Decision of the Political Committee of the Russian United Democratic Party YABLOKO dated 14 March 2014

Against the background of the deepening global crisis in connection with the situation around Ukraine, when the Ukrainian circumstances and analysis of the events of the past few months have been relegated to the background, the Political Committee of the Russian United Democratic Party YABLOKO believes that it is necessary to revisit these events, the underlying nature of the events, and the lessons learned, and to express our views and assessment.
Through the fault of both Yanukovych and extremist elements in the opposition that assumed responsibility for radical initiatives, the peaceful Maidan protest snowballed into armed clashes, which resulted in the loss of countless innocent lives. The country experienced regime change with new authorities that are dangerously radical in their composition and extremely unpredictable in terms of the potential consequences, when simply nobody is able to offer a responsible action plan.

The peaceful existence, rule of law, territorial integrity and future of a fraternal country have been put at risk. At the same time, the actions of Russia’s leadership in response to the events in Ukraine have unleashed an international political crisis – the most acute and dangerous crisis that we have seen since the end of the Cold War. Russia could end up isolated in the eyes of international public opinion on the international arena.

Russian society is being misinformed. A campaign of disinformation has been launched by the state-controlled media, which calls to mind the worst times of Soviet agitprop. People are becoming intoxicated over the strong-arm “return of Crimea”, the display of sovereign might, in violation of international law. However, the serious consequences – economic, political and moral – will inevitably be felt in Russian society, and soon. The exacerbation of the international situation will result in a clampdown by the repressive regime, the muting of independent media and persecution of any dissenting voices.

The lessons that we, Russian society and the Russian powers-that-be, should draw to prevent the repeat of similar developments in Russia, can be summed up as follows.

Lessons for the authorities

The criminal-oligarchic system of power, corruption, legal nihilism, the random repression of political opponents, disregard for public opinion, and finally a tendency to resort to violence against peaceful protesters – none of this can go on forever. Sooner or later society’s reaction to such regimes will spill over into powerful social explosions and destabilization, putting lives at risk (including those representatives of the powers-that-be), and jeopardizing the country’s integrity.

In Ukraine, increasing hatred of the regime ended with the escalation of violence and irreversible developments – armed confrontation, with a key role played by radical nationalists, and the subsequent tragedy that resulted in the loss of dozens of lives. Meanwhile the state retains only the external attributes of a state, but de facto borders on paralysis and collapse.

Rather than constantly looking for a reasonable compromise, we witnessed an endless “search for the guilty” – and without fail among other people, while ruling out their own responsibility. This became the norm of Ukrainian public life and threatens to generate newer and newer dangers.

It goes without saying that Yanukovych and his entourage are responsible for the human lives lost and the implementation of internal and external policies that culminated in the start of civil war and the vast risk of its proliferation.

However, while recognizing the undoubted responsibility of both Viktor Yanukovych personally and his parliamentary supporters for the fact that the situation followed the strong-arm scenario, up to and including the horrific bloodshed on 18-20 February, we believe that the events in Kyiv should be subject to an independent international investigation, which would make it possible to identify the extent of the responsibility of all the participants of the conflict.

Lessons for the opposition

The tragic lesson of the Ukrainian events is that a hybrid of political forces, which were in principle incompatible, joined forces in their opposition to the anti-national corrupt authorities. An active role in the movement was assumed by the Right Sector party, in which extreme nationalists turned out to be particularly prominent – the opponents of European values and European integration, anti-Russian and anti-Semitic. The refusal of Ukraine’s new official authorities to unambiguously and publicly disassociate themselves with these individuals serves only to discredit genuine democratic forces.

Certain rash acts of the new authorities in Kyiv also served as serious grounds for the deployment of aggressive anti-Ukrainian propaganda. The differences in the history, economy and mentality of different Ukrainian regions should be considered, but the interests of all the country’s citizens must be respected. Setting Western Ukraine against Eastern Ukraine is fraught with the risk of a major disaster.

The leaders of the parliamentary opposition, believing that it was possible to act jointly with subversives from the extremist Right Sector, de facto surrendered to them control over the adoption of all tactical and operational decisions on behalf of all protestors, and were unable to prevent both the start of the violence and its escalation; legitimizing the actions of the subversive forces and ultranationalists, the opposition missed an opportunity for the necessary peaceful unfolding of events.
The Russian democratic opposition should learn this lesson, in order to avoid ending up in a similar situation in future. Joining forces without taking account of differences in positions, showing tolerance to the intolerant, nationalists and radicals, all the more so outright Nazis – this prepares the ground for their own political annihilation and the risk of a national disaster.

The fact that regime change was won through bloodshed means that the victors have to take account of the interests of extremists and do their bidding. It is a well-known fact that Ukrainian radicals are the opponents of European values, and that the concept of European integration for these forces was merely a pretext, while their actual ideology is Slavic “social-nationalism”.

The first steps of the new Ukrainian authorities included the absurd and provocative rejection of the law on regional languages and the intention of prohibiting the use of Russian as an official language. The adoption of this law called into question the very idea of European integration, which had served during the first weeks of the protest as a powerful factor for consolidating Ukrainian society. This decision stands in radical contradiction to the idea of European integration and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages ratified by Ukraine in 2006.

The material support among the masses for the Right Sector and its leader Dmytro Yarosh also looks symbolic – he is the advocate of a “great holy Ukrainian statehood”, who desires to incorporate Russia’s south-west regions in Ukraine, but is above all ready to join forces with Russian right-wing forces, and also from a practical perspective act through its provocations as an ally of the oligarch criminality and Kremlin hawks.

An abrupt increase in the influence of the radicals during the revolution and establishment of new authorities had another extremely negative result: Russia’s leadership was dealt a trump card that in its opinion justified splitting Crimea off from Ukraine, and possibly other territories as well.

Developments in Russia according to the Ukrainian scenario could lead to an even greater disaster than the one confronting Ukraine. The protest forces in Ukraine, with the exception of radicals and extremists, have consolidated on the basis of the idea of integration with Europe. This vector provides certain hopes that the current “fascist” and criminal trends will over time lose their significance in Ukraine’s public and political life.

Unfortunately, in Russia the European idea does not yet serve as the basis for the consolidation of opposition forces. A pooling of forces based on raw protest without any positive consolidating idea would in the event of the overthrow of the authorities inevitably result in the prevalence of radicals with values and tenets far removed from democracy and human rights, who consider violence as the main instrument of political struggle.

Violence is unacceptable!

The most important lesson of the events in Ukraine, not only for the Russian authorities and the opposition, but also for society as a whole, is that violence is absolutely unacceptable as a way of resolving any state problems other than foreign aggression.

If they resort to violence against peaceful protesters, the authorities can expect no guarantee that they will not share the same sad fate as Yanukovych and his government.
If the democratic opposition does not resolutely reject calls for violence in advance, it will inevitably become a hostage of whoever leads the military units.

Finally, after mass bloodshed and even forcible deviation from the constitutional framework, individuals and society as a whole cannot expect that further state actions will ensure stability in the country and will pursue the interests of all citizens. Our own history provides a dramatic confirmation of this fact. The violence and bloodshed in October 1993 served as the pretext for such politics, which resulted in the war in Chechnya, the criminal privatization, the falsification of the 1996 election results, and finally the establishment of the current aggressive-authoritarian regime.
Recent experiences in Ukraine show that the consequences of violent politics can include the threat of state collapse, and the dismemberment of its territory by neighboring states.

The representatives of the state authorities and all political forces sharing fundamental constitutional principles should immediately start holding consultations in Russia in order to prevent developments following the Ukrainian scenario. Both political repression of the opposition and acts of provocation aimed at destroying state institutions are inadmissible. Only the path of peaceful evolutionary development can guarantee the preservation of Russia’s integrity.

Only peaceful protest consolidated on the basis of the European development vector, guarding against the influence of ultra-radicals and subversives, can become a powerful factor for democratic regime change in the interests of Russian society as a whole rather than new-sprung dictators and oligarchs.

Prospects

The Political Committee disagrees with the decisions of Russia’s leadership and parliament, which has in advance allowed the entry and use of its Armed Forces in Ukraine in the absence of reliable evidence of the use of force or the evident preparation of such actions by Kyiv’s leadership in respect of the peaceful inhabitants of Crimea and other parts of this country. These decisions by Russia have not had a restraining influence on the crisis, but have instead escalated the crisis, fanning the extremism of nationalists in Kyiv and in Western Ukraine, and equally radicals in the South-Eastern regions of this country. These steps have been perceived by the outside world as preparations for Russia’s annexation of part of Ukraine’s territory, and have led to the unprecedented consolidation and opposition of the USA and its allies. This line has not even gained the support of Russia’s closest allies – Kazakhstan and Belarus, while China has advocated the territorial integrity of Ukraine, as have India and Brazil.

Large-scale military maneuvers deployed on the borders with Ukraine, the actions of “popular self-defense” units in Crimea, where you would have to be blind not to see Russian special forces, the blockade of ships and parts of Ukraine’s Black Sea Fleet, and the claims of the Crimean authorities to own all of Ukraine’s property on the peninsula without any negotiating process, the shotgun referendum – all these illegal actions have been initiated, encouraged and supported in all possible manner by the Russian leadership. The Crimean strategy could be applied to regions in Eastern Ukraine.

In a bid to prevent the entire post-Soviet space from choosing the European option, Russia’s leadership is demonstrating a readiness to violate the territorial integrity of a state that refuses to toe the line of this anti-European policy.

The Russian United Democratic Party YABLOKO respects the expression of the will of Crimea’s inhabitants expressed at the referendum. However, we believe that negotiations must be held based on the results of the referendum between the Crimean and Ukrainian authorities. Russia’s leadership should refrain from steps aimed at the forcible admission of Crimea as part of the Russian Federation.

Russia should not contribute to any further exacerbation of the situation in a neighboring state through its foreign policy actions. It should do everything within its power to establish peaceful and constructive inter-state relations between Russia and Ukraine. The territorial integrity of both countries must not be called into question by any actions. In addition, Russia must reject any actions of a political, economic or information nature aimed at destabilizing the situation in individual Ukrainian regions or in the country as a whole.

Furthermore, one can in no way close our eyes to the fact that the implementation of this approach, the only reasonable tactic in Russian-Ukrainian relations, will be under constant threat owing to the anti-European course adopted by Russia’s leadership.
From a cultural and historical perspective, Russia, Ukraine and Belarus are part of European civilization, and European development is the only viable option. The only way of maintaining statehood for all our countries in the 21st century is to pursue the European path.

Attempts to move in another direction represent a deviation from natural historical development. The Ukrainian crisis and its tragic consequences represent a large-scale manifestation of this deviation and the direct result of the violation of the natural process of the historical development of the post-Soviet space.

Therefore, an end to the pursuit of the “Eurasian” chimera, which does not constitute a real counterweight to fascism, but merely strengthens it, and the return of our country to the European path of development is a political task of the highest importance, the achievement of which is extremely important for the future of both Russia and the other post-Soviet states, first and foremost – Ukraine.

At this critical moment in time, the Russian United Democratic Party YABLOKO calls on the Russian political leadership and the country’s democratic forces for Ukraine to display maximum friendliness to the Ukrainian people and respect its right to independent European development.