Brett Daniel Shehadey
Special Contributor for In Homeland Security
After suffering casualties, detainment, possible abduction and a few fatalities, the Ukrainian political opposition to President Viktor Yanukovych won some political ground at the home front. After a score of condemnation and mounting pressure at the international level, as well as the toll domestically, Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and his government have just stated their resignation before a no-confidence vote.
Prime Minister Azarov and his government will remain in position until the new elections can be scheduled. The response has been captured by Western media as a positive step but in Ukraine, people are skeptical.
This latest move comes after Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych offered to up the Prime Minister post three days ago to his opposition; as if a reward and concession without election. In the highly corrupt world of Ukraine bribery, and in the midst of chaotic Kiev riots, President Yanukovych partially caved by offering political opponent Arseniy Yatsenyuk the post of Prime Minister and famed boxer and national treasure Vitali Klitschko the post of Deputy Prime Minister.
These were flatly rejected and criticized in the open.
Amidst anti-protest laws implemented this month, the recent response of harsh police counter-rioting, government accusations of extremists embedded within their opponent, the crowds in Kiev and in other parts of Ukraine continued to push for deals economic and political agreements with the EU and the ousting of President Yanukovych; who is seen as an installation and a plant of the Russian Federation.
The peaceful protests that began in late November were incrementally replaced by an increasing militancy by the masses and stubborn corrupt mobilization by authorities to the “dictatorship laws.”
Protestors turned rioters had been busy seizing government buildings, including the Justice Ministry as well. Firebombing, rock throwing and vandalism are spreading. The rioting political opposition awaits a formal offer by the authorities to release detained protestors; many of whom are going missing as they are swooped up.
A state of emergency has not been declared but EU political leaders warn against such a move.
Reports of missing persons, retributive vigilante threats against those imposing or involved in any rioter fatalities are also common.
Just today, the anti-protest laws have just been repealed overwhelmingly by Ukraine’s Parliament and the also government resigned.
The authorities may be setting themselves up for a full-on escalation of violence by slowly and not fully appeasing the growing militancy of their political opponents. Of the tens of thousands demanding a push for Ukrainian independence, the EU and new elections, the latest civil unrest increasingly displays the markings of a potential rebellion in the capital.
Violence is increasingly called on as necessary from both sides as an assurance of controlling the politics and direction of the nation. Interior Minister Vitaliy Zakharchenko warned that all of those protestors occupying government buildings will be deemed extremists and that force will be used to remove them. Days before that he made a big deal that negotiations had failed and blamed political activists which are being relentlessly pursued.
The rioters can no longer believe anything Yanukovych or the establishment tell them- they have already broken promises of the EU which began a peaceful demonstration; and then turned against their right to demonstrate in a civil manner; and largely they are seen as sell-outs to Russia, with the brutal years of the Soviet Empire still in their childhood memories of those older than, say, 30 years.
Ukraine remains divided around residents that want to remain Eastern and aligned with Russia or venture into greater independence from Russia and thus into Western civilization. Amidst Moscow and Brussels, it is a virtual tug-of-war between, with Germany, the heavy weight of the EU and Putin, the voice of Russia, willing to give an exclusive economic and political union of border states another go since the fall of the Soviet Union.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has interjected that the West should stay completely out and about from meddling with the internal politics of Ukraine; meanwhile Russia is full-face inside. The trade deal that Yanukovych signed with Putin is about badly needed loans of a Ukrainian economy in shambles and preserving Russian military base leases and geopolitical security interests. Putin’s latest gesture to honor the $15 billion dollar loan and slashed gas prices even if a new government is formed is not without strings. Russia will demand its military base and security arrangements and it will not ask for them.
The eternal splitting Ukraine between Europe and Russia might depend more on what the Russians can let go of and what the EU really wants. Russians are stilling thinking of Ukraine in terms of security more than economic opportunity. The Russians make a massive monopoly on the 28 state EU natural gas supply and better trade opportunities there. The EU has the opposite of security in mind, but security concerns naturally play a part, second to political and economic ones.
Russia is already there. Brussels is sending its mediation envoy and they are already on the way.
“The more intermediaries there are, the more problems there are,” Putin said. “I am not sure Ukraine needs intermediaries.”
The mediators will force Ukraine transparency and Russian-Ukrainian relations will need to establish a far more benign public image. For Ukraine, mediation and arbitration appears to be the best option.
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