Eastern Europe's Anti-Russian Consensus Unfounded

MOSCOW, December 10 (Sputnik) — A reader of Western press might get the impression that ALL of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is against Russia. The decisions by the governments not only of Ukraine, but also of Moldova and Georgia to sign association agreements with the EU and to distance themselves from Russia are explained by “people’s will” and “sovereign decisions.” Usually, EU and US officials add that these agreements will only benefit Russia, as the European “zone of prosperity” will be nearing Russia’s borders. But is it really so?

Well, we had heard the same kind of talk when Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary joined NATO in 1999 and the EU in 2004. At the time, Russia was told that membership in NATO will make these countries feel more secure and, ultimately, improve their relations with Russia.

Reality never justified these promises. On the contrary, the number of, say, Russo-Polish diplomatic crises increased dramatically after 1999, and in most of these crises the “initiative for change” in relations was on the Polish side (for example, Russia or Ukraine never supported Polish opposition, while Warsaw openly promoted “revolutionary change” in both Moscow and Kiev). What is worse, each crisis in Russo-Polish relations since 1999 was much more dramatic and destructive than any of the preceding problems that the two countries had in the 1990s, when Poland was already independent, but not yet a NATO or EU member.

The “zone of prosperity and stability” also cracked up to be a myth (it is enough to mention financial meltdowns in EU members Greece and Cyprus).

In fact, public opinion in Central and Eastern Europe on European integration and especially on the increased military presence of NATO in these areas is badly divided, but the press in the EU and the US is covering up these divisions.

In Ukraine, these divisions burst into the open – and again the Western press tried to cover them up presenting what is actually a civil war inside Ukraine as “a Russian aggression.” To understand this, one just needs to read some interviews of NATIONAL politicians, and not of speakers from the numerous “European analysis” centers.

So, what do the REALLY popular politicians in Central and Eastern Europe say about the much-publicized association agreements with the EU? Here is Igor Dodon, the leader of the Socialist party of Moldova (which came in first during the recent parliamentary election in that small former Soviet republic): “European integration in the current form will lead to the loss of Moldovan statehood. The [separatist] region of Transdnistria will not want to “go to Europe,” just like another important ethnic autonomy inside Moldova – the Gagauz region. Most of the population in the north of Moldova is also against joining the EU. So, in this situation Moldova’s existence as a sovereign state inside the current borders will be called into question.” Despite excellent results at the election and polls, which have shown Moldovans’ support for the Russian-led Customs Union, after the vote Dodon’s Socialist party had to move to the opposition benches. The reason is simple: political life in Moldova since the violent events of 2009 has been controlled by the so-called Coalition for European Integration (CEI). In 2009, an angry mob of pro-Western “protesters” stormed and ransacked the parliament’s building, leading to early elections, which put CEI in power. Since then the “pro-European” coalition has never weakened its grip on power, dismissing numerous allegations of electoral fraud and removing some of the opponents (such as the Patria party recently) from the ballots days before the vote.

“I think what happened in Moldova in 2009 was a sort of rehearsal for the much more violent Maidan revolution in Ukraine in 2014,” says Svetlana Gamova, a longtime correspondent of Moscow-based Nezavisimaya Gazeta in Chisinau, Moldova’s capital.

In Georgia, which signed the association agreement with the EU together with Moldova, the radically pro-Western administration of Mikheil Saakashvili, which had prepared the agreement, had to shamefully leave office after almost ten years in power. Mr. Saakashvili is wanted in his native country for numerous crimes, including misuse of state funds, violence against political opponents and involvement in several mysterious deaths of competing political figures. 

So much for the former Soviet republics. Central European countries, which had not been a part of the Soviet Union before 1991, are also at least ambiguous in their attitudes to the European Commission “bulldozer diplomacy”, first towards Yanukovych’s Ukraine and now towards Russia.

For example, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban not only opposed sanctions against Russia, but also blasted the EU for sabotaging the South Stream pipeline. This project, if it had not been opposed by the EU and by Bulgaria’s pro-EU Prime Minister Bojko Borisov, would have delivered Russia’s gas to Hungary, Serbia, Italy and several other countries in Europe’s least developed region – its south. Orban even compared the European Commission to the biblical Goliath. In fact, the EC could also be compared to the early Soviet Bolsheviks: it tried to make Russian, Italian and other European companies, which had invested in the South Stream, “collectivize” their project, by providing the pipeline’s services also to other entities (the EU calls them “independent suppliers”).

What is the use of private property if you are made to “share” it with others? What is the use of building, say, a house, if some official wants you to let in other people, without your prior consent?

Or, maybe, the leader of Poland’s New Right party, Janusz Korwin-Mikke, was right when he called the European Commission “a bunch of communists with no respect for private property.” By the way, EuroParliament’s deputy Korwin-Mikke has been singled out by the Polish press as “the political surprise success of the year” because of his party’s results at the European elections this year.          

If in Poland the sober views on Russia come from the most courageous activists on the fringes of the political spectrum, in Serbia opposition to sanctions and support for the South Stream was the mainstream and stays the mainstream. “I think South Stream was good for Serbia. We did not distance ourselves from this project even under severe pressure,” said Alexander Vucic, the prime minister of Serbia. “Now we have to pay for the conflict between great powers.”

The problem is that the EU and the US, despite the disastrous consequences of the policy of “anti-Russian expansion,” which had led to the coup and subsequent civil war in Ukraine, do not intend to abandon that policy. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, which styles herself as the “motor” of anti-Russian sanctions adopted by the EU, recently accused Russia of “creating problems for Moldova, Georgia and Ukraine, which had taken a sovereign decision to sign the association agreement with the EU.” Merkel also expressed an opinion that these sanctions “worked,” without explaining in what way the current tragic situation in Donbas (now economically blockaded by Kiev) is better than before. US officials, such as Clinton’s former undersecretary of state James P. Rubin, go much further, calling for the stationing of NATO troops in Baltic countries and other neighbors of Russia on a permanent basis.

Wrong information leads to wrong policy decisions. There is NO anti-Russian consensus in Central and Eastern Europe. Believing in this consensus may push the EU and the US further down the path of dangerous confrontation with Russia.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not reflect the official position of Sputnik.