a boomerang to Russia. Pushing millions of people into war irreversibly cripples minds and souls. In fact, this is driving to suicide, a crime without a statute of limitations, for which all those who pushed the country and people to this will have to be held accountable.

There are no goals, objectives, or arguments that could justify a war with Ukraine. Even from the standpoint of the so-called romantic nationalism, such a war is not a defence, but a complete defeat of the Russian world and Russian civilization. Behind a possible war there are only personal ambitions, and false ideas about the structure of the modern world and the future of Russia.

Today we need to talk only about one thing – how to stop the war, which has been going on for seven years and these days can flare up with renewed vigor and on a new scale. In order, achieve an end to the bloodshed in Donbass in deeds rather than words, it is necessary to implement the peace plan published at the beginning of 2018 [also read in English here]. Because the main and ultimate task of real politics is the preservation of human life and dignity.

Source

Grigory Yavlinsky

is Chairman of the Federal Political Committee of the Russian United Democratic Party YABLOKO, Vice President of Liberal International, PhD in Economics, Professor of the National Research University Higher School of Economics.