RUSSIANS OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE?
Marcin Wojciechowski

Gazeta Wyborcza
2008-09-23
Poland

One would like Poland, Europe, and the world to have good relations
with Russia, but Moscow has to want it too.

Eight million – close to one in five – Ukrainians will be eligible
to apply for Russian citizenship, if a law currently discussed by
the Duma enters in force. The same applies to millions of Kazakhs,
Uzbeks, Armenians, Azerbaijanis, and other peoples of the former
Soviet Union. It’s enough for someone to have been born in Russia
to now apply for its citizenship. There are tens of millions of such
people in the former Soviet area.

It could seem alright that Moscow cares for its compatriots – were
it not for a small provision in its military doctrine: ‘A man with a
Russian passport gets mugged and beaten on the street in the Crimea,
and on the next day Russian tanks roll in or planes drop bombs. This
isn’t a joke, precisely such argumentation was used by Moscow during
the recent war in Georgia.

The argument about Moscow’s right to intervene on behalf of Russians
living abroad is being repeated at every step by the Russian president,
prime minister, and foreign minister. The purpose is clearly to
frighten. Poland has nothing to do with these threats, because it
doesn’t have a Russian minority. But for the former Soviet republics,
this is a clear warning.

On the one hand, Russia has been reassuring (also during minister
Lavrov’s recent visit to Poland) that the war in Georgia was but an
incident, rather than a result of Moscow’s new strategy. On the other,
it has been making steps to have a pretext to intervene at least in
the its former republics.

The problem with Russia is that it is sending conflicting signals. You
don’t know which one to believe.

One would like Poland, Europe, and the world to have good relations
with Russia, but Moscow has to want it too. Using threatening
rhetorics, fuelling ethnic separatisms, handing passports to citizens
of sovereign states certainly don’t serve that goal.