Does Russia or Ukraine even want the ruins of Donbas?

By Slava Tsukerman

 

 

On March 1,2016 Minister for Foreign Affairs of Ukraine Pavlo Klimkin, speaking at the 31st regular session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, stated :

“Russian aggression against Ukraine has led to the deaths of 9,000 people. More than 20 thousand were wounded and nearly two million citizens were resettled.”

 According to the 2014 report of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs infrastructure of Donbas cities Donetsk and Luhansk were damaged in the amount of 440 million dollars. Over two thousand objects, including 659 public buildings, 1230 private houses and 178 offices were damaged. In Donetsk alone, more than 70% of businesses were closed.

At a summit in Minsk on February 11, 2015, the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany agreed to a package of measures to stop the war in the Donbas region of Ukraine. In spite of the official armistice the military activity in the area didn’t stop.

According to the Ukrainian sources  Russian military activity in eastern Ukraine is increasing. The Intelligence Service of Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense reports that Russian regular servicemen continue to rotate in the conflict zone while Russian-backed separatist forces, in many cases under command of the Russian officers, keep receiving new military equipment, weapons and ammunition.

According to Ukrainian officials on March 1, 2016 Russia sent three trains with ammunition to the occupied city of Ilovaisk and two tanks and four armored vehicles to Novoazovsk. The Ukrainian Intelligence Service reports that “due to the rotation of Russian special forces, the 24th special purpose separate brigade (Novosibirsk, Russia) was deployed to the Donetsk region”.

On March 2, 2016 Ukrainian TV presented a video of the speech of NATO Supreme Allied Commander Philip Breedlove.

General Breedlove says NATO and partners have to be ready to rebuff Kremlin threat. The NATO leader claims Russia has placed “well above” 1,000 pieces of military hardware in Ukraine over the past 12 months.

He believes that Russia is building up its offensive against Ukraine. He is sure the Kremlin continues to violate the Minsk agreements by enlarging the territory and increasing the arms along the Ukrainian border.

Breedlove also believes that Russia’s threat to use nuclear weapons is not serious. In his opinion the Alliance and its partners have to be ready to rebuff the potential aggression from the Kremlin.

On March 3, 2016, President Obama extended U.S. sanctions imposed on Russia over its military intervention in Ukraine for another year. The lifting of the sanctions is tied to the fulfillment of the Minsk peace agreements. Part of those agreements require Moscow to help Ukraine’s government regain control over its borders in the areas held by the rebels and for local elections to be held there. So far there has been minimal progress towards this.

What is the real reason for the failure of the peace process in Donbas?

Most of the observers agree that the ruined present Donbas today has no value to Russia to Ukraine.

Here is an excerpt from the interview with Vladislav Inozemtsev, a highly respected Russian economist and director of the Moscow Center for the Study of Postindustrial Society, published by the site Apostrophe.com.ua:

“So, you think, that if not the reaction of the West, the Kremlin would have captured more Ukrainian territory?”

 “Oh, of course”.

 “What would Moscow gain?”

 “Nothing. You know, Putin is not an economist. And he does not think in these categories. The current head of the Kremlin is a person who thinks in terms of the geopolitics of the XIX century. Today getting of almost any extra territory of any country is unjustified and counterproductive. Capture new territories in the world today is the most ludicrous thing one can do. Such regions are, as a rule, require the development, financing, maintaining some order over there… In the XVI-XVII centuries, it was clear that if you capture any small country, where farmers plow the land, you get more products, more taxes, and so forth. But today, when the objective basis of the economy is the sphere of services, technology and efficiency, it is not necessary to capture a new territory. It is necessary to develop the existing ones. Russia has enough undeveloped areas. So annexing the Crimea, from the point of view of economy was the most ludicrous thing that could be done. But Putin does not think like an economist. He thinks in terms of imperial policy. He believes that one needs to expand the territory. He knows that periods of territory contraction in the past had always been periods of decline for Russia, and the periods of expansion were the time of revival. Putin understands how it works on the psychology of population, and economic logic has no value to him”.

Nevertheless Inozemtsev doesn’t believe that Putin in fact wants to annex Donbas.

Inozemtsev says: “Now, after the war, when we have become witness to enormous destruction, a dysfunctional system, and the region’s transformation into an economic wasteland, obviously Russia will not annex it. … Much there has been destroyed; much has been stolen, removed to Russia and resold. I believe this region represents no special economic advantage.”

The well known Ukrainian-American historian, political scientist, poet, writer, and painter Alexander J. Motyl comments Inozemtsev’s interview in the World Affairs Journal :

“The bottom line—surprise, surprise!—is this: Vladimir  Putin doesn’t want peace. He wants to make Ukraine into a permanent backwater state dependent on the Kremlin. Kiev to reintegrate the now occupied, politically poisoned, and economically ravaged Donbas into Ukraine, knowing full well that this region, now forever crippled by Putin’s proxies, will condemn Ukraine to being a permanently bankrupt puppet of the mafia state next door. This would be suicide.”

Alexander J. Motyl concludes his comments with the statement:

“Tragically, although many Ukrainian policymakers understand it makes no sense for Ukraine to infect itself with this cancer, the power of Ukrainian patriotic rhetoric—‘The Donbas is eternal Ukrainian land!’—may wind up saddling the country with a burden so heavy that it will crush its sovereignty and its democracy, move it decisively away from Europe and the world, and succeed in achieving what Viktor Yanukovych failed to do: transform Ukraine into a backward hinterland of a backward imperialist petro-state.”

A lot of people in Ukraine, Russia and all over the world share this opinion.

Here are two examples.

An Ukrainian blogger Rudakovv :

“Ukraine needs to get rid of Donbas as from a region affected by gangrene.” 

Economist Anders Aslund :

“The real question is, how much will reintegration of the Donbas cost Ukraine, and who will pay for it?

 Who should pay for the restoration of the Donbas? The obvious answer is the aggressor, Russia. In a just world, Ukraine would add a demand to the Minsk negotiations for some $20 billion in war reparations from Russia for the Donbas. In reality, however, only losers pay war reparations.”

It’s important though to take into consideration that a lot of Ukrainians don’t share this point of view.

Here is a very typical statement of an Ukrainian blogger Sergei Klimovskii

 

“During this week the Kremlin actively but carefully implements into the Ukraine’s information space the idea, that Ukrainians should get rid of the occupied parts of Donbas. The ‘friends’ of Ukraine and the ‘independent’

experts are delivering this idea, since no one would trust Kremlin’s masters of propaganda. The ‘suggestions’ should be made by the ‘friends’.

“Moscow has no choice but setting up this “mine”. Sanctions produce results not as fast as carpet bombing, but they are equally destructive. We can say they are insidiously destructive. They are even more dangerous for the Kremlin than bombing. They put pressure not only on the economy but on the psyche of Moscow.”

Sergei Klimovskii believes that the Kremlin has decided to try a plan: let’s convince Ukrainians to give away Donbas themselves. Russians would promise to stop their attacks, only to trigger the lifting of sanctions.

Klimovskii concludes: “Well, we will give them this miserable third of Donbas, and then what? Costs and troubles will continue. Kremlin proposes peace in exchange for one-third of Donbas. It is another Moscow lie. It is better to forget it, and keep building European Ukraine.”