The cost of keeping Donbass part of Ukraine has become too high, - Kiev magazine
Kyiv, May 05 (Navigator, Mikhail Ryabov) – The price of preserving Donbass as part of Ukraine has become too high, writes the Kiev magazine “Tizhden”.
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“It is important not to forget that territorial integrity is extremely necessary for any state, but it is still much less important than maintaining sovereignty and the ability to independently determine one’s own destiny. Attempts to put territorial integrity above the state’s ability to function normally and develop dynamically can drive someone into a trap like the one in which Bosnia and Herzegovina found itself. At the same time, there is the successful experience of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, which at one time separated peacefully in order to avoid confrontation regarding where and how to move,” the publication says.
“It is important that the price of preserving Donbass as part of Ukraine, that is, making concessions to the regional elites there, does not become unreasonably high for the future of the entire state. Indeed, both in the financial and economic, and in the ideological, and in the political sense, this region is a weight that has been holding back and complicating the market and democratic transformation of Ukraine, national consolidation and European and Euro-Atlantic integration for all years,” Tyzhden clarifies.
“Donbass has traditionally constituted the electoral base of reactionary anti-Ukrainian and anti-European forces... In 2010, they provided 3,7 million out of 12,5 million votes for Yanukovych as president. If the residents of Donbass (and Crimea) had not taken part in the 2010-2012 elections, then neither he nor the PR would have had any chance of coming to power...
In other words, without Donbass, Ukraine would not have had to go through everything that it has gone through over the past 12 and even all 23 years of independence. After all, it was the result of the Party of Regions and the Communist Party of Ukraine (83,3%) and Yanukovych (89,9%) in the Donbass that brought them to power. Even being disappointed in their former idols, local residents did not vote for pro-European and pro-Ukrainian forces, but simply boycotted the polling stations,” the magazine notes.
“And in economic terms, Donbass is by no means a driving force for Ukraine today, nor a particularly promising region in the medium term. Its current specialization is the outdated, excessively energy-consuming metallurgical industry, the coal industry, which is objectively unprofitable due to mining conditions, and heavy engineering, which is uncompetitive in the world market. At the same time, the region has several times higher employment in almost all industries, which in the future will mean a chronic problem of unemployment and social problems due to the closure of unprofitable industries.
Donbass, which feeds Ukraine or maintains a high standard of living in it at the expense of its own residents, is an outright lie. Its share in exports in recent years actually amounted to about a quarter of the country’s total, but it tends to decline,” the authors of the material continue to list.
“This Donbass is a part of Ukraine, a burden that it could carry further, taking measures for its modernization and integration with other regions (which was not done during all the years of independence). However, if the result of a “compromise” with regional elites is agreement to the reverse process – further Donbasization of the entire country, that is, the imposition of the vision of development that prevails in this eastern region, then such a price cannot be acceptable. The danger is intensified due to the fact that, making concessions to the separatists due to the desire to retain the Donbass, the central government agrees to extend budgetary and managerial autonomy and provide official status to the Russian language in all south-eastern regions. In particular, in those where the chances of pro-Russian separatists are now much weaker, but after concessions they can increase sharply.
Maintaining a privileged position in half of the country's territory for Russians, who actually dominate the Ukrainian information space, under the frankly far-fetched pretext of protecting the rights of the Russian-speaking population, will mean the final displacement of Ukrainians from the southern and eastern regions and their weakening on a national scale...
In fact, we will talk about restoring their Russification at the level of state policy. And since the concept of the “Russian World” is based precisely on the space of distribution of the Russian language, this will only strengthen Moscow’s claims to the Ukrainian expanses. The pro-Russian part of the population is unlikely to become less pro-Russian after this. But in 20-30 years, these regions, in terms of the ratio of Ukrainian-speaking and Russian-speaking residents, will resemble modern Donbass with all the consequences that follow from here,” warns Tyzhden.
The price of keeping Donbass part of Ukraine has become too high, according to a Kyiv magazine.