Why Integration Leaves Me Cold

It is sometimes very sad to look at this world, for you get the impression that it is set up wrong. This wrongness lies in the almost daily publications on Russian dirty money, reports from East Timor, and much else.

It was absolutely obvious long before the hostilities in Dagestan that Russia had simply abandoned any kind — be it harsh, liberal, or democratic — of policy toward the Caucasus and its peoples. It took mindless terrorist acts which claimed the lives of hundreds of innocent people for Moscow to ponder the need to change something and someone.

It was also obvious that Boris Berezovsky had his finger in the pie, as far as both relations with Chechnya and earlier political scandals in Russia are concerned. But now, instead of making a careful, calm, and deep analysis, the press is feeding us provocations, like the unconfirmed interceptions of his radio talks with the Chechens. Suddenly, the much-respected Russian NTV channel dwells on the “well-known sympathies of Ukrainian nationalists to for Chechen fighters” in a program on the open Ukrainian-Russian borders.

For some reason, I do not feel any burning desire to integrate one way or another with Russia or the CIS, also primarily associated with Moscow, after all this and after the numerous Western publications about Kremlin sleaze and scandals with the Russian dirty money.

I do not understand what makes the Ukrainian authorities pay such compliments to the Kremlin and those who want to capture it and what forces them to agree to play by Moscow's rules: to buy oil and gas at world prices and pay for them with foodstuffs at Russian domestic prices. I do not understand why it is impossible to buy the same oil anywhere else — for example, in Kazakhstan or the Middle East — and thus avoid our utterly senseless problems.

It is difficult for me to understand why the CIS should exist at all, since it has failed to avert so many conflicts. And I do not believe at all that it can be turned into a free-trade zone unless Moscow comes up with the idea, of course.

I personally do not need the CIS as a successor to the CPSU Politburo, for I see no integration other than a close shadow link between the authorities that have ruled since the days of the CPSU's leading role and an equally close tie between criminals. And no one has yet convinced me that Ukraine is unable to produce high quality and inexpensive goods, then sell them not only to the former Soviet states but throughout the world. No one has yet convinced me that Ukraine needs such shows as awarding Mr. Kuchma an Order of the Golden Eagle. I have already seen all this in the now bygone USSR.