By Vestnik Kavkaza
The problem of changing the political system of Ukraine was discussed back in 2004. And now it becomes acute again. Supporters of federalization are main actors in the Southeast of the country. However, Kiev is absolutely against turning the state into a federation.
However, Moscow has a different view. Andrei Klishas, the chairman of the Council of the Federation Committee on Constitutional Legislation, Legal Affairs, Development of Civil Society, says that a federal state has different levels of organization of a political system. Full-scale state power requires certain competence on the level of a territory. Many countries (the USA, India) in case of multiculturalism or differences in economic and political development of territories chose the federal model. One third of the planet’s population lives in federative states. One of the most successful political and economic systems of Europe, Germany, is a federation.
Klishas thinks that in Ukraine a federative agreement should be signed. It would define the volume of power which regions are ready to give to the Kiev central authorities. In this case people will receive internal guarantees that they can speak Russian, that a part of their salaries is spent for development of regions, that they have a right to determine their own life on a certain territory.
Vadim Solovyov, deputy chairman of the State Duma Committee on Constitutional Legislation and National Building, thinks that Ukraine united two different nations: “Two different souls: one is Eastern Orthodox, another is Western Catholic. They could exist within a united state with absolutely different approaches only in the framework of the Soviet System which united them. When the Soviet model collapsed, these two different souls continued to live together because of momentum. However, when the new Ukrainian authorities declared establishing of a strictly national Ukrainian state and tried to impose the model of state development on the Eastern Ukrainians, it became clear that sooner or later Ukraine would stop being an unitary state.”
According to Solovyov, the February events in Kiev raised a question on existence of two states: “A direction of Ukrainian development will depend on a position of the Kiev authorities: whether they could understand views of residents of Eastern and Southeastern Ukraine, take civilized political steps, response requests of the Eastern Ukrainians and the Russian population or they would ignore them. If they were serious enough, the situation could be settled softly and we would get a federative state. If they had no understanding and practical appraisal of the current situation, it would lead to a severe conflict. I wish we saw no full-scale military actions and a civil war.”
