Tuesday, July 29, 2014

Ukraine’s Political Crisis May Lead to Disintegration of Its Statehood - Experts
Crash scene of Malaysian airline.
July 25, 20:04 UTC+4

MOSCOW, July 25. /ITAR-TASS/. The West-encouraged Maidan in downtown Kiev - a symbol of Ukraine’s desire for integration with the European Union - has led the country to a power vacuum, economic collapse and a full-scale civil war, say Russian experts polled by ITAR-TASS.

The ruling coalition in the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s unicameral parliament, broke up on Thursday, and parliament-appointed Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk tendered his resignation.

Maidan is the name for downtown Kiev's Independence Square, which is the symbol of Ukrainian protests. The words “Maidan” and “Euromaidan” are used as a collective name for anti-government protests in Ukraine that started when then-President Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign the association deal with the European Union last year.

“The factor of anarchy is taking effect in Ukraine. The Ukrainian statehood keeps fading. The process was triggered by a state coup organized on Maidan by European integration supporters with US approval on February 22 this year, when President Viktor Yanukovych was illegally removed from power,” Mikhail Delyagin, the director of the Globalization Problems Institute, told ITAR-TASS.

“Power institutions in Ukraine are more and more replaced by oligarchic influence groups. Private states are established in the country. This is well seen by the example of Dnepropetrovsk Region Governor Igor Kolomoisky, who owns industrial assets, a bank, mercenary battalions and buys the political system,” he said.

“These influence groups cannot solve social tasks by definition, because this is within the competence of state power institutions,” the expert said.

“The loss of statehood and sovereignty by Ukraine is explained by the West’s huge influence upon the country’s domestic and foreign policy pursued by invisible foreign specialists and military experts,” Delyagin said.

“In these conditions, the legitimacy of elections to the Verkhovna Rada, scheduled for October, will be determined not by the Ukrainian people but by the US Department of State, as it was during the recent presidential elections,” he said.

“The new Verkhovna Rada will be worse and more radical than the previous one, as its aim will be support for President (Petro) Poroshenko in his urge to spare no shells for destruction of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s republics,” the analyst said.

“The scenario to dissolve the Verkhovna Rada and Prime Minister Yatsenyuk’s resignation are quite logical events, as Ukraine’s parliament did not approve the government’s draft laws.

Poroshenko needs his own majority coalition in the Verkhovna Rada, and he will get it,” Center for Political Technologies (CPT) Director-General Igor Bunin told ITAR-TASS.

Yatsenyuk’s resignation on Thursday automatically means the resignation of the entire Ukrainian government. But the cabinet members will continue fulfilling their duties until a new coalition is formed in the Rada.

Earlier Thursday, the parliament did not support the government’s bill on 2014 budget sequestration, as well as a draft law on reforming the country’s gas transportation system.

“The problem of the Kiev authorities is not in organizing new parliamentary elections, but in the inability to conduct reforms in the interests of society, rebuild their corrupted mentality, when agreements are reached not in power institutions but on the sidelines and in bathhouses,” Bunin said, adding that the authorities apparently do not show any urge to make Ukraine a unified state.

“The war-struck Ukrainian state is trying to pretend that everything in the country is proceeding in the normal mode - there are debates in the Verkhovna Rada, flights of aircraft above Ukraine have not been terminated, and an association agreement with the European Union is being prepared for ratification,” CIS Countries Institute Director Konstantin Zatulin told ITAR-TASS.

“In reality, the breakup of the majority coalition in parliament and the resignation of premier Yatsenyuk are elements of the Ukrainian statehood’s agony,” Zatulin said.

“The elections to the Verkhovna Rada, scheduled for fall, have a rather odious hidden motive. The country’s Supreme Court is considering the issue of banning the activity of Ukraine’s Communist Party, whose faction in parliament was dissolved the day before. It means that the new parliament will have no communists, representatives of the Ukrainian East or Party of Regions deputies,” the expert said.

“Punishment of political opponents means that Ukraine, contrary to the opinion of Kiev’s friends in Washington and Brussels, is going further away from the principles of democracy. Instead of an attempt to consolidate society in Ukraine, the country sees the victory of the temptation to eliminate opponents at any cost - by both military and political means,” Zatulin said.

“By fall, a social and economic collapse will start in Ukraine. The country will have no funds to pay wages to public sector workers and military, problems will deteriorate in the sphere of the housing and communal services and the population will begin protests,” he said.

“This will be the prologue of further disintegration of the Ukrainian statehood,” Zatulin said.

“Ukraine’s statehood is teetering on the brink of breakup. The Kiev authorities apparently do not have an economic strategy. The continuing military operation in the country’s east is destructive for Ukraine,” Vyacheslav Nikonov, a deputy of the State Duma, the lower house of Russia’s parliament, told ITAR-TASS.

“Nevertheless, the United States is pushing the Kiev authorities toward a war with their own nation to the bitter end. This is a dead-end,” Nikonov said. “Premier Yatsenyuk realized that the path chosen by Kiev leads to a deadlock and was the first to leave the sinking ship.”

Crisis in Ukraine

Violent anti-government protests, which started in November 2013 when Ukraine suspended the signing of an association agreement with the EU in favor of closer ties with Russia, resulted in a coup in February 2014.

Crimea seceded from Ukraine and reunified with Russia in mid-March 2014. Crimea’s example apparently inspired residents of Ukraine’s southeastern regions who did not recognize the coup-imposed authorities, formed militias and started fighting for their rights.

Kiev has been conducting a punitive operation against the breakaway Donetsk and Luhansk regions to regain control over them. The operation has claimed hundreds of lives, including civilian.

Western-leaning billionaire businessman and politician Petro Poroshenko won the May 25 early presidential election in Ukraine set by the provisional Kiev authorities propelled to power during the February coup. He was sworn in and took office June 7.

Poroshenko signed the association deal with the EU on June 27, on the sidelines of an EU summit in Brussels. Poroshenko, dubbed “the chocolate king” because his structures control Ukraine’s Roshen confectionery manufacturer, had funded anti-government protests that led to February's coup.

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