In eastern Ukraine, the mob rules - Reuters | Germany Turns Against the West on Russia | Mr. Sinn, why don't you go and fly a kite?! And zis iz to put it very mildly... - Hans-Werner Sinn: Why We Should Give Putin a Chance 05/05/14 16:36 from Mike Nova's Shared Newslinks
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Russian President Vladimir Putin with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in September 2013 at the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia. Getty Images (He warms her up...)
In eastern Ukraine, the mob rules
BY MATT ROBINSON
DONETSK, Ukraine Mon May 5, 2014 5:17am EDT
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(Reuters) - His mistake was to run from the advancing mob, and that was enough for the men and women carrying clubs, knives and swords through Donetsk's Lenin district.
They set upon him. Beaten and bloodied, the unidentified man was saved, in a manner, by militiamen who dragged him through the crowd under metal shields, bundled him into the back of a car and drove him off at speed to an unknown fate.
No one could say what he'd done; he was a "provocateur", a term used by both sides of Ukraine's increasingly bitter divide to describe the other, but in the rebel-held east it means only one thing - a supporter of the "Fascist" government in Kiev.
It was a brutal picture of the mob-rule that has descended upon this city in easternUkraine, the biggest to fall to an armed uprising against a government in Kiev that wants to take the country west. Kiev blames Russia for fomenting the violence, a charged denied by Moscow.
Pro-Russian separatist leaders want a referendum on May 11 to declare Donetsk and the surrounding region an independent republic.
Whatever the outcome, it won't be recognized by Kiev. The anger unleashed in the process will prove hard to rebottle, and points to a state descending into dangerous disorder, potentially civil war.
"We will not forgive Odessa!" the crowd chanted, a phrase that has quickly become the new rallying cry in towns across Ukraine's industrial east.
The deaths of more than 40 pro-Russian activists in a burning building during clashes in the Black Sea port on Friday have injected new venom into the fight for Ukraine.
Sixty-seven pro-Russian activists, detained by police during the unrest, were busted from prison on Sunday by a crowd that broke down the main gate.
The cry was first heard in Donetsk on Saturday, when a couple of hundred people smashed up the city's state security building as evening fell, then walked down the street and ransacked the business headquarters of the region's Kiev-backed governor, steelbaron Serhiy Taruta.
'PEOPLE POWER'
They carried out chairs, crates of vodka and icons. Middle-aged women cheered young men in balaclavas, the new power in this city of one million people built on steel andcoal.
"This was for yesterday! They're monsters, worse than monsters," said Tatiana Kamniva, who had joined the protest with her daughter. "This is just the beginning," she said.
On Sunday, the target was the military prosecutor's office, then the Lenin district council building, both of which were flying the Ukrainian flag.
Masked men in military fatigues and armed with automatic rifles made some attempt to marshal the crowd, which was blocked at the doors to the council building by other militiamen holding shields and clubs.
The building belonged to the people and shouldn't be burned, a man said through a loud hailer. "Don't worry, we'll go west, and take Kiev," he said, trying to placate them.
A handful of policemen looked on, a helpless force in several eastern towns where armed gunmen walk the streets.
The head of the council turned up and opened the doors so the flag could be lowered and set alight. It burned weakly on the ground.
One woman, wielding a metal bar, lamented that she had wanted to smash something up, and yelled at the militiamen for taking away the man who had run from them.
There were similar scenes at the weekend in coastal Mariupol, south of Donetsk, where protesters torched a downtown branch of Privatbank, owned by an oligarch who backs the pro-European political forces in Kiev.
"In our town, the people are in power," said a 55-year-old former sailor who gave his name as Mikhail, surveying the damage.
His wife, Irina, said the arson was probably the work of more provocateurs trying to discredit the uprising. Nevertheless, Mikhail said, "They did right to burn it."
(Writing by Matt Robinson; editing by Janet McBride)
Updated April 28, 2014 7:16 p.m. ET
Heinrich August Winkler is a major German historian whose book "Der Lange Weg nach Westen'' ("The Long Road West") is considered the standard reference work on Germany's postwar democratization, and what Mr. Winkler saw as the end of its dangerous geopolitical notions of playing an ambivalent midstream role between East and West.
In an important essay published earlier this month in Der Spiegel magazine, Mr. Winkler expressed alarm about a current rise in German sentiment, both left and right, showing understanding or even traces of support for Vladimir Putin's aggression in Crimea and Ukraine.
Mr. Winkler, a Social Democrat, writes that this trend is creating "new doubts about Germany's calculability." He describes the Russian president as having become "the patron of reactionary forces'' throughout Europe, barely a decade after having inspired Western hopes that Russia could become a pluralistic and strategic partner. Now, Mr. Winkler asserts, "the West, until further notice, must say goodbye" to those hopes.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel arrives in Washington on Thursday to talk to U.S. PresidentBarack Obama about the crisis between Russia and the West—or as Mrs. Merkel's government euphemizes it, "the events in Ukraine." It is highly doubtful that she will use the occasion to say anything publicly with the force or finality of Mr. Winkler's judgment.
What Mrs. Merkel hasn't done, and doesn't seem to want to do, is commit herself out loud to any notion that could confront the German public's visibly heightened dissatisfaction with being embedded in the West. As I heard an official in Berlin say privately last week, such a confrontation by Mrs. Merkel would mean stating the unpleasantly obvious: that, since a break-point with Russia was reached through its Crimea takeover, there can be no return to a comfortable status quo ante in German-Russian relations.
To me, Mrs. Merkel doing so would signify a basic change in Germany's Russia position, from "why-can't-we-all-just-be-friends" (and "we're-in-the-money") to a position that accepts, in relation to Mr. Putin's lawless ambitions, a containment-oriented revision in the Western posture on energy, trade and NATO strategy.
Instead, we have a chancellor who—regardless of Germany's participation in new sanctions, or German officers being held captive by pro-Russian separatists—has spent much of her time since Russia's annexation of Crimea waiting on the phone to Moscow for positive signals from Mr. Putin.
This has turned out to be like staring out a window looking for Halley's comet (which appears every 75 to 76 years).
In her statement on Ukraine in mid-March, Mrs. Merkel said blandly that the problem was "about principles and methods of accommodating conflicting interests in the 21st century." A couple of weeks ago, she characterized Russia's annexation of Crimea as "a one-off case," rejecting a comparison with the Nazi seizure of the Sudetenland from Czechoslovakia in 1938.
Such statements come instead of any expression of concern by Mrs. Merkel that, for instance, one poll this month found that 49% of Germans want their country to mediate between Russia and the U.S.—outnumbering the 45% who want to see Germany siding unmistakably with the West.
Irrespective of the fact that the Obama administration has made clear it won't engage militarily in the defense of Ukraine, a non-NATO member, the poll also showed a majority of Germans rejecting a regular presence of NATO forces in the Alliance countries bordering Russia. Symbolic contingents of American troops were sent last week to Poland and the three Baltic states.
In the conservative newspaper Die Welt, Jacques Schuster commented last week on "Germany experiencing a creeping de-Westernization" and a return to the "old ghosts of the middle-ground."
That is clearly where Mr. Putin wants the Germans. So why hasn't Mrs. Merkel, in straightforward language, marked out where she stands and where Germany must not drift? Here are the answers I have come up with:
1. Not her style.
2. She doesn't want "to frighten" public opinion (or alienate voters ahead of May's European Parliament elections).
3. By way of responses in question form: "When's the last time America won a war?'' Or, after backing out of attacking Syria, "What do its redlines mean anymore?''
All this, on the official level, comes with reassurances that Angela Merkel is truly, truly on America's side. But you have to wonder hard about this if, as the New York Times reported last week, Mr. Obama is focused, come what may, on isolating Mr. Putin's Russia to the point that it becomes a pariah state.
Some observers have pointed out that Mrs. Merkel, in grasping for de-escalatory straws, got played by Mr. Putin when, at the end of March, her spokesman said she had been informed that Russia was in the process of diminishing its troop presence on the Ukrainian border. A Russian account of the telephone conversation following the German announcement didn't contain the nonexistent good news.
And in Brussels a senior NATO official told me flatly that, concerning projected middle- and long-term changes in the Alliance's force posture to counter Russia's belligerence, "the Germans are on the fence.''
Could anything then come out of this week's Merkel-Obama meeting? For sure, she will be praised as a great leader—while other views of reality, at least publicly, are pushed aside.
About reality in April 2014: Michael Naumann, who served as the minister of culture in Gerhard Schröder's second-term cabinet, offered me a definition in a conversation last week. "The Germans, now and historically, are scared of Russia," said Mr. Naumann, "and Putin knows this.''
Mr. Obama can't miss taking this reality into consideration as the United States comes to terms with facing Russia essentially alone.
Mr. Vinocur is former executive editor of the International Herald Tribune.
Updated May 2, 2014 6:48 p.m. ET
The fact that the Soviet Union broke up without a civil war a quarter-century ago, that Russia subsequently found the path towards a market economy and that Eastern Europe was integrated into the European Union was a gift of history. The players involved in the Crimea crisis should not squander such a gift.
The annexation of Crimea was definitely a violation of international law. The peninsula was ceded to Ukraine by Russia in 1954 within the Soviet Union, and remained part of Ukraine after 1991—a situation that was accepted by all parties. A redrawing of borders decided upon by only one party cannot be accepted in Europe.
However, it must be borne in mind that the present crisis was triggered by the West. The overtures made by NATO to Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine in recent years effectively threatened to encircle Russia's Black Sea Fleet in the only ice-free port at its disposal.
If U.S. President Barack Obama believes that Russia is just a regional power that will have to put up with this, he is wrong. Russia has protested as energetically as the U.S. did at the time of the Cuban missile crisis. Moscow used a referendum as its instrument in Crimea, but things could have been far uglier.
After killing millions of Russians in World War II and enjoying the good fortune of a peaceful reunification thanks also to Russia's support, it is the duty of Germany in particular to de-escalate the conflict with Russia. But some hardliners in Washington, Brussels and Moscow obviously have their own agenda. NATO can chafe at the bit once again, and the powers-that-be in the Kremlin are not the only ones to have noticed that international conflicts are an effective way of distracting attention away from domestic problems. It is good that the German federal government is trying to exercise a moderating influence, while exercising care not to endanger the solidarity of the West's alliance.
Russian President Vladimir Putin with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in September 2013 at the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg, Russia. Getty Images
Were Russia to plan further annexations, we would have to react with sanctions. But we need to proceed carefully: No reasonable party can be in favor of the economic destabilization of Russia and a trade war.
Russia is already being weakened by capital flight. The country is far more heavily dependent on the West than vice-versa—despite the fact that some EU countries, Germany in particular, obtain one-third of their oil and natural gas from Russia. Roughly 60% of Russia's exports are to the EU, while only 7% of the EU's exports to third countries go to Russia. Russia's economic destabilization would radicalize the country and throw the world back into the Cold War era. The Ukrainian civil war that was avoided in 1991 would also return to the list of conceivable scenarios.
How can the cost of any further annexations be raised for Russia and the chances of finding a peaceful solution be strengthened, without doing any damage to Russia, Ukraine or the EU? The answer lies in the offer of a free trade agreement with Russia and the Ukraine as part of a new international agreement on Ukraine's future.
In 2010, Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed a free trade area stretching to Vladivostok from Lisbon. What happened? The EU worked on a free-trade agreement with Georgia, Moldova, Ukraine and Armenia instead. This only increased Moscow's nervousness, because it implicitly posed the threat of customs barriers for Russia.
Free trade with a country specialized in commodities, such as Russia, that complements the West's specialization in manufacturing, promises major trade gains that would be much greater than the benefits of trade between similar economies alone. EU politicians are currently negotiating a free-trade deal with the U.S., which would bring benefits to the countries involved. But the inclusion of Russia in a free-trade agreement could turn out to be a real gold mine for all parties. Free trade is no zero-sum game; everybody stands to gain. It enables the specialization and division of labor, which is the source of prosperity. Even countries with scant political affinities can engage in free trade and, by creating interdependencies, free trade also promotes peace.
Germany has no discernible Russia policy to date, although German Chancellor Angela Merkel is very familiar with the country. In the interest of preserving peace in Europe, it is high time for Berlin to actively pursue a strategy of convincing the EU bodies to forge good neighborly relations with Russia, and with Ukraine and the other countries situated between the power blocs.
In the event of political stabilization, offering Russia free trade with the West would preserve peace, bring economic advantages to Europe and effectively push forward the policy of "change through rapprochement" first implemented successfully by Willy Brandt with East Germany.
Mr. Sinn is president of the Ifo Institute for Economic Research in Germany.
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