Ukraine’s way out

In 1856, Russia lost the Crimean War to an alliance of the British, the French, the Ottoman Empire, and the Kingdom of Sardinia (predecessors to the modern Italian nation-state). However, that did not subdue the flames of Greater Russian nationalism. 158 years later, as if to herald the centennial “celebrations” of the WWI, with its annexation of Crimea, Russia has won the first round of the Second Crimean War.

However, its opponents, the Western powers, are stupefied over their concrete role in this conflict. It would not be naïve to presume that the US and the EU are confounded. Of course, we hear about certain sanctions against oligarchs linked to Putin like the Rossiya Bank and others, or the European Union’s visa bans and asset freezes of 30 odd top honchos of the Russian political order including the Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin.

However, any serious retaliation looks unlikely. In essence, Russia’s “zone of influence” over the peninsula is taken as a fait accompli by all major powers. And, besides, Russia has ensured the tacit support of China and India ad libitum.

The Western media, cacophonous about this annexation, barely fails to conceal the fact that the Western powers have managed to turn Ukraine into a protectorate. The NATO-Ukraine Commission (NUC) established in 1997, through a charter to allow western military presence on the Ukrainian soil, was one of the first attempts to carve out Ukraine from Russian control.

The infamous troika – International Monetary Fund, European Central Bank, and the European Commission – which had earlier devastated several countries of Europe has set its sights on Ukraine for quite some time. Even though Rada, the Ukrainian parliament, is controlled by supporters of the exiled president Viktor Yanukovich, the provisional government is nothing but a mere puppet at the hands of the imperialist powers.

A few question about the referendum

The referendum of March 6 overwhelmingly voted (96.7%) for Crimea’s accession to Russia. Considering such irresistible will of the Crimean population, what deters us from accepting this as a legitimate expression of the peninsula’s population? Western critics term it as illegal, citing the inviolability of the Ukrainian constitution which clearly specifies that any change to the country’s territory can only be made through a national referendum.

This takes us back to a century-old debate about territorial integrity and the aspirations for self-determination. The concepts around the latter argue that if a section of the population struggles to secede and hold a referendum with that goal, they have the right to do so in toto.

There can’t be an iota of incertitude about the majority of the Crimean population’s volition for uniting with Russia. Nevertheless, we need to look into its actual dynamics. What was instrumental for this referendum? Did the outcome of a mass movement from below that arose as an answer to the success of the Maidan movement in Kiev help this referendum? No. It came about in precisely the other way.

In marched the Russian soldiers, then a movement demanding this referendum was constructed and thus, executed. Therefore, even if the right of self-determination of the masses was formally realised, the masses who were stimulated to determine themselves were not the ones in control of the situation. Hence, they didn’t determine their destiny themselves – as much as it happened in the past, Crimea was made a part of Ukraine without their consent from outside.

Putin’s hypocrisy

Putin’s harangues about the rights of ethnic minorities in Ukraine are loaded with hypocrisy, considering the violence he has unleashed within Russia. These duplicities and selective concern are also evident even inside Crimea. The Tatars, the oldest inhabitants of the Crimean peninsula, treat this Russian annexation with the deepest suspicion and hostility.

After all, during the Stalin-era, it was the Soviet state dominated by Russians which ethnically cleansed the Tatars during WWII. The total Crimean Tatar population was deported to Central Asia and parts of Russia, resulting in lakhs of deaths and the painful disintegration of this national community.

No Crimean Tatars were permitted to return to their homeland until 1967, then a part of Soviet Ukraine. The existence of such painful historical memories motivated the Crimean Tatars to vocally oppose the Russian maneuver. They even boycotted the referendum.

Only time will tell us about the fate of Crimean Tatars inside the Russian Federation. The post-Soviet Russian state has a savage practice of violently inflicting its will on any defiant people in its periphery – like it did with the Chechen people, for instance. Even so, loyalties of the Tatars could be bought through clientelism.

The way forward

It would be unprincipled and politically abhorrent to endorse either Moscow or Washington as the lesser oppressor. It only compounds the trouble. The nationalists at Kiev make full use of the Russian military takeover of Crimea to perpetrate their vicious politics under the pretext of resisting Russification or foreign domination. In a similar way, Kiev’s reactionary maneuvers to affirm its dominance provides Putin all the pretence he needs to predicate Russian military and economic might to salvage the Ukrainians of the fascists. Both the Russian aggression and the US-EU imperialism must be defeated. Therein lies the way out for the people of Ukraine.