Interview by Vladimir Nesterov, exclusively for Vestnik Kavkaza
Another round of talks of the contact group on settlement of the situation in the east of Ukraine took place yesterday, late at night in Minsk. There haven’t been reports about agreements reached yet, but it seemed they discussed the need to fulfill all the clauses of the Minsk treaties, which included a ceasefire, a dissociation line which was defined by the memorandum of September 19th, withdrawal of heavy arms and release of war prisoners.
It is interesting that, ahead of the meeting, Kiev rejected the non-aligned status of Ukraine, and the country intends to join NATO.
The deputy head of the Federation Council committee on international affairs, senator Vladimir Dzhabarov, told Vestnik Kavkaza about the situation in Ukraine.
- How good is it for Ukraine to separate from Russia and other countries of the former USSR, if we speak about leaving the CIS?
- It is not good for Ukraine, but it is good for the current Ukrainian leadership. They are oriented towards Western Europe and the US and they understand that the higher their confrontation with Russia, the more support they get from the West. They speak about the denunciation of the Belavezha Accords but they forget that these agreements, that Ukraine signed together with Russia and Belarus, were together with the agreement on the dissolution of the USSR and the denunciation of the Union Treaty of 1922.
How will they separate from it? If they denounce it, we can consider that Ukraine is again a part of the USSR together with other republics. That sounds like science fiction. Still, Ukraine will lose a lot.
They bring the example of Georgia, that left the CIS and nothing dramatic happened. It still uses agreements concluded within the framework of the CIS, such as those on free trade. But there is a difference. Georgia only joined the CIS treaty, but Ukraine created it. If Ukraine leaves it, we have every reason to annul all the agreements connected to its membership of the CIS.
I think Ukraine might have serious problems, considering their association with the EU. It has been postponed for a year, but it will eventually come into force. They will then close their borders, introduce fees, there might be problems with the visa regime. There are 5 million Ukrainians working in Russia. According to our economists, those who work in Russia officially transferred 3.4 billion euros to Ukraine in 2013. This is what went through banks, so how much did they bring in cash? I think the same amount.
So the Ukrainian budget is getting about 7-8 billion dollars from Ukrainian migrants in Russia. If we introduce visas, this channel will break. I think that those 5 million will ask their leaders in Kiev: “Where are you taking us? Why do we need it?” The Rada is quite radical now, it is clear who rules there, but I hope for reason in President Poroshenko, who will not sign the decree on leaving the CIS.
- Were there really no good specialists among the 40-million Ukrainian population that they needed to call in experts from abroad and give them Ukrainian passports?
- It is just ridiculous. Can you imagine that some Albanian or Lithuanian enters the American government and urgently receives citizenship because of it? No country that respects itself will act this way. Kakha Bendukidze at some point was invited to be a minister in Georgia under President Saakashvili. But he was at least an ethnic Georgian. He was from Tbilisi. But here it is unclear. I don’t think they understand what they are doing. What has the government of Poroshenko done until now? What is their main project? It is the wall project, to build a wall and close contacts with Russia. He should not, however, forget to make a hole for the pipeline, otherwise it will not work.
We remember, the last wall was in Berlin, recently we celebrated the anniversary of its destruction. And Ukrainians want to build another wall. Do they think that Europe ends at the Russian-Ukrainian border? They want to separate us from Europe. And a country in extreme poverty wants to spend enormous sums on the construction of such a wall. They say: “It will keep the population busy.” Busy with what? With nonsense? This is wasting public money.
As for these foreigners, the minister of economy, a citizen of Lithuania, said that Ukraine is on the verge of bankruptcy. Did you see the reaction of the Rada? They laughed. The news from Ukraine every day is that they don’t have gas here, they don’t have food supplies there, hospitals have no heating there. And what will come next? You think that those conflicts in Vinnitsa, in Kharkov, came out of the blue? It is dissatisfaction with the authorities. People again went to the barricades. The Maidan can continue, can happen again.
Nothing good will come of it. We don’t need Ukraine at war, it will be an endless problem in the center of Europe. Who needs it? We don’t. Western Europe also does not. When it invited Ukraine to the EU, it was pursuing its reasonable goals. They wanted a huge labor market, a cheap market, a huge market sales market, with the possibility of selling some products to Russia without fees, using our free trade. They did not want to get a country at war, a conflict in the South-East, with military gangs wandering around Ukraine. Do they need a constant conflict? No, they don’t. The Americans don’t care.They are far away, on the other side of the ocean.
There are still debts that need to be paid, including 3 billion dollars to Russia, which they received last year and organized an overthrow afterwards.
