Despite the best efforts of Vladimir Putin and
his terrorist commandos in the eastern
Donbas region, Ukraine’s presidential
elections did in fact take place on May 25th,
under conditions that international observers
concur were fair and free. As of this writing,
Petro Poroshenko appears to have won in one
round.
Herewith a few lessons:
First, Ukraine is hardly the unstable almost-
failed state that Putin and his Western
apologists say it is. The terrorist violence was
confined to two provinces—Luhansk and
Donetsk. In the rest of the country, the voting
proceeded smoothly. On top of that, Ukraine’s
security forces were able to maintain law and
order in much of the country, a positive
development that builds on the armed forces’
creditable performance in their “anti-terrorist
operations” in April and May.
Second, Ukraine is anything but the
illegitimate state Putin and his western
apologists say it is. Voting participation for
the entire country was high: about 60 percent.
Not including the two provinces that were
terrorized by Putin’s commandos,
participation was even higher. Everyone
knows that the only thing that kept Ukrainians
in the Donbas from voting was Putin’s
terrorists.
Third, Putin’s terrorist commandos have been
outflanked by the elections. People want
stability; they want a return to normality.
And they know that elections can bring about
both. The terrorists, like Putin, have nothing
but violence to offer. That is not a winning
electoral platform. Nor is it any way to win
the hearts and minds of the eastern Ukrainian
population the terrorists claim to be
defending from wild-eyed Ukrainian
“fascists.” Small wonder that, after hemming
and hawing for several months, even
Ukraine’s richest oligarch, Rinat Akhmetov,
got off the fence and denounced the terrorists,
while calling on Donbas residents to take to
the streets and march in protest. (And, in an
indication of just what is still so wrong with
the Donbas, hundreds of thousands heeded his
call. Were they not, one might well ask,
capable of acting on their own—without being
told to do so by some higher-up?)
Fourth, while Ukraine now has a legitimately
elected president, Putin has egg on his face—
lots of it. Russia’s fascistoid dictator can
continue questioning democratic Ukraine’s
legitimacy, and he is perfectly entitled to
believe that fair and free elections are unfair
and un-free, but at some point such
truculence becomes nothing more than
childishness, stupidity, and petulance. Come
to think of it, haven’t those three qualities
defined Putin’s behavior since the fall of
2013, when he coerced Ukraine’s since-
deposed sultan, Viktor Yanukovych, into
backing out of the Association Agreement with
the European Union? Ask yourself this: just
what has Putin gotten out of this entire crisis?
An arid peninsula with enormous economic
and political problems, a spike in his
popularity, and affirmations of love from his
Western apologists. And just what has he lost?
Good relations with the West, good relations
with Ukraine, and the prospect of a rapid
recovery of Russia’s moribund economy. Isn’t
it time to recognize the obvious: that Putin’s
statecraft is about as refined as
Yanukovych’s?
Fifth, Ukraine’s much touted, much decried,
and much denounced “radical, right-wing
extremists” attracted about 1–2 percent of the
vote—which surprised no one who knows a
bit about Ukrainian politics. (Contrast that
with the 25 percent achieved by France’s
National Front in the May 25th elections to
the European Parliament.) In a word,
Ukraine’s right-wingers are a fringe
phenomenon that has played no serious role
in Ukraine’s national politics, is playing no
serious role in Ukraine’s national politics, and
will continue to play no serious role in
Ukraine’s national politics. All those Western,
Russian, and Ukrainian analysts who’ve been
beating the drum about the nefarious
influence of Ukraine’s right in the last few
years—while turning a blind eye to the
extremism of Yanukovych’s thuggish regime
and the even worse extremism of the pro-
Russian hyper-chauvinists who eventually
became the core of Putin’s terrorist
commandos in eastern Ukraine—have some
serious crow to eat. And some serious
apologies to make: for diverting attention
from the real danger in Ukraine to their own
personal obsessions.
Sixth, it may be time to be guardedly
optimistic about democratic Ukraine’s
prospects. True, the Donbas will remain a
problem for a long time, but Putin’s terrorists
are unlikely to branch out to other parts of
the country. As Turkey, Israel, Colombia, and
many other countries have shown, life can go
on, even when terrorists are ensconced in
regional strongholds. More important, Putin
and his terrorists appear to be in a dead end.
The government of Prime Minister Arseniy
Yatsenyuk has a serious reform program that
should bring about radical economic change
and a whole-scale decentralization of
authority. The newly elected president has
good credentials and a huge popular mandate.
The West—the United States, the European
Union, the International Monetary Fund, and
the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—
supports Ukraine and will make sure that
reforms are in fact implemented. Finally, the
capital city, Kyiv, has a new mayor, the pro-
Western reformer, Vitaly Klitschko.
Not bad for a country that, according to
Putin’s Russian propagandists and Western
apologists, is supposedly on the verge of
collapse.
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