PUTIN’S POWER GRAB: FIRST ARMENIA, NOW UKRAINE
Daily Beast
Dec 4 2013
By Will Cathcart
December 4th 20135:45 am
The protests sweeping Kiev are as much a reaction against the Kremlin
as for the E.U.-and Brussels and Washington need to take note.
On Monday in the largest Ukraine protest since the Orange Revolution,
as thousands mobilized in continuation of their demand for the
resignation of their government and for sanctions against those
responsible for the violence on Saturday-and as protestors in Paris,
Tbilisi, Yerevan, Detroit, and cities all over Canada gathered in
solidarity-Russian President Vladimir Putin stated the following from
the Armenian capital of Yerevan:
“Russia has never intended to go away from here … We will be
strengthening our positions in the Transcaucasus drawing upon all
the best that we have inherited from our ancestors, drawing upon on
good relationship with all the countries of the region, including
with Armenia.”
The hundreds of Armenian protestors marching toward the Armenian
president’s palace shouting “Putin, go home” and “No to the USSR”
might disagree. It is no coincidence that Putin is currently in
Armenia. The protests and bloodshed we are seeing today in Ukraine
are the culmination of a recent blitz from Moscow to force Armenia,
Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia away from Europe and into Putin’s
reactionary Eurasian Union, a kind of neo-USSR, Jr.
A Recurring Cycle
Last September, Putin paid a visit to Armenian President Serzh
Sargsyan, three months before the Vilnius Summit. After a closed
and no doubt very uncomfortable meeting, Sargsyan announced that his
country would be signing Putin’s Eurasian Customs Union instead of the
EU Association Agreement, which includes a free trade agreement. The
Eurasian Customs Union and EU trade agreements are by nature mutually
exclusive.
Angry Armenians took to the streets. In a single day Moscow sent a
message to the inhabitants of an entire region that they do not have
a choice-that their independence is arbitrary. Two months later,
the people of Ukraine are now sending a message back, though it may
be too late.
The Ukraine parliamentary debates leading up to the Vilnius Summit,
in which the EU Association Agreement would be initialed, came down
to a vote whether to allow the jailed former Prime Minister Yulia
Tymoshenko, a bona fide political prisoner, medical treatment in
Germany. Her release was a precondition to signing the EU Association
Agreement. After another mysterious meeting with Putin, Ukrainian
President Viktor Yanukovych’s ruling party refused to allow Tymoshenko
to travel to Germanyand thus on November 21st the Ukraine Parliament
suspended its path to EU integration.
In the months leading up to the Vilnius Summit, there were no
statements from the White House, no real backup plans from Brussels.
The leadership in Brussels and Washington didn’t seem to fully grasp
the gravity of this situation or the will of the Ukraine people,
at least until one hundred thousand angry Ukrainians and one rogue
tractor took to the streets and police began beating them and throwing
flash grenades. What we are seeing isn’t a “regional shift,” it is
backlash against overt regional coercion against the will of a people.
When protestors take control of their own city hall as they did in
Kiev, the message they are sending is no longer metaphorical.
In this ‘Darkroom,’ Ukraine’s bloody clash pits Europe against Russia.
In many ways, by the time it arrived on November 28, the Vilnius Summit
had already become arbitrary. Armenia and Ukraine were already lost
and now the two tiny countries of Georgia and Moldova have become
unadulterated geopolitical targets. It’s a familiar routine: The
gallant Western knight dangles the carrot and quotes Ronald Reagan;
the hungry rabbit gets excited; the rabbit hops in the way of the bear,
who is angry about the carrot; the carrot and the knight disappear;
intentions are good but timing is bad; promises and rabbits get broken;
the cycle continues.
Moscow will do absolutely everything in its power-from offering
cheap natural gas as an incentive to threatening to impose harsh
restrictions on imports as punishment–to prevent the next step of the
Association Agreement, the actual signing, and to turn the populations
(or at least the representatives) of these countries against their
own idealist European notions. Putin has successfully done so now in
both the Ukraine and Armenia. The Russian tactics are working, the
U.S. and EU are failing and in turn the United States and European
Union are failing the populations of these countries who have put
their own security at risk for a better way of life.
The Georgian Role
Fresh out of a successful Vilnius Summit where the Georgian government
initialed the Association Agreement with the EU (the Ukraine and
Armenia did not, hence the recent protests), Georgia’s new government
seems to be setting itself up as a regional leader for EU integration.
There are many reasons for this, including Georgia’s pro-Western
track record for the last decade, its intense contribution to ISAF in
both Iraq and Afghanistan and the 2008 war with Russia. Yet also amid
accusations that the new government in Tbilisi has imprisoned former
leaders as political revenge, Georgia’s post-Saakashvili government
has a vested interest-if not a perceived obligation-to prove to the
U.S. and EU that its pro-Western foreign policy will not change course
even as it wisely seeks to mend ties with Russia. The recent Vilnuis
Summit proved to be just such an opportunity, at least for Georgia
and Moldova.
As Georgia seeks to normalize relations with Russia, the Russian
proxy-government in the breakaway region of South Ossetia continues
to recklessly drive its boundary-line further into Georgia territory,
violating the 2008 ceasefire agreement and the terms of Russia’s 2012
WTO membership. Such moves indicate that Russian pressure will only
increase exponentially as Georgia and Moldova continue formal steps
toward the EU Association Agreement initiated last week.
The initiative of the Ukrainian people to stand up against a
president who is putting Moscow’s demands before their own is of
immense significance.
According to Georgian Commentator Mark Mullen, “The Kremlin doesn’t
know how to be friends. They don’t understand positive incentives.
This will cause them problems with European leaders, most importantly
Merkel, who is already pushing back. And most importantly with
the people in neighboring countries that they so enjoy pushing
around. It is possible to imagine a scenario in Ukraine or Armenia
where anti-Russian feelings unite the people and serve as a politically
unifying force to divided opposition. As usual, it largely relates to
how many people are out in the streets. The next neighborhood summit
the EU holds should be in the summer.”
Paying for Western Aspirations
The initiative of the Ukrainian people to stand up against a
president who is putting Moscow’s demands before their own is of
immense significance. This is more than a simple conflict between the
people of Ukraine and their president; this is geopolitical friction
between a politically capricious and financially unstable European
Union and a belligerent emerging autocratic Eurasian Union.
But the Eurasian Union is not founded on a set of higher ideals-however
imperfect one may argue the EU’s own ideals are.
Putin’s Eurasian Union, including only Belarus-“Europe’s Last
Dictatorship”– and Kazakhstan, was created for the sole reason
of keeping its neighbors out of the EU. It is no wonder then that
Russia’s neighbors-at least their citizens, though evidently not their
governments-continue to run toward a financially weakening EU. Perhaps
it is less a matter of running toward Europe than away from Russia.
If Brussels and Washington don’t get their act together soon and send a
counter message to the “real” European community, not the one defined
by treaties and borders-the one defined by a desire for individual
freedoms and the right to honest prosperity-then the message that
Russia’s policy of aggressively isolating its neighbors is working.
This is why there is blood on the streets of Kiev. This is why nearly
a decade after the Color Revolutions, a different sort of the same
revolutionary chatter is drumming up again, and it has very little to
do with the actual European Union and more to do with a people’s right
to choose their country’s direction. These people see themselves as
part of the European community because that community represents a
way out of the corruption and prevailing autocratic tendencies that
have overtaken their lives.
The coming months will prove whether the EU and U.S. will make good
on the promise of a better democratic world that it has been selling
to these people since the collapse of the Soviet Union. There are
many hot spots around the world to distract the attention of Western
politicians and diplomats but few real opportunities to actually make
a difference regarding the course that a society and a region will
take. Decisive inaction is not to be confused with strategic patience.
The time is now-indeed long overdue-for American and European leaders
to make it clear that they stand with the people of the Ukraine
and Caucasus region and respect their sacrifices along the road to
democracy as they struggle to fend off a bully to the north. I truly
wish them all the best of luck.
Will Cathcart is a former media advisor to the President of Georgia
and former managing editor of the Charleston Mercury newspaper. Will
currently works in business development in the Black Sea region. His
articles have appeared on The Daily Beast, Anderson Cooper 360,
in the Georgian Journal and in the Buenos Aires Herald.
From: A. Papazian
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/12/04/putin-s-power-grab-first-armenia-now-ukraine.html