Now, the fact that this political transformation was perhaps done not entirely in a constitutional manner is less significant, according to this narrative, than the fact that it was popularly inspired. The western portions of the country claim, indeed, to speak for the entire country, to be the truly authentic Ukraine.
Then we have the eastern and southern regions, whose narrative going back decades is very different, leading up to the fact that both in 2004 and again more recently they see what is happening in Kiev as more of an attempted coup and an attempt to impose a certain political vision on the country and a certain cultural vision on the country that excludes the east and the south, or at least excludes perhaps not the people so much, but their interpretation of Ukrainian identity. By that I mean Russian-speaking, Orthodox, with close ties to Moscow, close cultural affinities, economic ties, and sympathies for Russia in the east and the south.
So what we see consistently is splits between how populations in the east and the south and the population in the west and the center of the country view the political legitimacy of the government in Kiev right now. Roughly speaking, we have 75-80 percent supporting the government in Kiev and its political aspirations in the west; maybe a little bit less in the center, but still essentially supportive; and the east and the south 75 percent negatively assessing the course of the current government.
This has political implications. One of the big problems that is fueling, I think, the resentment and frustration in the east, and to a lesser extent in the south, is one of the demands, or one of the things that came up in the discussions that Rinat Akhmetov, the oligarch, had with the people who occupied the Donetsk regional government building--namely, they said, "We'd like to be listened to"--and their goal is to invite the authorities to come to Donbas and to tell them what their concerns are.
Well, Akhmetov said, "Well, you can do that, but if you are concerned about who is in charge, you can vote both in May and you can vote later."
They said, "There's no one to vote for." In other words, they don't see a viable candidate because their party, the party that traditionally represented them, the Party of Regions, is in disarray and has been decimated. So they feel essentially that in the current electoral conflict they have no possibility even of having their voice heard.
DAVID SPEEDIE: Just to clear up a couple of points of reference there, the Party of Regions is of course Yanukovych's party. You made a couple of references to 2004, and that was of course the so-called Orange Revolution that brought then-President Yushchenko and Prime Minister Tymoshenko, and certainly from the point of view of the east, and perhaps Ukraine generally, was hardly the brave new world for Ukraine that the west had hoped for 10 years ago.
NICOLAI PETRO: Right. It's also fair to say that by the end of Yushchenko's term he was widely perceived, both in the eastern and the western parts of the country, as not having fulfilled the hopes of the Orange Revolution. In the west, however, this merely galvanized them to take their case outside of the political process to the streets and to take any opportunity, which obviously crystallized at the end of 2013, around the issues that were well known at the time of Yanukovych's corruption and the controversy over the accession to the European Union and to mobilize popular support around those.
It remains, however, true that the majority of the people on the Maidan--although there were representatives from many different regions, we know from surveys taken in January and late February that well over 80 percent of the people there were from western Ukraine.
DAVID SPEEDIE: Let me come back to Donbas for a moment and the east and the south. Is what is going on there basically a secessionist impulse? Is this another Crimea in the making in any of that particular region, or there a spillover possibility?
NICOLAI PETRO: I know they were referred to in two ways, it seems, in the Western press, as sometimes just Russians, although they are obviously Ukrainians, not Russians; but sometimes as pro-Russians and sometimes as secessionists.
Let me talk about the secessionists first. As far as I can tell, there have not been demands for secession. The most extreme agenda was that proposed by the so-called Committee for Donbas, which proposed for May 11th that a referendum should be held in the Donbas region for the creation of a Donetsk Republic. If such a referendum was not allowed by the authorities in Kiev, then there should be a declaration of independence and that an appeal should be made to Russia for peacekeeping troops to be introduced.
Now, you can take all of this as euphemisms, of course. It sounds, indeed, very similar to a Crimean scenario. But nevertheless, one could say certain legal niceties are being observed. They are not actually calling immediately for secession and joining Russia.
But the issue there in the discussions that they have been having with the politicians suggests to me that the agenda of secession is something that is basically being held out as the punishment for not listening to the desire of these local representatives for greater regional autonomy.
It's interesting that the government in Kiev is indeed offering a packet of reforms that includes greater regional autonomy. It's not exactly clear how much that will involve, but the rhetoric at least is there. They are saying that, "We do indeed want to give more autonomy to the regions."
The main concern with that, and why it's not immediately embraced, in regions like Donetsk, and maybe Kharkiv and Luhansk as well, where the occupations have occurred of government buildings, seems to be that these sorts of promises, including, for example, promises on language equality, have all been made before. What needs therefore to change is for them to be constitutionally framed. In other words, there needs to be a guarantee of local rights within the constitution.
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