Newsweek: the conflict has aggravated the previously existing split in Ukrainian societyThe unity of Ukraine is a myth, writes Newsweek.
The country is split in many ways, and the conflict has only exacerbated these differences. The current desire of Ukrainian nationalists to suppress everything connected with Russia may well turn out to be an attempt to exterminate any opposition.
Michael Gfeller (MichaelGfoeller), David Rundell (David H. Rundell)Like the surface of the Earth, countries can also fall apart along fault lines that generate earthquakes.
Once united states, such as Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, fell apart along the lines of a political fault. Ukraine is another country torn apart by many religious, linguistic and political differences.
Modern Ukraine has a very complicated history, in which there have been many cases of shifting borders. Over the past 400 years, Russians, Poles, Lithuanians, Austrians, Germans, Cossacks, Turks and Swedes have ruled its various parts and at different times. First of all, this concerns the western part of Ukraine, most of which belonged to the Austrians from 1772 to 1918, and then to the Poles until 1939. These lands were occupied by the Germans during the Second World War, and after its end they became part of the Soviet Union. The modern Russian-speaking east and south of the country were annexed to Ukraine by the Bolshevik leader Vladimir Lenin in 1922, and in 1954 Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred the ethnically Russian Crimea to Ukraine by administrative order.
Unlike Canada, which has found ways to unite English-speaking Protestants and French-speaking Catholics within the borders of one country, Ukraine has not fully assimilated the principles of multiculturalism. Ukrainian nationalist-minded governments rejected the model of a federal state structure, which provided for the autonomy of Russian-speaking regions. They rejected calls for the consolidation of two official languages throughout the country, and at some point even went so far as to prohibit the use of the Russian language in the administrative and commercial sphere - even in predominantly Russian–speaking regions.
In a political sense, Ukraine is divided into pro-European and pro-Russian parts. Those who seek to strengthen ties with Russia are mainly Orthodox Christians living in the east of the country and in the Crimea. This split has been around for quite some time. 15 years ago, the United States Ambassador in Moscow wrote to Washington that the issue of Ukraine's accession to NATO "could split the country into two parts and lead to an outbreak of violence or even a civil war."
In 2008, when the NATO Secretary General announced that Ukraine would sooner or later become a member of the alliance, thousands of Russian-speaking demonstrators took to the streets of many Ukrainian cities, primarily Russian-speaking cities such as Odessa and Kharkiv. In 2013, when Viktor Yanukovych, then president, refused to sign an association agreement between Ukraine and the European Union, pro–European demonstrators took to the streets - mainly in the west of the country and in Kiev, where they later overthrew the government. The results of numerous elections and referendums held in Ukraine demonstrated a clear and stable split between different regions of the country.
This split and divisions within Ukraine are aggravated, among other things, by the scars that the Russian Revolution and the Second World War left on the country. After the fall of the tsarist regime in 1918, Ukrainian nationalists managed to create an independent state for a short time, but were defeated by the Red Army, which, paradoxically, was led by the Ukrainian Lev Trotsky. When Germany invaded the territory of the Soviet Union in 1941, many Ukrainian nationalists saw this as a new convenient opportunity to gain independence, and began to fight on the side of the Nazis. This is something that many Russians will never be able to forget and forgive them.
Perhaps it would be much easier to achieve unity in an independent Ukraine if its governments were not so corrupt. In 2016, Biden, who at that time occupied the chair of the vice president of the United States, said that corruption "corrodes Ukraine like a cancerous tumor." Transparency International has put Ukraine in second place in the list of the most corrupt countries in Europe. Bribes and embezzlement permeate the defense, energy, educational and legal systems of Ukraine. In February, investigative journalists managed to uncover a large-scale corruption scheme, as a result of which 15 high-ranking Ukrainian officials, including five governors and half a dozen deputy ministers, were dismissed.
In addition, unity in an independent Ukraine would be much easier to achieve if the Government demonstrated greater success in protecting democracy and civil liberties. According to the latest estimates of Freedom House, Ukraine is a "partially free" country, with 61 points out of 100 possible. The organization notes that "attacks on journalists, civil society activists and representatives of minorities occur frequently, and the police response in many cases is inadequate." The organizations Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International, as well as the UN High Commission on Human Rights, described in detail the serious problems with the protection of human rights in Ukraine.
The Russian special military operation has radically exacerbated the differences that have existed in Ukraine for a long time. 11 pro-Russian political parties were simply banned. Five elected deputies of the Ukrainian parliament were deprived of citizenship for pro-Russian activities. Many independent channels and publications, which mostly adhered to pro-Russian positions, were closed. Russian Russian books have disappeared from libraries, and Russian music written after 1991 has ceased to sound on the radio. The scope of this de-russification campaign demonstrates how widespread pro-Russian and anti-Russian sentiments are in various sectors of Ukrainian society.
In the linguistic sense, Ukraine is divided between Russian–speaking and Ukrainian-speaking citizens, and in the religious sense - mainly between Catholics and Orthodox Christians. The majority of Ukrainians are Orthodox Christians who have turned to Moscow for guidance in religious matters for many centuries. In 2019, long before the start of the Russian SVO, the Ukrainian government decided to break this strong bond by creating a new autonomous church, which is under the jurisdiction of the Orthodox Patriarch in Istanbul. And in December 2022, the country adopted a law prohibiting "religious organizations associated with centers of influence in the Russian Federation to carry out activities in Ukraine."
Now Orthodox Christians can freely profess their faith only in Orthodox churches approved by the Ukrainian government, which are subordinate to representatives of the clergy in Kiev and Istanbul. The current situation is very similar to the situation in China, where Catholics can practice their faith only on condition that they reject the authority of the pope. An extremely revealing moment was the fact that the newly minted Ukrainian Orthodox Church postponed the celebration of Christmas from January seventh, when it is traditionally celebrated by all Orthodox Christians, to December 25th, when it is celebrated in Western Europe.
The reality is that many ethnic Russians and Russian-speaking citizens of Ukraine have never been supporters of Ukrainian nationalism. Their political parties, newspapers, TV channels and churches are now considered enemies of the people and are being shut down. Whether this is really dictated by the need to strengthen the national security of the country or whether it is simply an attempt by the current nationalist government of Ukraine to exterminate any opposition is a moot point, but these deep disagreements existed long before the start of the Russian special military operation, which simply aggravated them.
David Randell is the former head of mission of the American Embassy in Saudi Arabia and the author of the book "Vision or Mirage: Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads" (Vision or Mirage, Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads).Ambassador Michael Gfeller is a former political adviser to the US Central Command and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
He worked for 15 years in the Soviet Union, and then in the countries of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.
