Ukraine like the two Koreas? The accusation comes from Kyiv, more precisely from the head of the Ukrainian military intelligence service Kyrylo Budanov, who in an interview with the Guardian yesterday spoke of Russia’s intention “to split Ukraine in two in order to create a Moscowcontrolled region after she failed to take control of the whole country”. A “Korean scenario” that would envisage a normalization of the conflict along the lines of that of the Korean peninsula after World War II. Back then, as Corriere della Sera recalls today, the winners agreed to end the 35year rule of the Japanese Empire over Korea.
An annexation in preparation?
The area was then occupied by the United States and the Soviet Union and divided between the two superpowers into “zones of influence” South and North. The plan was to create an independent and undivided country, but each of the two territories claimed sovereignty over the entire peninsula. A war ensued in 1950 that separated North Korea from South Korea. On July 27, 1953, the Armistice was signed, which also created a demilitarized zone. The “dividing line” was drawn according to the 38th parallel. According to Ukrainian intelligence, the announcement of a referendum on joining Russia by the selfproclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic goes in that direction. An initiative by the separatist leader Leonid Pasechnik who then partially corrected the recording and ensured that no concrete preparations were underway for the time being met not only with the obvious, clear rejection of the Kiev authorities, but also with some doubts in the Russian power apparatus.
Publicly opposed to this was Leonid Kalashnikov, chairman of the Duma commission on the affairs of the former Soviet republics, who spoke of a consultation that was “inadvisable” because “the two republics were part of Ukraine until recently”. “Any false referendum in the temporarily occupied territories is legally insignificant and will have no legal consequences,” Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Oleg Nikolenko said yesterday, saying he was confident no country in the world would recognize the validity of such a consultation . But that wouldn’t stop Moscow from doing what it did to Crimea in 2014. The hypothesis of calling a referendum was also put forward for the independence of the Kherson region in the south of the country, which was occupied by Moscow’s troops in the initial stages of the conflict. The residents of this port city took to the streets to protest against the occupation and against this project.
