At a reported cost of over $100 million, the 1,426 mile-long wall of steel, complete with its own ditch four meters wide and two meters deep, riddled with surveillance towers and electrical systems, will span the entirety of Ukraine’s eastern border with Russia, all the way to the Black Sea. During his visit to the wall site, Prime Minister Yatseniuk said that it demonstrates that Ukraine and Russia are “not one nation, as Putin says, and the Kremlin thinks.”
Of course, the wall’s symbolic meaning trumps its usefulness and practical application. But the mere idea that a nearly bankrupt Ukrainian government is allocating funds for its building at a time when more than 24 percent of its population lives beneath the poverty rate, when real inflation is 272 percent and the economy lost 7.5 percent in 2014, should be disconcerting for any Western observer.
Luckily, under the Minsk II agreement, Ukraine will have to create a roadmap to solve the situation of the two separatist regions in the Donbass. Indeed, despite being short on specifics, in exchange for regaining control of its Eastern border with Russia, the ceasefire calls on Kyiv to write a new constitution by the end of 2015 that would award the rebels a greater degree of autonomy and allow them to hold elections.
However, since the February signing of the deal, Kiev has so far failed to present a coherent political plan to fulfill the conditions mentioned in the text, giving birth to a slew of policy recommendations. Among the many “way outs for Ukraine” steadily delivered by pundits and sycophants over the past year, one recent suggestion caught my attention. Former Ukrainian Tax Minister, Oleksandr Klymenko, suggested in a series of op-eds in Newsweek that Ukraine should grant Special Economic Zone (SEZ) status to the two separatist republics in Donbass, in order to attract investment to the war-wracked region, while also keeping intact Ukraine’s sovereignty.
Since all parties to the conflict agreed in the Minsk peace deal that the Donbass has certain specific “particularities,” increasing the power of local governance through a SEZ would empower the so-far neglected minorities and local politicians to stimulate regional economic development. Much like the European Union’s own principle of subsidiarity — which maintains that decisions should be taken at the lowest possible level and the highest level necessary — granting increased autonomy coupled with a SEZ would provide the Donbass “tools to improve quality of life rather than relying on the beneficence of central government.” The final recommendation outlined by Klymenko concerns Ukraine’s status as a bridge between East and West, which should be set in stone by keeping the country on a neutral and non-aligned pathway.
Indeed, Klymenko does make several good points: the current Kyiv government seems to lack rudder, stalling in their talks with the Moscow-backed rebels and haggling over the precise meaning of the Minsk II agreement. But stalling for what? According to research by two Russian scholars from Moscow’s National Research University, Washington will not step up its game in Ukraine as the White House has settled on a policy of “strenuous inaction”. Treating Russia like a declining challenger that is nearing its collapse, the U.S. is “maintaining the status quo and waiting to negotiate later from a position of greater strength”. In other words, Obama is unlikely to supply weapons to Ukraine or take a stronger stance against Moscow, as it would not be in the US interest.
While the Russian economy is definitely under intense pressure from the international sanctions prompted by the illegal annexation of Crimea, Moscow can withstand that pressure past the end of 2015 deadline set in the Minsk agreement. In this context, Kiev doesn’t really have much of a choice – the West is unlikely to take a stronger stance against Russia nor is Ukraine’s going to improve this year enough for the country to risk a new outbreak of violence in the East. Klymenko’s plan could offer a useful compromise that would bridge the gap between Ukrainian hawks (such as Yatseniuk) and the softer elements in the government.
However, one thing that could stand in the way of Klymenko’s plan is Russia’s obstinacy. As long as Moscow refuses to back down down completely from its involvement in Eastern Ukraine, no solution stands a viable chance of succeeding. As ludicrous as the Great Ukrainian Wall sounds like, stopping Russia’s irresponsible hybrid war might need just that.
