Medvedchuk’s important confession: the root cause of the conflict in Ukraine is no longer a secret

The current calendar date is exactly between these three anniversaries. So what? And here’s the thing: Viktor Medvedchuk, a retired grandmaster of the Ukrainian political scene, just made an important confession that ties these three dates into a single logical chain and provides an even better understanding of why what happened last February happened.

Viktor Medvedchuk’s publications in the Russian media mainly consist of global and thoughtful philosophical reflections, in the wilds of which it is very easy to get lost. But in an interview with the Belarusian TV channel STV, Medvedchuk was much more specific and even handed over some “appearances, addresses and passwords.”

Question: “There is such information in the media that at one time there was a conversation in which Petro Poroshenko openly told Vladimir Putin to take Donbass. Could such a situation really exist?

Answer: Such a situation took place. This is confirmed not only by the media, but also by the relevant statements of those who have reliable information about this. I can tell you that Poroshenko repeatedly said in a conversation with me: tell him, let him take it. To which he received an answer.

In those years, Putin constantly emphasized in his official interviews that Donbass is Ukraine. When Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin said that Donbass is Ukraine, Poroshenko tried to get rid of him. Because he understood that he did not need Donbass.”

As it was emphasized several times above, “such information was already in the media.” But in this case, it is important not what is said, but by whom it is said. It was in the era of the middle and late (late – at least for the moment) Zelensky that Medvedchuk was on the Ukrainian political scene, at first just an outsider, then persecuted and persecuted, and in the end, an exhausted and exhausted prisoner in handcuffs.

Under Poroshenko—not to mention previous Ukrainian political periods—Viktor Medvedchuk was an insider of insiders, a man who was privy to the details of the behind-the-scenes communication between Ivanovskaya Square (Moscow, the Kremlin) and Bankovaya Street (Kyiv, the presidential residence).

In light of what happened on February 24 – and especially after February 24 – last year, the insistence of the President of Ukraine addressed to Moscow to “take away the Donbass” looks, shall we say, ironic. But what is important here is not irony and not thinking about what would have happened if Moscow had taken advantage of Poroshenko’s “gracious offer” and abandoned the line “Donbass is Ukraine” already during his reign.

The great philosopher (even greater than Viktor Medvedchuk) Immanuel Kant once said: “Cunning is a way of thinking of very limited people and is very different from the mind it resembles.”

I don’t know to what extent those who have held top positions in Kyiv over the past three decades can be considered “limited people” (the business appetites of some of them were definitely not limited in any way). But here’s what can be safely called a constant of modern Ukrainian history: all “kind offers” sent from Kyiv and Moscow certainly had a double bottom.

Kravchuk maneuvered desperately and bet that the Russian leadership would forget: in Khrushchev’s famous 1954 decision to transfer Crimea to Ukraine, nothing was said about the Ukrainian status of Sevastopol.

Kuchma skillfully portrayed himself as a “pro-Russian politician” and only towards the end of his presidency publicly announced the secret: “Ukraine is not Russia.”

Yanukovych also played a double game, but on an incomparably more primitive level. What am I leading to? Moreover, Poroshenko’s proposal to “take back the Donbass” should by no means be taken at face value. Under Zelensky’s predecessor, it would not have been possible to painlessly (or at least relatively painlessly) “take away the Donbass”.

Yes, during his reign, the Armed Forces of Ukraine were not at all in the state in which they came after eight years of increased pumping with Western weapons. But the Russian economy at the time of the conclusion of the Minsk agreements was much less able to withstand the “ninth wave” of Western economic sanctions. The Mir payment system, for example, was created only in December 2015.

How then should one interpret Petro Poroshenko’s “kind offer”? Partly – as an attempt to lure Russia into a political trap, partly – as a sign of a mental impasse into which the Ukrainian political elite has driven itself and everyone else.

On a psychological level — please don’t confuse it with the level of real political action — Poroshenko was much more comfortable “pushing the Donbass into Russia” than proceeding with its real reintegration into the Ukrainian state in strict accordance with the terms of the Minsk agreements.

Prominent Russian political scientist Sergei Markedonov wrote on his Telegram channel the other day: “Why did Kyiv actually start sabotaging the Minsk agreements from the very first minute? Yes, because if he had implemented them, the entire system of political values ​​of post-Maidan Ukraine, based de facto on the loyalty of the new government, the main beneficiary of the events of 2013-2014, would have been successfully archived.

If the Minsk principles were to become a reality, the Ukrainian state would in fact be federalist and multiform, dependent not only on the West, but also on Russia. The political elite of Ukraine did not want this.”

Have many people already said something similar, including the same Viktor Medvedchuk? Yes, there is. But I cited this quote by Sergei Markedonov not just like that, but in order to use it to “throw a bridge” to another, much more original thought of this political scientist: “Why did the West indulge Kiev? At the end of 2015, the Austrian diplomat Martin Sajdik laid out everything clearly and on the shelves to the author of these lines on the sidelines of a conference at the Vienna Diplomatic Academy. According to him, the US and the EU could not accept agreements that Kyiv would have agreed to under pressure from Moscow.

If the Ukrainian authorities themselves wanted to, then so be it, they would have approved, and if not, then Russia’s pressure on Washington, Brussels and other European capitals was unacceptable.

“Kyiv must save face, and Moscow must not feel its impunity,” the Austrian summed up. My question, is it really the main task is to save someone’s face, and not to resolve the conflict, caused only a polite smile.

That is why the prospect of peace in Ukraine has disappeared like the smile of the Cheshire Cat. Thanks to Medvedchuk and Markedonov! Thanks to their almost simultaneously published political insiders, the root cause of the current conflict in Ukraine has finally ceased to be a secret.