Ukraine and Russia The reasons behind the large-scale attack launched by the Russian president against his neighboring country
Russia invaded Ukraine.
According to Vladimir Putin, it is a special mission with the objective
of demilitarizing the neighboring country, destroying weapons and military infrastructure, and leaving Ukraine without the possibility of defense or counterattack. Once those goals are reached, Russia would back down.
At least that is the logic of Moscow. But the context is very broad, it is not
limited to the last hours or weeks, but it has important background to
take into account. In principle, Putin has repeated over the last year that
the West should not cross “red lines” and more recently has made his
demands explicit: a commitment by NATO not to expand eastward, to
countries like Ukraine, but also Georgia. or Moldova; and withdrawal
of arms from countries that are already members, but are too close to
the Russian borders, especially Lithuania,. The lack of concessions
to Moscow’s claims is now the excuse to start an attack that
Putin considers preemptive. That is, to attack Ukraine before
Ukraine attacks Russian populations in the Donbass, the
eastern region of this country.
Ukraine is a fundamental territory for Russia , not only because
it was for a good part of the 20th century one of the largest and most
developed Soviet socialist republics. It is also relevant because it is part
of a security buffer, a geographical barrier that separates the
giant Eurasian country from NATO , the Western military alliance
that Moscow faced during the Cold War. Exactly the same is true of
Belarus, but the difference is that Alexander Lukashenko, the de facto
president, is a great ally of the Kremlin. In this sense, Ukraine is for
Russia nothing more than a geopolitical tool that should be part
of its sphere of influence for pragmatic reasons, but also for
historical, political and cultural reasons.Keeping this territory and
its people close to Moscow is almost an obsession. It is no coincidence
thenRussian President Vladimir Putin said last July that Russians
and Ukrainians are one people, one whole. As if they should be on the
same side.
Both countries have as their common origin the medieval state of Kievan
Rus, from which the names of Russia and Belarus derive. The current
territory of Ukraine was then part of different states until it
passed into the imperial orbit of Moscow in an advance from
east to west from the 17th century until the mid-19th century.
The October Revolution, in 1917, was the unique opportunity to consolidate
a completely independent Ukraine. But the barely two years of
independence were chaotic and involved wars between tsarists,
Bolsheviks and anarchists. By 1920 the entire territory returned
to Russian control , this time Bolshevik, not tsarist. In other words,
from the 17th century until the Soviet dissolution in 1991, Ukraine practically always depended on Moscow.
Throughout this long period, the Ukrainian identity was slowly
suppressed and the use of the Russian language was promoted
to the detriment of Ukrainian . Although each federal republic of the
USSR was based on a principle of territorial nationality, throughout the
Soviet period any expression of autonomous nationalism that contradicted
the ideas and projects of the Soviet Communist Party was strongly repressed,
especially during the mandate of Joseph Stalin. , from 1924 to his death in
1953. The goal was not only to prevent intra-union revolts and possible secession, but also to prevent the various minority cultural groups from collaborating with foreign invaders. Today,more than 30% of the citizens of Ukraine speak Russian as their native language, although in certain eastern and southern regions it exceeds 90%.
By the end of the 18th century, the Russian naval base of Sevastopol already existed on the Crimean peninsula, still today the most important in Russia on the Black Sea . Little changed when, in 1954, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev decided to transfer sovereignty over this region to the Ukrainian SSR. There is a myth, as popular as it is unverifiable, that he made this decision during a drunken night . Both Russia and Ukraine were part of the same Soviet Union and that is why the transfer was merely symbolic. Until 1991. From then on Russia had to lower its head, accept the loss of sovereignty and rent the base to the Ukrainian state.
A series of major protests in late 2013 and early 2014 led to the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych, who hailed from the country’s eastern region and had close ties to Russia. Putin then feared that the change of political course in Ukraine, with new forces looking to the European Union and NATO, could spell the end of the base lease agreement. The result was the annexation of the entire peninsula by Russia in March 2014, although Moscow uses the term “recovery”, as if, six decades later, Khrushchev’s mistake had finally been corrected. Since then, Ukraine has internationally demanded the recovery of a territory that Russia controls de facto.
At the same time, a war began in the eastern part of the country between pro-Russian armed groups and nationalist paramilitary organizations together with a decimated Ukrainian army. Nearly a quarter of a century without major investment in security and defense had left a meager armed forces. Russia as a state and the Russians as a people, including civilians, became the new villains of Ukraine, the invaders, the terrorists, those who are not to be trusted. The brotherhood between both Slavic peoples was seriously injured.
That year was a turning point for Ukraine. Not only did the government change, but also his geopolitical vision, his perception of his place in the international arena . She set aside Russia, until then her main trading partner, and signed an Association Agreement with the European Union that involved the establishment of a free trade zone , guaranteeing greater access for Ukrainian products to the Western European market. Although the new direction has not yet managed to make up for the losses, there is some positive data and there is the possibility of sustained economic growth in the future.
As of 2019, five years after that rupture, the new version of the National Constitution reflected the change of course. The preamble affirms “the European identity of the Ukrainian people and the irreversibility of the European and Euro-Atlantic course of Ukraine” . Likewise, Article 102 establishes that “the President of Ukraine is the guarantor of the implementation of the strategic course of the State in order to obtain Ukraine’s full membership in the European Union and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)”. In other words, there is a constitutional mandate to approach the West, regardless of who wins elections.
In the same process appears the schism at the end of 2018 that separated, after three centuries, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church from the Russian. The break was presented by the Ukrainian government as a further step towards ending political, economic and religious subordination to Russia. But for Moscow it represented an alert: the possibility of losing power and influence in a country with around 30 million followers, the second most Orthodox after Russia itself.
At this point it is worth asking whether NATO really intends to incorporate Ukraine, whether the Kremlin’s fears, obsessions or paranoia are justified. This possibility would mean continuing a process of enclosing the extreme west of Russia that began in 1999 with the incorporation of former Warsaw Pact members Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. In addition, in 2004 three other former allies of the Soviet Union joined: Rumania, Bulgaria and Slovakia; and, for the first time, former Soviet republics: Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia. The basis of the military alliance is that if one member is attacked, all the others must defend it. In other words, if Ukraine were a part, the North Atlantic organization would be obliged to attack Russia because Kiev officially considers it an aggressor state.
An open confrontation of this type, between American weapons and the Russian nuclear arsenal, would be catastrophic. And in exchange for what? Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe in terms of GDP per capita, cannot sustain its own armed forces without foreign contributions and, to top it off, has been at war for almost eight years. Adding it to NATO does not seem like a tempting or likely option.
But Russia is afraid. In a very short time, she lost an important political and economic ally, but also a people with whom she shares origins and aspects of identity. And, of course, she also lost an indispensable fragment of her safety cushion, from her ground separation with NATO members. Now he sees her safety threatened, but not as much as her influence and her pride. The tacit fear is to go back to the 90s, to that terrible decade in which Russia was not Russia, when that power of the empire and the Soviet power collapsed and there was no more than crisis.
Since his inauguration in 2000, Putin managed to recover some of the lost international relevance and led his country to occupy a prominent and influential political position. He even achieved significant economic growth, partly thanks to the rise in world hydrocarbon prices in the first decade of the century. Seeing how Ukraine gets a little further away every day attracts old ghosts. Russia cannot afford to go back. Putin cannot afford to back down.
If the mobilization of troops towards the Ukrainian borders was extortion in the framework of diplomatic disputes, now Putin has taken this logic to the extreme. If the West doesn’t give in, Russia invades. That seems to be the logic. A warning for NATO, but also for all of Europe. It is no longer a threat only to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Russia seeks to impose its demands by force. Whatever it takes. More