jaw-jaw, not war-war
Several of you, especially of the millennial persuasion, have demanded I pay less attention to something that happened over forty years ago, and 8,000 miles away, and a little more to the current conflict taking place now on our proverbial doorstep. Your wish is my command, especially as this war now questions the mutually assured destruction (MAD) theory I have pretty much subscribed to all my natural, and which now is being potentially threatened.
Following three months of hostilities, Russia’s war aim now appears to be the ‘liberation’ of the Donbas, the eastern provinces of Ukraine bordering Russia. Until the 18th century, it was a region of steppe grassland largely inhabited by insular Cossacks and nomad Tatars and known unfortunately as Dyke Pole. However, its character and importance radically changed when coal and other natural resources were discovered and it rapidly became one of Russia’s major industrial regions. Quick to cash-in, two brits saw a commercial opportunity with Charles Gascoigne building an ironworks in Luhansk and John Hughes a steel plant in Donetsk. So successful were they that the latter city, even though lying squarely within Novorossiya (New Russia), was renamed Hughesovka in his honour. I kid you not.
Along with Russians, Greeks, Serbs, Ukrainians and Romanians were encouraged to settle here and by 1913, the region was responsible for over 90% of Russian coal and was referred to colloquially as the ‘heart of Russia’. In 2001’s census it was found that ethnic Ukrainians represented 57% and Russians 40%, with the Russian language dominating to the tune of 75% in several of the largest cities.
This was all to change during the noughties, coming to a head in 2014 Euromaidan revolution which saw Ukraine in its entirety voting for closer links with the EU, potentially at the cost of Russia and Russian identity. For the far east of the country, the scrapping of laws protecting the use of the Russian language in schools and government institutions were seen by many as a step too far and potentially fanning the flames of civil unrest. Russia responded by annexing Crimea and sending in the big guns. Eventually, a ceasefire brokered by France and Germany froze the conflict but created a veritable 500km ‘Maginot Line’ which subsequently witnessed more than 14,000 people killed and 1.6m displaced in the run-up to the new conflict.
There’s no denying that the Donbas has a distinct political culture from much of the remainder of the Ukraine, and the language issue has caused some consternation, but in an earlier independence referendum, over 84% voted for independence from the USSR, which completely scuppers Putin’s claim of widespread liberation. Furthermore, even Ukraine’s pro-Russian parties have vocally and visibly come out against the illegal invasion and its subsequent savaging of the Russian-speaking cities. It is widely anticipated that if Putin manages to conquer the Donbas, he will annex it, as he did with Crimea, perhaps ultimately establishing a ‘land bridge’ with the western peripheries of the region.
What the final outcome of Putin’s murderous crusade will be remains anyone’s guess but it increasingly looks as though a limited ‘victory’ in the Donbas may be the best he can hope for. In reality, this will represent nothing less than a defeat and he will slink off back to his kremlin lair to lick his wounds and machinate further. I wish to see neither any further escalation of this conflict nor of Putin’s expansionary ambitions but I do believe Ukraine, and the friends of Ukraine, should be urging an immediate negotiated peace, even if this means making some concessions over the disputed lands. Churchill was correct in his ‘jaw-jaw is better than war-war’ assumption and he had plenty of experience of both. When Ukraine’s future has been secured and Putin is long gone, we are going to need to co-exist with Russia and not leave Europe’s largest country as a long-standing and embittered enemy.
