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Towards the Junta: What will happen should the government fail the reforms

Volunteer battalions, having returned from Donbas, are unlikely to accept the role of the TV audience in a corrupt, oligarch state.

Yanukovych’s butler, former head of the National State of Affairs and the person in charge of Mezhygirya’s upkeep Andriy Kravets has been spotted in Kyiv.

Gennadiy Kernes returned to Kharkiv triumphantly, to the applause of a crowd which has been gathered at the airport especially for the occasion. The schemes in the tax, customs services, the agricultural complex are under restoration. The law enforcement has started shaking business owners anew, and the observers who have found new masters are raring to return to the regions. The court system is successfully resisting change, and the head of the lustration committee Yegor Sobolev, who is in charge of its cleanse, is already being called in for questioning.

The people that have anything to do with the government are talking about the fact that Yanukovych’s system has come to its senses much faster than Kuchma’s alaogous system in 2005. The characters that disintegrated the country to its current state are lining up and hoping to take another bite of Ukraine. The government, it seems, has taken the course of agreement with this public.

[quote style=”boxed” float=”left”]At the very peak of Maidan journalist Vitaliy Portnikov stated: “The French Revolution won because it had a guillotine and no Facebook.”[/quote]

Maidan looks like the mother of all revolutions. The Great French Revolution came face to face with external aggression, attempts at restoration during the rebellion, it survived several conspiracies inside its coalition. And it ended with a military coup and Napoleon’s dictatorship. Manu other revolutions that took up the heritage of the French one followed similar scenarios. Especially in the countries which were at war or recently survived war. Snowy February in Russia was replaced with bloody October. The unrest in Greece and numerous political deals and treacheries, which followed the limitation of the monarch’s power, ended with a dictatorship of the black officers.

The external factor that provokes dictatorship is present in Ukraine: counterrevolution and factual military aggression is being conducted by Russia which strives to reanimate the bipolar world. One can remember how military regimes came to power where civil post-revolutionary government were unable to satisfy the civil demands, they were far behind the society’s hopes, where with their weakness, corruption or lack of principles they undermined the ability of the country to defend itself at war, being unable to answer the challenges to national security.

What with internal policies? The behaviour of many representatives of the Ukrainian government in the rear is already called by the soldiers, particularly volunteer departments, treason. Maidan activists and parrots which went to the east to rebuke the hybrid (as they say now) war started by Russia are dissatisfied with the level of commandment, provision, corruption and cowardice among higher officers and officials. It should be said that the volunteers have the most social trust, and their opinion has the most authority for Maidan’s social base. This fact is obvious even judging from the popularity of the commanders of volunteer battalions and the demand for them in the media.

These people form the new military-political elite of Ukraine in practice – a disciplined, militarily experienced and one that prefers fighting to commercial deals. As opposed to professional soldiers, which have been decaying during the years of the independence and are only coming to their senses now, this new elite is wonderfully motivated. They have a joint vision of the future of the country, as Maidan birthed the volunteers by standing against the new Ukrainian feudalism.

After returning from the war, they will be armed with the according instruments to make their ideas reality. Starting with a military veteran fraternity for coordinated tasks and ending with access to arms. Experience of violent political protest, which started to develop in the final stage of Maidan, will only become more deep-rooted and developed.

What will happen if thousands of patriots return from war to their cities and see what kind of disorder and corruption the government had renewed in their absence? A rhetorical question.

Azov Battalion in Kyiv
Azov Battalion in Kyiv

It is unlikely that taking down the power, the President or the government, will happen at once. It is most likely that yesterday’s volunteers and today’s activists will start using direct violence against the most infamous rascals – police commanders, judges, tax service workers and district attorneys. Then the government will either start to react or wage war against the patriots. First using the office of the Prosecutor, then using the forces of formed and loyal special troops which will also be constructed during the war in Donbas. Another loop of escalation inside the country will begin, which will inevitably lead to the fall of the government and the coming of a real military or semi-military (with a marionette Parliament) dictatorship. The junta that the Kremlin propagandists are dreaming of will become reality. The internal conflict in the Ukrainian state will inevitably be used by Russia, which will mostly likely reactivate the plan to annex the South and East. Ukraine in its current borders will crash and its development will be thrown backwards for decades.

A pessimistic scenario, no? But it is inevitable in the next two-three years if the President and the government don’t carry out deep reform, don’t dismount the system of total corruption, don’t launch social and political lifts and don’t integrate real patriots into the government, those who are ready not to benefit from the state but sacrifice their lives for Ukraine. If Petro Poroshenko, Arseniy Yatseniuk and other current governors don’t understand – having gotten power thanks to Maidan, they were put on the black ski slalom trail. There is no way back, the hill is steep and the skis are badly lubricated. An ice wall stands at the end of the run. Beyond it is a void. It is a one-way trip. It will either make them victors or kill them. Just like everyone of us.

Sergiy Vysotskiy, LIGABusinessInform

Translated by Mariya Shcherbinina

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