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Author : Srecko Djukic
Serbian essayist and writer, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary (Ret.)
THE SLAVIC PEOPLES are living through another se-
vere conflict, but history never stops. The so-called
Ukrainian project - a dream about Ukraine as a Western
toehold (we all know whose) born as soon as the Soviet
Union fell apart - is moving toward its defeat. The
Ukrainian drama is rapidly approaching its culmination.
What really happened in Ukraine in winter and spring
2014? Kiev's painfully familiar policy of blackmail, the
favorite instrument of all Ukrainian regimes ("pro-Russ-
ian" and pro-Western alike), triggered another political crisis. All Ukrainian presidents, one after
another, seemed determined to sit between two stools.
The Serbs, who in the last quarter of a century lived through everything what a country and a
nation can endure, remained puzzled by what is going on in Ukraine after the Soviet Union's
peaceful disintegration, the fratricidal bloodshed in Yugoslavia and its disintegration. We expected
a very different course of events in Ukraine, an Orthodox country and the largest among the
European states. We expected to see a European edition of Canada or Mexico. Kiev preferred
a different road. I should say that I never hesitated to point to Ukraine's vacillating political
course and the wobbly "Ukrainian model" as a whole.
I have written a lot about gas transit across Ukraine and explained why all Ukrainian regimes in-
variably opted for blackmailing Russia and the West instead of trying a unified approach to be-
come a bridge or, if you like, a "window on Russia" and a "window on Europe." This would
have made the North and South streams unnecessary.
As a diplomat I was invariably amazed to see some of my Ukrainian colleagues cringing to West-
ern diplomats in an effort to put themselves higher than Russia, a sad and absurd picture. They
groveled to everything to the west of Ukraine and tried to look superior to everything Russian.
To tell the truth, I've never seen anything marginally similar among the diplomats and ambassa-
dors of now hostile republics of former Yugoslavia.
It has become abundantly clear that the West has suffered a defeat in Ukraine: it hunted a wolf
and caught a fox; it has made its bed and must lie on it.
The anti-Russian government in Kiev burdened by multi-billion gas debts had to seek support
from Moscow: gas is being stolen Ukrainian style to avert bankruptcy and economic disaster.
We all know that the West and the United States repeatedly challenge Russia and that Putin, fully
aware of this, is consolidating its positions.
If the new people in power want to save their country they should create a new Ukrainian state-
hood (a "new Ukrainian project") which should be very different from the old one.
The Collapse of the "Ukrainian Project"