Eastern Ukraine leader voices support for federalization

Oleksandr Yefremov, the head of the Party of Regions parliamentary faction, declared his support for the federalization of the Ukrainian government on March 4. “Not backing down from our principled attitude to the necessity of defending our native language, the need for conduct a decentralization of government and budgetary federalism, we should understand that these and other tasks will be achieved when achieving the main one – a federal administration of Ukraine,” he told a party gathering in his native Luhansk oblast, as reported by the Ukrayinska Pravda news site. He also called for the party’s organizational and ideological reformatting. Two days earlier, pro-Russian activists took over the Luhansk Oblast Council and forced its politicians to sign a resolution not recognizing the current government as legitimate and asking the Russian government to dispatch soldiers to the oblast.

Zenon Zawada: Yefremov has joined another eastern Ukrainian leader, Mikhail Dobkin in Kharkiv, in calling for federalization. They are motivated by protecting their assets, which are under threat by a government lustration campaign of corrupt officials closely tied to the Yanukovych administration. Yefremov is among Luhansk’s biggest asset holders.

Their federalization campaign can only succeed with Russian support and interference, in our view. There doesn’t appear to be a critical mass of local residents of these oblasts to support the federalization cause, although that can change if economic conditions worsen during the next year or two. Moreover, we don’t think Russian President Vladimir Putin is unstable enough to send his soldiers into Ukraine’s other regions, though we certainly can’t rule that out after the invasion of Crimea.