Carnegie Moscow Center
After the May 25 poll, a new president of Ukraine will hardly inaugurate stability. One can only hope that Ukraine decides its future before it turns into a burnt-out case.
The south and even the east of Ukraine do not express massive support for separatism. The violent clashes in Odessa may signal a turning point—indicating that Ukrainian society itself is trying to stop the country’s fragmentation.
There are many Ukrainians, even in the southeast, who have grown accustomed to Ukrainian independence and would resist efforts to fragment Ukraine and force the annexation or creation of quasi-independent republics.
To understand the crisis in Ukraine, it is necessary to look at the region the way its residents see it. Contrary to the Western narrative of Russia aggression, the real story is much more complicated.
After the end of the Cold War, the West neglected the task of solving the “Russia problem” through integration. Trying to solve it now through economic warfare is not going to work.
It would be better for Russia to reach an agreement with the West on the territorial integrity of Ukraine, coupled with an assurance of its permanent neutrality and a simultaneous accession by Ukraine to the Association Agreement with the EU and to the Russia-led Customs Union.
Ukraine’s Jews are, for now, not a central part of the political drama, but the repeated use of anti-Semitism as a tool in the country’s full-contact politics sends a worrying signal nonetheless.
Ukraine is facing a serious threat which appears to lie within the country’s own domestic politics.
Putin’s rhetorical shift toward calm and congeniality shows that now Putin is presenting himself as a victor who has formulated and applied the new rules of the game.
The video bulletins from the conflict zone in Ukraine produced by Simon Ostrovsky demonstrate that this country is a perfect trial bed for new forms of journalism.