What’s Next for Ukraine?

Andrew Wilson thinks that the Ukrainian protesters have won. But the battle for a free Ukraine is just beginning. Russian won’t make it easy.

“the new government in Ukraine, however it’s made up, will be given the briefest of ritualistic honeymoons before Russia uses every instrument at its disposal to try to make it fail.” 

When Russia bailed out Ukraine in December, its aim “was to provide just enough money to support the old semi-authoritarian system (helping Viktor Yanukovych pay the police) and keep Ukrainian society post-Soviet, that is, still dependent on government. So Ukraine’s new leaders will have to be honest and say their aim is to dismantle both.”

Wilson expects Russia to come at Ukraine from all sides: “Russia has talked a lot about its ‘soft power’ in recent years. It isn’t particularly soft. The new Ukraine will pay more for gas, which will be regularly cut off for ‘technical reasons.’ Russia’s crazy ‘food safety’ agency will declare that everything that comes out of Ukraine is radioactive. Ukrainian migrant workers will be sent home now they have finished helping to rebuild Sochi. Worst of all, Russia will work hard to try to re-corrupt the political system. The Kremlin used to boast that it could exploit Ukraine’s old-style ‘democracy’ – meaning that, just like Yanukovych, they could launch their own puppet parties and buy agents of influence in the honest ones.”

(For a Ukrainian pastor’s views on what Ukrainians want, see the piece by San Sanych Orlov-Koshchavka at the Trinity House web site.)