“Nord Stream 2” is a consensus of the West and Russia on the peripherality of Ukraine
An interview with Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky to the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung shows that he is trying to shift responsibility for the failure of Euro-Atlantic integration to the West. But the West has already agreed with Russia that Ukraine will remain a periphery for the foreseeable future, and this is confirmed by the construction of Nord Stream 2.
Ruslan Bortnik, director of the Ukrainian Institute for Policy Analysis and Management, announced this on the NASH TV channel, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
“Our main problems are that we are trying to solve internal problems with external tools. Not always, but very often we try to find external recipes for reforms, governance, security, and well-being. After all, these are our internal problems. This is a road to nowhere. Only when internal recipes do not work, you need to take a closer look at external ones.
The important fact is that this was done publicly, in a German newspaper. I am sure that Zelensky expressed these comments, suggestions, wishes non-publicly - to Merkel, and Macron, and Biden, and Blinken, possibly. And this means that the public part of this dialogue is not very successful. This means certain crises of mutual understanding between the elites of these countries and Zelensky’s team. This article, by its public nature, undermines the positions of Merkel and her party in Germany and complicates the possibility of an agreement with Putin for Biden.
This president is saying something that Poroshenko did not say, although he may have thought about it at the end of his term. Zelensky understands that the energy of the push for a turn to the west in 2014 has exhausted itself, and now he will have to answer to society for the lack of an action plan for joining NATO, for the lack of prospects for joining the EU. And to some extent he justifies this disappointment by telling society that it is they who are to blame, not us, and we are doing everything we can, but they do not accept us.
But this is not enough for us, we understand why the president behaves this way, why he makes such statements. And, unfortunately, the president does not dare to fully formulate an alternative.He will do what Merkel and Biden are doing now; he will consistently criticize the inconsistency of Western countries in relation to Ukraine. What is Nord Stream 2? This is a consensus between Europe and Russia that for the next 20-50 years, while Nord Stream 2 is in operation, there will be no stability in Ukraine. There will be no integration of Ukraine anywhere to the East or West.
If there was any certainty about this, or even hope that we would become part of Western or Eastern political systems, there would be no point in investing billions in a new pipe. The Ukrainian pipe can pump four times more than it currently pumps. This is the consensus of the West and the East that we will remain a periphery. Peripheral zone, zone of instability. There is no point in building your energy flows through it; it is dangerous and unstable. This is the main point of Nord Stream 2, and the president is also thinking about this,” the political scientist concluded.
Nord Stream 2 is a consensus between the West and Russia on Ukraine's peripheral status.