 Hello, everybody. Welcome to Ukraine Post-Conflict Strategies. Thank you very much for coming. I'm John Ciorciari. I'm the co-director of the International Policy Center here at the Ford School. I'd also like to thank our co-sponsors, the Center for Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian Studies, and also the Wiser Center for Emerging Democracies, both at the University's International Institute. I want to thank Will Lamping, who's an MPP student here at the Ford School, and also our IPC administrator, Thea Rowe, for helping to pull this event together and organize it. I'm joined by a distinguished panel. They're going to discuss the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, some of the challenges that stem from the conflict, such as needs for reconstruction, resettlement, and demobilization in the event that the conflict winds down, or even if it continues, and the roles of major external powers. I'll introduce them with one-line biographies. You can see much more about their impressive backgrounds on the website. Ronald Suny, the William H. Sewell, junior distinguished university professor of history here at the University of Michigan, will lead off. Then we'll have Yaroslav Ritzak, professor of history at the Ukrainian Catholic University and Lviv National University. Third will be Yuri Zhukov, an assistant professor of political science also here at the University of Michigan. And last but not least, our own ambassador, Mel Levitsky, who is a professor of international policy and practice here at the Ford School. Panelists are going to start by giving brief remarks. While they do, if you have questions, please write them down on the note cards that were handed out to you as you entered. And please pass them to one of our team members in the aisles who will walk along these sides and make themselves known with their show of hands. They will then bring the cards down to me and to Will Lamping. And we'll do our best effort to ask a representative a sample of your questions to the panel. So without further ado, let's welcome our panelists and get started. Thank you, John. Thank you all for coming. This should be a very interesting evening indeed. My task is Will is my student and my TA and he gave me this task. Basically, I'm going to try to explain what does Putin want Russia and the crisis in Ukraine? In a real sense, in my view, the Soviet Union did not collapse in a single moment of catastrophic colossal disintegration in 1991. In my view, it's still collapsing. The fibers, the networks, the integrated populations, the diasporas, the discourses and understandings that held the largest country on the globe together are still in the process of fraying and unraveling as the current war in Ukraine shows. Conflicting ideas of ethnicity, nationality, of disputed histories, of how coherent the Slavic world is, nationalizing efforts by those dedicated to building a new independent Ukrainian state and nation and anxieties by Russia and Russians of their geopolitical and cultural vulnerability, all these together have lethally combined in a toxic mix that has exploded into open warfare. Thousands have died, more thousands have been wounded, crippled, displaced from their homes, their lives turned upside down. Old anxieties and attitudes, emotional attitudes and views towards friends and enemies, however, remain. In my view, you can take Russia and the Ukraine out of the Soviet Union, but you can't take the Soviet Union out of Russia and the Ukraine. So how did the world get into this mess? It's a fascinating question. And I think to be very crude, there are two major narratives, master narratives, one more dominant in the West and one in Russia. In the Western narrative, the events on Maidan two years ago were a democratic revolution, people rising up to resist corruption and dictatorship, a reach by ordinary people for freedom, independence and a closer alliance with Europe. In this view, Ukrainians yearned for a better life and saw the possibility for that life in closer relations with the West. There was, in this view, very little genuine support for the rebellion in Eastern Ukraine, which was largely an artificial calamity encouraged and supported by Russia. So it is Russia that is the sole perpetrator of the conflict, given its support for the former president of Ukraine, Yanukovych, and later, of course, when it brazenly annexed Crimea and invaded Ukraine. Thus, in the Western view, the crisis is largely the creation and responsibility of Putin and the Russians. The Russians, of course, have their own counter-narrative. What happened there in their view is a coup d'etat was carried out in Kiev, orchestrated by the West, particularly the United States, and influenced by fascists. Within Ukraine, there was real genuine opposition to Maidan and to this rise of fascism. This was particularly strong in Donetsk and Luhansk, where genuine spontaneous grassroots resistance to the illegitimate regime in Kiev exploded in deadly warfare, largely because of Ukrainian government and paramilitary aggression. Russia has played, in its view, a supporting and largely humanitarian role in protecting the independence and freedom of Eastern Ukraine. Now, there are variants and versions of this, less crude than the ones that I've mentioned. I was particularly taken by the views of my friend and fellow historian Timothy Snyder, who indeed believes that this is more than just a clash between Russia and Ukraine. It is indeed a clash of civilizations. That is, Putin is out to destroy Europe, the European Union. In an especially egregious misuse of history, Snyder equates Putin with Stalin's actions during the infamous Nazi Soviet period. Justice Stalin sought to turn the most radical of European forces, Adolf Hitler, against Europe itself. So, Putin is aligned with his grab bag of anti-European populist fascists and separatists. His allies, on the far right, are precisely the political forces that wish to bring an end to the current European order, the European Union, unquote. I subscribe to the John Stuart School of Heterology, of Naziology, that is, John Stuart said wisely, let's all agree that the only thing we're going to call Hitler is Hitler. So, I don't think these are very helpful kinds of analogies. Now, what is this Russian narrative and how can one flesh it out? And it seems to me we can find a lot in Putin himself to try to explain what indeed he is about. Vladimir Putin has several sort of big elements in his general narrative. And they go back, of course, to the late Soviet period and indeed to the Yeltsin period. You can find many of the things that Putin is saying in the Yeltsin period as well, but they weren't acted on. Russia was still weak, Russia was closer to the West, and Putin didn't act on many of these things. One is that Russia is Velikia-Dirjava. It's a great power and it should be treated like a great power. And therefore, the second element that he worries about is that Russia has not been given its due. It's not adequately respected by its European and American partners. And in February 2007, in his speech at the Munich Conference on Security Power, he put this quite bluntly. Sometimes the speech is called the introduction to a new Cold War. Putin was upset by the United States' emergence as the single hyperpower or unipower in the world. And he's against this idea of unipolarity. He rejected the notion that force could be used internationally if it were simply sanctioned by NATO or the European Union, and proposed instead that the only legitimation for armed force against another state was through the UN, which of course, the United Nations, where he would have a veto. Another point in the armor of Putin is a new confidence that wasn't there in Yeltsin's years. The new wealth, as well as American overextension of its capabilities, enabled the Putin administration to embark on a more assertive policy independent of what the United States might prefer. You could say that Putin's foreign policy closely mirrored his domestic politics. If anything, there are three elements to that, statism, realism, and increasingly nationalism. His international policy was the corollary of his domestic policy, stronger state, preservation of the present internal distribution of power, economic prosperity, though too little investment in the future, stability and continuity, most importantly. Putin has made it clear, though people in the West often miss this, that he does not want to restore the Soviet Union. His foreign policy in his view is not imperialist or expansionist, rather it is about having stability and, I would argue, regional hegemony in the near abroad, the countries around his own country. Regional hegemony, security, stability. He's not a radical. He was ready to deal with any kind of regime, no matter how noxious think of his relations with Assad. So in his view, and actually in my view as well, Moscow's policies can be interpreted to preserve existing influences in the region for the purpose, in his view, of greater stabilization rather than imperial control. The Kremlin is driven by these ideas of security and stability because of its own sense of vulnerability, of its own weakness. Russia's foreign policy cannot be understood if you just look at Russia or just look at the Ukrainian-Russian conflict. It has to be understood in the larger international context, looking at the entire international arena. I mentioned its general weakness, its vulnerability vis-a-vis the West, and the global ambitions of the single superpower in the world, the United States. Russian realism contrasts with and has to learn to live with the liberal internationalism and often liberal interventionism of the American government, which has been particularly evident for the last two decades. While Russia aims for a regional hegemony in the so-called near abroad, the United States, most forcibly under George W. Bush, has promoted its own ambitions for global hegemony and the active prevention of any rival hegemon from rising and establishing its influence over any region. American foreign policy, as many of us know, has been largely ideological, driven by a vision of the world in which security can be achieved only by creating a benign world of democratic capitalist states with Western values of tolerance, civil rights, and economic individualism. American leaders believe that America has a special positive role to play in world affairs. That is in the words of Madeleine Albright, we are the indispensable nation. Its own vision of its own unique position privileges its own freedom of action, for American interests are seen to be magically consonant with those of other peace-loving states. In this vision, Russia then is constructed as materialistic, venal, self-interested, anti-democratic, naturally authoritarian, and expansionist. She is simply an international mischief maker. The Russians, of course, think they've been cheated, that they've been neglected, and even they've been lied to by the West, most importantly on the issue of NATO. When Gorbachev negotiated in negotiations around the unification of East and West Germany, he agreed to withdraw Soviet troops from the countries of the Warsaw Pact with assurances, at least he thought so, that East Germany would not be militarized and, as Secretary of State Baker, promised him on February 9th, 1990, there would be no extension of NATO's jurisdiction one inch to the East, unquote. German Foreign Minister, Genscher, told Edward Shevardnadze, one thing is certain, NATO will not expand to the East, but of course they did. Promises were made, not only were other countries brought into NATO, largely because they really wanted to be in it, but to other Soviet republics, notably Georgia and Ukraine, that eventually they too would gain eventual membership. NATO expansion was not seen as Russia as a benign act, of course. It's seen by many of its members, however, as enhancing their security. I wonder about that. I wonder in fact by bringing those countries into NATO, we haven't in fact created a serious security dilemma. By increasing one side security, NATO is then seen offensive by the other side by the Russians, who then have to react by increasing their security sometimes through reckless acts. While the West saw its moves eastward as benign and non-threatening, we know that the Kremlin felt that the West fought and acted as if its interests alone were legitimate, never considering whether Russia would see the movement of a potentially hostile military alliance closer to its borders, indeed into the former Soviet space as a serious threat to its national security. These ideas, as I say, go back as far as Yeltsin, but Putin is the one who's acted upon it. And he acts from Russian weakness. He knows that the European Union is 12 times larger economically than Russia. The United States, 13 times larger, China twice the size. America's defense spending, greater than all other nations combined, and NATO's 70% of which is financed by the United States is 10 times larger than Russia. Yet despite his weakness, Putin repeatedly stated that Russia, a nuclear armed state, must be taken seriously by the West. What he wanted in Ukraine, I believe, was a neutral, benign Ukraine that would be friendly to Russia. And he almost got it before the fall of Yanukovych. But then he did certain things, which in my view were neither realistic, were impulsive, and were reckless. By, if you wanted a Ukraine that was in fact pro-Russian or neutral, what you don't do is annex part of its territory. The Crimea thing, which was done quickly, without a wide consultation, in fact changed the whole game. The European security system was changed. We are now in this deep crisis. Thank you. Since the beginning of Ukrainian events, I have been traveling intensively, both to the West and the East, and I, there's rarely three days in a row where I'll be staying at the same place, more or less in the same bed. So I thank you so much for inviting me here because it provides me with this luxury. I stayed in Anarbor for 40, for five days. So actually this is kind of an achievement. Thank you so much for that. And I would like to use this opportunity to say some of my thoughts because basically why I'm moving that much, not because of the political current situation, but also as an intellectual historian trying to make sense of it, so to say. And so therefore you have to be both here and there. So I've been to Donetsk, been to Basta-Bunkiv, to been to Warsaw, to been to Brussels. Now I am in Anarbor. And my impression, general impression is that you have no chances to make sense of this calamity. And the first thing is why it could not make sense because it's unprecedented. This is my first point. Even the way we define this war as a hybrid war saves you a lot because basically it's another way to say it's an unprecedented war, something we have for the first time, or probably one of the first times, so to say. My idea is here some of my point that we have any kind, we don't have any kind book we could grab from the shelf and to read to get some kind idea, to get a sense of the events. More so, we even don't have a vocabulary to speak about these events because we're back basic concepts. One example we'll do, and here we'll probably come to my major point. There is a new concept that emerged recently in the social scientists, probably you know of this concept, so-called precariat. This is the concept that you launched by the British social scientist guy standing. It's about a very global phenomenon. I believe many of people here sitting here there, precarities, so then I realize they are belong to this class. It's basically described some kind of a new emerging class which is global. It is mostly people who are held by their, say, by their objective data, by their educational level, by their skills, by their values, they belong to the middle class. But throughout their academic careers, or any careers, they won't have chances, say, to be secure, so they are more closely in the senses to proletariat. So they have very precarious positions, so to say. And this is quite a new phenomenon which is global. And say, occupying the Wall Street is very much about that. We have a recent discussion about this phenomenon in Poland. And there are many people who are discussing this idea and they say this last thing is invented, has nothing to do with current political situation. But then you had, in Poland, political presidential elections and turned out to be this specific class, which is precariat, decided, determined the outcome of the elections, so to say. Because the basic, they failed the current president of Komorowski. And nowadays, in Poland, nobody already discusses this concept of precariat because it's taken for granted. It's there. Basically, it's a class which is very much like generation. Or other words, they say, tell me the year you've been born, I'll tell you how poor you will be. So this is the whole idea about this class. So my point is that in many sense, it would happen in Ukraine related exactly to this term, to precariat. Just give you an idea, one data. Ukraine nowadays belongs to the top most educated countries in the world. Number of the people who are after the high school, entering the universities, unbelievably high. Approximately 80% even more than Israel. I'm not saying they're good education, in case I believe it bad, as they call it, equality, but quantity is which amazed them. And basically, they're going to university, not because of some kind of the idea they're getting knowledge, because they basically, they're hiding from employment, so to say. So this is what you have there. You have a people, young generation, who have managed the last 25 years, we have no perspective for the future. And increasingly so, under extremely corruptive regime, and increasingly as such corruptive regime as Yanukovych. So in my understanding, to a large extent, I'm not saying this is the only definition. Ukraine, ever am I done, was revolution of this class, of this young people. I could go in on with some characteristic, probably come with discussion, because of all several papers on this, because we may send service on that to you, especially in values, because values are very important. It's not just kind of some other ideological mis-term, because you could measure some values, you could see this kind of the difference between the older and younger generation in Ukraine. So what I'm saying here, that if you, when I'm going back, if you think that you, war, or European may done, ever may done, and the war which ensued is about nation, nationalism, identities, you are wrong. It's not about that. It's exactly how Putin wants to see it. It's about nation-building, empire-thing like that. It's not about that. It's about changes. It's about modernizations, about the chances for the people who live there. This is important, essential for me, this point to point, point, point to make, because we're using all the vocabulary of empire-building, national-thing like that. And I believe it, exactly the Putin believes the things, because he's misjudging Ukraine. He still believes Ukraine is divided country, then hunting, then works there, clash of civilization kind of talks like that. And this is nonsense. You have to be in Ukraine, you have to travel Ukraine to see the sociology, you have to skip surveys. You could see this is, don't really, don't really matter. What really matters is corruption. This is the higher point. Security and corruption is the highest point. Nobody talks about language nowadays that more, about historical memory, about Mandar, all this kind of rubbish, excuse me, for saying that we've been talking before the things. So basically, this is my point. You have to get this, if you change this view, you understand Ukraine, but you start understanding better what is a stake. My second point, at large extent, Putin was, has to pay for this mistake, for this ignorance. Because basically, if he would be right, if he would be right, his project of the Russian Spring would be successful. Again, here I might point this content with Professor Ronsuni. The Russian scenario toward Ukraine, Putin, I don't believe, worked on impulsive, makes his decision on impulsive way. Because Russian scenario, possible Ukrainian scenario toward Russian scenario toward Ukraine, school Ukrainian scenario, has been already elaborated in 2009, a year after Georgia. And there has been a lot of analysis. There has been publication in the slides. If you look at the publication of 2009, and you look at what was going on there at the event, you will see this is kind of carbon copy, what was there. Basically, the whole idea was of Putin, if Ukraine would move to West, and it was not talk about NATO, against what importance, talk about the repeating union. Agreement was repeating union, which has no kind of commitments. It's a technical agreement. But it was considered from the point of view as a kind of threat of the strategic interest of Russia. So what's the strategy says? If this Ukraine would move West, there's a plan of disintegrating Ukraine in two parts. I'll clone the axis, Kharkiv Odessa. To tell you more, for your knowledge of Ukraine, it goes about the industrial heart of Ukraine. Neppropetrovsk, Kazaporozhye, the most educated, the most industrialized, the most urbanized, large regions of Ukraine, which also, which is very important, have access to the wall, to the Black Sea. So in this sense, if Ukraine wants to go, Europe could go, but in a smaller scale. It's like a weak state, agricultural state, not really developed with the West, Galicia, the kind of thing. This was strategy, at least I was, was being elaborated into online. I know that because I was, at that time during Maidan, I was working closely in the Poroshenko team, and we already knew that in December of nine, what is December 14, 13, excuse me, at the first weeks of Maidan, what is coming. Most of the people in the Poroshenko milieu knew that it's not in the coverage who is the main danger. It's Putin who is the main danger. They know what is coming. What is coming when Maidan would be, would succeed. So I'm telling you, it's a long-term game. It's something different in a game, but I believe still, it's a game scenario which is based on a very wrong presumption, that identity matters, Ukraine is divided, Russian language matters, so once Putin entered Crimea, all the other Russian speaking parts would meet Russian army with flowers, and never happened. So basically, I would say, Putin was punished for his failure of the Russian war, of Russian Spring, because basically what you got here as a result of Russian Spring is Donbass only, not even Donbass, it's one third part of Donbass. This is the territory when the Russian Spring has been, has been, has been, has been shrinked. That said, that said, I don't claim that Putin has claimed, failed completely, no. In a large extent, to some extent or to large extent, his political has been successful, because by imposing the war on Ukraine, and this is imposed over, I believe, giving this perspective, long-term perspective, it's still a chance for Ukrainian modernization, and it's basically what the revolution was about, because for him, the modernization of Ukraine, introducing radical, political, and more so economical reforms is a threat, I would say a little threat, because otherwise, it's just legitimacy for providing his politics, for keeping this kind of ideology, or whatever he says, the articulation of the Ruskin Mir, which is, as a word, is nothing else but to claim, as a third, Zonderveck, a Zonderveck, which is basically to say that this is, except that it's a failure of the rationalization. Again, there is interesting study done by a police scholar who tried to compare, to analyze, Medvedev and Putin discourses by their presidents. So what was interesting in this case, that core element, or central term for Medvedev was modernization in his public speeches and appearances. The core element, or central element, in Putin was security. So see what has happened there. Basically, this is, so to say, denial, or say refusal to make any kind of modernization, and the call is Zonderveck, Ruskin Mir, all this kind of, excuse me, ideological mist or threats, which some people keep by face value. So by imposing war on Ukraine, Putin, to a certain extent, stills the chance for Ukraine for reforms, and, which I have to admit, it also provides Ukrainian government, which is very inefficient and corrupted for a very convenient excuse, not to do reforms. Because once you have a war, it's very hard to embark on reforms, and this is actually what, yet the new accusers in his speeches basically says, it's an issue nowadays, it's not about reform, it's about survival of Ukraine. And I would say it's a suicidal politics because it plays in the hands of Kremlin. This is a very short term. It's not even strategy, it's a tactics, because we're losing this kind of big picture. So what could be suggested or anything? I don't know what time is running. Let me check here. So I'll probably have four minutes. I'll try to put this brief as short. I believe to a large extent, Ukraine has missed, has lost its chance for radical reforms, because the wind opportunity was very short. The wind opportunity was about a year or so. I mean, there was much expectations. There were very strong social support rather strong social support throughout Ukraine. I let him talking about on the basis on the surveys that we did. Now it's lost. I know it was a lot completely, but it's lost. Let's forget it. I don't believe that Ukraine would go with radical reforms, successful reforms, even so Poroshenko now claims that he will start reform and he was using the Sakashvili as a kind of the support, additional support. But I believe again, it's too little and too late, so to say. So basically, we are now entering in Ukraine in the long term period of crisis, of political crisis, of political instability. And this is a very bad story, without economic reforms. I'm sorry to tell, so I'll tell that. So the results are rather unpredictable. So that said, I also have to say that Ukraine, for Ukraine, the window opportunity is closed. But what I do believe that still, Ukraine has a corridor, so to say. A new corridor, a long way to go. It's like a 20, 25 years. And my calculation and my expectations, call it naive or not, is based on two new phenomena which are evident in Ukraine. First is the younger generation. What probably the main advantage of Ukraine since the last 25 years is the young generation. You may call, you may, what professors have personally put it nicely, you may take Soviet Union and Ukraine from the Soviet Union, you can have Soviet Union and Ukraine. You can take it and talk about younger generation. But there's not that much Soviet about them. They don't remember the Soviet things. And it's also talking about the basically on the social service, the way they behave, the thing like that, so to say. So what I'm saying here that since this is people who nowadays in the age of 18 to 29, you have to provide them with a chance to get older. So for the next 20, some years, when they'll be in the middle age, and this is the period when the people on this age take responsibility for the country. And I believe there's a chance that's one these people would be in this age, this may be a new country nowadays. So they have a, Ukraine is not a sprinter, not a star. It goes a long run slowly, to say, but rather, rather, rather surely. As it will happen, it depends on the many circumstances which I could not predict. But, and here's coming to my final point, the vast support is very important. Because we have to think differently about Ukraine. Because it's think about again, nationalism, people, the thing like that, you're losing the point. You're losing this issue of this new phenomenon. And my second phenomenon is a civil society, which is thriving in Ukraine. Because without the society, to leave me or not, Ukraine would collapse in the first year of the Donbass military war. Because basically it was them who provided the main support, the delivery of main goods, whatever for the soldiers and officers, because not because of just patriotic duties, because there were their sons, brothers, husbands, and like that. This, you have to be there. Ending to, we really need a strategy. But we'll need a strategy to help this change. But to have a strategy, we have to think differently. And to think differently, we have to have a new vocabulary. Thank you so much. While we pull up our next speaker's slide deck, let me remind you please, if you've got questions you'd like to ask, write them down, and please prepare to pass them over to the aisles so we'll have folks to collect them. Thanks. Well, thank you, John, for inviting me to be on this very distinguished panel and to talk to all of you about such an important topic. And although the title of our panel and the theme is ostensibly post-conflict strategies, I'm actually gonna argue that it's premature for us to talk about that. Because I think the conflict is still very much ongoing. It has partially frozen, it has quite a down, but there are bullets still flying. And, in fact, just this morning, the OSCE sent out a report about a sharp increase in ceasefire violations. And now a lot of this has had to do with, those of you who have been following Ukrainian politics may know that last week, I believe the head of a Ukrainian political party, Hennadzik Kurban, the head of Ukrop, was arrested by Ukrainian authorities. And after the arrest, some of his supporters, about 1,000 of them, including about 300 right-sector militants, protested in Nipropitlovsk, after which the OSCE saw some of these groups, along with units of some volunteer battalions, including Alzov and Siech. They took up firing positions. They deployed to Northwest of Donetsk, which is where a lot of ceasefire violations, mainly small arms, fire, and explosions across the line of control have happened. And the reason I'm telling you this, and I'm gonna come back to this in the end, is that this episode underscores just how fragile the recent reduction in violence has been. So, overall, the level of fighting in the Donbass has dramatically decreased, since a high of about 396, I believe, individual, unique incidents of violence per week in January to about only a couple dozen last month. But what we have now is these third party groups, these spoilers, that are using ceasefire violations or threats of ceasefire violations. By the way, on both sides, they're using these kinds of violations as leverage on the government. In this case, to respond to what they thought was a selective application of justice. But it does underscore just how fragile the current situation is and how easily we can return back to the violence of previous months. Now, this conflict has gone on for about 18 months. I wanna begin by showing you how the violence has unfolded since Yanukovych's departure in February of 2014. And these are some of the data that my research team and I, some of whom are in the audience tonight, have been collecting. So, as you see, this is an animation. This shows rebel violence. This does not include political protests. So during much of March of last year, there were a lot of, what was initially peaceful protests which escalated to the seizure of government buildings throughout the Donbas, the seizure of police stations, and eventually the several towns falling under rebel control. And then in the beginning of May, May 11th, rebels held what the Ukrainian government called the pseudo referendum on independence and on the creation of the so-called People's Republic of Donetsk and Luhansk. And as you see, those gray areas are the territories that the rebels controlled at that point. And there are flare-ups of violence throughout this area. Ukrainian government initially hesitated and responded to it, but then in mid July, they sent four battalions, actually four brigades, to sweep that southern border area to restore control over the border crossings. And then in the middle of July, the 95th Air Assault Brigade of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, which is the most capable unit that they have, carried out this massive armored raid in which they basically split this whole territory in half and broke the front. And at that point, it kind of looked like the rebels were finished. And then the Russians intervened militarily. There was an armored assault down in the south, extending the reach of their territory over to the border of Zabologia. They eventually had to pull back because they outran their logistics. They also trapped a large concentration of Ukrainian troops in a pocket around Ilovaisk. And then after September 5th, there was a first MISC ceasefire agreement, which is what you're seeing right now. There's technically a ceasefire on the ground. As you can see, it is not holding. The line of control is relatively static at this point. The fighting has evolved into kind of static defensive warfare, kind of think, Western Front of World War I. And then there's another renewed rebel offensive in December and January of this past winter in which the rebels initially wanted to take control of the remainder of these two provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk. What they ended up capturing was Donetsk Airport, as well as this pocket in Ilovaisk, and Debaltseva, which is where, right, between, kind of at the midpoint between Donetsk and Luhansk, it's a major railroad crossing. If you control that crossing, you reduce the travel time from Donetsk to Luhansk by several hours. And then eventually the rebels closed the cauldron. They overtook that territory. And now what you're seeing is a second Miss Cease Fire Agreement, which has been in force ever since. And since then, the frontline has remained relatively static. As you probably see, there are a few territories that are still contested. A couple small cities changing hands every now and then. But overall, the level of violence has gone down with the exception of a small spike. As you see there toward the end in June, some artillery duels happened there. And there was serious concerns that it would flare up again into another large, treble offensive. That has not happened. And I'm gonna move on to the next slide because it kind of keeps going like this for a while. But that's essentially the distribution of control as it currently stands. This is the distribution of violence over the entire period of the war so far. Actually, this goes until the end of July. We're currently collecting data to bring us up to the present. But I wanna talk about some of the main drivers of the violence. So in the early stages of the conflict, during the protest phase and the early insurgency phase, the early stages, according to the data, were largely economic. They were not ethnic or linguistic. The strongest predictor of violence on the ground in these early stages. Violence was most likely and most intense in municipalities that were either heavily dependent on trade with Russia, or that were uniquely exposed to trade shocks or other types of economic negative shocks due to either the EU association agreement or Russian import substitution. And so these are mainly machine building company towns. Basically, towns where almost everyone is deployed in a single factory that exports locomotive engines to one customer, Russian railroads. And we saw a lot of the same things happen in coal mining towns. Those towns switched sides very early in the conflict. And they switched sides for the most part without a shot being fired. They did not resist the pro-Russian separatists when they moved in and took control over these towns. So contrary to the way this conflict has been portrayed both in the Russian press and in the Western press, this is not an ethnic conflict. And if there's one point that I want you to take away from night, it is that. Russian language and ethnicity and how many Russian speakers reside in a given town does not predict violence. Trust me, I've run thousands, literally thousands of predictive models on this. It does not come out as significant. The only instances in which Russian language does predict rebel control are in towns where these economic incentives were not very strong, where there's not a large industrial workforce. And as Ukrainians, of course, know, there are Russian speakers on both sides of this war and there are many more of them on the pro-Kiev side. And of course, they're in the later stages. When we transition away from protests and insurgency and into full spectrum maneuver war, the causes of the fighting have changed a little bit. And this may seem so autological, but the best predictor of violence is violence. And what I'm talking about here is artillery duels. So rebels launch an artillery barrage against government firing positions. Government and volunteer battalions respond. Rebels respond in turn. And after this artillery return, other units on the front line are being priced on alert and similar things spread out throughout the territory. And that kind of self-perpetuating dynamic is the main driver of violence over this entire period. And compounding this problem is our basic problems of command and control on both sides. There are simply too many actors on the ground and too many of them are not within the command structure of either the Ukrainian government or the Russian armed forces or even the self-proclaimed People's Republics of Dniessk and Luhansk. And of course, on the Ukrainian side, we have a lot of volunteer battalions. Some of them in the early stages of the war were formed out of self-defense protest units in the Euromaidan from Kiev. They took up arms. Some of them, like the Dniper-01 battalion that was financed by Kolomoisky, the governor of Dnipe Petros, basically worked like a private army, basically a private militia run by a warlord. Some of them have an openly nationalist right-wing agenda. Some of them, like the now disbanded Idar battalion, have been accused of human rights violations. Most of them, at this point, have been now subordinate to the Ministry of the Interior, but that, of course, has not prevented the kinds of things that we saw last week, even though they're formally within the command structure of the Ukrainian government. They're still very much autonomous actors. And all of that, of course, pales the comparison of the problems on the pro-Rubble side. On the pro-Rubble side, in addition to locals, basically local units formed out of either French political parties in Donetsk and Luhansk, or from former coal mining labor unions. You also have a lot of volunteers from Russia, a lot of ultra-nationalists from Russia, a lot of Kossak mercenaries, a lot of Chechen mercenaries who no one really controls. Again, a lot of these units have been now subordinate to the so-called armed forces of Novalysia, but they retain a lot of autonomy, and there's no real switch that Putin can flip to turn off the violence at any given point. And that's so once violence breaks out, it becomes very difficult to contain in this kind of environment. We have so many third-party spoilers. And then, of course, what also predicts violence is simple matters of geography and logistics. It's hard to find it in a town that you cannot access through roads. The closer you are to the Russian border, the more supplies you'll receive from Moscow, and so on. Now, I want to talk about why violence has declined if we indeed think that it has declined. And in fact, it goes up and down, but relative to the very intense level of activity that we saw last August and last January, it has declined. One potential argument is that the ceasefire is working, but as you can see right there, after MISC-1 and MISC-2, it's really hard to make that argument. In general, this case study, very nicely illustrates the fact that countries did not, combatants did not stop fighting because of a ceasefire. They signed a ceasefire because they wanted to stop fighting. And as we saw in MISC-2, before MISC-2, that agreement happened because the rebel winter offensive failed. They initially wanted to take control of Mariupol, of Kramatorsk, of Silevnsk, the entire territories of Donetsk and Luhansk, they failed. They captured the airport, they captured the Srelava crossing into Bolsheva, and they could not take any more territory without a huge increase in Russian military support. Russian armored units going across the border, which Putin did not have any appetite for at the time. So ceasefire success, not really. Perhaps the sanctions are working. Well, they are and they aren't. If you look at Putin's approval rating, they have not made a dent. I think right now he's at about 90%. And there's also logic, a flurry flawed logic in how these sanctions have worked. The way that sanctions work is if you have compliance on the other side. If the side that is being sanctioned has an opportunity to comply. And if the condition of these sanctions is get out of Crimea, no Russian leader, Putin or anyone else, can do that without losing power. They'll have to run out of the country like Yanukovych did in Ukraine. And so there's a sense in Russia that these sanctions are there to stay. There's also the question of Russian operations in Syria, whether they are in fact a big distraction from the fighting in Ukraine, get Ukraine off the front line of the newspapers, get Russia back into the negotiating table. And certainly they have had this effect. But the military opportunity costs of these operations in Syria are actually very small. Here we're talking about basically 34 fighter jets, a few ground attack helicopters, some Marines to protect the base, air crews, combat service personnel. All of units that are not used in Ukraine where the fighting is mainly done by mechanized units on the ground. And but I think the main reason that why the violence has gone down if it has gone down is there are many more stake holders now in the status quo than there were previously. And by stakeholders I mean primarily at the official level, Poroshenko, Putin, from Putin's standpoint, now in Ukraine we have a frozen conflict, which is essentially a veto on NATO integration for Ukraine, where he can flip up, he can turn up the heat whenever he wants. But also on Poroshenko's side, Ukraine is a 50-50 country electorally. Traditionally that's been the case for most of the election cycles. So is the U.S. Now imagine if California or Texas secedes, right? What will that do to the outcome of presidential elections? If California secedes, what will that do to the probability that Democrats will win in a national election? And of course there are also some fiscal savings that come into play. You didn't have to pay the salaries of state workers in Ukraine for a while, not since last summer. But of course those fiscal saving costs have now been completely offset by the increased military spending, but still reintegrating Ukraine is much more costly than potentially just keeping the status quo intact. But of course, the people who are not real stakeholders in the status quo are the locals, the rebels on the ground in Donetsk and Luhansk, and also a lot of the volunteer battalions. And so I'm actually gonna fast forward from this slide straight to the conclusion. How do we keep this violence down? And so particularly during the flare-up of violence last winter, there's been a lot of talk about sending US military aid to Ukrainian armed forces. And the people in many of these kinds of static positions in an open front, basically facing armored units on the Russian and the rebel side, certainly want anti-tank munitions, anti-tank guided missiles. That's been a main request that they have. And the problem here is that US military aid to Ukraine, the idea is that it will deter the rebels from any future offensives. But the problem is that it's kind of paradoxically is both too much and too little. It's too little to change the balance of power on the ground. Military experts, those who have been following the unfolding events of the battlefield, know that Ukraine's military defeat is not due to any deficiencies in technology. It's due to poor logistics, inexperienced commanders, a lot of difficulty maneuvering battalion and brigade-sized units in the field, due to poor intelligence, and complete breakdown of command and control between the regular army and these volunteer battalions. And injecting sophisticated weapons into this kind of operating environment is very risky. I'm not gonna mention the fact that the javelin missiles are about a quarter million dollars each and it would also entail US training personnel being on the ground in harm's way. So if we want US troops on the ground in Donetsk, that's a potential strategy we can take, but it fundamentally won't change the balance of power on the ground. A key to any kind of conflict resolution will be to keep third-party spoilers in check on both sides. And partly, this is a problem of the Russian zone-making. They're most capable units. The Russian army has gone through an entire restructuring in the past 10 years. They've increased their reliance on professional soldiers on what they call contractic contract personnel. But that mainly applies to specialized units, technical units such as armor, artillery, airborne, that does not apply to infantry. Infantry is mainly conscripts and they have mothers who complain when their sons are sent into battle. So Russia has relied on third parties, like a lot of locals, a lot of mercenaries. These people are hard to control. And Ukraine has also had a similar problem, but mainly due to the fact that at the beginning of the conflict, they only had 6,000 combat-ready troops. So we need to keep these third-party spoilers in check. I don't know how. Hopefully someone will figure that out. Now also the current economic blockade of Donbass is kind of productive. If we want to increase the reliance of the 4 million people who live there who have not yet fled on Russia, if you want to increase their reliance on humanitarian aid from Russia, go ahead, keep them blockaded. This is not the best idea if we want to eventually reintegrate these territories into Ukraine. But the bottom line is that Kyiv needs to create an attractive political economic model in the territories that it controls. It needs to create incentives for the people who live in the Donbass to look to see their future in Kyiv rather than in Moscow. Of course, this is the same prescription that was recommended for Georgia and from Odoba. It did not really unfreeze those conflicts, but I think this is a strategy for generations. This is not something we can implement in two or three years. The bomb is the long-term, but that's where we currently are. Thank you for your time. You know, there's an advantage to speaking last and a disadvantage. One of the advantages, I could just say ditto, and we could have a discussion. Because I agree with the number of points of view, but I agree that all of them are valid based on research, based on history. Some of them are educated guesses. I'm gonna take off my professorial robe and put on a diplomatic ambassadorial sash for a minute and try to be a hard-boiled realist about this issue. Because I think it's important not to let us say from the standpoint of the US government, also I can't speak for the European Union, but at least from the standpoint of the US government, the situation in Ukraine has to be put into a much broader framework. And one of the questions in that broader framework is what are the Russians up to? What are their national interests? Are there parallel interests with ours? Are there conflicting interests with ours? Can we have a grand dialogue with them? Because it certainly doesn't pay for us or for the Russians to have another Cold War begin. It's more expensive, it's dangerous. There are all the reasons that we fought for 70 some years. Well, I wouldn't say 70 years, but at least after the Second World War to contain the Soviet Union at the time. That was my period of time in government. I have to say when I served in Moscow in the 70s, I visited Ukraine several times. And one of the things I took away from that was that the KGB surveillance at the time was much heavier in Ukraine than in Moscow. It was much heavier than any place I've been. It kind of is an indication of the mutual distrust on both sides and the idea one might call paranoid, but you know what Henry Kissinger or somebody said about paranoids, they said even paranoids have enemies. So the sense that Ukraine was different because it was an important part of the Soviet Union. Big population, the bread basket, so-called of the Soviet Union, et cetera. It was an important country. So I think we wanna put this into the context of US national interest, US strategy. I think the Russians under Putin, especially have been very strategic in what they've been doing. And I think Ukraine fits into this strategic framework. What are Russian national interests as we try to predict them from outside? First, and this has been mentioned before, they want to rebuild respect and fear. I put those two together. Respect and fear of the kind that the USSR, that the Soviet Union had during the Cold War before. They want, and Putin particularly, when I say they, it's not just Putin, it's a ruling elite of what one might have called the nomenclatura during Soviet days. They want to be included in all the big boys clubs and to be included in decision-making and important world events. Part of the problem with this is that they also are a controlling factor in terms of the way the West deals with events. It's very much a tactic that goes back to Soviet days. First, you cause a problem. Then you make sure that you are involved in the solution. So if you cause the problem, you're involved in the solution. You have to be, you have to discuss at the very highest level, the G8, with the European Union, with the United States. It's, Russia certainly sees its foreign policy overseas as a kind of control factor internally as well. Been very popular. You know, this is an old tactic of not just so, but Russia, you create issues in the outside that require you to take certain controls internally because they're disruptive to the stability of the state. And I think we have seen certainly a number of examples of that in terms of the press, various trials that have gone on in Russia. And in terms of Russia's strategic view, I think it's very clear that Putin and his group view the West, but primarily the United States, as wavering, undecided, weak, and war weary. And that is an, so if you're thinking from the standpoint of a Soviet policymaker, you take that into account. It gives you an open area in terms of what one can do to build influence worldwide. And I'm sure that this seems to be the case. Now, one example of this was the so-called red line. So President Obama drew red line, chemical weapons, et cetera. Then it was violated, pretty clearly violated. Then he said, I have to go to Congress. And then the Russians seeing this wavering came in and there was a negotiation and here we are back again. My own personal view, nobody, I agree with this. I think when the red line was crossed, we should have strategically bombed several places as much as we can, not civilian installations but military to show that we had will resolve and that we could be dependent upon. Because I think from the standpoint of the Russians now, that was a watershed. They saw that we were not willing to use force or to, and use force, I don't mean by sending troops into Ukraine but at least arming Ukrainians going, trying to persuade NATO to do more, et cetera. Okay, so I think the elements of Russian strategic doctrine now are first build the armed forces, expand their reach on land, sea, and air. This seems to be happening. If you look at the number of incidents now where Russian aircraft have come close to the national territory of NATO members and other Scandinavians especially and where their ships, particularly in the north, are seem to be in a probing expedition with submarines that are detected as well. It's clear that not only are they building the armed forces back again, but they're also using them for strategic purposes and for signaling purposes in terms of not only what their intentions are, well, what their resources are and what their possibilities are. Since we have been looking at Russia as a weak country ourselves since the end of the Soviet Union particularly during the Yeltsin period when we kept saying, oh, we want Russia to be a normal country, which I always thought was a kind of strange expression on our part, but in any case. Also, from the standpoint of the sanctions, which were discussed here. It's clear, and if you look at Russian history as well, it's clear that things like sanctions actually lift the popularity of the particular leader. This is what's happened with Putin because the argument is here our potential enemy is making more difficult for you to live. That's a good excuse for not having very high standard of living. In fact, it's the outside that's doing this, not us. If they understood our motives and in a way our own ideology, then this wouldn't be happening to you. So it's a control mechanism. And the idea is to denigrate the effect of the sanctions, but realistically trying to also get them taken off at some point, find some conditions for doing this. Then there's this issue that was discussed here before as well. Re-establish, and this has been going on for some time. It's not new. Re-establish hegemonic relations with a number of near abroad countries. And also, not just through what I would say peaceful means, but also by showing that what the consequences of challenging Russian interests would be. Well, we've seen this in Georgia. We've seen it in Ukraine. Syria is in a way the same kind of thing. First place, there are a lot of Russians in Syria, a lot of Russians over the years, and a lot of Syrians who live in Russia, who have married Russians in one way or another since they've had these military installations. And so getting back into this strategic framework, Syria fits in very nicely. So hegemony by re-establishing some of the relationships with the former republics, as well as the threat of using forces they have. They've already shown that they can. And then you have a number of places where we don't make the newspapers very much, but where do we have Russian troops already? So I looked this up. And if you look at, for example, Armenia and the whole issue of Nagorno-Karabakh, which the Russians have supported, where the Russians have supported Armenia very strong, there are about 5,000 Russian personnel there. But besides that, the Russians are clamping down on Armenians in terms of their ability to maneuver. Belarus, their personnel in Georgia, and both Abkhazia and South Ossetia, they're somewhere in the neighbor of 7,500 Russian troops. In the old, in the stands, this is Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, we have Russian troops, and Russian influence increasing. And of course, Syria, we have it, and now we're Ukraine. And there's even been an agreement signed recently to re-establish some kind of relationship with Vietnam because they had a basic comron bay during the Vietnam War. And in addition to that, the Russians have been playing the China card. This is our old China, they stole our strategy. They've been playing the China card in a way that's, I think, quite clever, showing that because China and the United States and our allies have been having problems with freedom of the seas, with the building of these islands, it's a perfect time for Russia to try, Chinese suspect Russian, history will tell you that there's a lot of suspicion between the two countries, but realistically speaking, it's not a bad deal for Russia and China to have a closer relationship, and I think this is what's happening. So how do we relate this to the Ukraine? This will, and what can the United States possibly do that will increase its own national interest? Let me address that a little bit. So it is true, Syria has moved Ukraine to the backpages. I don't know if that's the, if that was the reason for moving and I doubt it. There was a broader reason to establish that big boy image and show that they have, that the Russians have interests in the Middle East and need to be part of whatever solutions, whatever negotiations take place. The question of Crimea. So Crimea has become basically a fact of life. You said it, it's been mentioned here before. There's no Russian leader that could possibly say, okay, well let's negotiate, maybe we can figure out a deal or they'd have more autonomy, it's not gonna happen. It's going to be part of Russia and there's not gonna, there are some consequences they could pay, but it's not going to go back. You know, Ronald Reagan even said the Panama Canal, it's ours, we built it and we're gonna keep it and we didn't keep it. I don't think the Russians are gonna do it that way. In any case, the thing that's happened most recently, which I think is interesting, is Putin made it just a short time ago a speech in which he basically showed the softer part of this doctrine that is the doctrine that is the incentive. And he said essentially, look, we can work with our partners, he always calls us partners with our partners in the West. So what's going on here? We can presumably, we can negotiate on the Syria issues, as long as we don't have to stay with Assad, that sort of subroza going on, but he needs to be there while we're negotiating. And in Ukraine, you need us quite obviously, we can talk about that as well. So there is, this is a very clever policy of using the fist and using the fist and the velvet glove, I think that's coming on. Now, so just briefly, what can the United States do? First place, there are some very big US national interests going in. We do not want the policy established even, and remember, there's a bit of inconsistency here, but as someone once said, foolish inconsistency is the hobgoblin of a small mind. So, foolish, sorry, foolish consistency, I said it wrong. Foolish consistency is a hobgoblin of a small mind. So it seems to me there are several things that can be done, which make sense, and which fit in even into the Obama administration, foreign policy, and national security strategy, which personally I don't admire very much, but we have a president, and so let's look at what things could be done. First place, it's very important to keep the allies united on sanctions. That's going to be very hard to do. You need to make Ukraine, I think, part of the overall dialogue with Russia. You cannot handle it separately. It needs to be part of that overall dialogue and part of the deal. Call it a grand bargain if you want, but it has to fit into it, because if it's handled separately, I don't think we'll get very far. We need to keep the sanctions in place, as I said, and we need to keep the allies there. However, we also need to make clear to the Russians what needs to be done to reduce the sanctions. I think they have had a, certainly have a major effect in terms of investment, capital flight. You can see this in the figures and in the economy in general. We need to demand that the Russians not pull out whatever they are, volunteers, mercenaries, Russian forces, out of Ukraine, and we need to be careful about Crimea. So there are some things we could do about Crimea, but we need to be realistic about what can be done, I think. It's not going back to Ukraine. I think that's just unlikely. The example I would give is when I served in Moscow, but during that whole period of time, we'd never recognized the forceful incorporation of the Baltic countries, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. There's an advantage in keeping that principle going. It can be even toughened because you can do something like we did with Cuba and the Helms-Burton Amendment where you put a notation in the passport and that valid for travel to Crimea. You can punish Crimean officials by making sure they can't travel, they can't have visas, they can't get to the United States, freeze their money, you can be very tough on that. I'm not sure that we'll get anywhere, given what I think are Russian attitudes toward maintaining control of Korea, of Crimea. Okay, so then within this grand dialogue, we need to press for a more solid ceasefire and negotiations between the parties. I think it's the Ukrainians that need to solve this and it needs to be solved without the pressure from either east or west, but particularly from east. Then we have to, I think, come up with an economic package for Ukraine to show the advantages of working with the west. I'm not sure that it should include membership or associate membership with the EU, but something, but an economic assistance package certainly is important, particularly in balance of payments issues. Even preferences in trade, like what we have in the general system of preferences with a number of underdeveloped countries. There's no reason why it couldn't be applied to Ukraine at all. And we need to have, and this is the last point I wanna make, we need to have a very strategic dialogue and talks with the Russians about the full range of issues that we both agree on, many of them at this point, but end that we disagree on because that relationship is important. The Russians are aggressive, they're forward leaning as we say sometimes, and it's not going to, and it's not going to stop. I think some results can be had, but I think the negotiation themselves and the image of negotiating with what is a potential important adversary is very important in and of itself. So that's what I have to say, and thank you all for participating with us. Thank you all also for offering us a number of good questions to choose from. I'm gonna pass the microphone to Will Lamping, and he's going to select a representative sample of your questions. Our first question is for Ronald Suny, but of course all the panelists are welcome to weigh in on it. You discussed the Western and Russian narratives of what has happened and is happening in Ukraine. What is the Ukrainian narrative? Are there any differences between the Western and Ukrainian narratives? It seems to me there's several Ukrainian narratives. I mean if you include Donetsk and Luhansk as well, or do you mean that maybe the questioner meant what is the Ukrainian narrative on the other side? And I think the best answer for that would probably be to have Yaroslav answer that question rather than I, because what I see is real in my mind confusion and conflict among different actors, different political parties. I don't think there's a very consistent single narrative, but I'll leave that to you. I do agree, but I see it's a kind of advantage for Ukraine because nobody has a monopoly. There's no single unit dominating narrative in Ukraine period. You could, if you're talking about Ukraine, it's better or it's just plural than single or so to say. And I believe there's a beauty of Ukraine in the sense because otherwise if nobody's dominating, you have a country which has to come some deals, agreements, and that's basically what the democracy is about. All right, thank you. For Professor Zhukov, given the early stage insurgency and the currently more conventional combat of this hybrid war, is military victory by either side feasible? And if so, what might that, who is likely to win? So the military balance of the ground strongly favors the Russian side. I should say the pro-Russian rebel side. But the way that works is rebels without Russian support are capable of holding territory. They're not capable of taking territory. They're capable of manning static defensive positions. They're not capable of penetrating through the Ukrainian defenses, which at this point are pretty well fortified. If the situation does not change on the ground, I would say we'll see continuous stalemate and we'll see a general freezing of the conflict along the lines that it is currently on. If Russia chooses to intervene much more forcefully, we can potentially see deeper penetration within these two provinces. It's a great tank country. And if once the Russians get past the Ukrainian defenses, there is very little stopping them as they roll right across all the way to the Dnieper River. But currently, I think the most likely scenario is a continuous stalemate. OK. And this question is open to the entire panel. Is there a chance of a similar conflict breaking out either from a current frozen conflict or in another former Soviet state? And so could you speak to the danger for regional instability stemming from the current conflict in the Donbas? Well, maybe I might just say a word. So remember the Brezhnev doctrine. Brezhnev doctrine basically was that the Soviet Union had the right to intervene in any country and we're talking about there, the Warsaw Pact countries essentially, that threatened socialism was abroad. So I respect what you said about Russian speakers and ethnicity. But the first thing that Putin basically said was that Russia had a responsibility for protecting Russians and Russian speakers wherever they were. That is a pretty important doctrine if you think of the Baltics, for example, where you have numbers of upwards of 30% and so and more in some of the Baltic countries. So in terms of what principles that we need to fortify and support, I would say we need to get away particularly from the idea that a country can invade a neighbor for what are essentially, I guess in this case, linguistic and ideological reasons or ethnic reasons. Part of the problem and part of the good thing that's happened post war, particularly in the last 10 years or so, is this idea of the responsibility to protect. So the responsibility to protect says if a dictator is abusing his own people, the United Nations has the right to do something about it under Chapter 7 of the United Nations Charter. So the Russians, in fact, have flipped this around a little bit. There's a sort of responsibility to protect Russians. We can't allow that to happen, because that will have dire circumstances in terms of our own values and in terms of our strategic interests, it seems to me. Thank you. Thank you. And this part. I don't think that's serious. I think that's rhetorical. That is, they make that claim. Yeltsin made this claim, by the way, originally. But it's never acted on, really. And even when there were real abuses of Russians in Estonia, most importantly, they didn't act on it. And most Russians in the Baltic countries prefer to live in those nice Baltic countries, higher standard living and all that, than they do in Russia. So there's no push from Russian diaspora in those countries, which, in the last 20 years, there's some work on this, have become increasingly identified as a separate nationality, almost, as a diaspora Russian people living abroad. So I don't think this is that real a problem. And clearly, a place like Kazakhstan, where there are lots of Russians and Russian speakers in the North, might worry about this. But the Russian government has not made serious moves like that. They can use it rhetorically. My comment was not meant to say that it was the diaspora that was asking for the Russians to come in, but that the Russians were using the diaspora as a reason and could use it in other places. It's a kind of signaling device. Be careful. That's anyway. So if I can weigh in briefly, I guess I'm more on Ron's side of this question. Because I think the main difference between the Baltic states and the Donbass is the local component is not there. Because the Baltic states, as Ron said, should be a most likely case for an ethnic Russian uprising, because they are treated as some of those countries as second class citizens. But the economic component is not there. What makes Donbass unique and what I think makes similar uprising unlikely in both any other part of Ukraine, but also any other part of the Soviet Union, is because in Donbass, there's a concentration of industries that are almost completely dependent on trade with Russia. And by implementing this import substitution scheme that Russia has had going since even before the other one had done, they have put the pressure on that particular, the most vulnerable, the most economically vulnerable part of the Ukrainian population. Russia does not have that kind of leverage in the Baltics. Thank you. And this next question actually speaks directly to changing identities and perception of identity, specifically in Ukraine. Professor Hridsak, you claim that in order for Ukraine to reform the younger generation, in order for reform, the younger generation needs a chance to mature, to act freely, to act freely without the memory of the Soviet past. If you could speak to this, how would you propose that this opportunity should be provided? The last, I've never, the last sentence. Could you propose, how would you go about providing this opportunity? To change, to allow for the generation to free the Soviet past? Thank you so much. There is a whole discourse emerging for the last, I would say, seven, eight years. Since the time it was evident the Orange Crucifixion has failed, the Yushchenko and Tomoshenko were delivering reforms. So it'll be like a new discourse emerging of the, say, third way of the school, Third Ukraine, which is basically building wall, neither of Galicia nor the Bas, and very much, so to say, pro, pro, pro, pro, pro, pro, pro, pro, pro, pro-Western. Just give you one idea, let's go closer to what has just been said. A year ago or so, blogger in Odessa, rather famous one, has suggested to accept the Russian language in Ukraine officially as a separate language. The way like American and British language, English language in Britain and England, and the reason he says basically that in Ukraine, Russian language in Ukraine is very much different, even in vocabulary. Okay, I won't judge that, to what extent is it different, but say, but his main argument for us, because in Ukraine, Russian language is a language of European choice and liberty, so to say. So what I'm saying here, I'm not claiming this is true or wrong, I'm claiming this is new, so to say, new discourses emerging, which try to bridge this division and to put it a third way, and very importantly, they, how should I put it, they don't pay that much on historical memory, that's very interesting, on issues which are most vulnerable, which is language and historical meaning. Because if you want to have Ukraine be divided, talk about historical memory, particularly about Second World War, and talk about language, then have initial divide, but you start talking about different things, like corruption, like inefficiency of the government, you have a different country. So I'm saying this, this is now attempt, I know whether it was success or fail, but at least there's attempts visible in public discourse to reformulate, so to say. They call it from identity to values, so to say, from identity, identity-based discourses to the values-based discourses. And I would say, again, nobody has done some kind of studies, but there's something that, that we know, probably it's wishful thinking, but still, there's some claims of this line, kind of studies and hypothesis, that what we're witnessing now in Ukraine is a demise of identity politics and identity discourses. I don't know what would be the results, but still I'm saying what is there. Thank you very much. And speaking of Ukrainian public discourse, recently Ukraine banned communist symbols within the public sphere. Given this and the rise of right-wing battalions fighting on the side of Ukraine in the Donbass conflict, is there a serious risk of a rise of right-wing politics, potentially fascism, in reaction to Russian intervention in Ukraine? There is, and this very serious, but taking seriously, could be disregarded, so to say. And I would say, but having said that, and actually Russian behavior, Russian aggression, if you will, increases the chances for obvious reason, for this kind of an issue, but it's interesting. So far, I'm not witnessing this decrease when it comes to the voting and the surveys. There are certain issues in Ukraine which is filled with kind of the extremists. I mean, they vote in constituency. It's more or less the same. It's more or less the same. And importantly, I probably know that fact, but still it makes sense to reiterate it, after the Euro-Maidan presidential elections and the parliamentary elections, right-wing parties felt just brilliantly, so to say, if I may say this word. They two leaders of this right-wing movement, which is Chechnya Bok and Yarosh, the leader of the private sector, get less voices together, combined that the leader of Jewish community in Ukraine, the presidential elections. So I'm saying here, yeah, it has been taken as a risk, but so far we don't see this kind as a real risk. But again, it depends very much on what's going on in Ukraine. What trend, what direction, the political crisis in Ukraine will there, because they are sitting on the wings, so to say. All right, thank you. And our last question for this panel has to do more with a regional perspective. The United States and Great Britain have not adhered to the elements of the Budapest memorandum, which was put in place to protect Ukraine and Ukrainian national sovereignty in return for Ukraine, giving up its nuclear arsenal in the immediate post-Soviet period. Has the, how, in what ways has this strengthened, put in strategy with regards to Ukraine, and how has this shaped Ukrainian policies with regard to the conflict? Oh, it's, for one thing, it's added to the image of the West not adhering to what the commitments were in agreement. The deal was a pretty simple one. Ukraine gets up its, this is oversimplifying, Ukraine gives up its nuclear capabilities, although it kept its missiles, but gave up nuclear capability and its borders are supposed to be respected. So if that doesn't count anymore, again, I'm not saying that you invade as a result of the breach. On the other hand, that doesn't count anymore. It says something about the resolve and the will of your opponent. Russians are great chess players, and so I think that that figures into the way that they and the way that Putin assesses what kind of actions that he feels are in Russian national interests that can be undertaken at a relatively cheap cost. So there is interesting twist in Ukrainian political decision making or whatever suggestions that say to treat this deal as a kind of a dealing trade for a trading deal for some kind, what was, as we say, an economic assistance package, so to say. More specifically, this has come in the discourses, public discourses, a martial-like plan for Ukraine, so to say, which is very much treated seriously, specifically by Poroshenko administration since recently here, and they did a lot along these lines so far they failed, but also they have some support. You've probably read the Soros article along this line. You also mentioned some kind of intellectuals in that. But I'm saying here, they're using this kind as an argument as a trading deal for some kind of economic assistance package, because let's face it, part of the failure of economic reform is that they are very expensive, the reform itself. There must be some kind of economic, there must be some kind of the budgeting in Ukraine. There's a strong deficit, so to say, and the only budget that could come very closely is the possible is from the West, whatever it means, Brussels, Washington, Soros, whatever you know, but still Ukraine better needed. Since we're almost coming to an end, I'm gonna leave on a more positive or optimistic note. Maybe this will help a little bit. I actually think that Putin is in trouble, and I think he realizes that he's gotten himself into a quagmire. Now, you know there's about 18 dozen books on Putin right now, psychological studies, his kleptocracy and so forth, so you can almost from the material make any Putin you want. The way I read him, as I said, there's a realist interested basically in stability and security, and wanting in some ways to, as Mel put it so well, playing a bigger role, being one of the boys on the larger stage, my sense is he must at some point realize, what have I gotten out of this struggle? Okay, I got Crimea. Now I gotta pay for that, all right, I got that, and that's making me popular at home. I've had some trouble at home with elections and demonstrations. That's a good thing. I've got Donetsk and Luhansk. Oh boy, am I gonna pay for that? I was hoping through Minsk Agreement that Ukraine would pay for that. So there's the second thing. And he can't get out of the situation. He's estranged from Europe. He's estranged from the United States. Things are much more difficult. The economy is not doing well. And you know, this is a neoliberal guy in terms of his economic policies who wants to be well integrated into the global capitalist system, and this is costing on all kinds of levels. And so I think in some ways he would like to see a way out. And Minsk too, he got a pretty good deal in Minsk too, and he thought maybe if the Ukrainians would push for that, that would be a way out. I don't know what's going to happen. I can't talk about future strategy because I think it's, as Yuri put it, maybe it's too early to talk about that. But I think that in his own realism, he may come to the realization that he is overreached. And by overreaching, he is actually weakened Russia and weakened his position on the globe. Thank you. I hope you'll all join me in thanking our panelists for a very nice presentation.