Freebie or will

Twenty years ago, large portraits of the winners of the presidential elections in Ukraine and Belarus, Leonid Kuchma and Alexander Lukashenko appeared on the first lane of the Prokhanov newspaper Tomorrow. The shopping weekly literally choked with delight: finally, those who would return Belarus with Ukraine the Russian king came to power. Belarusinash! Ukraine!

Twenty years later, the Kremlin still leads an unsuccessful, although now bloody, war for the Ukrainian lands, trying to force the former “second republic” of the Soviet Union to abandon not only the course to return to the civilized world, but, in fact, from its own statehood. But almost everything turned out with Belarus: the country lives almost in complete Russian dependent, its economy is no different from that "national economic complex", which Lukashenko received from the communist authorities.

Belarus entered not only the notorious customs union, but also in the CSTO. On its territory there are Russian troops, ready to make a military coup in a subordinate state by only a wave of the hands of Vladimir Putin. The Belarusian political and entrepreneurial elite was degraded, the opposition was destroyed, the apparatus of power, army and special services is saturated with Russian agents. Why did Belarus happen, but not with Ukraine? And this despite the fact that in 1994, Moscow actively supported Leonid Kuchma in the presidential election in Ukraine and resisted the success of Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus. Even on the eve of the second round, the Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, who arrived in Minsk, who arrived in Minsk to support the Moscow favorite in Minsk, refused to talk with the most probable election winner. The only Russian politician welcoming Lukashenko was then Vladimir Zhirinovsky. But Arkady Volsky arrived to help Kuchma in Kyiv, and the senior leaders of Russia and other CIS countries did not hide his sympathy for the former Ukrainian prime minister before the elections.

We can say that, being in the presidential office, Kuchma immediately became a big patriot than Bandera with Shukhevich. But this is not entirely true: the second president of Ukraine in the first and last years of his rule was surrounded by Moscow proteges. The first chapter of his administration is Dmitry Tabachnik. The latter is Victor Medvedchuk. Both have never particularly hid their contempt for everything Ukrainian. Kuchma is not an ideologist. Rather, a typical "Red Director", who has learned to be the head of state literally on the go.

But the whole latest history of Ukrainian statehood is the eternal competition of the course on building its own country with the desire to be in the Asses of the Kremlin. And proponents of independence constitute such a serious and confident power in the future of Ukraine that not a single head of state can ignore it. Rather, one could. It was Viktor Yanukovych, who turned into the Sochi pensioner who was wanted by the Ukrainian justice. Yanukovych - this was the real Ukrainian Lukashenko. The fact that Moscow did not succeed in 1994 tried to crank 16 years later. Unsuccessfully.

And the Belarusian presidential elections turned out to be a competition of people who completely devoid a state approach. Both Lukashenko and Kebich strove to life at the Russian expense. And the other two candidates who really poured over Belarus, the leader of the Popular Front Zenon Poznyak and the “father” of the Belarusian statehood Stanislav Shushkevich - were far behind the fans of the freebie. Well, then there were no real presidential elections. The Belarusian society paid a terrible price for its choice. And the point is not only in the frozen “scoop”, political repression, poverty, the lack of personal prospects for talented and promising people. The point is not even that the Belarusians abandoned their flag and the “chase” sung by the Great Bogdanovich, and their culture is in the position of the stepdaughter in their own country. The worst thing is that even today we cannot say with confidence whether the Belarusian statehood will remain in the foreseeable future. But regarding the Ukrainian, I think no one has no doubt.