Archive for the ‘Ukraine’ Category

Will Belarus follow Ukraine out of the Russian orbit? – Atlantic Council

A woman in Minsk confronts a member of the Belarus security services with images of injuries inflicted during the country's crackdown on pro-democracy protests. Kremlin support for Belarus dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka has helped prop up his regime but is also fueling anti-Russian sentiment in the country. (Tut.By/Handout via REUTERS)

As the crisis in Belarus has unfolded over the past month, there has been a growing sense of deja vu about the Russian response. Officials and media in Moscow have attacked the Belarusian pro-democracy protests as the work of extremists and foreign agents, while at the same time warning of a nationalist threat and drawing emotionally explosive parallels to the WWII Soviet struggle against Nazism. These narratives are not new. They directly echo the Kremlin reaction to the 2004 and 2014 pro-democracy uprisings in neighboring Ukraine.

Moscows lack of originality should come as no surprise. This script sells itself in modern Russia, where attitudes towards the former captive nations of the Soviet and Tsarist eras remain strikingly imperialistic and few question the ethics of continued Russian domination. Such thinking makes it all too easy for the Kremlin to demonize non-Russian national awakenings in the post-Soviet world as little more than treacherous Russophobia. It also obscures the nation-building processes that began in 1991 and are still very much underway.

Similar claims of Russophobic nationalism have also been at least partially embraced by a significant number of academics and Putin sympathizers in the West, reflecting the continued dominance of russocentric thinking towards the former Soviet world. This needs to change if the international community wishes to fully grasp the implications of the geopolitical turbulence generated as nations in the post-Soviet region shake off generations of russification and embrace independent identities. An appreciation of this post-imperial process is key to understanding the crisis in todays Belarus and deciphering the dramatic shifts taking place within Ukrainian society. It also offers the best chance of predicting how the region will develop in the years ahead.

Far from representing anti-Russian extremism, the nation-building processes in countries like Belarus and Ukraine are a natural and necessary response to an epoch of Russian domination that stretches back hundreds of years. Across the former USSR, the non-Russian republics are now asserting national identities that inevitably diverge from the imposed visions of the imperial past. This is creating novel perspectives for international audiences previously accustomed to viewing the region exclusively through a Russian lens.

Nowhere is this more evident than in Ukraine. As the largest of the non-Russian Soviet republics in terms of population and the country with the longest experience of Russian imperial rule, post-Soviet Ukraines nation-building journey has been particularly challenging. Nevertheless, the scale of Ukraines progress since 1991 towards an independent national identity makes a mockery of Kremlin attempts to dismiss this historic development as the work of extremists and outsiders.

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Moscows ongoing information war against Ukrainian identity ignores the broad societal changes taking place in the country while exaggerating the influence of radical elements. This includes amplifying small-scale events and marginal figures in order to create the illusion of national significance. As part of this agenda, the Kremlin has frequently been accused of orchestrating far-right rallies and staging extremist incidents in Ukraine. Indeed, during a recent prisoner exchange between Kyiv and Moscow in early 2020, one particularly notorious Ukrainian neo-Nazi was even handed over to Russia at the Kremlins request. The case of Edward Kovalenko illustrates Russias long history of nurturing fake fascists for propaganda purposes and raises questions over the credibility of other fringe groups in Ukraine whose primary function seems to be serving as bogeymen for Kremlin TV and credulous international correspondents.

In reality, despite the polarizing influence of the ongoing war with Russia, far-right political parties have failed to make any electoral impact at the national level in Ukraine. During Ukraines wartime presidential and parliamentary elections of 2014 and 2019, support for nationalist parties remained firmly rooted in the low single digits. This is far lower than the backing received by similar parties during recent elections in numerous EU member states.

Meanwhile, the landslide victory of Russian-speaking Jewish candidate Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the April 2019 Ukrainian presidential election illustrated a side of Ukraines nation-building journey the Kremlin prefers not to acknowledge. Zelenskyys election was the most emphatic evidence to date of an emerging civic identity in independent Ukraine that moves beyond the traditionally narrow confines of language and ethnicity to reflect the realities of the modern Ukrainian nation.

This civic national identity has been evolving organically since the dawn of Ukrainian independence in 1991, but the process has accelerated dramatically following the outbreak of hostilities with Russia in 2014. The Russian-Ukrainian War, which is how two-thirds to three-quarters of Ukrainians view the conflict in the Donbas, is being fought on the Ukrainian side predominantly by Russian-speaking Ukrainians. While Ukrainian is also widely spoken on the front lines, it is the Russian-speaking contingent that dominated many of the leading volunteer battalions in 2014, before being integrated into Ukraines military and security forces.

This linguistic pluralism is mirrored in the ethnic makeup of Ukraines defenders. Significant numbers of Georgians, Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Belarusians, and Russians have fought for Ukraine since 2014, while the various branches of the Orthodox faith have been joined by other Christian denominations along with Jewish and Muslim contingents.

The conflict has exposed the shortcomings of traditional Russian efforts to divide Ukraine geographically into nationalist and pro-Kremlin camps. Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, which is firmly within the predominantly Russian-speaking heartlands of eastern Ukraine, has suffered the highest military casualties in all Ukraine. It treats large numbers of the Ukrainian militarys wounded and is home to the countrys first memorial museum documenting the conflict. Meanwhile, western Ukraine has the highest incidence of draft-dodging, despite being routinely depicted by the Kremlin as the source of all nationalistic sentiment in modern Ukraine.

The evolving nature of national identity in independent Ukraine can also be seen in changing attitudes towards language. While language issues are still often exploited in the Ukrainian political arena, opinion surveys indicate surprisingly high levels of consensus and a growing mood of tolerance across Ukraine on key aspects of the language debate.

A comprehensive nationwide survey conducted by the Razumkov Center and Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation in late 2019 found widespread acceptance of Russian-speaking Ukrainian patriotism. At the same time, there was broad agreement over the role of the Ukrainian language as an important marker of independence, with acceptance levels ranging from 95% in the west and 86% in the center of the country to between 64-71% in the east and south. Strong majorities of Ukrainians in all regions also agreed that at least half of national media should be in Ukrainian. In other words, a more nuanced picture is emerging where language no longer defines identity but is recognized as an important national symbol.

The growing number of Ukrainian citizens who self-identify as ethnic Ukrainians is a further indication of Ukraines strengthening post-imperial national identity. According to data from 1989, ethnic Russians made up 22% of the Ukrainian population. By the time of the 2001 Ukrainian census, this figure had dropped to 17%. More recent data from a 2017 poll conducted by the Gorshenin Institute and Germanys Friedrich Ebert Foundation indicated that the number of people in Ukraine who identified as ethnic Russian had fallen to below 6%. While this decline may be partially due to migration flows since the fall of the USSR and the temporary exclusion of ethnic Russian Ukrainians in occupied Crimea and eastern Ukraine, it also suggests a growing readiness of Ukrainian citizens from different backgrounds to see themselves as Ukrainian.

Taken together, these developments indicate that Ukraine has achieved significant success in its civic nation-building efforts. The increasingly civic nature of modern Ukrainian identity is evident in the tendency of Ukrainians to direct any feelings of war-related animosity towards Russias political leaders rather than the Russian people. A Pew Research Center survey of Ukrainian public opinion conducted last year found that approval of Vladimir Putin had plummeted between 2007 and 2019 from 56% to just 11%. Meanwhile, February 2019 research by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology found that 77% of Ukrainians had a positive attitude towards Russians in general. This diverges strongly from Kremlin propaganda narratives of Russophobic Ukraine and suggests that greater Russian respect for Ukrainian sovereignty could lead to rapid improvements in bilateral ties.

The biggest barrier to better relations between Russia and other former Soviet republics may well be Russias own reluctance to treat its former vassals as equals. The Kremlin demonizes nation-building elsewhere in the former Russian Empire, but the most toxic post-Soviet national identity is arguably that of Russia itself. During the two decades of Putins reign, revanchist sentiments and openly imperialistic rhetoric have become everyday features of the Russian national discourse. Nor are these merely words. The ongoing Russian occupation of whole regions in Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova reflects the Kremlins willingness to back up its revisionist world view with military might.

Recent experience strongly suggests that Russias uncompromising approach towards the countrys former imperial possessions is counter-productive. Moscows six-year war in Ukraine has had a catastrophic impact on Russian influence. The Kremlins increasingly open intervention in Belarus could soon have a similarly negative effect on Belarusian attitudes towards Russia. Putins bid to prop up the Lukashenka regime in Minsk may prove successful in the short term, but it is likely to profoundly damage Russias standing among a new generation of Belarusians who are experiencing a national awakening but who might otherwise have been ready to maintain friendly relations with Moscow.

Russias aggressive reaction to nation-building in Belarus and Ukraine reflects Moscows failure to come to terms with the loss of empire. Modern Russia still bristles at the new reality of former colonies asserting their statehood in ways that challenge long-established imperial dogmas. Until this changes, the post-Soviet region will remain a source of geopolitical instability. Meanwhile, Putins Russian World will continue to shrink as Moscows outdated imperialism alienates the countrys natural allies.

Taras Kuzio is a non-resident fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute at Johns Hopkins-SAIS and a professor at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy. He is also author of Putins War Against Ukraine and co-author of The Sources of Russias Great Power Politics: Ukraine and the Challenge to the European Order.

Wed, Aug 26, 2020

With the emergence of an independent Belarusian national identity, we are entering a new stage in the Soviet collapse. Thirty years after the empire officially expired, the last outpost of Soviet authoritarianism in Central Europe is finally in eclipse.

UkraineAlertbyFranak Viaorka

Tue, Sep 1, 2020

Belarusian pro-democracy protests are now in their fourth week but Russian support for beleaguered dictator Alyaksandr Lukashenka has revitalized his regime. How will the crisis evolve in the coming weeks?

UkraineAlertbyPeter Dickinson

The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

UkraineAlert is a comprehensive online publication that provides regular news and analysis on developments in Ukraines politics, economy, civil society, and culture.

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Will Belarus follow Ukraine out of the Russian orbit? - Atlantic Council

Treasury sanctions Ukrainian lawmaker, 3 others over election interference – UPI News

Sept. 10 (UPI) -- The U.S. Treasury designated Thursday a pro-Russian Ukrainian who promoted false allegations against Joe Biden among four people for sanctions linked to attempted election interference.

Ukrainian lawmaker and Russian agent Andrii Derkach was among four Russian-linked individuals included in the list of new sanctions for trying to interfere in the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Derkach met with President Donald Trump's lawyer Rudy Giuliani in Ukraine in December as Giuliani attempted to get dirt on former Vice President Biden's ties in Ukraine, Politico reported.

Derkach told Politico that Democratic lawmakers were concerned about his effort to influence Republican investigations ahead of the 2020 election after he sent materials related to Biden to Congress.

"Andrii Derkach and other Russian agents employ manipulation and deceit to attempt to influence elections in the United States and elsewhere around the world," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. "The United States will continue to use all the tools at its disposal to counter these Russian disinformation campaigns and uphold the integrity of our elections system."

The Treasury also designated Russian nationals, Artem Lifshits, Anton Andreyev, and Darya Aslanova, linked the Internet Research Agency.

The department has previously sanctioned the IRA and its Russian financier Yevgeniy Prigozhin for supporting the IRA's attempt to interfere in the 2018 U.S. midterm elections.

The IRA, often referred to as a "troll factory," also made efforts in 2016 to favor then-candidate Trump.

More recently, Facebook removed a small network of 13 Facebook accounts and two pages linked to individuals associated with the IRA's past activity, a report shows.

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Treasury sanctions Ukrainian lawmaker, 3 others over election interference - UPI News

Documents pertaining to operation of Ukrainian special services to detain Wagner PMC fighters must be handed over to The Hague Lutsenko – Interfax…

KYIV. Sept 10 (Interfax-Ukraine) Documents appearing in the operation of the Ukrainian special services to detain the Wagner PMC fighters involved in war crimes in Donbas must be submitted to the International Criminal Court (ICC, The Hague) for their absentee conviction, former Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko said.

"I advise ... to send them to the International Criminal Court for conviction in absentia of all those terrorists, otherwise this whole story will develop into a deep political crisis," Lutsenko said at a press conference at the Interfax-Ukraine agency on Thursday.

He believes that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky should dismiss the participants in the meeting, after which the details of the special operation became known to the relevant structures of the Russian Federation and the operation was disrupted.

According to the ex-prosecutor general, it is necessary "to dismiss immediately all the participants in this meeting, first of all, Mr. Yermak [head of the President's Office Andriy Yermak] and Demchenko [first deputy secretary of the National Security and Defense Council Ruslan Demchenko], apologize to the officers of the special forces, whose dignity was sullied, reward them, carry out a set of measures to prevent such things from happening and not destroy documents."

Lutsenko also claims that officers of almost all services involved in this operation are ready to testify at the temporary investigative commission, which must be created in the Verkhovna Rada.

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Documents pertaining to operation of Ukrainian special services to detain Wagner PMC fighters must be handed over to The Hague Lutsenko - Interfax...

Ukraine’s Naftogaz urges state to be ‘proactive’ in helping boost gas output – S&P Global

Highlights

Country has potential to move from stagnation to growth: CEO

Ukraine PM Shmyhal says government committed to support

Ukraine produced 20.7 Bcm of gas in 2019

London Ukraine's state-owned Naftogaz wants the government to be "proactive" in its support for the country's domestic gas sector in order to provide the right conditions for output to grow, its CEO Andriy Kobolev said Sept. 8.

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Ukraine, whose gas production has been steady at some 20 Bcm/year for the past 25 years, has vast untapped potential in its onshore blocks -- both for conventional and unconventional resources -- as well as in the Black Sea.

Large swathes of acreage have been opened up in the past year for new exploration but there have been delays in signing off on new production sharing agreements and gas producers believe there should be more incentives afforded to the industry to boost upstream activity.

"Ukraine has the potential to move from stagnation to production growth," Kobolev said at a meeting with government officials in Kyiv.

"But new areas and projects that can provide such a result carry significant risks, require significant investment, new technologies and expertise," he said, according to comments posted to the Naftogaz website.

"We are ready to take responsibility, explore and open these opportunities for the entire industry and for the country. But their successful implementation requires a proactive position on the part of the state," he said.

Ukraine has long harbored the ambition of being self-sufficient in gas -- and even to become an exporter -- and its Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said at the meeting that domestic gas output would bring about Ukraine's energy independence.

The country produced 20.7 Bcm of gas in 2019, almost enough to meet its consumption of 26.4 Bcm.

"At meetings with the President [Volodymyr Zelensky], we have constantly raised the issue of increasing our own production," Shmyhal said.

"It is necessary to conduct appropriate exploration phase, complete the already partially implemented exploration plans and promptly begin production. For its part, the government is exerting every effort to do such work, and we are also counting on the relevant legislative initiatives of the lawmakers," he said.

"I am confident that together we will be able to complete the necessary work and shortly strengthen Ukraine's energy independence."

Naftogaz said it stood ready to implement pilot projects in new areas of production, reducing the risk of such developments for the whole industry.

These could include the development of deep horizons, deposits of unconventional shale gas and the Black Sea shelf, it said.

"The industry also needs decisions from the state -- signing production sharing agreements after tenders that were held more than a year ago, introducing incentives for unconventional gas production, and opening access to subsoil users to the Black Sea."

Ukraine has also opened up the downstream gas market with Naftogaz now able to sell gas directly to households and businesses, rather than through third parties which used to be the case.

It is offering a number of different tariffs for customers, including annual, quarterly and monthly tariffs for business.

Its annual tariff, which it said is best suited for gas suppliers, is indexed to the German NCG hub, Naftogaz said, while its quarterly and monthly tariffs are priced off the country's energy exchange.

"Naftogaz is ready to supply gas to all market participants in Ukraine," its commerce director Willem Koppuls said.

"To do this, we have prepared proposals of various volumes, linked to both European hubs and the Ukrainian exchange," Koppuls said.

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Ukraine's Naftogaz urges state to be 'proactive' in helping boost gas output - S&P Global

Nunes declines to answer if he received information from Ukraine lawmaker meant to damage Biden | TheHill – The Hill

The House Intelligence Committee's ranking member, Rep. Devin NunesDevin Gerald NunesNunes declines to answer if he received information from Ukraine lawmaker meant to damage Biden White House, Congress talk next coronavirus relief bill as COVID-19 continues to surge Tucker Carlson: 'Matt Drudge is now firmly a man of the progressive left' MORE (R-Calif.) on Wednesday declined to answer whether he had received materials from Ukrainian sources meant to damage former Vice President Joe BidenJoe BidenHillicon Valley: Three arrested in Twitter hack | Trump pushes to break up TikTok | House approves 0M for election security Wisconsin Republicans raise questions about death of Black Trump supporter Trump holds mini-rally at Florida airport MORE's (D) reputation ahead of the 2020 election.

Nunes was questioned repeatedly in a closed-door committee meeting Wednesday by Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.) about materials that were allegedly sent to GOP members of Congress, including the California representative, by Ukrainian lawmaker AndriiDerkach.

Derkach has worked with President TrumpDonald John TrumpTrump says he will ban TikTok from operating in the US Trump's 2019 financial disclosure reveals revenue at Mar-a-Lago, other major clubs Treasury to conduct policy review of tax-exempt status for universities after Trump tweets MORE's personal lawyer, Rudy GiulianiRudy GiulianiNunes declines to answer if he received information from Ukraine lawmaker meant to damage Biden Democratic attorneys criticize House Judiciary Democrats' questioning of Barr Swalwell: Barr has taken Michael Cohen's job as Trump's fixer MORE.

Giuliani has ties to Ukraine, and last year boasted publicly of a trip to the country for the purpose of investigating Biden's past.

"I guess I would request an explanation from the ranking member why he is just not prepared to respond to a simple question whether he has received materials that have been called into question that seem designed to denigrate a former vice president of the United States, but, at a minimum, to share them with the rest of the committee," Maloney said during the closed-door hearing, according to a transcript released by the committee Thursday.

The questioning came during a part of the meeting Wednesday when the committee voted along party lines to allow all members of the lower chamber to view intelligence that Democrats sent to the FBI warning the agency that about a campaign to discredit the former vice president, according to a report from CNN.

Maloney went on to tell Rep. Adam SchiffAdam Bennett SchiffDemocrats exit briefing saying they fear elections under foreign threat Nunes declines to answer if he received information from Ukraine lawmaker meant to damage Biden Hillicon Valley: House panel grills tech CEOs during much anticipated antitrust hearing | TikTok to make code public as it pushes back against 'misinformation' | House Intel panel expands access to foreign disinformation evidence MORE (D-Calif.), chairman of the Intelligence Committee, that there are public reports that congressional Republicans have received materials from the Ukrainian lawmaker, and that they "would not be prohibited from disclosure."

"But, at a minimum, I also understand that majority staff has requested of the minority that they be shared with majority staff so that we might evaluate them independently," Maloney continued.

The New York congressman added that his inquiry to Nunes is whether he is "prepared to disclose to the committee whether he has received materials that have been called into question in the public reports from Andrii Derkach and, if so, whether he is prepared to share them with the rest of the committee," according to CNN.

Schiff then asked Nunes if he would like to respond to Maloney, to which Nunes replied, "No."

Maloney again pressed Nunes, asking him if he would say whether he received the materials.

"Is the ranking member prepared to even respond to the question? How about it, Mr. Nunes? Did you receive a package from Andrii Derkach or not? And would you share with the committee or not?" Maloneycontinued.

According to the transcript, Nunes did not answer.

"Well, I guess this is a case where silence speaks volumes."

The meeting was then adjourned by Schiff following the exchange.

The Trump campaign and the president's allies have repeatedly pushed an unfounded claim that the former vice president used the power of his office to help his son Hunter Biden who, at the time, served on the board of Ukrainian energy firm Burisma.

Text messages released earlier this year revealed communication between a member of Nunes's staff and Lev Parnas, a close Ukrainian associate of Giuliani's who was arrested for campaign finance violations, about meetings with Ukrainian prosecutors to get information about Biden, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The Hill has reached out to Nunes's office for comment.

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Nunes declines to answer if he received information from Ukraine lawmaker meant to damage Biden | TheHill - The Hill