Putin’s inferno
The West must take a tough stand with the government of Ukraine—and with Russia’s leader
CIVIL strife often follows a grimly predictable pattern. What at
first seems a soluble dispute hardens into conflict, as goals become
more radical, bitterness accumulates and the chance to broker a
compromise is lost. Such has been the awful trajectory of Ukraine, where
protests that began peacefully in November have combusted in grotesque
violence. The centre of Kiev, one of Europe’s great capital cities, this
week became a choking war zone. Buildings and barricades were
incinerated and dozens of Ukrainians were killed.
Despite talk of a truce between some of the participants, the horror
could yet get much worse. The bloodshed will deepen the rifts in what
has always been a fragile, complex country.
Outright civil war remains a realistic prospect. Immediate
responsibility for this mayhem lies with Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine’s
thuggish president. But its ultimate architect sits in the Kremlin:
Vladimir Putin.
It was Mr Yanukovych’s rejection, in November, of a trade agreement
with the EU, in favour of an opaque deal with Russia, which started the
unrest. Soon the protesters were demanding his resignation, while Mr
Yanukovych and Russian propaganda denounced them as terrorists. How,
after three months of tetchy stand-off, the killing started this week is
murky. But most of it was perpetrated by the president’s men.
The response from the West should be firm. The president’s henchmen
deserve the visa bans and asset freezes that America has imposed and the
EU is considering. Mr Yanukovych must rein in his troops and, if he
can, the plainclothes goons who are committing much of the violence. But
the protesters, if they want to stop a full-scale blood-bath, also need
to compromise—to quit their symbolic base in Kiev’s Independence
Square, and the other buildings they have occupied. The best option
would be for the two sides to form a transitional coalition government.
A presidential election is due in 2015: it should happen this year
instead, preferably without Mr Yanukovych. His regime has featured
rampant cronyism, the persecution of his rivals, suborning of the media
and nobbling of the courts, now topped off by slaughter. But he will be
hard to move. Built like a bouncer, he twists like a weasel; he is
likely to try to wriggle out of any commitments he makes when he thinks
the crisis has passed. If so, the tycoons who have sustained his power,
and who have much to lose in this madness, must force him out.
What should come next is less clear. Virtually all of Ukraine’s
established politicians have discredited themselves, including Yulia
Tymoshenko, the jailed opposition leader. The protesters have no clear
champion—one reason the violence may prove difficult to stop. It is hard
to envisage a candidate emerging who will bridge the underlying
fault-lines in Ukrainian society (see map). Mr Yanukovych still commands
support in the east and south; in Kiev and the west, where protesters
have seized government facilities, he is reviled. A split remains
terrifyingly plausible. Avoiding that fate requires, above all, an end
to the Russian meddling. Mr Putin may not have lit the match this week,
but he assembled the pyre.
To most rational observers, fomenting chaos across the border in
Ukraine might seem an odd ambition for Russia. Not to Mr Putin, who
regards Ukraine as an integral part of Russia’s sphere of influence, and
saw the orange revolution as a Western plot to steal it. His economic
sanctions and threats helped to persuade Mr Yanukovych to turn his back
on the EU. It is clear that the loans and cheap Russian gas that prop up
Ukraine’s teetering economy are conditional on Mr Yanukovych taking a
tough line with the protesters. Mr Putin’s bullying and machinations
have brought Ukraine to this pass.
If Mr Yanukovych clings on, weakened at home and ostracised abroad,
Mr Putin will be content, for he will have another dependent leader to
add to his collection of pliable clients. But he might not stop there.
Russian hawks have long wanted to annex Crimea, a Black Sea peninsula
that Nikita Khrushchev transferred to Ukraine (reputedly while drunk).
This upheaval could provide a pretext for Mr Putin to grab it. Either
way, a wretched Ukraine will help convince his people that street
protests, and political competition, are the road to ruin.
Confronting the Kremlin
It is past time for the West to stand up to this gangsterism.
Confronting a country that has the spoiling power of a seat on the UN
Security Council, huge hydrocarbon reserves and lots of nuclear weapons,
is difficult, but it has to be done. At a minimum, the diplomatic
pretence that Russia is a law-abiding democracy should end. It should be
ejected from the G8. Above all, the West must stand united in telling
Mr Putin that Ukraine, and the other former Soviet countries that he
regards as wayward parts of his patrimony, are sovereign nations.
There is a kind of rough justice in the timing of Ukraine’s turmoil.
In 2008 Russia invaded Georgia, its tiny southern neighbour, just as the
Olympic games began in Beijing, prompting formulaic Western protests
but no meaningful retribution. The events in Kiev interrupted the winter
Olympics in Sochi, intended to be a two-week carnival of Putinism. This
time the West must make Mr Putin see that, with this havoc at the heart
of Europe, he has gone too far.
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