The Russian Challenge

The Russian Challenge
A War of Narratives and Arms
sprang up around it. Its most visible wartime manifestation
has been the formation of all-volunteer territorial defence
battalions, currently 37 in number, more than a quarter of
them from eastern oblasts. This helps to explain why the
majority of Ukrainian soldiers in the conflict are Russianspeaking.
126 But the influence of the parallel state can now
be felt across the board, from the bottom-up organization of
defence in Mariupol to the fabrication of body armour out
of household materials, and the provision of winter clothing
for soldiers and shelters for families whose homes have
been destroyed.
At the same time, the strength of the parallel state is a
commentary on the debilities of the legal state. Compared
with the Yushchenko years, there are better prospects that
the two will converge (an example being the emergence
of Samopomich [Self-Help], which won 33 seats in the
new parliament). Yet the legal state, with its bureaucratic
mastodons, suffocating hierarchies, mindless routines
and idiotic regulations, remains very much in place.
Along with its silent partner, the quasi-criminal shadow
state, it is the gum that fouls every good policy and drives
all but the toughest reformers to capitulation or mental
breakdown. It is this malign synergy, rather than any
latent Banderist ideology, 127 that has poisoned relations
between the largely self-financing territorial battalions
and the Ministry of Defence, which has covered up fraud
and theft on an unconscionable scale.The last minister to
confront such a challenge, Anatoliy Grytsenko, managed
to remain in office for almost three years – in the event,
not long enough to produce the ‘irreversible’ changes he
sought. Less than a month after Yanukovych took office,
the six deputy ministers and senior officials dismissed
by Grytsenko were reinstated.
The considered wisdom in Kyiv is that President Poroshenko
and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatseniuk are the least bad
leaders that Ukraine has ever had. Intellectually, they
understand the necessity for reform as much as anyone. But
that will not be enough to empower reformers, bring the
economy out of the shadows and overcome the culture of
power and patronage of which they are part. So far, their
actions have been in line with Augustine’s prayer: ‘Lord,
make me good but not yet.’ The differences between the
Russian state, which appears to work even when it does
not, and the Ukrainian state, whose deficiencies escape no
one, are threefold: money, coercion and deference to power.
The challenge for Ukraine is to produce systemic change in
penurious circumstances and by lawful means in a country
where power and privilege are scorned. This is both a
constraint and an opportunity. So is public recognition that
there is no longer any choice.
There is no choice. In present circumstances, prolongation
of the status quo invites destitution and chaos. Over 40
per cent of Ukraine’s coal mines (accounting for 66 per
cent of production) are flooded. Infrastructure has been
destroyed and assets confiscated on a colossal scale. By no
means all of Donetsk and Luhansk was a rust belt. Iron and
steel accounted for 34 per cent of export revenues. There
was measurable (albeit inadequate) investment in energy
efficiency and modernization following the gas crises of
2006 and 2009. Firms such as the Industrial Consortium
of Donbas undertook complex and highly profitable
construction projects for European customers. Today, its
assets are in Russian hands, and its co-chairman, former
Donetsk governor Serhiy Taruta, is bankrupt. 128 In this
matrix, Ukrainian military and National Guard units are not
entirely free of blame. They fire into civilian areas, though
supposedly only when fired upon.
The challenge for Ukraine is to produce
systemic change in penurious circumstances
and by lawful means in a country where
power and privilege are scorned. This is
both a constraint and an opportunity. So is
public recognition that there is no longer
any choice.
This dire economic situation, combined with social
and humanitarian conditions in the east, would pose a
formidable challenge to any prosperous EU member state.
In its May 2014 report, the UNHCR described ‘an increasing
number of human rights abuses’ in occupied areas, ‘such as
abductions, harassment, unlawful detentions’ and torture. 129
These practices, along with threats against Jews (which
have reduced the 17,000-strong Jewish community of
Donetsk to a rump of several thousand), attacks on Roma
and the ‘plunder and pillage’ described by Girkin, form
the backdrop to a catalogue of material deprivation and
breakdown of essential services, threatening communities
with starvation. 130 After the destruction of Debaltsevo, 15
buses filled with residents heading west; only one went east.
126
On 10 November, the battalions were incorporated into the National Guard, though it remains to be seen what impact this will have on their ethos, their command
structures and their standards of discipline.
127
Stepan Bandera (1909–59), Ukrainian nationalist leader whose beliefs, actions and legacy remain deeply controversial in Ukraine.
128
Evgeniy Shvets, ‘Serhiy Taruta: “Rinat [Akhmetov] is no longer an oligarch, and I am bankrupt”’ [Rinat bol’she ne oligarkh. A ya – bankrot], LB.ua, 5 January 2015.
129
Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Report on the Human Rights Situation in Ukraine, 15 May 2014, p. 4.
130
Amie Ferris-Rotman, ‘The Scattering of Ukraine’s Jews’, The Atlantic, 21 September 2014, www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/09/ukraine-jewishcommunity-israel/380515/;
International Crisis Group, Eastern Ukraine, pp. 17 ff.
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