Deport, disenfranchise, send to concentration camps, kill 1.5 million. 2019 calls for discrimination against residents of Donbass

Translation of a 2019 'strana' article

Original article here

Checkpoint in Donbass. Photo by Hromadske TV

Over the past few days, there have been several radical proposals about what to do with the Donbass.

Ukrainian public figures of a nationalist color offer their own formulas. Deport for 50 years from Ukraine, deprive the right to vote, remove pensions, create filtration camps - these are just some of the proposals that famous Ukrainians have shared on social networks, while in the Donbass an attempt is ongoing to begin disengagement of military forces .

The purpose of these statements is understandable - to scare people in the uncontrolled part of Donbass so that the population of the "DPR" and "LPR" do not want to return to Ukraine. Which can in the future stop the timid steps towards peace that are being made now. 

We have collected the most scandalous statements made by Ukrainian politicians, writers and journalists over the past five years.

"Within three months, leave Ukraine in any direction"

Yesterday, the former host of the show "Karaoke on the Maidan", producer Igor Kondratyuk announced his version of the settlement of the situation in the Donbass after Ukraine agreed to the Steinmeier formula .

Among the 10 points of the “Kondratyuk program” is the deportation of residents of the Lugansk and Donetsk regions from the country if they do not confirm their desire to live in Ukraine, as well as depriving them of the right to vote for 10 years. And those who were involved in the organization of the so-called "referenda" Kondratyuk proposed to deprive the right to vote for life.

The showman published his opinion on his Facebook page .

"Kondratyuk's formula for resolving the conflict in Donbass.

1. Ukraine regains control over its eastern borders (peacefully, with the help of the OSCE, UN peacekeepers and all types of important organizations). Therefore, the ONLY point for which diplomats/leaders from different countries gather in the Minsk, Normandy, Geneva or any other format is to force the Russian Federation to close its border with Ukraine. All other issues are not discussed at such negotiations due to their uselessness.

2. After Ukraine gains full control over the eastern border, the militants of the illegal armed groups of the so-called "LPR" and "DPR" voluntarily surrender their weapons.

3. Those who will be determined by the Ukrainian military court as war criminals - to serve the terms established by courts.

4. Residents of the so-called ORDLO [Temporarily Occupied Territory of Ukraine], within a month from the moment of the full restoration of power by Kiev, need to decide whether they want to live in the state of Ukraine.

5. Those who do not want to leave Ukraine within 3 months in any direction, Ukraine pays them "exit fares" for this. With the condition - not to return to Ukraine for 50 years after leaving.

6. Those who remain lose their right to vote for 10 years. In the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, only those who have lived in the territory controlled by Kyiv since the beginning of the summer of 2014 will be eligible to be elected to elected positions and serve in the police for these 10 years.

7. Persons who were involved in the organization of the so-called "referendums" on the so-called "LPR" and "DPR", and remain to live in Ukraine, lose Ukrainian suffrage forever.

8. During the execution of points 1-7, Russia is silent, as if it has water in its mouth!

9. After the fulfillment of points 1-7, the liberation of Crimea from the rascists is carried out according to the same formula.

10. The guarantor of the implementation of the Kondratyuk formula for the settlement of the conflict in the Donbass is all nuclear countries, except for the Russian Federation."

"40 years of cleansings, filtration camps, "f @ k everyone"

A couple of days before Kondratyuk's recipe, Lvov journalist Oleg Radyk, host of the Big Negotiations program, proposed his formula.

He called for beating the inhabitants of Donbass for the wrong answer to "Glory to Ukraine." He also suggested closing all universities in the region and not paying pensions. And that "collaborators" pass through filtration camps that need to be built in mines. 

According to him, only 40 years of cleansing will make the temporarily uncontrolled territory "truly Ukrainian." 

"Want the truth, how to return the Donbass when we enter there. 

40 years of cleansing and anti-terror. The prohibition of the Russian language for all officials. Closing of all universities. All. Let them go to Lvov. Financing snitches. Fuck pensions. Everyone. Benefits. Allowances only. Victims of the Russian occupation. Digging OSCE in the shoulders. Filtration camps for collaborators. On the territories of the mines.

And fuck up, fuck up, fuck up everyone who doesn't answer correctly to Glory to Ukraine...
PS. Forgot. All stores must be Roshen [Poroshenko’s chocolate brand]. And on TV there should be Quarter 95 Studio [Zelensky’s TV production company]. And fuck them up.

In my old age, I am ready to become the head of the filtration camp or the Horlivka police," Radyk wrote on Facebook .

After Strana wrote about his statement, Radyk decided to sue us. At least he wrote about this intention on social media.

Do not give the right to vote to IDPs

A well-known Maidan activist, and in the recent past, a deputy from the BPP [Petro Poroshenko Bloc], Mustafa Nayem, once stated that IDPs [internally displaced people, of which there were 1.5 million in Ukraine at this time] should not be given voting rights .

As part of the round table in the Verkhovna Rada, he entered into a skirmish with Supreme Court Judge Vasily Gumenyuk over the right of residents from Donbass to take part in local elections in eastern Ukraine.

"Imagine that we have hundreds of thousands of people who are registered in the controlled territory, close to the front line, are displaced persons, but in fact they live in that territory. The center of their vital interests is there. They, one way or another, cooperate with with that power, if we allow elections at the local level, we will get not only an integrated government, but a government that will directly represent the interests of, let's say, not quite Ukrainian forces," Nayem said.

Gumenyuk objected that the right to vote in Ukraine is guaranteed by the Constitution to every citizen. 

It should be noted that earlier Nayem submitted a bill to the Rada No. 6240 on the renewal of the electoral rights of internally displaced persons. 

"Our draft law will provide an opportunity to exercise legal and constitutional voting rights in local elections not only to internally displaced persons, but also to other mobile groups of citizens, such as labor migrants. Finally, an end will be put to the issue of discrimination of citizens by place of residence and regional grounds in the electoral implementation," Nayem reported in March 2017. 

"Vote for Ukraine - let them live and improve. Vote for secession - goodbye"

The Ukrainian writer Yuri Andrukhovych also said what Ukraine should do with the Donbass.

Back in 2010, that is, a few years before the start of the war, he stated that Crimea and Donbass should secede from Ukraine.

“If ever such a miracle happens that the Oranges [pro-NATO forces] win again in Ukraine, relatively speaking, then it will be necessary to give Crimea and Donbass the opportunity to secede. Now they will not do this, because today their people are in power in Kiev, but I I almost don't believe that the Orange will ever come to power," Andrukhovych said.

He talked about how, in his opinion, Crimea and Donbass differ from other regions of Ukraine. “Politically, this is a different nation. I don’t touch on ethnic issues, only political ones. Politically, this is part of the Russian nation,” he said, adding that the territorial integrity of Ukraine is illusory.

"We constantly delight ourselves with some kind of illusion of territorial integrity, which does not exist anyway, it exists today only due to the fact that their guy is sitting on the throne in Kiev, that is, one-seventh of Ukraine makes its decisive contribution to how the country as a whole lives. Therefore, I would not refuse such a project and would not make this damned integrity some kind of dogma." The writer thereby expressed an opinion that today would be called separatism.

In 2014, in another interview, he said that keeping the Donbass as part of Ukraine "is possible only at the cost of fatal concessions for our European future."

“Once again, Donbass will have to be appeased on a really big scale. Yes, it is still possible to keep Donbass in Ukraine, but it will be such a Ukraine…” he noted.

According to Andrukhovych, simply stopping the hostilities, withdrawing the security forces from the Donbass would mean capitulation.

"This is a very bad start for our new future, very traumatic. The separation of Donbass from Ukraine should have created the impression that we did not lose it, but finally got rid of it," the writer said.

In 2019, he continued to talk about his vision of the Donbass problem and propose an action plan.

"Donbass is such a disease that in general, with a very favorable set of circumstances, at the cost of serious losses, primarily the lives of our military personnel, could be healed. However, soon, at the most inopportune moment for the whole country, this disease will again come out with such a relapse that it will not seem small. God give our president enough intelligence so that he would already begin to get rid of this disease with some imperceptible movements, slowly unhook this blazing car from the Ukrainian train. 

My vision is this: the Donbass must be squeezed up, the terrorists, as their idol Putin says, must be cleaned up. Then establish a temporary military administration there. And then hold an honest legitimate referendum in accordance with all the rules and with all international observers. If they vote for Ukraine, let them live with us and improve, grow up, grow wiser. Vote for secession - goodbye. Breathe a sigh of relief and cross yourself. You ask, why then did our soldiers die and continue to die? They are dying for Ukraine, for our freedom. Thanks to their feat, hostilities are taking place in the Donbass, and not, for example, somewhere in the Poltava region," Andrukhovych said in an interview with "AIF" .

As for the Crimean Tatars, he reproached them for sitting at home when the "little green men" came.

"There are people who just need to be killed"

Ukrainian journalist Bogdan Butkevich, who works for Espresso TV [formed during euromaidan, one of the most ‘liberal’ media groups in Ukraine], proposed his plan of action against Donbass and its inhabitants. During a TV broadcast in April 2014, he advised getting rid of the superflous 1.5 million, according to him, residents of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions. 

"Donbass is not just a depressed region. There is a wild number of unnecessary people ... I am absolutely conscious about this. There are about four million inhabitants in the Donetsk region. And at least one and a half million extra," Butkevich said.

He also said that there are people in the Donbas who need to be killed.

"We need to understand the Ukrainian national interest. And Donbass needs to be used as a resource.... Regarding Donbass: I don't know a recipe for how to do it quickly. However, the most important thing to do is that there are people who just need to be killed," he said to the journalist.

Temporarily disenfranchised. Avakov's plans

All of the above could be perceived as the nonsense of marginals, if not for the fact that such ideas, albeit not in such a radical form, were not voiced by quite official persons.

Last summer, Interior Minister Arsen Avakov proposed several plans for the reintegration of Donbas "after victory." 

By victory, most likely, the introduction of peacekeepers was meant, which was actively discussed at that time. So active that Ukrainian politicians began to share the "skin of an unkilled separatist." [a pun on the Russian idiom ‘don’t share the skin of an unkilled bear’]

In one of his Facebook posts Avakov proposed the introduction of the status of "resident of the territory temporarily not controlled by Ukraine" - for the period until the restoration of legitimate Ukrainian documents.

This is a strange statement, taking into account the fact that no one has yet taken away the passports of citizens of Ukraine from Donetsk and Luhansk residents. 

In fact, this is a mass filtration of the inhabitants of the "LDNR". The minister himself explains this "filtration" as follows:

“In the temporarily occupied territories, not only adherents of the “Russian world” and admirers of the Putin regime remain, but also those who could not leave for completely personal, non-political reasons, the elderly and those who were not allowed to leave by health or had nowhere to go... During the war years, families were created there and children were born, schoolchildren became students, people reached retirement age ... All this created a large field of legal uncertainty, which must be properly brought into legal status and this will take time. 

In another post, Avakov suggested introduce a presumption of guilt for residents of the "DNR" and "LNR" . By which the minister understands "the consistent restoration of all civil rights and freedoms" for all residents of those territories. 

That is, their automatic defeat in the rights "before the trial." 

The minister proposed to remove these rights for 5-10 years. And at the same time to deprive voting rights. 

"I think that people from the occupied territories will be deprived of their rights in relation to elections to central authorities - parliament, president, and so on. But this is normal international practice. It was used in all post-conflict zones, from post-Franco Spain to the Balkans. Time calms excessively hot emotions. This period has always been from 5 to 10 years. After that, the territory received all rights," the minister said in one of the interviews .

The appearance of such plans was interpreted by many as an attempt by Avakov and the "party of war" in Ukraine to disrupt the prospects for the negotiation process for the peaceful reintegration of uncontrolled territories. 

It is clear that if the residents of the "DPR" and "LPR" are told that they will automatically become second-class citizens in Ukraine, then they will definitely have no desire to integrate.

And it is also no coincidence that the talk of discrimination against the people of Donetsk has resurfaced even now, when for the first time in many years the prospect of starting a process of political settlement in the Donbass has appeared. 

Moreover, they sound in a very radical form (Kondratyuk and Radyk).

And here the position of the government is important. Will it respond in the legal field to such frank calls to infringe on the rights of some Ukrainians and incite hatred towards the Donbass? That is, will criminal proceedings be opened against the "instigators"? Or will they pretend that nothing bad happened?

The prospects for the peace process in Donbas largely depend on the answer to this question.