At the beginning of 2022, Ukrainian state and national unity became one of the Kremlin’s most important goals, and without its destruction, Moscow sees no way to defeat Ukraine.
In February 2022, in an attempt to act as in 2014 on the principle of divide et impera, Moscow tried to create several separatist republics in western Ukraine. On March 5, 2022, the SBU detained separatists in Ivano-Frankivsk region who were tasked with recruiting more than half a thousand traitors in the western and central regions of the country and creating a “Federal Republic of Ukraine.” The separatists planned to eliminate key heads of law enforcement agencies and government officials, seize administrative buildings, and proclaim “people’s republics” modeled after the so-called L/DPR. In the course of the planned coup, the separatists were to discredit and deprive the security forces of public support, and inspire distrust in law enforcement agencies and the Armed Forces. All of this was planned in the face of rumors of an offensive from Belarus that would strengthen the separatists. It could also have led some ambivalent and opportunistic citizens to believe that separatists could become a real power in the western regions, so it is better to start negotiating with them.
Applications for independence to other states were already prepared, and if Hungary recognized these pseudo-entities, it could have a significant impact on military aid to Ukraine from the West. Even before the Great War, they were in no hurry to give us weapons, believing that we would surrender in a week and the weapons would end up in the hands of the Russians. And if information about street riots in Galicia and Prykarpattia were to spread, the West would decide that Ukraine does not even control the western regions and military assistance could become illusory.
The plan to attack western Ukraine from the inside looked dangerously likely and devilishly well thought out, and if it were to be implemented, Ukraine would fall apart like a house of cards. The Kremlin thought that the justification and success of such a plan were guaranteed, given the myths about the low level of patriotism and distrust of Ukrainians in the government. But the planners underestimated the Ukrainians, who, according to their plan, should have been in despair and stupor in the first days of the Russian invasion.
Given that in 2022, armed “terrorist defense” units emerged in every village in the western regions, every school became a hub for volunteers, and military commissariats could not cope with the number of volunteers, the “western” separatists decided to keep their noses to the grindstone during the “H” hour. Those who were supposed to destroy Ukrainian national unity and statehood were tied up in their apartments in such an inglorious manner, but they never understood why Ukrainians remained united in such circumstances.
In the two years since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, no separatist republics have emerged, and the idea of regional separatism has not even spread in the information space. Although the enemy is actively, albeit unsuccessfully, trying to create scandals in the style of: “Kharkiv has no air defense because everything was taken to Kyiv”, “men are mobilized only in western Ukraine”, etc. But these divisive and propagandistic messages did not pay off the money invested in their replication – Ukrainians did not buy them. The language split also did not become a trigger for mass secession from Ukraine, as the Kremlin had hoped.
Of all the Russian information and psychological operations, it was not the linguistic, religious, “Odesa” or even “Zakarpattia” map that proved to be more or less effective, but the more than century-old Marxist-Leninist idea of class enmity. The propaganda thesis “mobilization is only for the poor, and the rich have paid off” has gained more followers than all Russian attempts to split Ukraine along seemingly very thin lines of linguistic and regional differences. Despite the fact that the Armed Forces of Ukraine have enough representatives of all property classes, refuting this thesis of Russian propaganda and demonstrating the mobilization of representatives of economic elites should be the response of the Ukrainian authorities to knock this “trump card” out of the hands of enemy propagandists. After all, Moscow will invest even more in the class divide between the Ukrainian upper and lower classes.
However, in the second year of the war, due to mistakes and an unreformed system of mobilization policy, the map of “regional separatism” may gain new life, and the Kremlin may use mobilization as a tool for this.
On April 14, our Infolight team of researchers noticed an anti-mobilization campaign with the phrase “Romania, free us” spreading on social media in the western regions, including Bukovyna. The propagandists used the thesis of “corrupt Ukrainian TCCs” and called for the dissociation of some residents of Chernivtsi region from mobilization by inspiring separatist slogans. From words, the Russian agents moved on to deeds. On April 9, a TCC representative was attacked in the Chernivtsi region, near the village of Chornohuzy, when a serviceman of the Vyzhnytsia district TCC was making a warning and was forced to shoot into the ground to fend off an attack by a group of civilians. Pro-Russian bloggers immediately cut the video in such a way that the beginning of the conflict and provocations against the soldier were cut out, and the screams of excited women, quite possibly brought from one of the parishes of the Moscow Patriarchate, were well rehearsed to create a discrediting image of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Russian agents disseminated such videos with the comment “the people are starting to rise up.” It seems that in Chernivtsi region, in addition to the usual arguments used by opponents of mobilization in Ukraine, the national issue and regional separatism are also being used as a propaganda attempt to “protect the population from mobilization.” If we add to this the attacks on the military TCCs in Ivano-Frankivsk region, the enemy may try to undermine Ukraine again with the “mobilization and separatist” card, which, if the Ukrainian authorities delay in dealing with enemy agents, could become a trump card.
In 2022, this card had no chance of success. Ukrainians have become one of the most united nations in Europe. By nationality, 92% of citizens of our country considered themselves Ukrainians, despite the fact that according to the official census of Ukrainians in Ukraine, 77.8% of them are Ukrainians. The vast majority of Ukrainians – more than 84% – considered any territorial concessions unacceptable, and even among Russian-speaking citizens, 80% of respondents did not support territorial concessions. This is the position of a strong state nation.
Today, the formula for Ukrainian victory and repulsion of the aggressor involves, first of all, the unity and unity of the nation, something that Ukrainians did not have a century ago in the national liberation struggle. The overwhelming majority of Ukrainians today realize that no matter how imperfect our state and government may be, or what differences there may be between Ukrainian regions, this is no reason to allow Russians to come into our homes and organize a Bucha in every Ukrainian town.
Author: Valeriy Maidaniuk.
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