Vitaly Portnikov

For the first time in a long time, the Russian president convened a special meeting of permanent members of the Security Council on Ukrainian issues. The meeting took place shortly after the meeting of advisers to the heads of state participating in the “Norman format” negotiations in Berlin and was by no means the first signal of the Kremlin following these contacts. The first was a lengthy interview with the deputy head of the presidential administration of Russia and the “curator” of the Ukrainian direction, Dmitry Kozak, whose whole meaning fits in a nutshell – the “theater of the absurd.”

That is how the official described the position of the Ukrainian negotiators, and you should not look for these words with a glimpse of constructiveness and a desire to come to an agreement with Kiev, even if someone in Kiev does not lose hope that he can come to an agreement with Moscow. A meeting with members of the Security Council is already a discussion of specific actions after it turned out that there is nothing to agree on. But all the comments after this meeting demonstrate the growing disappointment of Vladimir Putin from the dialogue with Vladimir Zelensky.

The Kremlin recently passed the same distance in dialogue with Zelensky’s predecessor Petro Poroshenko. When Poroshenko was elected head of state, he was perceived in the Kremlin as a moderate politician with connections in the Russian establishment – not just parliament speaker Alexander Turchinov and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk, who were rushed to declare leaders of the “war party”. But when it turned out that Poroshenko was not going to turn the occupied Donbass into a “state in a state”, insists on continuing sanctions against Russia and calls it an aggressor state, Poroshenko himself was declared the leader of the “war party” and stopped contact with him. But the hope arose that the new president, accusing his predecessor of not wanting to end the war with Russia, would be prudent.

Moscow accuses the Ukrainian leadership of striving to withdraw from the Minsk agreements, expresses dissatisfaction with Zelensky’s words about the causes of World War II and makes it clear that without direct dialogue with the leaders of the “people’s republics” there will be no progress in the negotiations. Zelensky’s desire to discuss the status of Donbass with immigrants forced to leave their homes after the Russian aggression, Dmitry Kozak called “anecdotal.” The cherry on the cake was a letter broadcast by Russian media from party leadersVerkhovna Rada deputy Viktor Medvedchuk, Opposition Platform – For Life, in which Zelensky is accused of continuing his predecessor’s policies, cheating voters, and urging him to resign. This letter is connected not only with the Kremlin’s disappointment, but also with the upcoming local elections in the fall: the HLR, whose rating is steadily growing due to the pro-Russian part of the electorate Zelensky and his party “Servant of the People”, is striving to finally gain a foothold in the niche of the “only real” friend of the Kremlin and “ defender of the Russian-speaking “, which may allow the party to gain a foothold in the eastern and south-eastern regions of the country. And in the center and in the west, the European Solidarity party Poroshenko and the forces of the national-democratic spectrum could be the winner.

Oddly enough, such consequences of Zelensky’s fiasco may well suit Putin, who is already used to playing the piano of a divided Ukraine. But they will not create any progress in resolving the Russian-Ukrainian crisis. Not a single Ukrainian president will be able to accept the conditions that the Kremlin puts forward, because the fulfillment of these conditions, coupled with the actual loss of sovereignty and the “Balkanization” of Ukraine, will lead him to a political collapse. Pro-Russian forces still have an electoral ceiling, now limited to 30–35 percent: yes, these forces can influence, but they cannot decide for the rest of the country. Moreover, if the Kremlin decides on new territorial seizures, then Moscow will only reduce the number of potential voters of pro-Russian forces, “transfer” them to the other side of the demarcation line,

And therefore, no matter how paradoxical this sounds, in order to return Russian influence to Ukraine in its “home-grown volumes”, Kiev needs to return both the Donbass and the Crimea – the electorate of Donbass alone will simply not be able to cope. But since there is no question of returning the territories, the Kremlin will continue to have to negotiate with the Ukrainian presidents, who will have neither the opportunity nor the mandate to surrender. The names of these presidents may change, but the essence – the Kremlin’s disappointment with each new owner of the office on Bankovaya Street and the continuation of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict – will not change. Because the point is not who is on Bankova, but who is in the Kremlin. And while Putin in the Kremlin, both Ukrainians and Russians need to learn how to live in the conditions of this endless war, which neither economic problems nor a pandemic will stop.

(c) Svoboda