February 22, 2014, 16:41 / Opinions

Vladimir Fedorin: The end of the Medvedev doctrine

Ukraine is leaving the post-Soviet space. What should Russia do?

On the night of Thursday, declared the day before as an all-Ukrainian day of mourning, shooting resumed in the center of Kyiv. By evening, the death toll approached a hundred. Most of the dead were unarmed: a pensioner, a farmer, a political activist, a political scientist from the Ukrainian Catholic University...

The investigative commission will say who was the instigator of the shooting on February 20. It is only clear that political responsibility for the execution of Ukrainians of all nationalities lies not only with the Yanukovych regime, but also with the Kremlin, which has placed its bet on it.

On Thursday morning, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev announced that Moscow would resume economic assistance to Ukraine only if the government of Viktor Yanukovych is “on its toes” and does not allow itself to be “wiped on its feet.” The cause-and-effect relationship between the Kremlin's position and the escalation of violence in Kyiv will sooner or later be established - not by investigators, but by historians. However, it is already obvious today: the “Medvedev Doctrine,” proclaimed in August 2008 and declaring the republics of the former USSR to be Russia’s “backyard,” cannot bring our country, even in its current, unfree state, anything but losses.

Brezhnev-Medvedev Doctrine

The small victorious war with Georgia and the unilateral recognition of the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia brought an end to 17 years of Russian power policy in the space of the former Soviet empire. On August 31, 2008, Medvedev summed up the new strategy in an interview with central television channels. “Russia, like other countries of the world, has regions in which there are privileged interests,” he said. “We will work very carefully in these regions and develop friendly relations with these states.”

Translated from diplomatic to public, “very careful work” implied limiting the sovereignty of the former republics of the USSR that had not managed to integrate into European structures, and, if necessary, projecting military force in the post-Soviet space. The political instrument of this strategy was the support of authoritarian regimes in neighboring countries and the destabilization of unstable democracies - propaganda, financial, foreign policy.

This policy is nothing new. In fact, this is a copy of the “Brezhnev Doctrine”, approved by Soviet tanks on the soil of Czechoslovakia in August 1968: Eastern Europe is the backyard of the USSR, deprived of the right to political choice, and the custodians of the status quo are authoritarian regimes molded in the Soviet image and likeness and infiltrated by Soviet agents. In the event of a threat to these regimes, Moscow was ready to use hard force - which, in fact, happened in the case of the client regimes of Abkhazia and South Ossetia in 2008.

Commenting on the Kremlin’s new foreign policy strategy, Fyodor Lukyanov, editor-in-chief of the analytical magazine “Russia in Global Affairs,” in the fall of 2008 called Ukraine “the main platform for the upcoming geopolitical clash” between Moscow and the West.

Actually, Ukraine never ceased to be such a platform, and the doctrine of limited sovereignty did not go anywhere even in the “wild 1990s.” The founding document of the post-Soviet world - the Belovezhskaya Accords - was understood by the leaders of Russia and Ukraine who signed it in completely different ways: Boris Yeltsin - as the foundation of a new Union in which Russia would dominate directly, without the union Center headed by Gorbachev that had bothered him; Leonid Kravchuk - how the beginning of a peaceful divorce.

The Ukrainian view of what was happening was more realistic. Moscow poorly understood Kyiv’s motives and regularly sent it threatening signals, but, as a rule, in vain. In August 1991, immediately after the failure of the GKChP putsch, Yeltsin, through his press secretary Pavel Voschanov, in response to Ukraine’s declaration of independence, stated that if neighbors did not participate in the renewed Union, he would refuse to recognize administrative borders as state ones. In the fall of the same year, from the pages of Nezavisimaya Gazeta, Russian security forces threatened a nuclear attack against Ukraine. A couple of years ago, I asked Kravchuk how seriously did the Ukrainian leadership take these threats? He replied that he considered them a bluff: Russia had enough of its own problems without military adventures. In defiance of the Kremlin, Ukraine created its own army and gradually built or galvanized the main institutions of statehood - the national currency, the tax system, and private property.

Having come to terms with the internal independence of Ukraine, Russia nevertheless successfully blocked the integration of the “brotherly republic” with the West. The Bucharest NATO summit in the spring of 2008 (that is, even before the war with Georgia and the proclamation of the principle of limited sovereignty) remained with Moscow: Kyiv did not receive an invitation to join the North Atlantic alliance. Vladimir Putin then threatened Western “partners” that Russia would refuse to recognize the territorial integrity of Ukraine. The partners agreed that the game was not worth the candle.

The rise to power of Viktor Yanukovych in 2010 and his corrupt rule have left Ukraine extremely vulnerable to outside pressure. Through blackmail and promises, Moscow forced Yanukovych to abandon the creation of a free trade zone with the EU. In December 2013, Ukraine's sovereignty, by and large, was at its lowest point in all post-Soviet years. The country was able to adopt the 2014 budget only after receiving financial assistance from Russia. De facto, Ukraine has slipped to the position of one of the Russian regions, the budget of which depends on the decisions of the federal center.

Something went wrong

The Kremlin's geopolitical gambit, carried out according to the behests of Boris Berezovsky (to buy not companies, but their top managers), turned out to be a failure. We must honestly admit that few people expected this, either in Putin’s Russia or in Yanukovych’s Ukraine.

By the fall of 2013, the Ukrainian president looked not like a top manager, but an all-powerful master. All centers of possible resistance - from the opposition, the judicial and law enforcement systems to the electronic and print media - were either marginalized or brought under the control of the president's family. The only weak link in the entire structure seemed to be the depressing situation of the economy, but it was here that the Kremlin was ready to lend its shoulder - subject to a significant narrowing of Ukrainian sovereignty.

The Kremlin and Yanukovych did not take into account two factors. First, they underestimated the institutional depth of Ukrainian society. The parliamentary opposition, civil activists, the middle class of Kyiv and all classes of Western Ukraine, churches - all this pluralistic “soup” was not taken into account, and, as it turned out, completely in vain. Secondly, the specifics of national identity. It was in Russia that the memory of an empire that collapsed twice in the 20th century made “revolution” a dirty word. In Ukraine, which has experienced several national catastrophes over the past four centuries, they are not afraid of revolution - at the very first people’s meeting in early December, the Maidan crowd of hundreds of thousands chanted this word along with the word “vidstavka” (then referring to the government of Mykola Azarov).

When in Ukraine it came to a direct confrontation between society and the authorities, it turned out that Yanukovych (and Moscow, which supported him) had nothing on the side except brute force. Who campaigned the loudest for Ukrainians to turn towards Russia? Verkhovna Rada deputy Oleg Tsarev promised to disperse the Maidan in an hour. Strangely, the children of this supporter of the Customs Union are studying in sodomized Europe, and companies associated with Tsarev are in no hurry to return the $13 million borrowed from VTB. Another “Russophile,” people’s deputy Vadim Kolesnichenko, spoke about the official Ukrainian opposition as follows: “All these motherfuckers simply need to be destroyed!” and demanded that the journalist quote him verbatim.

Before Yanukovych’s geopolitical turn towards Moscow, these figures remained marginal even in his own party. All that “soft power” of Russia, investments in which were talked about so much in Moscow after Putin’s embarrassment during the Orange Revolution, was of the same quality. With friends like these, you don't need any enemies.

The result is natural. Now Russia will have to deal with a completely different Ukraine. The behind-the-scenes deals that underpinned interstate cooperation on key issues for Moscow (gas contracts, the Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol, participation in the privatization of the Ukrainian military-industrial complex) have been called into question. Given the mood of the Maidan, the Kremlin will have to deal with a much tougher opponent in any negotiations in the future.

Is win-win possible?

Moscow made many mistakes in preparation for and during the Ukrainian crisis. Instead of soft power, the Kremlin used the language of blackmail, threatening to close its market to Ukrainian goods. Inflexibility, arrogance, low awareness, which is increasingly replaced by simple but increasingly aggressive television propaganda - this standard gentlemanly set of Russian diplomacy has awakened a national-bourgeois revolution in Ukraine, which in the foreseeable future will bury the remnants of the Soviet institutional legacy.

Despite the bellicose statements of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Prime Minister Medvedev, Vladimir Putin has already demonstrated that working to escalate the internal Ukrainian conflict is not an alternative option. By appointing systemic liberal Vladimir Lukin as his special representative for resolving the Ukrainian crisis, he showed that he was ready to defend Russian interests with the help of more subtle tools. Unlike his former successor, Putin holds real power in his hands, for which he bears real responsibility. The pacifier of Chechnya does not need to prove his toughness to Russian hawks. Medvedev's aggressive doctrine was proclaimed amid talk of Russia as a "safe haven" in the ocean of the global financial crisis. The outbreak of the Cold War in the context of the current crisis in emerging markets, which also affected Russia, will transfer the Russian economy from stagnation to deep recession.

Does Russia need confrontation with the new Ukrainian government? The Kremlin’s legitimist discourse (every government once elected is from God) looks like a mockery in the case of Yanukovych, who had no qualms about enriching his family and friends in front of the whole world. It is possible to torpedo Ukraine’s European integration for reasons of imperial prestige, but the economic embargo will hit primarily the eastern regions, which are generally considered pro-Russian, and with a high probability will only contribute to their forced inclusion in the all-Ukrainian nation-building project - not to mention the losses of Russian consumers. The same applies to the idea of introducing a visa regime, which will affect not only Ukrainian citizens working in the Russian Federation, but also Russians coming to Ukrainian resorts. Finally, an acute ideological confrontation with democratic Ukraine may have unpredictable domestic political consequences for the authoritarian regime that unleashed it.

Diplomacy, especially diplomacy in the spirit of Putin’s “pragmatism,” is bargaining. Even maintaining the status quo in trade relations with Ukraine, which is integrating into the EU, will be presented by Russia as a huge concession.

What can the democratic Ukrainian government offer for its part?

To begin with, courtesy. Yes, Russia supported the losing side of the internal Ukrainian conflict, but we need to look to the future. Post-Soviet Ukraine is not Jacobin France, capable of waging war against the entire “old world” at once. Ukraine needs to put its house in order and eliminate the gap with its neighbors that has accumulated over the past two decades. Exporting revolution is not the best way to create an optimal external background for a breakthrough in development. The new Ukrainian government should not turn into a bogeyman the facts of Russian interference in the internal affairs of its country that took place before the victory of the revolution - the liberated Ukrainian media will do this for it. These facts should be carefully recorded, but they should not be used in public debate, given the heightened sensitivity of the former metropolis. In exchange for tact, Ukraine can and should purge the bureaucratic and security apparatus of employees of “dual subordination.”

Ukraine can (and should) allow Russian companies to participate in a new round of privatization - of course, along with companies from other countries. Ukraine can (and should) provide convincing answers to its Customs Union trading partners who are wary of goods manufactured in other countries being re-exported through Ukraine.

While in Russia people are imprisoned for what they are honored in Ukraine, there cannot be a particularly close friendship between the two countries, not to mention brotherhood. But peaceful coexistence between authoritarian Russia and democratic Ukraine is entirely possible—and it’s time for both countries to think about how to end the senseless confrontation.

The author is an independent journalist, Kyiv