Week’s milestones. Government vigor, amendment with consequences, and strained greetings fraternization

Ukraine’s top government officials are cheerful and optimistic. The edition of the state budget for 2016 adopted by the Verkhovna Rada can postpone indefinitely any visa liberalization in the EU for Ukraine. Russia has taken on a path of "fraternization" with the Ukrainians: despite being a hundred years old, this technology still retains its relevance.

New Year celebrations have put the Ukrainian politics into a state of anabiosis. For over a week the country has been in a state of “no politics” with only individual bursts of political activity. It is a rhetorical question whether Ukraine should celebrate for so long in its current state, but some high level politicians continue to radiate optimism in tomorrow.

"10 minutes with Prime Minister" televised address has the potential to become a political blockbuster of the year, considering that the revelations of Arseniy Yatsenyuk do attract public attention. Even the New Year’s greetings of Petro Poroshenko comparing his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin to King Herod are overshadowed by some of the verbal escapades of the Ukrainian PM. Yatsenyuk compared the actions of his government with the Polish reforms, choosing not to comment on who plays the role of Balcerowicz, and what was the eventual fate of the Polish prime minister and reformer. Stressing the rejection of purchases of Russian gas, Yatsenyuk has explained to his fellow citizens, how to pay less for housing and communal services, if the households are heated insufficiently. It’s a shame though that this method is hardly viable in the Ukrainian “system of coordinates.”

Proposals of Ukraine’s Interior Minister Arsen Avakov seem equally revolutionary as he offers to stop for three months the work of the Ukrainian courts in order to reform the country's judicial system. Not a strain of thought was bothered in the mind of the minister, whose office would actually achieve dictatorship powers in the environment devoid of the judicial checks and balances.

However, we can’t say that the government is rational nowadays, unfortunately. In the circumstances when the Parliament adopts the 2016 budget “not paying attention” to the little but extremely dangerous amendment delaying electronic reporting of incomes by state officials until 2017, the recent battles for non-discrimination during  employment stop to seem so irrational. I’m not afraid to make a mistake: the majority of those who call themselves Ukrainian politicians do not need the European integration of Ukraine, because it will make them irrelevant in the new configuration of political relations. Regarding the 2016 budget, apparently, there was a banal under-the-table agreement to ensure Rada’s support for the country’s main financial document which was far from perfect. I believe, the notorious amendment will not be the only unpleasant discovery in the adopted version.

REUTERS

Meanwhile, Russia is closely following the developments in Ukraine, aiming to use the situation to its own advantage. The Kremlin has recently changed its tactics: instead of aggressive attacks on social networks, it has armed its information squads with a concept of "fraternal peoples," extending the ideological legacy of the Soviet Union. It should be reminded that this social relations technology of fraternization was used during the World War I to dismantle the morale of the military units on the front lines. It’s just that in today's hybrid warfare, this technology apply not only to combatants.

Yevgeny Magda

UNIAN in Google News