Today marks the one-year anniversary the Russian invasion. President Joe Biden’s unexpected five-hour trip to Kiev Monday should raise uncomfortable and unpopular questions about what Ukraine, which has been a beneficiary of more than $100 billion in U.S. assistance, has attempted to accomplish in the nine years following the Maidan revolution.
From the time Ukraine declared independence on August 24, 1991, until the Maidan coup of February 2014, Ukraine was essentially a binational kleptocracy that used its position as a buffer state, particularly in its role as a transit hub for Russian natural gas to Europe, to the advantage of its kleptocratic elite–a coterie of deeply compromised politicians and former Soviet-era functionaries-turned-oligarchs.
The tension between the Russian East, Galician West reached its peak during the Maidan protests, when Viktor Yanukovych (a politician from eastern Ukraine) sought to capitalize on Ukraine’s unique geographical position during the country’s E.U. Russia with its long-standing and strong economic ties to Ukraine fiercely opposed the accession bid.
Yanukovych managed to squeeze both sides and the E.U. economic deal was the winner. The offer made by Vladimir Putin of Russia was far more attractive than the one Yanukovych made. Yanukovych was avaricious but wary of disturbing his neighbor to the East and accepted the offer by the Russians, which was worth about $15 Billion.
Yanukovych was simply playing an old game. This game was not played for the good of the Ukrainian people but for its corrupt elite. In the 20 years that have passed since 1991, Ukraine has not been able produce a governing class capable of realizing that its geographical position is its Achilles heel but also its greatest strength. They could use their geographic position to advance the common good. The population, which was looted to the last hryvnia of its currency, fell deeper and deeper into poverty. In 2015, Iraq and Mongolia had higher personal incomes than Ukraine.
The chance to create a multiethnic, viable nation state in Ukraine was also lost by its leaders for 30 years. Instead, they chose to pursue a Banderite vision for a mono-ethnic nation state, a “Ukraine For Ukrainians”
The results were devastating.
Due to the Russian invasion one year ago, the civil war that broke out in Ukraine has brought us to the brink European war. The ruling elites of Ukraine, who have time but again rejected peace negotiations, need to understand that Ukraine has become a failed state. More than 12 million people have fled the country and its economy has been ravaged by at least one third since its invasion. But, President Biden and his advisors, along with the nearly-entire media-political establishment of Washington, believe that this war is about freedom. Freedom for Ukraine, freedom anywhere. It is about what kind of world we want and how we wish to leave it for our children.”
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Freedom? Only if freedom is defined as permanent dependence.
Ukraine’s ruling elites believe that if they want to survive, they must cling to the E.U. NATO. They will be a military dependent of the United States if they join NATO. They will be another vassal to Berlin if they join the E.U. and have to submit their future to the control of the European Central Bank in Frankfurt as well as an inexplicable bureaucracy based in Brussels.
As we pass the first anniversary of the Russian invasion and the ninth anniversary of the Maidan coup, those who so eagerly took to the streets to overthrow the democratically-elected Ukrainian president (and those Americans who so lustily cheered them) on the night of February 21, 2014, might take a moment to ask themselves: What exactly did we gain?
