Andrey Yepivantsev: Only time may show if we have opened Pandora's box in the Crimea or not

 The situation in Ukraine has led to a
collision between two international principles: peoples’ right to
self-determination and territorial integrity. Will the Crimea become another
Kosovo and are there any differences between them?    

Many parallels may be drawn between the situations in
the Crimea and Kosovo, but there is also a great difference between them: if
the West recognized Kosovo but did not attach it to anywhere, it is very much
possible that Russia will involve the Crimea within itself. Such a difference
will change much if not everything. There was nothing of the kind in post-war
Europe. Earlier, the inhibiting factor for some countries was the fact that
they will not be able to take the disputed territory within themselves. It
means that such a territory is doomed to semi-isolation and vegetation.
However, now we have got a precedent for settlement of this issue, and sooner
or later it will start playing a core role for somebody. One should not lessen
the significance of this precedent. However, at present one must not say for
sure if the event is positive or negative. Only time may show if we have opened
Pandora's box in the Crimea or not.

Some experts in Armenia have already
started speaking of the Crimea’s precedent for Nagorno-Karabakh. In the
meantime, Yerevan is mostly convinced that the Crimean scenario is unacceptable
for Karabakh. How would you comment on this?   
 

The solution to the Crimea issue: referendum and
joining the Russian Federation, if it happens, will become a very serious
precedent for Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh. It will be a great opportunity to
settle the most complicated problem. At the same time, there are some
differences that impede repetition of the Crimean scenario. Here are the main
three differences. The first is the factor of refugees. The referendum in
Crimea involved all the residents of the peninsula and claims true expression
of will. Meanwhile, dozens of thousands of refugee-Azerbaijanis left Karabakh
and the refusal to involve them in the referendum will become a very vulnerable
point in the issue of Karabakh's self-determination. Secondly, it will be very
hard for Armenia to repeat the Crimean scenario due to its complementary
policy. Russia does not fully depend on the countries opposing it. They are
mutually dependent. Moscow has been independent in its policy for many years.
It can afford making challenges to the countries that oppose such a solution to
the territorial dispute. As for Armenia, it wants to favor everyone at once,
which makes it dependent on many countries. It will hardly manage to combine
the challenge to the West with the desire to favor the West and get money from
it. So, the price of the policy of complementarism is the unresolved Karabakh
conflict. Maybe, Russia and Armenia have different weight categories and
Yerevan cannot blindly copy Moscow's decisions. However, Armenia could
neutralize part of that through closer cooperation with Russia. Anyway, it does
not cancel the abovementioned disadvantages of complementary policy. Thirdly,
Ukraine cannot declare war on Russia for a range of reasons, meanwhile in the
case of Nagorno Karabakh, Armenia must be sure that Baku will unleash military
actions with quite different consequences as soon as it makes sure that Yerevan
and Stepanakert have chosen the way "referendum-unification with
Armenia".

Won’t the Crimea’s separation from
Ukraine on the basis of the principle of people’s self-determination plant a
bomb under the Russian Federation given the separatist sentiments in some
entities of the Russian Federation?     

I think, it will plant no bomb but it will raise some
issues. The national regions decide to separate not because they have such a
right or precedents to do that. They do it when they can no longer exist within
some state. This has happened to Ukraine. The key reasons of the Crimea's
separation were the disputed boundaries after the collapse of the USSR, the
lack of an accomplished ethnos, the hard economic situation amid the collapse
of the state machine, large-scale corruption, etc. In case of such
prerequisites one should expect something very serious. I’d like to stress one
again that it is the domestic problems, not the precedents or incitement that
matters. I offer those who disagree with me to try to separate the national
regions from Switzerland, for instance. I am sure that if the Russian
authorities make the situation as desperate as the Ukrainians did, it will be
possible to speak of a bomb, but it will hardly be directly related to the
Crimea's separation. In the meantime, I think that the social strata and groups
inside Russia, which do not fully agree with the Government, will try to hold a
referendum and settle their problems in the Crimean way. To justify the
legitimacy of the referendum in the Crimea, Moscow pointed at the principle
"People must have an opportunity to decide their fate themselves".
Now the residents of Stavropol region, for instance, who are eager to withdraw
their region from the North-Caucasus Federal District, may demand a similar
referendum. So, Stavropol also has many parallels with the situation in the
Crimea. It is also necessary to defend the Russians there. The Kremlin did not
ask their opinion either when giving their region to another entity of the
Russian Federation. They are also eager "to return to Russia”. There are a
lot of such examples, and the refusal to hold a referendum will improve neither
the attitude towards the Russian authorities nor the interethnic situation.

Ukraine, which assumed CIS chairmanship in Jan 2014,
has already announced its withdrawal from the CIS. How will it affect the
prospects of the CIS in general?   

Ukraine is likely to leave the CIS just the same way
as Georgia in 2009. However, this will not change the general situation at the
post-Soviet area just the same way as it did not change when Georgia left. I
should confess that at present several CIS countries have several formal
reasons, which were used for conditioning of the Russian stance on the Crimea.
A part of their present territory was transferred to them during the Soviet
time. For instance, Belarus, Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan. Some of them have a big
Russian diaspora that has turned into people of the B class who need
protection, for instance, in Turkmenistan, etc. For this reason, elites of
these countries will fear in a certain sense. On the other hand, I am confident
that any integration processes contain an economic and political interest for
these countries, which will not be able to get rid of them or find an
alternative to them. So, these processes will go on developing. In this context,
I do not put stress directly at the CIS, as this project is more turned to the
past. And establishment of the Customs Union and Eurasian Union is on the
agenda at present. In this context, Ukraine's leaving the CIS will hardly
affect anything.

Since the termination of the Warsaw
Pact, the appearance of the dividing lines between the countries that have
chosen the European vector of development and the countries considered
authoritarian by the West has always been accompanied by NATO’s expansion into the
East. Russia has always been concerned with it. Don’t you think that having
received the Crimea today, Russia may see NATO’s bases and anti-missile defense
systems near its borders tomorrow?       

First of all, one must not watch the situation in Ukraine
only like losing of the Crimea. The disintegration processes go on developing
and nothing has ended yet. The fact that the authorities of Kyiv do not
recognize the referendum and the Crimea's joining Russia in future, is evidence
of the fact that Ukraine will not be able to join NATO as this organization
does not receive the countries which have territorial claims. But if to imagine
that something has changed and NATO has suddenly changed its basic principles,
nothing fundamental will change for Russia. Being NATO's neighbor is unpleasant
but not catastrophic. It is already for many years that Russia has been NATO's
neighbor and they have already learned how to live next to each other. Anyway,
for Russia, Ukraine's split and joining some of its part NATO is better than
absolute control of the whole territory of Ukraine by the anti-Russian tuned
ethnic Western Ukrainians. Sooner or later the whole territory of Ukraine would
turn into the anti-Russian foothold if Moscow did not tamper with the
situation.