Kiselev and Putin Both Agree! No Point in Wasting Time Talking to President Poroshenko Anymore

Poroshenko is now complaining about not being able to get in touch with Putin in Kremlin.

Poroshenko is now complaining about not being able to get in touch with Putin in Kremlin. But I believe Putin has nothing to talk about with Poroshenko. There's no point in wasting time because Poroshenko is a liar, he's insidious and he doesn't stand by his word. And quite often he's simply drunk. You allow him a phone call, and he'll start spouting nonsense, incorporating it into his election campaign. Obviously, engaging in this theater is not in Putin's best interests.

- We keep hearing Poroshenko complaining that he cannot reach you on the phone. He's complaining to western politicians and western journalists. Could you maybe tell us on what conditions this conversation might take place?

 

Vladimir Putin: "It's not like I'm avoiding Mr. Poroshenko or I just don't want to talk to him. That's not the point. The point is I don't want to be part of his election campaign. Let's look at what's really going on. Mr. Poroshenko masterfully creates a crisis which is actually a provocation. That's his first move. Next, he blames Russia for what happened. And third, he wants to demonstrate that he successfully resolves the problem which is not even his fault. That's what this is. It's a primitive scheme. I don't want to be part of these schemes. And I won't be".

Using Putin as a scare, Poroshenko imposes martial law in half of the country. Trying to stay in power, he seems to be willing to cut Ukraine in half. That's a real risk for a very young country which historically has been put together rather artificially.

Before the Bolshevik revolution, Ukraine had never existed as a country. The 1917 October Revolution led by Lenin had triggered active territorial repartitioning of the Russian west. Various quasi-states aiming at Ukrainness and independence started popping up there like mushrooms. But they also had a mushroom lifespan. All kinds of movements aspired to power during the Russian Civil War, from Bolsheviks and nationalists to Socialist-Revolutionaries and anarchists. But ultimately, only one of those states turned out to be viable: the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, established in 1919, with its capital in Kharkov and in a union with Soviet Russia.

The very same Soviet Ukraine became a co-founder of the USSR by signing the Treaty on the Creation of the USSR in 1922. Thus historical Russia became one Soviet Ukraine smaller. Generous. In this sense, Vladimir Lenin, as the head of the Soviet government, is the creator of the first viable Ukrainian state. Here are the governorates that were part of the Ukrainian SSR as of 1922: Volhynian, Donets, Yekaterinoslav, Zaporozhye, Kiev, Kremenchug, Nikolayev, Odessa, Podolsk, Poltava, Kharkov, and Chernigov.

And here are the cities established by the orders of Russian tsars when this territory was still part of Russia. Sumy, 1655. Kharkov, founded in 1656. Kirovograd, 1754. Zaporozhye under the name of Alexandrovsk, 1770. Krivoy Rog, 1775. Dnepropetrovsk, or Dnepr, founded under the name Yekaterinoslav, 1776. Kherson, 1778. Mariupol, 1778. Nikolayev, 1789. Odessa, 1794. Lugansk, 1795. Donetsk, 1869, under the name of Yuzovka.

In 1923, just one year after the creation of the Soviet Union, Soviet Ukraine began active Ukrainization of the former piece of Russia. It was believed back then that this would save the big country from Ukrainian separatism. It didn't. These are the words of Leonid Kuchma, the second president of independent Ukraine, from his book Ukraine Is Not Russia:

"However you regard the events of the 1920s, it should be acknowledged that if it wasn't for the school Ukrainization during that time, we probably wouldn't have our independence today. Mass Ukrainian schools that educated tens of millions of people, with time turned out to be the most important and indestructible element of the Ukrainian presence in Ukraine".

After that, the Ukrainian SSR grew with the help of Stalin the following way. In 1939, under the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Eastern Galicia, currently spread between Lvov, Ivano-Frankovsk and a part of Ternopol oblasts, is transferred from Poland to the USSR and becomes part of Ukraine. In 1940, Stalin adds to the Ukrainian SSR Northern Bukovina and southern parts of Bessarabia. In 1945, Ukraine annexed Zakarpatye, which is now Zakarpatye oblast.

The cherry on the cake of Ukrainian nation-building was the illegal transfer of Crimea which even Ukrainian nationalists had never dared to dream of. The Soviet leader with a Ukrainian background, Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev, was the one to do it with all his proletarian generosity in 1954, apparently to honor the 300th anniversary of the Pereyaslav Council that reunited Russia and Ukraine. It was a present to the secretaries of Ukrainian regional party committees who he was relying on. But it wasn't his to give.

In these borders, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic had existed up until the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. In the years of independence, things started falling apart. First, Ukraine, exhausted by public protests, lost Crimea, following the 2014 referendum. Around the same time, Kiev lost control over Donbass. The country is now being split apart by Ukraine's unpopular, if not hated oligarch President Petro Poroshenko. By declaring martial law in ten Ukrainian regions last week, he cut the country into two pieces. The east that has always sympathized with Russia is now colored khaki and opposed to the west. Does that promote the unity of the country? Definitely no. Different regions now have different rights. Same for the living conditions. Naturally, the regions that ended up in a worse situation are those where Poroshenko has zero popularity. The new division of the country and the new map of Ukraine look like a revenge from Poroshenko. A pre-election revenge aimed to create certain mechanisms among the oppressed to retain the power even after the election.

What makes the situation even more dramatic is that in the regions under martial law there's a strong presence of Ukraine's canonical Orthodox Church. The punishment mechanism has been set in motion.