Ukraine deal just short breath-taking – analyst
Press TV has conducted an interview with Manuel Ochsenreiter, editor-in-chief of Zuerst from Berlin, about the ceasefire plan for the Ukraine crisis.
Press TV: As far as Ukraine expressing readiness to seal a deal for a ceasefire, the facts on the ground seem very different.
We are seeing more sanctions being levied against Moscow, fighting still continuing in eastern Ukraine. If anything, there seems to be an escalation of attacks by the Kiev forces. I am sort of confused as to the track the Kiev government wants to go on over here?
Ochsenreiter: Well first of all, we have to see that today there is no state anymore, no Ukrainian state.
We have a disintegrated entity which is parted. There is one part in the west, which is under Western influence, where the Kiev government is a sort of satellite or a sort of a puppet with Petro Poroshenko the president. And there is the part in the east, which does not want to be anymore part of Ukraine.
So when we watch on our map and we see Ukraine the state does not exist anymore as it is on the map. By the way this is the same when we watch on the map and see states like Iraq or Libya as well.
And we should be very careful because Petro Poroshenko turned out within the last month as a master of doublespeak. So he on the one side signs a ceasefire, which is a signal that he feels very much under pressure, because the pro-Russia forces are doing a lot of advances within the last weeks since they are coordinating their fights much better than they did before. They are taking a lot of the areas. Now Mariupol is under pressure.
So he has to sign that maybe to stop them from doing further advance. But at the same time he is participating at the NATO summit and he is also calling for help from NATO states.
And there are a lot of heads inside the NATO states also in Germany - by the way - who are calling for supporting what they called ‘Western Ukraine’ for support given by military training, by weapon delivery, arms delivery, by financial help to build up the army.
So maybe this is what we see now just a short breath-taking because Petro Poroshenko seriously is not interested in peace. He is interested in taking back what he thinks is his or Ukrainian property.
He said already after he became president he was giving on the one side a peace message, on the other side he was giving the signal that he wants to take back Crimea and he said that the fights in the east, when he became president by the way he said that already, will take much too long and this should be done within several days.
So now these are already several months since he is president he did not take it back. This has to do with a complete desperate situation of the Ukrainian army. It is disintegrating as well. Soldiers are defecting. They are laying down their weapons. They are simply going home out there. They are changing sides and he has to do that right now. He has to do that to stop the desperate situation and try to do the best out of it.
Press TV: Well Mr. Ochsenreiter, then looking at your interpretation of what Ukraine is today would you say that the West has successfully withdrawn the borders of Europe to ensure its strategic and military interests?
Ochsenreiter: No. Right now you cannot say that the West was successful.
The West would have been successful if Yanukovych would have signed the agreement with the European Union, which would have more or less in future given for example the Crimea and Sevastopol into the influence sphere of the West.
So this was not successful, the project. So now the West tries desperately to secure those parts of Ukraine where the West has influence and we have to be honest when we look on western Ukraine, when we look on I think the majority of Kiev as well, the people living here are watching to the West. They want to be part of the West. They are watching towards the NATO.
We remember the pictures of the protests where these people were having the European Union flag. I think this might be one of the very few pro-EU demonstrations we see because inside the European Union the people are not as supportive as outside.
So we see the west wants to be part of this, but the east does not want. So what was the project of Washington and Brussels was to take whole Ukraine into the Western’s sphere and to take it away from the Eurasian project of the Russians of Moscow Vladimir Putin and this project was not successful right now. But this is not the end of the conflict. This is not the end of that war.
This is maybe just now a short stop because right now at the NATO summit they are discussing already deploying troops, opening new military bases at the eastern border of NATO.
They are even debating getting Ukraine inside the NATO - what would be a very problematic decision. So I do not think it will be done now or within maybe the next year but this is still on the paper. It is on the table. It is discussed.
So it is a very dangerous situation and maybe what we see now is just a break in this geopolitical conflict because we have always to remember it is not about democracy in Ukraine. It is not about corruption in Kiev. It is about two, in the meanwhile again two geopolitical blocs - the western liberal sphere towards the eastern sphere and the eastern sphere is represented by respecting sovereign national states, by respecting sovereignty and by defending that sovereignty against that Western liberal politics, which defines, in the meanwhile, the world as a sort of world inner politics like a real state.
The new bloc confrontation is a little bit different than the old one and the old Cold War but the new Cold War could be much more dangerous to become a hot war in future.