Mikhail Gorbachev has approved of the annexation of Crimea by Russia and said that, if he were Vladimir Putin, he would do the same. Strictly speaking, Gorbachev has repeatedly expressed this view before. Does this position deserve censure? Of course, it does. But is it right to debar Gorbachev from visiting Ukraine because of these statements and demand that he be kept out of the European Union, which some Verkhovna Rada hotheads are urging? That’s really too much.
Moreover, Brussels will not heed Kyiv in this, as well as in many other, questions. Gorbachev is today not an active politician but just a venerable pensioner, even though a Nobel Peace Prize winner. He has a zero impact on present-day Russian and international policies. Therefore, Putin and he are in totally different positions, as far as Crimea and Ukraine are concerned. The current Russian president is fully empowered not only to make a political decision, but also to make sure, if possible, that it is put into practice. He did so by occupying Crimea, thus committing an overt act of aggression, and then unleashing the Donbas war. But Gorbachev can, of course, recall the time when he ruled the world’s second superpower and severely criticize the Americans for allegedly rejoicing at the collapse of the Soviet Union. (I wouldn’t say I saw too much joy in the US media and among politicians – they were in fact worried about how to keep the post-Soviet space stable.)
Finally, as an individual and a citizen, Gorbachev has every right to approve or disapprove of Putin’s policies. In the case of Crimea (I am not sure about the Donbas), Gorbachev obviously approves of the president’s policy. It is by no means servility that makes him do so. He really continues to stick to some former Soviet realities. He sincerely believes that the breakup of the USSR was not only the 20th century’s greatest geopolitical catastrophe, but also a pure historical accident. But he blames the superpower’s collapse not on himself but on other forces, such as Yeltsin, America, Ukrainian and Baltic nationalists, etc. For Gorbachev, as well as for Putin, all the post-Soviet borders are nothing but a fake. Gorbachev confesses that if the USSR suddenly rose like phoenix from its ashes, he would perhaps be prepared to return Crimea to Ukraine, but he would never do so, while Ukraine is independent. “Crimea is ours,” you know.
But, according to all public opinion polls, at least 80 percent of the Russians share Gorbachev’s viewpoint. Does it mean that they must all not be kept at bay from Ukraine and Europe until they come to their senses? The vast majority of these Russians have never been abroad and are not exactly rushing to go there. So the ban on travels to Europe will only confirm their belief that Putin was right to deal with Crimea in this way. Only real life can make them change their mind in this matter if, in addition, a more adequate political regime is established in Russia. This will take more than a year – perhaps more than a decade. For the time being, the Ukrainian side should try to put across its position on Crimea to both the world community and the population of Russia.
The Russians will perhaps ponder sooner or later on the economic price of the annexation of Crimea. And the point is not about the West’s economic sanctions against Russia. A much more important, obvious and unavoidable point is that Crimea can only exist as an economically viable region in close contact with continental Ukraine. Otherwise, farming will go into decline due to shortage of water, and, for the same reason and due to the lack of electric power, Crimean resorts can exist now on a subsidized basis only. In 2015, the Russian budget accounted for at least 67 percent of Crimean funding, while the number of tourists dropped fourfold. As long as Crimea is part of Russia, it will depend on subsidies as much as Dagestan, with no hopes for major nongovernmental investments.
The attempt to solve the transport problem on the isolated peninsula is being made in quite a Russian style. Instead of rapidly increasing the capacity of Crimean seaports and chartering or building more ferries and vessels to solve the problems of supply, the authorities have launched a much more ambitious but loss-making (and, what is more, a highly corruption-prone) project of building a bridge between the Kerch peninsula and Taman. The cost of the bridge over the Strait of Kerch is an estimated 228 billion rubles now. But, as the Russian experience of so large construction projects shows, the ultimate cost of this enterprise will be at least two or three times higher.
This has also exposed, among other things, the continental nature of the Russian leadership’s mentality. The authorities are always suspicious about any overseas area that has no land border with Russia’s main territory – they are afraid that it may, God forbid, slip out of the federal center’s control or even secede from Russia altogether. Therefore, they try to establish on-land communication with this kind of area at any cost. Suffice it to recall how many lances were broken over the attempt to get an exterritorial corridor to Kaliningrad oblast through Lithuania. The Kremlin views the bridge over the Strait of Kerch as the analogue of an on-land corridor to Crimea, which allegedly confirms again the right of Russia to own Crimea.
Besides, they may also be proceeding from the following consideration. Should Crimea get back to Ukraine some day, that country will inherit all the additional infrastructure of Crimean ports built by Russia. But the bridge to Crimea will always remain Russian, and Russia will be able to levy a transportation tax (yet the big question is who will use the bridge in this case). Of course, Putin was ready, as Gorbachev is now, to leave Crimea as part of Ukraine on condition that the latter joins the Customs (Eurasian Economic) Union and turns into a Russian puppet. But the Donbas war thwarted Putin’s plans to restore the USSR – of course, in a different form and under another name.
Boris Sokolov is a Moscow-based political journalist
