Ukraine authorities warn of Russia federalization plans

Russian President Putin is currently working on
recreating the Soviet Union, which requires the dismemberment of Ukraine,
former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin said in an interview with
RFE/RL Ukrainian-language television broadcast on Feb. 1. “He needs to become
the leader – and enter into history – of some kind new state, whether a union
or not a union. They will attempt to include absolutely everything, and
undoubtedly part of Ukraine as well. Do you think he will stop? He won’t stop,”
Klimkin said.

The fulfillment of the Minsk Accords is intended to
reintegrate Donbas into a federalized Ukraine, Klimkin said. That will trigger
a collapse of the state, he added. “They believe that such a state won’t hold
together and they are modeling this,” he said of the collapse. “It’s simply a
different approach, but the result in their heads is one and of the same. They
want to have Donbas, they want to have Novorosiya (in the southeast), they want
to have us here as Malorosiya (in the central region). They want to have
western Ukraine as some kind of buffer. They have this in their heads, and
they’re not going to let go in any way.”

President Zelensky’s current resistance to granting
special status to Donbas on Russia’s terms is considered by Putin as an
adequate pretext for dispatching soldiers further into Ukrainian territory,
said on Feb. 3 Heorhiy Tuka, the deputy minister for temporarily occupied
territories and internally displaced persons. “Zelensky will be forced or
convinced to accept the Russian Federation’s plan to integrate the cancerous
tumor of [occupied Donbas] in the healthy body of Ukraine. With special status,
of course. Furthermore, eternal official status,” Tuka said in a video on his
YouTube channel. “In the event that Volodymyr Zelensky will buck and doesn’t
agree to this scenario, the second approach will be applied. It involves an
offensive for some time, during which acts of mass disobedience could occur
against the current government. In that moment, under the pretext of protecting
either the Russian-speaking population, or imposing peace, the Russian
Federation will conduct an invasion of sovereign Ukraine’s territory,” he said.

Zenon Zawada: We agree
almost entirely with these assessments, particularly the view Putin is working
towards a collapse of the unitary Ukrainian state by 2024, when his term ends.
The Zelensky administration will never consciously allow this, but could end up
unknowingly implementing the Kremlin’s scenario under the guise of fulfilling
the Minsk Accords and achieving peace in Donbas, which is its main foreign
policy priority at this point. Pursuing its pragmatic policies and implementing
the Kremlin’s scenario has a high potential for creating domestic strife and
offering Russia the pretext to intervene militarily. The Zelensky
administration has indicated it is not only favoring conceding to Russian
demands, but we view it as the logical thing to do in securing the support of
his core electorate, the Russophile southeast population.

A minority, but highly motivated segment of the
Ukrainian public is likely to revolt against attempts to amend the Ukrainian
Constitution to give Donbas special status, creating a de facto federation in
Ukraine, which is what Russia is seeking in the fulfillment of the Minsk
Accords. Just how the Zelensky administration will deal with this revolt, and
whether it will result in a collapse of statehood can’t be predicted. We can’t
rule out the radical scenario of Russia dispatching its forces in the event
that Zelensky is unable to cope, under the narrative of “protecting its people
from bloodthirsty fascists.” Pro-Russian forces will be intensifying pressure
even greater in the event that Zelensky doesn’t fulfill the Minsk Accords,
depicting such a decision as a betrayal of his key campaign promise (which they
have already begun to do).

So far, the Kremlin is in a solid position to
achieve its goals in Ukraine, given the lack of a comprehensive political
strategy of the Zelensky administration, the Zelensky team’s eagerness to end
the warfare, and the growing disappointment with Zelensky among his core
electorate. And the Kremlin is currently focused on accomplishing its goals in
Ukraine without a military intervention, which is a radical scenario it would
like to avoid. The collapse of the state could occur simply by certain regions
declaring their refusal to abide by any plans to amend the Constitution. This
could prompt different regions to recognize different drafts of the Constitution.