Putin’s Ukraine symmetries

Has President Vladimir Putin lost control of his Ukrainian proxies? Just hours after urging them to postpone Sunday’s planned referendum on distancing eastern Ukraine from Kyiv, separatist leaders in Donetsk and Luhansk vowed, their respect for Putin notwithstanding, to proceed with the vote.

While it’s quite possible for a major power to lose control of its proxies, the idea of Ukrainian separatists who have risen under Moscow’s promised protection and may eventually seek to join the Russian Federation defying the will of the Kremlin seems a little far-fetched.

Just as far-fetched as it was, in Putin’s mind, that the Maidan protesters in Kyiv last February defied their Western backers to overturn a power-sharing deal crafted by the EU and Russia, and instead seized power themselves. In the Kremlin’s view, Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk and his government are nothing more than a proxy for Western powers, and Putin sees the February ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych as a Western power grab. The U.S. insistence that Russia negotiate directly with the new authorities in Kyiv, which Moscow doesn’t recognize, was unpalatable to the Kremlin; now, the Russian side may simply be “mirroring” what it sees as Western behavior last February. Putin is saying publicly he wants compromise and conciliation, but it’s unlikely that message has been driven home to the rebels in Ukraine by Russian operatives on the ground. And it is on the ground that new facts are being created – just as they were in Kyiv in February – on the basis of the balance of power on the streets.

As we noted yesterday, Putin is setting the negotiating table for an outcome that involves federalizing (or Balkanizing, if you prefer) Ukraine – the U.S. and the Kyiv authorities on one side of the table; Russia and the separatist rebels on the other.

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