Now, as we've both said, it's time to take action. Poroshenko has to give substance to his centrism by taking initiative to bring people together to the table.
Specifically, a very good move would be to re-cast, revise the idea of a government of national unity. Invite really representative people from the Donbas and from the East and the South into the national government of Kiev to say, "Although your party structures have been decimated, we are going the extra mile to listen to you and to hear your voice. We want to hear your voice in the constitution of a new national government."
The other thing is, as Richard suggested, he needs to push aside, or push into the background, the extremist voices. That latter, I think, is going to be the more difficult challenge for Poroshenko.
Not necessarily his government anymore, but the interim government certainly, came to power on the backs of these strong, nationalist voices and an agenda for a radical reform of the entire system.
Now, Poroshenko, a normal centrist politician, of course, wants to re-establish some of the normalcy and traditionalism of politics and traditional political parties and slow-moving deliberation that is the norm for civilized European politics. But he has to do so in a very short amount of time.
RICHARD SAKWA: Let me slightly modify something that you said about some of the parts of the East not wanting to be part of Ukraine. Most polls have suggested it's not so much the genuinely separatists, let alone aspirations to join Russia--these are a relatively minor concern at this stage.
What they do want, though, is a different vision of a Ukrainian state. I keep coming back to this, because we've seen, over the last 20-odd years, that a particular type of statehood has developed, and we know it's staggered from crisis to crisis, and that the East and the South have felt not part of it. Yes, in the Orange Revolution they participated. To a lesser extent than the West, but they participated, even in the initial Maidan, the Maidan for good governance. They are part of it.
So that constituency, that vision of two state languages, which even the very idea of it shocks people in the Western side of things, it's just normal to give a constitutional status to what is a genuinely bi-civilizational state. It's two civilizations.
They could use this as a positive, to say this is one of the richnesses, one of the great advantages of Ukraine, instead of making it a negative. It's become a negative because of a particular dominant narrative of what it means to be Ukrainian.
What Poroshenko now has to do is to say, "Look, to be a Ukrainian, you can have this Odessa, you can have this Donetsk identity. We will give it political form and shape, and I will reflect it."
On that basis, I think that a united, democratic Ukraine can start healing its wounds and not look to outsiders to try to solve its own issues. This has to come from within.
NICOLAI PETRO: If I could reformulate that little bit. I would say that one of Poroshenko's tasks, if he's going to successful, he will have to save the original concept of the Maidan from the Western Ukrainian nationalists and broaden it to make it a truly Ukrainian national idea.
DAVID SPEEDIE: That really gets to another fundamental point. You used in a recent piece of writing, Richard, what I find a very evocative phrase. You said that Ukraine and also, for that matter, Syria--but we'll leave Syria aside for the moment--were "victims of the geopolitical constellation." What I take from that and from what you've just said is that it's one thing to say that the Ukrainians will find this new narrative, that it's possible to be from Donetsk, from Kiev, or from Odessa and be a Ukrainian, but the rest of world has to play ball.
That means that some of the more, shall we say, excessive actions and rhetoric of the West, of the European Union, and I suppose for that matter, Russia simply have to recognize that what we're talking about is the fate of Ukraine itself and not Ukraine as a satellite state for either side. Is that a reasonable summation of what you're saying?
RICHARD SAKWA: Absolutely, that Ukraine will stop being a football and start being a playing field on which it can do its own thing.
The agendas of others have affected even, as I said, externalization. This endless talk of sanctions, if I may go straight to the bottom of it, I think is misguided.
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