Novaya Gazeta, 13.04.2021

Photo by olegkozyrev/depositphotos

Dmitry Peskov’s [Vladimir Putin’s Press Secretary] statements that Russia “is not going to move” towards war with Ukraine, but “will not remain indifferent to the fate of Russian speakers who live in the southeast of the country” are not a sign of abandoning the planned scenario, but represent another bundle of firewood laid into the fire of war, which could flare up at any moment.

It is necessary not to let it burst out: both because the consequences will be dire, and because, as has happened more than once, this will mean the onset of a period of terrible reaction.

That is why the anti-war topic is again becoming a key issue on the opposition agenda. This is what is most important.

The prepared fire has long been generously poured with gasoline, such as the statements of President Vladimir Putin about “Russian lands and traditional historical territories” allegedly “donated” to the former Soviet republics that they should have returned when leaving the USSR.

Such as the promises of Dmitry Kozak, deputy head of the Presidential Administration: alleging that Russia could rally to the “defence” of the citizens of Donbass.

And such as the groans by state propagandists: for example, Margarita Simonyan [head of RT] (“Mother Russia, take Donbass home”, which allegedly “the overwhelming majority of people in Russia and, perhaps, all the people who remained in Donbass” want) or Vladimir Solovyov [one of the key journalists and TV persons engaged in the state propaganda] (“Today Ukraine is an absolute evil that we cannot allow to exist”).

First, no one authorised the Russian authorities to “protect the citizens of Donbass”, because they are citizens of a foreign country.

Second, Donbass has never been a part of Russia (it was not part of the RSFSR – the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic [back in Soviet times]): it was invariably a part of Ukraine throughout the whole Soviet period. And, by the way, 84% of voters in the Donetsk region voted in the 1991 referendum for the independence of Ukraine within its internationally recognised borders (and also for the fact that its territory is “indivisible and inviolable”).

And third, according to the 2001 census, 57% of Ukrainians and 38% of Russians lived in the Donetsk region. It does not look like “Mother Russia”, does it?

As for the “danger” that allegedly Russians living in Donbass are facing and from which it is necessary to “protect” them, it is nothing more than a propaganda myth.

For some reason, there is no such danger (otherwise they would have been yelling about such facts in the studio of the same Vladimir Solovyov 24 hours a day) throughout the rest of Ukraine. Nobody is persecuting people who speak Russian, neither in Slavyansk (after the Strelkov-Girkin fighters were expelled from there), nor in Kyiv, nor in Lvov, nor in Uzhgorod…

Nevertheless, [Vladimir Putin’s Press Secretary] Dmitry Peskov declares that “next to us there is a country, the leadership of which, we can not rule this out, may again consider it possible to solve the domestic problem by force”.

This is said by the Press Secretary of the head of state, who twice – in 1994, and then in 1999 – just solved the “domestic problem by force” in Chechnya. Declaring that what was happening there was our internal affair, in which no one had the right to interfere, and the actions of the federal forces in Chechnya were not at all a war crime, but a valour.

The current rhetoric of the Russian authorities about the allegedly “forced” and only “retaliatory” nature of their possible military actions, accompanied by the cries of political propagandists about NATO approaching the Russian borders, painfully reminds a long familiar thing.

Military aggression was justified in approximately the same way (and any military intervention on the territory of a foreign country without its consent is called an aggression) both before the entry of [Soviet] troops into Hungary in 1956, and before the entry of troops into Czechoslovakia in 1968, and before Afghanistan in 1979. And most recently, in 2008, when the five-day war with Georgia began. Actually, it was then that the “technologies” of future aggression against Ukraine that happened in 2014 were tested. Because when in 2008 the West gave a typically “Munich” response to the aggression against Georgia, it instilled in the Kremlin the confidence that the attempt could be repeated.

It is not unclear which line will prevail in the Russian leadership now: trying to arrange a “small victorious war” or limiting themselves to just saber-rattling and chest-puffing. Since the mechanism for making such decisions is unknown. But taking into account the quite possible unwillingness of the West to “die for Donetsk” (if we paraphrase a well-known phrase), limiting itself to minor sanctions and expressions of deep concern, the first option does not seem at all improbable.

Moreover (I will quote the recent statement of the Yabloko congress made by Lev Shlosberg, Grigory Yavlinsky and Nikolai Rybakov) there is “a direct connection between the militarisation of Russia’s foreign policy with the situation and the political attitudes of the authorities inside the country, and it is in the atmosphere of military hysteria that the Russian authorities intend to conduct a nationwide election campaign”.

It is the State Duma, which will be elected in the fall of 2021, and it will work in 2024, when the presidential elections are due to take place.

And Vladimir Putin himself has just signed a law allowing him to be elected two more times after “resetting” of his presidential terms.

And Valentina Matvienko, Speaker of the Federation Council, is already announcing a meeting of the upper house on 23 April – two days after the presidential address (may it be for the permission for another use of Russian troops abroad?).

We will reiterate: the time is coming again when the anti-war theme should become the main topic of the opposition agenda.

If we can prevent the war, only then there will be a chance for political changes and the release of political prisoners.

Source in Novaya Gazeta  https://novayagazeta.ru/articles/2021/04/12/v-atmosfere-voennoi-isterii

BORIS VISHNEVSKY

is Deputy Chairman of the Yabloko Party, member of the Yabloko Federal Political Committee and  Bureau. Leader of the Yabloko faction in the Legislative Assembly of St. Petersburg