Special for the Yabloko website, 27.02.2023

Photo: Viktor Kogan-Yasny / Photo by the Yabloko Press Service

What would I say should be done, if – very unlikely – some external experts asked me what is needed for Ukraine and Europe now?

I would say that a “road map” is needed. For ten years and twenty years. Ceasefire, restoration of Ukraine, return to the borders according to the UN Charter and OSCE norms, political transformations that would allow leveling internal nidi of instability in the future Ukraine, in future fundamentally new circumstances, transformations in Russia that will allow a full return to cooperation with the EU and NATO to mutual benefit, peaceful relations between the United States and China while respecting the interests of the Republic of China in Taiwan, and transformation of the People’s Republic of China. Steps towards the “Europeanisation” of US laws, and the abolition of the death penalty there. Return to the idea of a Greater Europe with a common vision of a peaceful future.

I would also tell them that Putin’s position inside Russia now and in the near future has very little to do with the situation at the front, and that a hypothetical (highly unlikely) Ukrainian military victory in its South-East is unlikely to seriously affect Putin’s position inside Russia, that talk that Putin “dreams of a compromise and the status quo” is grossly inaccurate, as history has long shown that Putin is anything but a dreamer.

I would tell them that four out of five Russian citizens within the Russian political and economic system are now directly dependent on Putin for their daily living, in matters of personal freedom, health, and subsistence, and that “popular discontent with the defeat of Putin” is unlikely to manifest itself, and if it turns out that one reason or another will lead to actions of mass discontent in Russia in the current decade, then the mood of these actions is unlikely to please those who are looking forward to them.

I would say that the situation of Putin and the Russian ruling stratum depends critically on themselves, their sense of their usefulness and prospects, rather than desires of today’s “narodniks” broadcasting from their places of relocation, and that diplomacy is not a sweet pleasure of communicating with friends sitting on a couch, but hard work, which includes not only drawing tanks and planes… And that you can’t get away from the future, even if you don’t want to see it point-blank and you live only for the current minute…

VICTOR KOGAN-YASNY

is an Advisor to the Chairman of the Federal Political Committee of the Yabloko party. Head of the public organisation “Regional Civil Initiative – the Right to Life and Civil Dignity”. Candidate of chemical sciences.