It is indeed saddening to watch these days the unfolding events in Ukraine, where, in a matter of weeks, peaceful cities around the country turned into places of violent protests, divided the population and placed the territorial integrity of Ukraine as a nation under threat. Months of destructive anti-government political protests, assisted by foreign meddling, converted a peaceful society into a violent mob, resulting in deaths and the loss of the Crimean peninsula from Ukraine to Russia.
The protesters showed from the beginning that they lacked leaders with vision and proposals on how to steer the country out of the crisis, and instead of demanding that their government implement policies which could help Ukraine stay neutral from East and West dependency, they divided the population into pro-European and Pro-Russian camps.
As the protests became persistent and grew bigger, foreign meddlers started to visit Kiev’s Euro-Maidan to show their support and encourage the protesters to continue their demands for European integration.
Obsessed with achieving their pro-EU goal, the protest leaders directed their efforts towards overthrowing their elected president, Mr Viktor Yanukovich, and neglected to include the sensitivities of their pro-Russian populations, who felt threatened with the anti-Russian climate in Kiev.
This was a tragic political miscalculation of historical dimensions which brought instantly the catastrophic results that we are witnessing today. Overwhelmed with the support from the west, the Kiev protesters succeeded in ousting President Yanukovich, an action that backfired violently and sparked angry protests in the eastern and southern parts of the country.
During the several months of protests in Kiev’s Euro-Maidan, protest leaders, media and foreign meddlers did not bother to ask the residents of Crimea, Donetsk, Dnepropetrovsk, Odessa and the rest of the Russian speaking population if they were approving the demands for European integration.
Crimeans, infuriated by those who were chanting anti-Russian slogans while waving EU flags at the heart of Kiev, felt betrayed and with the ousting of President Yanukovich, they raised their own Russian flags and accelerated the urgency to hold a referendum for independence and annexation to Russia.
Equally upset are the rest of the Russian-speaking population, seeing their acting government aggressively pursuing the pro-western policies which are contrary to their wishes.
These mistakes, together with the lack of unifying leaders, sees Ukraine today plunged into a serious political crisis which further destabilises the country by polarising the population into pro-Russians versus pro-West and threatens its territorial integrity through more referendums for annexations.
At this juncture, the acting government, which has not shown qualifications of leadership with vision on how to unify the population and move their country forward, must refrain from making decisions without first asking the Ukrainian people for approvals. Losing Crimea through their mistakes, they already wrote a very dark page in the history of Ukraine and instead of constantly crying over the spilled milk, they must start urgently to unify their population, stabilise their country and prevent more painful losses to independence or annexations.
Undoubtedly the Ukrainian government has every right to demand the return of Crimea, but it can do so without sacrificing the urgent needs of the country to travel around the world and appear in front of podiums together with western leaders, who are also responsible for this disastrous result, to denounce the actions of Russia.
Over-reliance on the West appears not to have much effect to reverse the present status of Crimea because the West lacks the moral authority to dictate on Russia, as they too are the architects of the dismemberment of Yugoslavia, the bloody partition of Kosovo and other interventions.
Just recently ex-German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, who was one of the main players who ordered his planes to participate in the bombardments against Serbia to detach Kosovo, admitted that the war against Serbia was illegal.
The British too, who are criticising the Crimean referendum, are in a very weak position as they went several thousand miles across the Atlantic Ocean to organise a referendum in the Falkland Islands to protect the less than 3,000 inhabitants in the Falklands.
Given the present status of Ukraine with the catastrophic results, loss of Crimea, the divided population and the territorial integrity of the country at great risk, it is safe to conclude that the Euro-Maidan protestors in Kiev achieved a very painful Pyrrhic victory.
Today’s Ukrainian leaders must realise that blaming everybody else and looking for a scapegoat in Russia will not acquit them of their irreparable mistakes. Over-relying on the west to threaten Russia into giving back Crimea is also a false hope. Believing that by joining the EU, the Ukrainian people will live in luxury with high paying jobs, that dream, too, will soon prove to be an illusion which will turn into a nightmare and further aggravate the already bad situation.
At this moment, Europeans and Americans have already mobilised the IMF to start prescribing terms and conditions for the loans to be provided to Ukraine. We can only hope that Ukrainians will not be placed under the same debilitating IMF designed austerity measures that were prescribed for Greece and which pushed thousands of Greek businesses into bankruptcy, unemployment rate and suicides at sky high levels – the highest in history.
In short, the Europeans, Russians or Americans are not charity institutions and definitely will not give free money or provide any protection free of charge, simply because their taxpayers will not allow them to do so.
While Ukraine is preparing for general elections to elected politicians with the same pro-EU integration agendas that brought the country to this situation, they must start looking for charismatic leaders to unite all Ukrainians, motivate them to re-build their economy without false promises from foreign benefactors.
Make foreign meddling in the domestic affairs of the country a Heinous Crime, demand respect for Ukraine’s sovereignty and trade equally with East, West, South or North.
*Ilias Sourdis is a freelance Greek expatriate and businessman. He has lived outside Greece since 1976 – with most of his experience in Asia.
