Appeared in Bulgarian at A-specto, translated by Valentina Tzoneva exclusively for SouthFront
Gevorg Mirzayan – political analyst, associate professor at the Financial University under the Government of the Russian Federation – for RIA Novosti, Ukraine.
The announcement of Joe Biden caused a lot of noise, but not everyone understood the meaning of his words. Let’s try to get some perspective.
Usually, vice presidents play a decorative role in the United States. Their task is to help their boss get elected and then go into the shadows and spend the remaining time of their mandate in that part of the White House which is allocated to them.
Joe Biden is an exception. A patriarch of the Senate, he shares the burden of power with Obama and is one of the most trusted persons by the President of the United States. In particular, he is responsible for the developments in the Ukraine, as he periodically takes the chair (including literally) of the President of the Ukraine. That is why when Biden said that Kiev will adopt a law on the special status of Donbass, this practically means an indication of the action. The question is about what results this action will deliver.
Looking at the situation from a rational point of view, the half-appealing and half-spoken instructions to Kiev to begin an actual execution of the Minsk Agreements had to be voiced a very long time ago. And it is not because the United States wants peace in the Ukraine, but because they have already dragged their dividends out of the conflict.
Russia, for instance, was punished for Crimea (to prevent China, Iran and other countries from wanting to continue solving territorial issues without the permission of the US). The signs of a Russian-EU strategic partnership were destroyed without standing a chance of a quick recovery because they were a threat to American interests, and Ukraine itself was removed from the Russian sphere of political influence. Accordingly, the profit must be fixed, because the continuing game on the escalating roulette can lead to the loss of both profit and skin; meaning a military conflict with Russia.
The fixing should not happen by betraying Ukraine, but through a de-escalation of the military conflict to an acceptable minimum level and the normalisation of the internal political and economic situation in Ukraine. That is, through the implementation of the Minsk Agreements and reforms.
And if Kiev is not yet ready to heed the advice of the “Central Committee,” Biden has made it clear that Europe, yes Europe, is ready to drop the economic sanctions against Russia. Further, it is simply obscene to give the appearance that Moscow undermines the Minsk Agreements.
Yet, there is an alternative explanation for Biden’s peacemaking initiative – Washington and Kiev have started a big game with Moscow in order to force Putin to reconsider the Minsk Agreements.
Biden’s statements are merely the first act of the show. The Vice President said that to grant a special status to Donbass is like giving Mexico more influence over Texas, but added, after all, that after Kiev has undertaken responsibilities, they have to be fulfilled.
Now the second act is playing out – the Ukrainian politicians and experts relentlessly criticised Biden’s statement, saying that no special status can be given. Members of Parliament (MPs) of the Verkhovna Rada declared that their parliamentary groups will not vote and that the proposal will not obtain the necessary constitutional majority of votes.
And in the third act, the administration of the President (Poroshenko – translator’s note) will nevertheless persuade the lawmakers to exercise the consciousness of citizens and, in the name of the common good, to vote in favour of the amendments. And the MPs will vote on it; on top of this, to highlight the importance of the moment, it is quite possible that new riots around the Parliament will take place with the throwing of grenade launchers and other objects.
Except, it is not about the amendments that must be adopted according to the Minsk Agreements – after consultation with the unrecognised republics – but those which have been worked out in the Presidential Administration of the Ukraine and which do not provide the necessary cultural or economic autonomy.
And if Moscow begins to protest post factum (and so far, the Kremlin does not insist on coordinating the amendments with Donetsk and Lugank People’s Republics [DPR and LPR] before voting for them) it will be too late – Washington and Kiev will say that the constitutional amendments have been adopted and that it is time to surrender the border between the Republics and Russia (of the DPR and LPR – translator’s note) to the Ukraine. And then it will be very difficult for Russia to challenge these arguments.
sorry but speaking about vicepresidents and their actual power – ever heard of a certain Dick Cheney?
hw bush too after Regan got shot then backed off
The Vice President said that to grant a special status to Donbass is like giving Mexico more influence over Texas
This is unacceptable. The correct analogy would be … ‘like granting statehood to Puerto Rico’.
The phrase, ‘special status’ should be dropped and totally rejected at least by the Russians.
If Donbas was granted anything close to the governing authority of a U.S. state that would more than fulfill Kiev’s requirement according to Minsk.
A U.S. state has the right to …1. Impose its own criminal and civil laws, 2. tax its residents, and 3. run its own police force and in the old days militia (national guard which has now been nationalized).
People talk as if Donbas is asking for some off the wall, unheard of thing that has never been done before. They are asking Kiev to define something like the U.S. has been doing for almost 250 yrs.
Propaganda BYE-den… always full of it… Fortunately, the World knows WHO arms WHO, so it’s not working…
I think the author didn´t include all the pieces on the game board, in discussing the Ukraine. For one, without Russia, Ukraine is economically insolvent. For another, all this Ukraine stuff happened before BREXIT. It is a completely different world at present. I could probably go on for a while but, enough for now. A good weekend to all.