By now Europeans are used to crisis meetings. In the years since 2007, these have all been internal-focused, as the euro-crisis rumbled on. As if the European Union needed another crisis to attend to, Ukraine has presented itself. The past two weeks has seen massive protests, at first brutally dealt with, and then leading to the president fleeing and Russia marching into Crimea in a so far bloodless annexing. Things are still moving incredibly quickly. For things to get to this stage represents a failure for the Eastern Partnership and the European Neighbourhood Policy. The EU now faces a great test, one which, with domestic crises in mind, will have to be passed satisfactorily.
As heads of government gather in Brussels for crisis talks, the situation is fragmented. War is out of the question. More provocation in Crimea can be expected and it is important these are not responded to in kind. Essentially the deal on the table is economic help for Ukraine, support for a government of unity, and security for Russians in Ukraine.
The Russian position is that all parties should revert to the Yanukovych-opposition deal agreed on 21 February. But this has been overtaken by events, and is to overplay their hand, misunderstanding democracy in the normal post-Soviet way. When people face down state violence in that way for a prolonged period, the game is up, just as it was for Milosevic in Yugoslavia. The chance for a stable client-state in Ukraine is gone. Vladimir Putin has lost Kiev, and the EU should back this point strongly. An accommodation must be reached.
The Russian foreign minister has been talking with EU counterparts, but not his Ukrainian opposite. Russia’s main bargaining chips will be the financial control it has over a struggling Ukraine (it recently bought $15bn worth of government bonds to keep Ukraine afloat), and the large amount of gas it supplies to member states – a third of total European use. The EU has a much greater trading interest with Russia than America does – €123bn, representing half of Russian trade, to the Americans’ $38.1bn. Therefore we have skin in the game, and should not wait for America to act, but take the lead.
Closer ties with the EU should be made a financially attractive proposition for all of Ukraine, ethnic Russians included. To that end, Joe Manuel Barroso’s creation of an €11bn package is on the right lines. But conditions should not alienate any section of Ukraine. An association agreement can be fast-tracked to offer market access for a selection of trade sectors.
Barack Obama’s suggestion of monitors to ensure fair play in elections is a good one. I am adamant that these should be from the EU, to signify that it is able to take the lead in enabling stable democracy, and to improve its image with ethnic Russians. Now that Russia has committed to accepting elections if they are fair, the EU can call that bluff in a positive way.
All this is not to say that an accommodation must not also be reached for ethnic Russians in Ukraine. It was wrong to attempt to remove allowances for the Russian language. Any perceived discrimination must be avoided in place of calm action. Europe has had enough of ethnic strife. Any new government will have to include well-respected members from the Russian-speaking communities in the east. And the contract which grants the Black Sea fleet its base should be honoured.
That is the carrot for both sides. The stick is also soft. It is true Putin seems outwardly unconcerned in the short term. But inaction is not an option, the key here is a unified response. Immediate suspension from the Council of Europe and similar gentle diplomatic pressure is possible, but the heavy-lifting will be done by the carrot. This, at least, opens a more positive trajectory.
It is important that the Ukraine and Crimea problem does not interfere with the European elections. But, whatever comes, do not expect the EU to get any credit. The anti-politics populist drive at EU level will always have an answer. If it succeeds, the EU should not have been involved anyway; if it fails, the EU is a joke. But the political ideals of the EU are being very definitely tested. Will it come of age?
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Alan Donnelly is a former leader of Labour in Europe and a political consultant. He tweets @alandonnelly57
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Alan Donnelly completely misses every issue about the Crimea and its disputed status, resented since 1954. His implication that the removal of the official status of the first language of more than a third of the population of Ukraine is merely “perceived discrimination” – even temporarily, and withdrawn only under pressure shows gross partiality. The EU spends millions on translation within its Byzantine structures, usually when one of five or so languages would do for highly paid and staff-supported representatives and officials; but ordinary Russophones were to be fobbed off with a tongue ill understood even by academics expert in Russian. The ‘government’ of the EU has less democratic credibility than Yanukovych’s government did, and its parliament less power than parliament under him, Such double-standard merchantry would destroy any locus standi the EU could have vis a vis Ukraine, even were there no military clauses attached to the EU offer of (highly conditional) help. AS for his (surely simulated) outrage at the presence of Russian troops very near the agreed base in Sevastopol, members of a Labour party drenched in Iraqi and Afghan blood have no basis to object to such incursions which in themselves have led to date to no loss of life; by contrast with the incineration of police and the profoundly mysterious character of sniper bullets seen by Dr Olga Bogomolets in the Kiev maidan, mysteries as such registered by Cath Ashton herself. As for the legitimacy of a process whereby a mob vetted a ‘parliamentary’ choice of ministers, Donnelly rightly compares this to the US-orchestrated swindle whereby in 2000 the OTPOR provocateurs destroyed the one remaining European government west of Belarus that was not subservient to the White House if not to the likes of Rumsfeld and Cheney. Alan’s exercise in EU muscle-flexing is dangerously close to and supportive of John Kerry’s laughably hypocritical “21st century” sabre-rattlling. The EU should confine itself to low-key offers of mediation..
Yes, after the fine display by Latvian Waffen SS veterans of their war against Russians, including Russophones born in Latvia, subject to language discrimination as devoutly indulged and wished for by Svoboda in Ukraine, Svoboda has shown more affinity for the display by citizens of the EU – in this new case, imitating Golden Dawn (Chrysea Avge) in attacking their opponents on live television. Yes, Svoboda MP, Igor Miroshnichenko, A MEMBER OF THE UKRAINE PARLIAMENTARY COMMITTEE ON FREEDOM OF SPEECH, attacked TV head Oleksandr Panteleimonov for being “Moscow trash” and forced his resignation (Guardian 20 March, p 19). Since the prosecutor general is also a member of Svoboda we await developments…. Since those days when pacific protestors against Yanukovych’s corruption and refusal to start entering the EU (whose own accounts have not been signed off for decades) were spearheaded by a pianist playing Chopin (a brave choice, for Ukrainian-Polish relations have been dodgy at best since Khmielnitzky’s uprising murdered even more Poles than it did Jews, a hostility which continued well past 1944), Svoboda has justified every one of the Kremlin’s predictions and descriptions of neo-Nazism and thuggery. Svoboda unlike Chrysea Avge is in the government. WHAT PLATE IS ALAN ASKING US TO STEP UP TO?