Стр. 26 - V

Электронное приложение к журналу «Международная жизнь»
Dmitry Muza, professor, head of the research department,
Donetsk Pedagogical Institute (Donetsk People's Republic)
THE TWO MAIDANS, that of 2004 and that of
2013/2014, the coup instigated and managed from
abroad, the swift withdrawal of Crimea from under
Kiev's jurisdiction, the instant "Russian springs" in
Kharkov, Donetsk, Lugansk, Odessa, and Zaporozhie
can hardly be compared to the Transdniestria,
Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhaz, or South Ossetian con-
flicts in terms of their intensity, intrigues behind them,
ways of development, involvement of foreign forces, means of settlement (the Normandy for-
mat and the Minsk process), or the potential future architecture stemming from them.
It was Donbass and not Crimea that has become a stumbling block for the application by the
United States of a new, offensive deterrence doctrine with desire for total control of the Ukrain-
ian project. Donbass is not the scene of an anti-terrorist operation or a civil war. It is the scene
of a war of a new type, a war with the use of hybrid warfare, something that involves a diversity
of resources and actors. This war is aimed at formatting a new era via a local format.
If Russia sticks to its current line in the Ukrainian crisis, the United States will turn Ukraine into
a Vietnam for the Russians, the American hawk promises.
It seems to me that U.S. geopolitics has undergone a paradigm shift. Namely, the United States
has changed its geopolitical engineering, going over from the use of "hard" and soft power to
setting fire to foreign countries, using flashpoints for the purpose. U.S. military experts have ar-
gued recently that today's world is effectively a mosaic of hot spots - Southeast Asia and South
Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe, South America, and Mexico. There's room in this mosaic
for Russia as well - despite all its internal weaknesses and external risks, the country would be
able to achieve economic stability, build a democratic system, and even carry through small-scale
wars in the post-Soviet space (!). Following the convention used in this kind of discourse, the
experts modestly gloss over the role of the United States in unleashing and sustaining such wars,
including mainly the war in Ukraine.
Today, two and a half years since the beginning of the "Russian Spring" in Donbass, each party
to the military conflict has its own vision of the future of Donbass, as does the United States,
the main architect of the conflict, although the Minsk format was meant to coordinate their po-
sitions on quite many points.
Armen Oganesyan, Editor-in-Chief of the journal Inter-
national Affairs (Russia)
DEAR COLLEAGUES, I would like to stress that this
year's conference has been different from the others,
there have been more presentations during it, and it
has involved more heated debates than the previous
conferences did. I hope it has been a very fruitful con-
ference.
Russia is doing a great deal at government level for the
development of Crimea. But the Russian business
community also needs to take a unanimous attitude, and we have talked about this today as well.