Five years ago a drastic power change took place in Ukraine, leading the country into years of civil war, a harsh spat with Russia and a protracted economic decline
MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 23rd February, 2019) Five years ago a drastic power change took place in Ukraine, leading the country into years of civil war, a harsh spat with Russia and a protracted economic decline.Unrest in Crimea and Donbas was the first consequence of the 2014 events in Kiev. A rally in the Crimean city of Simferopol on February 26, 2014, turned into clashes, as a result of which two people were killed and 35 were injured. A referendum on the Crimean autonomous region joining Russia was held the following month in March. The majority of Crimean residents voted in favor of joining Russia.
Rallies of supporters of federalization in Donetsk and other cities in the southeast of Ukraine resulted in the proclamations of the people's republics in Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv. Odessa was also one step away from this. However, rallies in Kharkiv and Odessa have been harshly suppressed by security forces and radicals, while the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics still exist.
After active phase of hostilities in 2014-2015 and the signing of the Minsk Agreements, the demarcation line in the Donbas "settled" and has not been changed since then, but security forces from time to time declare the capture of another village in the "neutral zone."
During his election campaign in 2014, independent candidate Petro Poroshenko declared that "the anti-terrorist operation cannot and should not last two or three months, it should and will last hours." However, this promise has been not fulfilled.
FEARS FOR RUSSIAN LANGUAGE COME TRUE
Poroshenko's other election promise was "to be guided by Article 10 of the Constitution, which defines the Ukrainian language as single state language, but guarantees free development of Russian and other languages." However, in fact, all five years the attack on both the Russian language and on minority languages, in particular, Hungarian, have continued. Language quotas were introduced for media alongside laws on the Ukrainization in the sphere of education and the service sector. Now the Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, is preparing for the second reading of the draft law on state language, which provides for the exclusive use of Ukrainian language in almost all spheres of life.
This was not a surprise for those who closely followed the situation in Ukraine. After all, the "language law," which gave Russian language regional rights, was canceled on February 23, 2014, that is, literally, the day after the Euromaidan.
Rada has also adopted a law, saying that the Treaty on Friendship and Cooperation with Russia would be terminated on April 1, 2019. Moscow has already called Kiev's decision a destructive step and expressed deep regret over it.
The Ukrainian opposition also opposed the initiative not to renew the treaty, saying that such a decision was contrary to the country's national interests and was further complicating relations with Russia.
Ukraine's "visa-free" with Europe regime can be named as one of the positive achievements of the new Ukrainian government. Now Ukrainians can come to Europe using their biometric passports and stay there for up to three months without visas. Kiev has heavily promoted this measure as a great achievement.
Critics of the Ukrainian authorities point out that wealthy Ukrainians already had Schengen visas, and the abolition of visas is good for those who are going to work in Europe illegally. In addition, Ukrainian tourists still need a set of documents such as hotel reservations and tickets to show them at the border.
"The visa-free regime does not even appear in Poroshenko's [election] campaign. And this is not an accident," Associate Professor at the Department of Post-Soviet Countries of the Russian State University for the Humanities Aleksandr Gushchin told Sputnik.
Another symbolic act, but even less specific, are the amendments to the Constitution, which enshrine Ukraine's course for joining NATO and the European Union. At the same time, EU Commissioner for European Neighborhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Johannes Hahn has said that it was unrealistic to talk about Ukraine's membership in the European Union in the coming years, and that Kiev had to rather concentrate on implementing the Association Agreement with the bloc.
NATO's former chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen spoke in a similar key. According to him, in order to join the alliance, Ukraine will need to achieve a series of criteria, the implementation of which will take a lot of time. Experts believe that Kiev will not be able to claim membership in NATO in the next 20 years.
While Ukraine is far from being a member of the European Union, ordinary citizens "euro-integrate" individually. There is an outflow to Russia too. In total, according to Gushchin, more than 6 million people have left Ukraine in the last five years.
"From March to December 2018, 766,000 people left ... in 2017 - more than a million. That means that every year more than a million people leave," Gushchin said.
The analyst noted that this number included refugees who left Donbas because of the hostilities and came to Russia. However, in general, most Ukrainians are leaving for Europe.
"Fewer are coming to Russia, the majority, of course, is going to the Central Europe and Poland," he added.
As a result, it is unclear how many people live in Ukraine now as the last census was conducted 15 years ago, according to Gushchin.
"There are now 35-37 million in the country, at best," the expert said.
Gushchin recalled that at the time of the Soviet Union's collapse, the population of Ukraine was 52 million. The analyst also noted that the lack of statistics and the lack of clear numbers would leave room for fraud in the presidential elections on March 31, 2019.
Another symbolic achievement of the authorities was the creation of a "new church," on the basis of two non-canonical church structures, which were operating in Ukraine. This processes, the Unifying Council, the signing of the Tomos of autocephaly by Constantinople, the enthronement of Metropolitan Epiphany, each time turned into festive occasions, where the main character was not so much the church hierarchy, as President Poroshenko himself.
At the same time, the majority of the global Orthodox community does not recognize the legitimacy of the "new church." In addition, its creation resulted in seizure of several dozen of churches belonging to the canonical Ukrainian Orthodox Church of Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP).
Since 2014, Ukraine has seen a spate of political killings with the involvement of radicals. On April 16, 2015, famous Ukrainian journalist and writer Oles Buzina, who was known for his criticism toward Ukrainian authorities, was killed near his home in Kiev. Andriy Medvedko and Denis Polishchuk, who are associated with nationalist organizations, are accused of the murder, but still have not been detained.
The perpetrators of those killed in the House of Trade Unions in Odessa on May 2, 2014, have not been identified. The Ukrainian authorities also have failed to properly investigative murders of Russian journalist Pavel Sheremet and former lawmaker Denis Voronenkov, among many other cases.
The Ukrainian leadership has come under fire for growing persecution of foreign media, especially Russian journalists. One of the most prominent cases is the arrest of RIA Novosti Ukraine portal head Kirill Vyshinsky over his work as a journalist.
Vyshinsky was detained in Kiev in May on suspicion of treason and support for the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk people's republics. Earlier in February, the Kherson city court extended the journalist's arrest until April 8.
According to Russian President Vladimir Putin, Vyshinsky's arrest is politically motivated and demonstrates Ukrainian authorities' unacceptable policy, aimed at targeting journalists who are just doing their jobs.
Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Representative on Freedom of the Media Harlem Desir has expressed his concern over Ukraine's actions toward Vyshinsky and called for the journalist's release, stressing that all OSCE members had pledged to create the necessary conditions to allow journalists to work freely.
Ihor Huzhva, the editor-in-chief of the Ukrainian internet news portal Strana.ua, was arrested in 2017 over allegations of blackmailing Dmitry Linko, a member of the country's Radical Party, for not disclosing materials that would compromise the party. A Ukrainian court ruled to keep Huzhva in custody for 60 days Huzhva has denied the allegations and was later released after the bail had been paid.
As a result, the Ukrainian journalist had to flee the country and seek political asylum in Austria.
Rossiya Segodnya International Information Agency photojournalist Andrei Stenin was killed in eastern Ukraine near Donetsk on August 6, 2014, when the car he was driving while on an editorial assignment was shot at and burned on a highway.
In general, some 20 journalists in Ukraine have been killed since 2014, according to Ukrainian media reports.
Even though Ukraine's economy has been showing slight signs of growth for the last four years, this gain is insufficient to reclaim levels of development which the country experienced prior to the crisis, according to associate professor at the Department of Post-Soviet Countries of the Russian State University for the Humanities.
The country also suffers from the lack of sufficient inflow of foreign investments. The investments last year amounted to $1.7 billion, a sharp fall from pre-crisis $10 billion, the analyst stressed.
At the same time, Kiev's external debt continues to grow as "public and publicly guaranteed debt in 2018 increased by $2 billion, or 2.6 percent. The total amount now stands at $78.3 billion. If we talk about the share of GDP ... it is 62.7 percent now [from the annual GDP of Ukraine]. Next year, more than a quarter of the state budget will be spent on maintaining the debt," Gushchin said.
The economic results of Ukraine's policy on European integration are mixed, Mikhail Kryvoguz, a researcher at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian academy of Sciences (IMEMO), said in his report.
"Kiev policy artificially interrupts deep cooperation ties between Ukraine and Russia in all sectors of the economy and is aimed at squeezing Russian business out of the country. It is carried out without regarding the country's economic interests. The rupture of trade and economic ties with the Russia does not lead to an improvement in the socio-economic situation in the country, but only to the loss of the Russian market and aggravation of economic problems," Kryvoguz said.
Ukraine also did not benefit much from the Association Agreement with the European Union, which has been ratified by the bloc in September, 2017, according to the analyst.
"In an effort to conclude this agreement as soon as possible, the Ukrainian authorities have accepted all the conditions of the European Union. But having received the respective status, the Ukrainian government is very sluggish in negotiations on abolition of quotas and the expansion of duty-free trade. As a result, Ukraine is losing ... Europe is not ready to remove quotas and lift restrictions. The United States also has begun to introduce anti-dumping measures against Ukrainian metal products," Kryvoguz added.
However, despite negative trends, the Ukrainian economy does not stand still as over the period of 2015-2017, more than 200 industry and agricultural enterprises have been put into operation, the expert underlined.
