Mykola Riabchuk (Lutsk, 1953) is a man who travels and the impressions he collects about the vision of the war in his country leave him perplexed, although he is sure that everything is due to “false perceptions of Russia” established in the academic field. and diplomatic. Great connoisseur of the sociological traits of Ukraine, he could talk about them for hours. The interview took place during the recent Memorial Meets in Madrid for Russian opponents, organized by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Cidob and the Rafael del Pino Foundation.
Is it possible that Kyiv’s intelligence services, the USB, misled the Russians – the FSB, ex-KGB – about how the Ukrainians were going to react to an invasion?
I don’t believe it. I think the Russians bought into their own propaganda. They made up this story that Ukrainians and Russians are one people and about a fascist junta that took power in Kyiv in 2014, that Ukrainians would welcome Russian troops and Mr. Putin. They believed it! I read the Russian propagandists…
Did the FSB think so too?
He probably sold Mr. Putin what he wanted. Year after year opinion polls, many of them reliable, indicated that the Ukrainians were increasingly pro-Western and that the Russians had completely lost support since 2014. The SBU and FSB could read it. And yet, the recurring platitude of Russian propaganda was that the Ukrainians were good Slavic people and those who did not meet this standard were cretins, idiots who must be eliminated. Perhaps they only abandoned that idea in March or April, when they met strong resistance, and the propaganda changed: the entire population is infected by fascism, it requires re-education. Europeanization produces fascists. It is an ideological statement.
Apparently the same day of the invasion, President Volodimir Zelensky had to meet with several Ukrainian oligarchs. What was the idea of ??that meeting?
Don’t know. Maybe Zelensky thought that some of them had contacts with Russian oligarchs and he tried to use them for a negotiation… But it seems that even if that was the case the Russian oligarchs had no influence on Putin. Now Russia is a real dictatorship. You have to understand that for Putin it is not a question of negotiations: he needs a total taming, an emasculation of Ukraine. Ukraine should be like Belarus.
Why talk about this Russian mythology about Ukraine, when we know that Putin’s goal is to keep it out of European, NATO and US influence?
Well, it is that the question is our own existence. The Russian imperial identity implies the appropriation of the Ukraine, it must be assimilated or eliminated. Since Peter the Great, different methods have been used: assimilation through education, the church… That failed. They opted for genocide and famine was provoked to eliminate five million peasants. Putin’s final blow to tame Ukraine was when he discovered with the election of Zelensky that there were no pro-Russian forces left in Ukraine. In 2019, when the supposedly ultranationalist Petro Poroshenko lost the elections and the supposedly cosmopolitan Zelensky won, it seemed that Ukraine had clearly made its European choice. Not for geopolitics but for values, for democracy, for human rights and freedom. And in the West many people began to understand that since the 18th century Ukrainians had nothing in common with Russia.
In 2004, when the orange revolution, some said that Ukrainian nationalists wanted to divide the country…
Well, I understand that all complexity needs to be simplified, and in the case of Ukraine it is very simple: East and West, pro-Russian or pro-European. But it is much more complicated. There was a huge, ideological division on models and vision of the future, but not in a clear way that divided society like in Bosnia or Ireland. Many internalized Soviet values, they did not believe that we could be European, they were afraid, they were reticent perhaps because they had many relatives, friends in Russia… There was an attachment to the Soviet tradition, to the imaginary of the Slavic and Orthodox community. These people were not pro-Russian as the media described them, they were ambiguous; it wanted to join Europe but at the same time maintain good relations with Moscow. But people of ambivalent positions can change, and that is what has happened, gradually, and what we are seeing especially now.
Did Kyiv make a mistake in 2014 by sending troops to Donbas?
I think he made the mistake of not acknowledging that it was a Russian invasion, because in fact there was no local uprising but Russian agents. The operation could have been successful if Russia had not sent regular troops in the fall of 2014. It was a huge defeat and we had to sign the Minsk agreements. And Russia tried to manipulate them. The idea was to make Ukraine a dysfunctional state, like Bosnia.
Was there never a chance to somehow relaunch the Minsk agreements?
No. Zelensky tried to do something. He won the elections hoping to negotiate something with Putin. He sincerely believed it, it seems to me. And the first meetings showed that it was impossible. Putin wanted total submission. Zelenski was a pacifist, he did not represent the side of the war, but he found an attitude unacceptable. The main idea of ??the Minsk agreements implied that they were returned to you but they would be controlled by Moscow, which would have its agents there, capable of vetoing any decision of the Ukrainian government. Of course it would have been easier to get rid of those territories, but they weren’t territories. Zelensky did not understand it at first, but later. Russia was not interested in territories… well, apart from Crimea. The mere existence of Ukraine delegitimized all that southern Russian mythology. This issue had to be resolved, and for Putin it requires a final solution.
If the war lasts long there will come a time when Putin will need to negotiate something…
I think it won’t. He can’t back down, he’s invested too much in this, his image, everything… Going back to the February borders, not to mention the Crimea, is impossible for him. He is the alpha dog, he must be the absolute leader and persuade everyone that he is. If not, he will be eaten by his own pack.
You can hear everywhere: Zelensky calls for tanks, then planes… This will lead us to the third world war.
How are we to defend ourselves, then? Look, Putin is not going to attack any NATO country because he understands that there would be a response. He’s not crazy, believe me. And he now understands better than well that the Western countries and NATO are not that weak. When in January of last year Biden said that in any case he was not going to interfere, sorry but that was a green light for Putin… There is no need to say that, your enemy should not be sure what you are going to do or not.
The US has said that it wants to weaken Russia. And that is sustained by the blood of the Ukrainians.
I know. I am not going to get into Biden’s head but Ukraine resists not because the Americans want it but because it has to resist, it is not a question of whether there is an American plan or not. If Russia can do this once, it can do it again. The idea of ??changing the regime in Russia, bringing it to the point where the elite understand that the leader is not legitimate, drives change. And delegitimization can come in several ways. One is the defeat in the Ukraine; another is the economic situation, which will deteriorate if the sanctions work. Internationally, more isolation is needed, which is why I support him in sports and culture, because his soft power works for hard power now. It is instrumentalized to promote the power of Russia.
Do you mean banning Shostakovich or Dostoevsky?
Put them aside for the duration of the war. I know it’s a radical action and many people don’t accept it, but culture is used as symbolic capital of the empire and creates the wrong idea of ??Russia: those atrocities are very wrong, but look what a great culture! I read an interview with Mikhail Petrovsky, the director of the Hermitage and a staunch supporter of Putin.
There was an attempt to install a Hermitage in Barcelona…
I know. Petrovski said that every hour of Russian exhibitions abroad “is our special operation.” Use the same expression as the Kremlin. A cultural director speaks in military terms. Look, there are 400 monuments to Pushkin in Ukraine. But they are not about Pushkin the poet, they are signs of imperial dominance, they mark the territory. I have nothing against Pushkin, even if he was an imperial poet, but why 400 Pushkin in the Ukraine? He is disproportionate. One would be enough. At least while the war lasts, let’s put all this in the fridge!
