AND
THE NEXT REFUGEE CRISIS ?
By J.Hawk
UKRAINIAN President PETRO POROSHENKO’S
recent visit to ANKARA, which took place against the backdrop of a major
political crisis in KIEV which is revolving around POROSHENKO’S efforts to oust
the hapless Prime Minister ARSENIY “Yats is the Man” YATSENYUK in order to
reapportion UKRAINE’S rapidly shrinking economic pie to his own cronies,
clearly must have dealt with matters important enough to warrant his absence
from KIEV at a time like this.
TURKEY
WILLING TO INVEST IN UKRAINE AND INCREASE BILATERAL TRADE
The official news releases and
subsequent reporting do shed a fair amount of light on what the two leaders
have discussed, and for the most part the most important theme was money. Thus POROSHENKO
appears to have made some pretty attractive offers to ERDOGAN concerning the
privatization of UKRAINE’S coal mines, including ones located in NOVOROSSIA where
UKRAINE’S laws no longer reach. There was also some discussion of the status of
CRIMEA, with the two sides expressing interest in raising the peninsula’s
profile in a variety of international organizations. There was even
considerable chatter in UKRAINE’S media and social media concerning UKRAINE
officially ceding (!) CRIMEA to TURKEY for an unspecified sum of money.
All in
all, POROSHENKO appears interested in drawing ERDOGAN into UKRAINE’S internal
politics and the UKRAINE–RUSSIA relationship by giving him a financial stake in
the outcome of the conflict. For its part, TURKISH leaders announced they are
willing to invest in UKRAINE and increase the level of bilateral trade.
Which raises the question: what
exactly are the two countries going to trade? Here, the two leaders have a
remarkable self-interest overlap. Both of them have extensive ties to organized
crime in their countries and profit enormously from a variety of smuggling
activities and from control over trade routes.
CLASH
OF CLANS ?
Thus ERDOGAN, his family, and his
political inner circle benefited from ISIS oil smuggling and the refugee
smuggling to EUROPE. POROSHENKO and his clan benefit from smuggling activities
into the EU, particularly after the appointment of GENNADIY MOSKAL to the post
of the local governor, where he was sent after establishing POROSHENKO’S control
over smuggling in the NOVOROSSIA area. More recently, POROSHENKO’S “activists”
have been trying to extract revenue from a variety of transit blockades, first
around the border with Crimea, and more recently in TRANSCARPATHIA. But these
business models are beginning to fail, in both cases due to RUSSIA’S actions,
though EU’s own policies have also damaged the illicit operations’
profitability. RUSSIA-led destruction of ISIS and the interdiction of oil
smuggling routes, combined with diverting RUSSIAN cargo traffic flows away from
UKRAINE, has hit the two organized crime kingpins’ pocket books pretty hard.
EU’s closing of borders to migrants coming through the BALKANS is also having a
financial effect.
FUNNEL
MIDDLE EAST REFUGEES INTO UKRAINE FOR FURTHER “DISTRIBUTION” INTO THE EU
Therefore it might be tempting
for the two leaders to collaborate on opening a new “trade route” of sorts, one
that would funnel MIDDLE EAST refugees into UKRAINE for further “distribution”
into other parts of the continent.
The
scheme has much to recommend it. It would increase pressure on both RUSSIA and
EU, since the refugees could now enter POLAND, ROMANIA, BELARUS, and RUSSIA
following their entry into UKRAINE. It would increase the profits of smugglers
in TURKEY as well as UKRAINE, ultimately benefiting ERDOGAN and POROSHENKO.
And it would give both leaders
the ability to once again turn to the EU and demand billions of EUROs, as well
as visa-free travel regime with the EU, in return for their promise to “deal”
with the refugee crisis. ERDOGAN has already demonstrated that the EU is very
easily blackmailed and has almost no ability to exercise “hard power” against TURKEY
or UKRAINE, for that matter. There is no reason to expect ERDOGAN will abide by
whatever terms he has reached with the EU, and there is every reason to expect POROSHENKO
to try to learn from ERDOGAN’S example and collude with him on refugee
smuggling.
The logistics of the new route
remain unclear, but they could be resolved, ironically, with the money provided
by the EU to help the refugees! The most
plausible scenario, and one least likely to provoke naval interdiction efforts,
would include POROSHENKO offering to house some of the MIDDLE EASTERN refugees.
Once in UKRAINE, they would be set free (after paying a small “handling fee” to
whichever POROSHENKO-linked organization will be empowered to deal with the new
arrivals) and pointed in the general direction of UKRAINE’S closest
international border. The fact that UKRAINIAN
navy ships are already coursing between ODESSA and ISTANBUL, ostensibly to
ferry $800 million worth of TURKISH non-lethal military aid to the UAF,
suggests that the logistical route is already being paved.
