Translated material
Farewell to Ukraine
In external terms, the current political situation in Ukraine is reminiscent of the late Yeltsin situation in Russia. Relative freedom and democracy in Ukraine, like seven years ago in Russia, are a consequence of the shadow and public struggle of oligarchic clans for decisive control over the country. But unlike Yeltsin’s Russia, where influential financial and industrial groups controlled the largest assets but did not control politically specific territories, in Ukraine each clan has “its own” regions. It is no coincidence that in the Ukrainian parliamentary elections, strictly depending on the geographical location, the Yanukovych-Akhmetov Party of Regions, the Yulia Tymoshenko Bloc, and Yushchenko’s “Our Home is Ukraine” won. Ukrainian-speaking Western Ukraine is mentally a backyard of Western Europe. Russian-speaking Eastern Ukraine is the outskirts of the Russian Empire, the same Little Russia that nationalistically minded Russian political scientists like to talk about. The south and center of the country are transitional regions from “European” Ukraine to “Russian” Ukraine.
Such mental heterogeneity of Ukraine did not allow political technologies to do in this country what they succeeded in Russia - to lock all capital into the entourage of the head of state, clear out the legal political field and reduce the entire political process to the struggle of intra-power groups with each other.
As a result, we will become and are already becoming witnesses to a paradoxical situation. Politically, Ukraine is increasingly moving away from Russia, while Russian private and state capital is increasingly drawn to Ukraine. The first is out of an instinct for self-preservation, the second is out of a desire to realize the geopolitical ambitions of their real owners, to prevent Ukraine from completely leaving Russia.
What in Russia is mistakenly called the “Orange Revolution” was just a fixation of the European choice of a significant part of the Ukrainian nation. As for its other part, oriented towards Russia, the state of Russia itself now does not allow it to be “chosen”. You can come here to earn money, which is what a significant part of the Ukrainian population does, but it is difficult to make a strategic ally of a country that itself has not found its place in the modern world. I haven’t decided whether it is Europe or Asia, “sovereign democracy” or banal Asian despotism.
Therefore, Russia can say goodbye to Ukraine for a while. It will go its own painful way, whether it will become part of the European Union or not, but in any case it will retain its state identity. Russia, where the authorities are mired in the division of property and internal struggles, still has to make the way to a new identity. Today's Ukraine may not be better than today's Russia, but it is certainly not Russia.