It has been ten years now that Russia is reuniting with Belarus. On October 20th 2005 “the commission preparing the Constitutional act of an Allied State announced that the project of the document that declares the alliance’s bases, would be examined by the Supreme Council before November 15th. Then the act will be submitted to a referendum, which will take place both in Russia and in Belarus,” Izvestia writes on 10.21.05. We can rejoice and applaud? Finally two people will merge into one? No, Izvestia explains. “The Constitutional act is not yet the constitution of a united State, but the document of a ‘transitional period’. The commission members draw attention to that fact. Different datelines for the adoption of the principal law are given: from November-December 2006 (i.e. on the eve of the elections in Russia) up to 2008-2010 (in this case it is the ‘successors’ of the actual presidents who will apparently decide its fate). Thus, today the allied State itself is almost virtual and its principal law is temporary.” “Naturally, the deliberate PR-bluffing with the Russian-Belarusian allied State, revived each time another stage of unpopular reforms is planned in Russia, is able to mislead only the most naпve observer,” the political scientist Stanislav Belkovsky that I already cited, notices.
To put it mildly, president’s Putin personal meddling in the electoral campaign in Ukraine was silly as well. The visit he made there before the elections and his unconditional support of the rather gloomy candidate Yanukovich (two trials and relations with Donbass’ criminal bosses) have polarized Ukraine’s political forces. They have mobilized western Ukraine and led it under Yushenko’s flags. I will explain, why. As all new States that have never had a State system before, Ukraine is experiencing painful sensations each time a big metropolis meddles in its affairs. This is how the “westernizers” have interpreted Putin’s visit and his support of Yanukovich. Literally Putin helped Yushenko to win the elections. And in fact, at a certain moment, by exacerbating the situation with his visit, he led the Ukrainian society (the nazbols are absolutely right!) on the brink of civil war between western and eastern Ukraine. Fuel was added to the fire by the Russian political technologists headed by Gleb Povlovsky who tried to use semi-criminal or even criminal methods during the electoral campaign, the same they use in Russia. Kremlin’s apprehension of the orange revolution is also caused by a sense of deep annoyance for its inadequate, stupid and helpless behavior. Today the Kremlin is spreading its own version of what happened in Ukraine (Maydan, the orange revolution) as a conspiracy organized and paid by the US. While in reality it is the manipulation of the elections according to the Russian model and the interference of Putin and his court political technologists that has caused the outrage of the Ukrainian society. Obviously a man used to solve problems with the use of violence (he has just “solved” the Beslan problem then) Putin would have liked the Maydan problem in Ukraine solved like in Beslan. A little provocation, shots from the Orange ranks at Ukraine’s domestic troops and “forced measures” of the swat teams in return. But the Ukrainians solved their problems peacefully, without bloodshed. From this time the RF president’s principal driving force was the fear of a “Maydan”. Realizing that the police (the Ukrainian and the Russian police have a common psychology inherited from the soviet police) would not shoot at the crowd on the Maydan because they are still under the influence of the soviet, although superficial, admiration of the “people”, Putin has approved the organization of the Nashi. Resorting to semi-military patriotic formations is the first sign of State fascism. You remember how Yakemenko breathlessly described to the students how the victorious soccer fans from Russia are driving out 100 thousand Ukrainians from the Maydan to the Dnieper with plastic chairs and then he mentioned the prison in The Hague where he will be sent. I don’t know if Putin realizes that the creation of semi-military organizations that practice beatings of their opponents, arsons and pogroms is State fascism?
Putin’s group has simply gone mad from the sight of “orange” revolutions. On October 20th 2005, on an official visit, Mister Lavrov said the following, I am citing Kommersant: “Concerning the subject of ‘color revolutions’ that is actually worrying the leaders of the CIS countries, mister Lavrov said: ‘The standardization in any form and the exportation of a certain sort of democracies with the use of force and all sorts of pressure methods are inadmissible. Even more inadmissible and counter-productive are the attempts of so-called regime changes that usually pursue quite defined foreign political goals that have nothing to do with the interests of a stable domestic development of the countries that have become the object of such intervention.” Where do you think, Sergey Lavrov, foreign minister of the Russian federation, has said this? In Askhabad, Turkmenistan’s capital, speaking in the National Institute of Democracy and Human Rights in the presence of the Turkmen president. That’s right. Inadmissible, intolerable and counter-productive are the attempts… Suffer in the stable domestic development of your Turkmenbashi, Turkmen and Russians in Turkmenistan. Belkovsky: “The Kremlin’s achievements in the sphere of defense of their compatriots outside the border are totally absent as well. The persecutions and humiliations to which the overly emotional Turkmenbashi has exposed the Russians were left unnoticed. The discrimination of the Russian minority, composing almost 40% of Latvia’s population sometimes caused a hoarse yelping in the Kremlin but it never ended in any real sanctions or other methods of pressure on Riga. And in a recent friendly conversation with his carefully selected people Vladimir Putin called not to demonize ‘our Latvian friends’.
The Kremlin did not show the slightest interest for the 2002-2004 political battles. Although, if forces loyal to Russia would have taken the power in this country it would have been much easier to solve the difficult problem of Kaliningrad’s transit. But the calls for help made from the other side of the Latvian border were ignored by the official Moscow. Not a single from the enumerated countries orients itself on Russia strategically, Belkovsky goes on. What’s left is of course the menacingly bent gas pipeline, but it’s hard to say that Putin is its creator and the image of an aggressive degenerate from the Kremlin, traditionally attached to the gifts of the pipeline by Putin’s administration does little to contribute to the growth of respect towards Russia in the remote and close corners of its former Empire.” Then Belkovsky concludes: “In the whole, effective geopolitics don’t work out. And those who want to know and understand Putin will never be able to understand his motivations if they don’t learn one simple principle: the RF second president is not a politician by his nature (and even less so an imperialist). He is a normal and typical businessman. And all of his decisions and actions are exclusively subordinated to the logic of big business, which comes down to the extraction of profits.” You could not have said it better.