As a battered Ukraine approaches an immensely favorable debt restructuring and a peace deal with Russia involving new, civil elections in rebel-held areas along its eastern region, its citizens should have no expectation of stability to follow. Since Russia began backing rebel separatists in localities of eastern Ukraine, the Ukrainian government, under President Petro Poroshenko, missed one important historical lesson from the Truman administration. No, I’m not suggesting that Ukraine have dropped “the bomb” over Moscow. Rather, Poroshenko forgot Truman’s massive success with the famous “Berlin Airlift.”
As Russian separatists have attempted to claim critical cities and areas in Ukraine, the Ukrainian government has done its best to economically blockade those regions. As President Poroshenko put it to the Ukrainian Parliament in June, “[The Ukrainian government] won’t support and subsidize murderers and gunmen, help bandits to keep afloat.” The Ukrainian government has done this by cutting off monetary and trade flows into the region. This includes groceries and medical supplies, while also refusing to pay pensions to millions living within the rebel-held regions.
This could not be a poorer plan to stave off the separatists. Regardless of economic flows within the held regions, these separatists are playing with house money. Independent of Russia’s economic woes, historical context shows that Russia will stop at nothing to win its endless battle of good vs. evil—Russia vs. everyone else.
Thus, it’s Ukrainian citizens that are hit hardest. The Ukrainian currency, the hryvnia, is becoming all but absent in these regions that are increasingly dependent on the Russian ruble and the dollar. Even those who can pay with hryvnias receive their change in rubles. This creates a status of de facto Russian territory for these rebel-held areas while the Ukrainian nationals living in these regions increasingly see their government as having abandoned them.
U.S. President Harry Truman faced a similar test of Russian/Soviet aggression in 1948 when the Soviet Union blockaded West Berlin, an area controlled by the West after World War II. Seeking to contain the Soviet Union, Truman knew that to fend off the communist threat, West Berlin needed a signal of Western support. Despite the blockade of road, canal and rail traffic, Truman organized a massive airlift campaign that led to 200,000 plus flights over West Berlin. In one year, almost 9,000 tons of supplies were brought to the blockaded region each day—even more than was arriving before the blockade.
As West Berlin became the fastest growing economy in all of Europe and an international embarrassment to the Soviets, the blockade was removed after 13 months. The massive program from the West signaled support against Soviet aggression. It also kept the West and capitalism in a favorable light among the domestic polity of still-war-torn West Berlin.
Now as Ukraine nears an agreement with Russia over the governance of the rebel-held areas, it will undoubtedly be ceding some of its federal authority and sovereignty. While it’s likely that had Ukraine supported these regions in a similar fashion to Truman’s treatment of West Berlin it would have had greater bargaining power in the ongoing negotiations (by maintaining greater favor among Ukrainians in these areas), the effect of such a policy would have gone much further. Even with current state of negotiations—local elections will be held in the coming months and powers usually reserved to the national government will be transferred to localities, including localities held by Russian separatists—a policy of economic support rather than economic starvation over these past months would have been hugely beneficial.
It is conceivable that many disheartened Ukrainians, cut off by their government and thus dependent upon rubles and economic flows from Russia will identify with Russia—or at least not with Ukraine—when it comes time to go to the polls in the coming months. Thus, even after a presumed agreement between Kiev and the Kremlin, and even if elections are civil and the transfer of power is smooth, Ukraine can expect its newly elected local governments to act as vehicles for the neighboring regime.
Going forward, Ukraine can continue to expect challenges to its stability that stem from the considerable Russian influence within its borders. Maybe it’s time for the government of the embattled nation to take a note from Truman and, in doing so, make themselves a more powerful force within their own country.
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