EU Commissioner for Enlargement Stefan Fule is arriving in Kiev to meet with President Viktor Yanukovych, as well as the leaders of political parties and the public. The Ukrainian Independent Bureau of Investigation recalls that the last time the commissioner was in Kiev was at the end of January, and during his speech to the European Parliament on February 5 Fule called the Ukrainian opposition and representatives of the protesters to distance themselves from radical movements.
Currently in Ukraine there is a very fragile lull, which at any moment could explode with any provocation, turning into a collision once again. Rostislav Ischenko, President of the Center of System Analysis and Forecasting, believes that "the process of resolving the situation in Ukraine is much less dependent on the actual Ukrainian politicians and their positions. Because the U.S.'s deep involvement in the leadership of the entire Ukrainian opposition and all its demands, desires and aspirations has been revealed."
Mr Ischenko believes that "the Russian Federation, with its official nonintervention, must participate in the conflict, at least at the level of negotiations with the United States. Because today it is clear that the war in Ukraine is not so much against Ukraine itself, not so much against the Ukrainian government, but against the Russian Federation. Therefore Russia, regardless of its own will, is one of the conflict sides."
The Ukrainian government is unable to retain power, "because when for two months in a row you have 4000 militants paralyzing life in the capital and threatening to paralyze the entire state, then you have no power. But the opposition is not able to pick up this power, because the official parliamentary opposition has virtually nothing. On Sundays, about 1.5-2 thousand Kiev inhabitants come to support it on Sundays, as though it were a holiday. And the rest of the time, the main striking forces are the notorious militants who are not controlled either by Yatsenuk or by Klitschko, nor even by Tyagnybok," says Mr Ischenko.
"For such a crisis there are only two solutions: either the start of the bloody stage of the civil war, when there will be hundreds or thousands of corpses on the streets instead of 5-7, or else its gradual decay, some compromise, which, in fact, does not cancel the confrontation, just postponing it for a while. I understand that now this kind of compromise option has somewhere been found, and started to implement. Apparently, negotiations will be conducted on maximal resetting of presidential powers by the time of the next presidential election, adoption of a new constitution to federalize the country and delegating a significant part of the power to local authoritie to mitigate this conflict between east and west, at least for a while," the expert believes.
He is sure that "the east and the west will still vote differently, it is clear that the parts of the parliament elected by the east and the west will still be looking in different directions, and it is clear that the conflict is not resolved completely. But at least, it will somehow be delayed until the parliamentary elections in 2017. In my opinion, there is now an opportunity of a quasi-peaceful conflict resolution, i.e. converting it into a latent stage."
