As Others Flee the EU, Ukraine Starts a Civil War to Get In

Strange as it may seem, at a time when others are scrambling to leave the EU, Ukraine is all but committing a suicide over a privilege of having a free trade agreement with the EU.

As the United Kingdom voted at a referendum to leave the European Union, Ukraine remains stuck in the middle of a civil war following the 2014 Euromaidan coup d’etat that saw president Viktor Yanukovych ousted from power after he decided to postpone the signing of an association agreement with the EU. Once in power, the coup leaders sent the army and paramilitaries to crush protests in the south-eastern parts of Ukraine that refused to accept the coup, thus provoking a full-scale civil war.

But is a trade agreement with the EU, not even a membership, worth a civil war? For the present day Ukrainian rulers it apparently is. The 2014 Euromaidan coup unfolded under the warcry of a fight against corruption of the Yanukovych regime.

In reality it was more a reaction of Ukrainian nationalists against the failed policy of 20 years of more or less peaceful assimilation of the country’s culturally Russian majority. As that policy was seen as not working, nationalists embraced the Euromaidan coup in hopes of installing a government that would stop at nothing to solve the Russian question in Ukraine once and for all.

That Ukrainian civil war would likely not have happened had it not been for a combination of three factors.

The first was the US meddling in Ukraine’s affairs through its useful idiots in the European Union. Washington orchestrated and bankrolled the Euromaidan as it sought to undermine Russia’s influence in Ukraine. What it misjudged completely was the Ukrainians’ real attitudes towards Russia and the West. Now the US doesn't know what to do with the monster it bred.

The second factor was the dire plight of the majority of the Ukrainians. 23 years of independence had made Ukraine the second poorest country in Europe after Moldova. For millions of Ukrainians immigration became the only chance to escape the crushing poverty at home. So it’s small wonder that at Euromaidan time peasants from Western Ukraine streamed to Kiev to clamor for what they thought was their ticket to leave Ukraine for the EU. Now the economic situation in the country is much worse than under Yanukovych, with the issues of corruption and immigration all the more urgent. But somehow no new Euromaidan is in sight.  

The third factor was Ukraine’s hard-core nationalists’ visceral hatred of Russia and all things Russian. Moved by the dark dogma of Ukrainian integral nationalism, they couldn't care less for Europe, but jumped at the chance to make war on their fellow Ukrainians who did not see Russia as a sworn enemy. Indeed, a house divided against itself will not stand.

Now with the European Union staring into abyss, the Ukrainian leaders are being made to look stupid for their attempts to board a sinking ship, and doubly so for doing that at the cost of destroying their own country in the process.