Parting with the Empire

On May 16, Ukraine introduced a ban on the use of Russian social networks, search engines, mail servers, antiviruses and other software. And the next day in Strasbourg, an EU legislative act on a visa-free regime for Ukrainian citizens was signed, which will come into force on June 11. Both facts are interpreted in Kyiv as “parting with the empire”

These two events, seemingly unrelated, actually have a common cause - they were the result of the annexation of Crimea and the hybrid war that Russia unleashed against Ukraine in 2014. If not for this, Europe would not have changed its attitude towards Moscow so drastically, and Ukrainians, perhaps, would have been waiting for a “visa-free regime”, as the visa-free regime is abbreviated here, for a long time. Before the events of three years ago, many European diplomats in Kiev told me in confidential conversations that, despite all the promises, the European Union has a serious reason to delay granting a visa-free regime to Ukraine: they say, there is an opinion that Russia should first be granted such a regime, otherwise Moscow will be very offended, and relations between the Russian Federation and Europe will deteriorate. After the spring and summer of 2014, the EU had nothing to lose.

So the Ukrainian authorities now have a free hand in relation to Odnoklassniki, VKontakte, Mail.ru, Yandex, etc. Banning them is an unpopular decision that has drawn a lot of criticism. In Ukraine, the number of users of VKontakte and Odnoklassniki exceeds the number of followers of Facebook - it is only in third place, many services, small and medium-sized businesses, online stores and so on are tied to Yandex. Many reputable international human rights organizations condemned the ban.

Nevertheless, many - both in the country itself and outside it - justify this decision with national security considerations in the conditions of that same hybrid war. Among the supporters of the ban are people who can hardly be blamed for anti-democratic views.

For example, the well-known Russian oppositionist Professor Andrei Zubov, referring to an unnamed authoritative expert in the field of computer affairs, wrote on his Facebook page that the Ukrainians banned Russian websites and computer programs by no means out of “innate harmfulness and an idle desire to annoy Russia”, but because all these sites and programs are “completely under the control and guidance of the FSB. They are aimed at collecting and further using dossiers on each person and on each company. In addition, these programs have hacker functions and, without additional external hacking, if necessary, can be used to attack not only you, but also to send various materials and requests for information on your behalf. Each of these programs can potentially be used to disable your equipment and lose or alter important data, attack your finances and steal using passwords and legal documents, up to determining your meetings and plans for a possible physical attack.

Security considerations were not the main thing for the Kyiv authorities. The main motive is connected with the gradually starting preparations for the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2019.

Ukrainian critics of the ban believe that justifying this measure with security considerations is just a front, but in reality the authorities are trying to bring down the wave of opposition sentiment in society and stop the noticeable decline in the popularity of President Petro Poroshenko. This opinion is broadcast by some popular bloggers, who in recent years have acquired extensive communities of friends and subscribers from tens of thousands of users. It will take months, if not years, to drag your audience to Facebook, they complain. They object: politically active users have long lived on Facebook, Odnoklassniki and VKontakte have a completely different, mostly apolitical audience.

It seems, however, that security considerations were not the main thing for the Kiev authorities (although, of course, it is strange when the business card of a politician or public figure of a country that accuses Russia of aggression contains an e-mail address ending in mail.ru). The main motive is rather related to the gradually starting preparations for the presidential and parliamentary elections in 2019. We constantly hear that political scientists who advise President Poroshenko and his party are rushing around with the idea of ​​reanimating and consolidating their “nuclear electorate”, which is not radically minded, but still nationalistic and radical – anti-Russian. Therefore, Ukrainians can expect more than one prohibitive decision, painted in the appropriate colors.

I say this without any condemnation: the language does not turn to condemn such bans, when Russia has actually been waging a war against Ukraine for the fourth year. In addition, politics is also a struggle for power. And to condemn a politician for using all sorts of ingenious political technological moves and techniques in this struggle is the same as scolding a wolf for eating lambs.

Although, if the consequences of such moves are poorly calculated, they can do more harm than good. In the case of the ban on Russian social networks and other Internet resources, it seems to me that the scale of the protest moods of Ukrainian citizens, who have already faced a lot of inconveniences and even real problems, has not been calculated. And this could easily negate the euphoria of obtaining a “visa-free” that resulted last week in huge queues for obtaining biometric passports. One cannot but agree with those Ukrainians who say: by leaving Russian social networks, we are depriving ourselves of the instruments of reciprocal influence on Russian society.