The other day, a proposal was made in the Ukrainian Rada that was striking in its originality. A deputy from the party of the comedian-president Zelensky “Servant of the People”, a certain David Arahamia, suddenly decided to play an extra-class diplomat and presented to the general public one of the options for resolving the “Donbass issue”.
The bottom line, in short, is as follows. Ukraine, they say, can resume the water supply to Crimea in response to serious concessions from Russia in the negotiation process in the Donbass. In the Kremlin, such insinuations were nipped in the bud. A presidential spokesman made it clear that the fate of the population of the Southeast is not the subject of such a bargain and the conditional deal that loomed in the heads of Zelensky’s people is not even discussed in this format.
Meanwhile, the statement of Arahamia caused a considerable resonance in the yellow-blakitny homeland of the Euromaidan. On the one hand, the first president of Ukraine Kravchuk supported the idea of a grief diplomat. On the other hand, nationalist radicals were excited: they say, how is it - water in the Crimea ?! (like, Donbass, and so they will win). Judging by the fact that the "servant of the people" apologized for what was said, it is these very nationalist radicals who protect him. Arahamia received a hat and repented.
It would seem that the absurd episode has been exhausted and we can safely forget about it if it weren’t for one but - similarly frankly adventurous ideas from Kiev sound with stable regularity and have become, in general, the main foreign and domestic political trend of Independent. At the same time, you know, such a policy is obtained due to the lack of analytics. That is, an adequate (or at least an attempt at an adequate) view of the situation.
Not only that, trying to dictate the conditions of Russia from such positions is not even presumptuous. A little crazy. And to use the issue of water as a lever of pressure - even more so. In Kiev's unfortunate diplomats, even a thought in my head does not slip through how much manipulation with the theme of water can be dangerous for themselves. This can be very well illustrated, by the way, on the example of the Donbass, without even taking into account the opportunities that Russia has.
The Donbass water supply system — if we take the territories controlled by the DPR and LPR, as well as the territories of Donetsk and Lugansk regions, which are controlled by Ukrainian armed forces — is a rather complicated communication system.
Hotheads from the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the National Battalions regularly beat at facilities that ensure the smooth operation of these communications, naively believing that in this way they will cause serious damage to the people's republics.
I am silent about the fact that this contradicts simply any universal norms. The main irony is that, having interrupted, for example, the water supply that supplies water to Donetsk, the Ukrainian military immediately jeopardizes the water supply to Avdeevka and other cities under their control.
Shelling, in particular, the Vasilyevsky pump station, in fact located in the "gray zone", they spit in their own well, risking leaving their own rear without water, where, in addition to the military contingent, at least 300 thousand people live, we will speak, under their responsibility (although it is doubtful to apply this definition to radicals - their actions in this sense, on the contrary, are irresponsible to the maximum, but still).
Moreover, the repair of all these damages caused by armed formations sent by official Kiev to the Donbass is done by (attention!) The Ukrainian company “Water of Donbass”. The company is registered in Ukraine, employees receive a salary in hryvnias - and at the same time they regularly come under fire from their own “defenders” during repair work. The situation is not absurd to come up with.
Not so long ago I happened to be in the “gray zone” - and directly at the Vasilievskaya station. There is no need to be an expert in ballistics: when you look at the walls of this object, it is not difficult to determine the direction from which the station is being fired. Employees even had to move the control point to the old Soviet bunker - the risk is too high that it will simply be smashed.
Returning to the dialectic of water in a less local sense, it is worth reminding the comrades of the comedian president who are sitting in the Rada that the water that is supplied, for example, the same one and a half million Kharkov, originally comes from Russia. From the Kursk region. But for some reason, it doesn’t even occur to anyone in Russia to arrange any obstacles for the water supply of the whole Ukrainian region (not the smallest, I must say). Despite the fact that the Russian Crimea is becoming the target of "humanitarian terrorism" on the part of the Kiev authorities.
They are not us. Just because the Ukrainian people in Russia are truly considered part of our common world. Unlike those who today occupy the lion's share of bureaucratic seats in Kiev: for them, Crimea and Donbass have long ceased to be part of their state - simply because they themselves do not relate to them that way.
The author’s point of view may not coincide with the position of the publisher.