Russia’s recent deployment of troops and military hardware (guns, mortars, cannons, tanks, and surface-to-air missiles) along its 1,226-mile-long land border with Ukraine, coupled with a propaganda offensive against Ukraine’s pro-Western leadership, have raised the spectre of an imminent Russian invasion of its neighbour. Western responses to these events are wholly predictable. US President Joe Biden thus warned Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on 11 December 2021 that Russia would pay “a terrible price” if it invaded Ukraine. Earlier on, he had threatened “economic consequences” (trade sanctions, freezing of overseas Russian assets), while ruling out direct military action, and also rejected Putin’s “red line” on NATO membership for Ukraine. At the same time, Biden reassured Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of steadfast American commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Echoing Biden’s sentiments, a statement issued by the G7 Foreign and Development Ministers’ Meeting in Liverpool on 11 to 12 December 2021 warned Russia of “massive consequences and severe cost” were it to invade Ukraine.
The current dispute between Russia, Europe’s largest nation, and Ukraine, the second-largest European country , dates back to the aftermath of the dissolution of the Soviet Union on 8 December 1991, when the Presidents of Belarus, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine signed the Belovezh Accords at a dacha in Viskuli in Belarus, creating the Commonwealth of Independent States. This agreement rubber-stamped Ukraine’s earlier declaration of independence on 1 December 1991. The thirteen years that followed were mostly uneventful, and the Budapest Referendum on Security Assurances, signed on 5 December 1994 by Russia, the UK, and the US guaranteed Ukraine’s security. The situation worsened from 2004 onwards, when Russia’s Eurasian project of integration, as exemplified by the Eurasian Economic Union, was directly threatened by the simultaneous eastern advance of both the EU as well as NATO. Eight Central and Eastern European countries, including three of Ukraine’s direct neighbours (Hungary, Poland, Slovakia) joined the EU in May 2004, while two adjoining countries (Romania, Slovakia) became members of NATO in March that year. Hungary and Poland had already joined NATO in 1999.
As Russians and Ukrainians (once referred to as “Little Russians”) benefit from common ethnic origins and a shared cultural, literary, and religious heritage, we have to turn to history to try to understand the background to the present conflict. Historical ambiguities over Ukraine’s independent existence outside of Russia appear to lie at the heart of the conflict.
The origins of the three Slavic republics of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine can be traced back to Kyivan Rus (862-1242 CE), a loose federation of Slavic principalities with Scandinavian origins, whose capital in Kyiv was the “mother of Russian cities” and is now the capital of Ukraine. Kyivan Rus was the largest and most powerful state in 10th and 11th century Europe and adopted Byzantine (Eastern Orthodox) Christianity as state religion in 988. Internecine warfare led to the gradual break-up of the federation, which finally succumbed to a Mongol invasion (1237-1242).
Ukrainian identity developed and the Ukrainian language evolved during an ensuing 400-year-long period of rule by the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, followed by the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. A Cossack state known as the Hetmanate was established after an uprising against the Commonwealth in 1648, only to be liquidated during 1764 to 1780 under Catherine the Great of Russia. Following the overthrow of the Czar, an independent Ukrainian Peoples’ Republic held out between 1917 and 1920. Ukraine then became a Soviet Socialist Republic in 1922 and remained so until independence in 1991. Even though agriculturally rich Ukraine was the bread basket of the Soviet Union, it suffered two man-made famines, in 1921-22 and in 1932-33, the latter being referred to as the Holodomor (Extermination by Hunger), which fuelled Ukrainian resentment against the Russians.
Even before the eastern encroachment by the EU and NATO in 2004, Ukraine had embarked on a process of economic reform and was seeking a closer relationship with Europe. The Orange Revolution of November 2004 was the first major outbreak of public dissatisfaction with the slow pace of progress. Troubles erupted yet again when, on 21 November 2013, Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych suspended plans for an association agreement with the EU that was meant to facilitate trade and cooperation. This led to a series of so-called Euromaidan protests, centred on Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Maidan Square) in central Kyiv, which soon turned violent, culminating in the Maidan Revolution of 18-23 February 2014.
The Maidan Revolution was countered by Russian intervention to halt Ukraine’s Western realignment. Ukraine was just too important to be allowed to form closer economic and political links with the West. The Russian Black Sea Fleet happened to stationed at the Crimean port of Sevastopol, while Russia’s natural gas pipelines to Central and Eastern Europe ran directly under Ukrainian soil. Perceived threats to Russia’s security, concerns over the welfare of Ukraine’s Russian ethnic minority, and objections to Ukrainian rehabilitation of Nazi collaborators prompted this Russian invasion of Ukraine.
During 27 to 28 February 2014, Russian troops began to take control in the Crimean Peninsula, which has an ethnic Russian majority and had originally been transferred from Russia to Ukraine by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1954. A controversial referendum on March 16 2014 was followed by the formal annexation of Crimea by Russia two days later. The EU, US and other countries retaliated by imposing sanctions on Russia, while UN General Assembly Resolution 68/262 rejected both the referendum and the subsequent annexation. Militant pro-Russian separatist activity simultaneously erupted in eastern Ukraine, leading to the setting up of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics and de facto Russian control of the coal-rich and industrialised Donbas region in the south-eastern corner of Ukraine.
Attempts to resolve the crisis in Ukraine through multi-lateral agreements have met with only limited success. The Minsk 1 agreement (5 September 2014) was followed by the Minsk 2 agreement (16 February 2015), which focused on de-escalation of the conflict and was weighted in favour of Russia. The Normandy Four group (Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany) was established during the D-Day celebrations in Normandy in June 2014 and finally came together in May 2019 to try to resolve the situation in the Donbas. On 18 July 2019, the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine, meeting in Minsk, agreed a comprehensive cease-fire. Despite all these diplomatic initatives, little progress has unfortunately been made on the ground and the conflict remains largely unresolved.
The present troubles in Ukraine reflect the incompatibility between Russia’s Eurasian ambitions and the desire of Ukraine’s leadership to forge closer ties with the West. Some sabre rattling and political brinkmanship are an inevitable part of such disagreements, but there can be no doubt that a peaceful and diplomatic resolution, including some form of compromise in eastern Ukraine, is the preferable outcome.
Ashis Banerjee