By Vestnik Kavkaza
Yesterday the vice president of the USA Joseph Biden talked to the Ukrainian President on the phone. Biden urged Victor Yanukovich to withdraw the police special forces from the streets, set the detained free and arrest those who are guilty of attacking journalists and protesters. The vice president of the USA thinks that only dialogue and compromise will enable the formation of a new government which will have the confidence of the Ukrainian people.
However, the dialogue failed.
“The situation should be settled by people of Ukraine, the citizens of Ykraine. Unfortunately, they won’t do it. It will be done by representatives of the USA and the Western countries,” Andrey Marchukov, the senior scientist of the Center of Russian Peoples and Inter-ethnic Relations History of the Russian History Institute of the RAS, thinks. “The situation which we see in Ukraine was established to fulfil their geopolitical, economic, and military and strategic interests.”
Marchukov predicts that “all plans, all interests of the opposition, the Maidan, and the West which is heading them, will be fulfilled, as these people never pay attention to the other part of the Ukrainian population. The pro-European opposition, Russophobic and nationalist or even pro-Nazi Maidan and various Ukrainian right-wing nationalist groups don’t consider their opponents as equal people who are good enough for a dialogue, consensus or compromise. They want to establish their power, as they think they are right and that only they express Ukraine’s will and know what to do.”
Unlike 2004, today in Ukraine we see no serious attempts at self-expression by Eastern regions. Marchukov thinks the reasons for this are:
- A passive attitude is typical for the population of the Eastern regions,
- Yanukovich doesn’t want the situation,
- The leaders who could do it were partially eliminated after the Orange Revolution,
- It is thought that the Party of Regions expresses the will of people living in the territories, even though none of promises which were declared by Yanukovich at the elections have been fulfilled.
Ukraine sees a situation in which one part is actively supported by the West and another part is passive and has no support at all. Talk about Russia’s active interference or pressure on Ukraine are called a lie and nonsense by Marchukov: “Russia and its authorities directly show that it doesn’t interfere, that it is Ukraine’s business. I think the position is wrong, as the whole Russian policy toward Ukraine after 1991 was wrong and harmful, first of all, for millions of Ukrainian citizens… The current statements and behavior of the Russian leadership continue the policy of non-interference in Ukrainian affairs, recognition of sovereignty and the independence of Ukraine. Is it good or bad? I believe it is bad, but we have to face the reality. So, it is cheap and incorrect to accuse Russia of interference in internal affairs. We know very well who interferes in them. And unfortunately, the crisis will continue till the Western goals are fulfilled.”
