Pinchuk calls for Ukraine to make painful “compromise” with Russia

Victor Pinchuk, among Ukraine’s biggest industrial magnates, has proposed for the Ukrainian government to make “painful compromises” with the Russian government in order to end the current warfare in Donbas in an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal that was published on Dec. 29. He called upon temporarily suspending talks on EU membership, instead pursuing Euro-integration measures as a privileged partner. He said Crimea must be returned to Ukrainian territory but Russia’s illegal annexation should not become an obstacle to establishing peace in Donbas. He called for local elections to be held in occupied Donbas as a key step in fulfilling the Minsk Accords, even if the conditions are not ideal.

Pinchuk, whose wealth was estimated this year at USD 1.3 bln, launched the annual Yalta European Strategy conference in 2004 as a means of promoting Ukraine integration in Euro-Atlantic structures. Pinchuk is also the son-in-law of former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma, who has unofficially represented Ukraine at the talks of the Trilateral Contact Group in Minsk to resolve the conflict in Ukraine’s Donbas region. Kuchma said as recently as November that he wishes to resign from the negotiations, which began in June 2014 with little progress achieved. He has since remained as Ukraine’s lead negotiator.

Zenon Zawada: Any attempts by the nation’s leaders to find alternative, out-of-the-box solutions to this conflict with Russia should be welcomed, given that the warfare has inflicted nearly 10,000 casualties and two million refugees, mostly within Ukraine and Russia, in the 21 months that it has been fought.

With his text, Pinchuk has raised several uncomfortable truths, among them that Ukraine will not realistically join NATO so long as a Putinist-style government is in charge in Moscow. European Union membership is possible in the long term but highly unlikely in the next decade for various reasons, including constant Russian meddling in Ukrainian affairs. But he also points that integration with both structures is still possible.

However, Pinchuk goes beyond compromise towards capitulation in our view, proposing a very similar foreign policy that was adopted by the ousted, Russian-oriented former president, Viktor Yanukovych. Removing the goals of EU and NATO membership, even on a de jure level, goes against the geopolitical goals of Ukraine that were established early in its independece.

A better compromise needs to be reached considering we don’t see the current economic sanctions as being effective in withdrawing Russian forces from Ukrainian territory. These sanctions have the potential to rupture the Russian economy, but that outcome can provoke Putin towards drastic measures to prevent a collapse and stay in power. Such drastic measures involve expanding the current warfare, not only within Ukraine’s borders.