Ukraine: conflict at the crossroads between Europe and Russia (2023)

introduction

Ukraine has long played an important, if sometimes overlooked, role in the global security order. Today, the country is at the forefront of a renewed rivalry between great powers that, according to many analysts, will dominate international relations for decades to come.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 marked a dramatic escalation of the eight-year conflict between the two countries and a historic turning point for European security. After six months, many defense and foreign policy analysts described the war as a major strategic mistake by Russian President Vladimir Putin that jeopardized his longtime rule.

Many observers see little prospect of a diplomatic solution in the coming months, instead recognizing the potential for a dangerous escalation that could involve Russia's use of a nuclear weapon. The war accelerated Ukraine's effort to align itself with Western political blocs, including the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

Why is Ukraine a geopolitical hotspot?

Ukraine became a battleground in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea and began arming and supporting separatists in the southeastern Donbass region. Russia's conquest of Crimea marked the first time since World War II that one European state had annexed the territory of another. More than 14,000 people died in fighting in Donbass between 2014 and 2021, Europe's bloodiest conflict since the Balkan wars of the 1990s. The hostilities marked a marked shift in the global security environment from a unipolar period of US dominance to one defined byrenewed competition between the great powers[PDF].

In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine with the aim of overthrowing the western-leaning government of Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

What general interests does Russia have in Ukraine?

Russia has deep cultural, economic and political ties with Ukraine, and Ukraine is in many ways central to Russia's identity and vision in the world.

family ties🇧🇷 Russia and Ukraine have strong family ties that go back centuries. Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, is sometimes called the "mother of Russian cities" in terms of cultural influence with Moscow and St. Petersburg. Christianity was brought from Byzantium to the Slavic peoples in Kyiv in the 8th and 9th centuries. And it was Christianity that anchored Kievan Rus', the ancient Slavic state from which modern Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians draw their lineage.

russian diaspora🇧🇷 According to a census taken this year, about eight million ethnic Russians lived in Ukraine in 2001, mostly in the south and east. As a pretext for its actions in Crimea and Donbass in 2014, Moscow claimed that it had a duty to protect these people.

superpower image🇧🇷 After the collapse of the Soviet Union, many Russian politicians saw the divorce from Ukraine as a historic mistake and a threat to Russia's position as a great power. Losing lasting dominance over Ukraine and dropping it into Western orbit would be seen by many as a major blow to Russia's international prestige. In 2022, Putin portrayed the escalating war with Ukraine as part of a broader struggle against Western powers, which he says are intent on destroying Russia.

Creme🇧🇷 Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev transferred Crimea from Russia to Ukraine in 1954 to strengthen "brotherly relations between the Ukrainian and Russian peoples". Since the collapse of the Union, however, many Russian nationalists in Russia and Crimea have yearned for a return to the peninsula. The city of Sevastopol is the home port of the Russian Black Sea Fleetdominant sea powerin the region.

To act🇧🇷 Russia has been Ukraine's biggestcommercial partner, although that connection has drastically declined in recent years. china finallyOvertook Russia in tradewith Ukraine. Before invading Crimea, Russia had hoped to draw Ukraine into its single market, the Eurasian Economic Union, which now includes Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.

Energy🇧🇷 For decades, Russia has relied on Ukrainian pipelines to pump its gas to customers in Central and Eastern Europe, and has paid Kyiv billions of dollars a year in transit fees. The flow of Russian gas through Ukrainecontinued at the end of 2022However, despite hostilities between the two countries, volumes have been reduced and the pipeline remains at serious risk.

political influence🇧🇷 Russia has struggled to maintain its political influence in Ukraine and across the former Soviet Union, especially after its 2004 presidential candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, lost to a reformist competitor in the popular Orange Revolution movement. This shock to Russia's interests in Ukraine came after a similar electoral defeat for the Kremlin in Georgia in 2003, known as the Rose Revolution, followed by another - the Tulip Revolution - in Kyrgyzstan in 2005. Yanukovych later became president of the Ukraine in 2010 amid voter dissatisfaction with the Orange government.

What triggered Russia's moves in Crimea and Donbass in 2014?

It was Ukraine's relations with the EU that raised tensions with Russia in 2013/14. In late 2013, under pressure from his supporters in Moscow, President Yanukovych rejected plans to formalize closer economic relations with the EU. At the same time, Russia pressured Ukraine to join the still-unestablished EAEU. Many Ukrainians saw Yanukovych's decision as a betrayal of a deeply corrupt and incompetent government, sparking nationwide protests known as Euromaidan.

Putin has portrayed the ensuing Euromaidan riot that ousted Yanukovych from power as a Western-backed "fascist coup d'état" that endangered Crimea's ethnic Russian majority. (Western leaders dismissed this as baseless propaganda left over from the Soviet era.) In response, Putin ordered a secret invasion of Crimea, which he later justified as a ransom. “Everything has a limit. And with Ukraine, our Western partners crossed the border,” Putin said.a March 2014 addressFormalization of annexation.

Putin used a similar narrative to justify his support for separatists in southeastern Ukraine, another region that is home to large numbers of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers. He referred to the area as Novorossiya (New Russia), a term that dates back to 18th-century Imperial Russia. Armed Russian provocateurs, including some agents of Russian security services, are believed to have played a key role in inciting anti-Euromaidan separatist movements in the region to rebel. However, unlike Crimea, Russia continued to officially deny its involvement in the Donbass conflict until it launched its wider invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Why did Russia launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022?

Some Western analysts see the 2022 invasion of Russia as the culmination of the Kremlin's growing resentment of NATO's post-Cold War expansion into the former Soviet sphere of influence. Russian leaders, including Putin, have asserted that the United States and NATOrepeatedly break the promises they madeIn the early 1990s, the alliance failed to expand into the former eastern bloc. They see NATO expansion in this turbulent period for Russia as a humiliating impertinence they can only watch.

In the weeks leading up to the 2008 NATO summit, President Vladimir Putinwarned American diplomatsthat measures to bring Ukraine into the alliance would be "an act hostile towards Russia". Months later, Russia went to war with Georgia, apparently demonstrating Putin's willingness to use force to protect his country's interests. (Some independent observersGeorgia complainedfor starting the so-called August War, but accused Russia of escalating hostilities.)

While Ukraine remained a non-member, it expanded its ties with NATO in the years leading up to the 2022 invasion. Ukraine held annual military exercises with the alliance and in 2020 became one of only six enhanced opportunity partners, a status special for the non-member allies closest to the bloc. Furthermore, Kyiv reaffirmed its goal of eventually becoming a full member of NATO.

In the weeks leading up to its invasion, Russia madeseveral important security requirementsthe United States and NATO, including halting alliance expansion, gaining Russian approval for certain NATO deployments, and removing US nuclear weapons from Europe. Alliance leaders responded that they were open to new diplomacy, but unwilling to discuss closing NATO's doors to new members.

“While in the United States we are talking about acrisis in ukraine, from a Russian perspective, this is a crisis in the European security architecture,” said Thomas Graham of the CFRgun control todayin February 2022. "And the fundamental issue they want to negotiate is the revision of the European security architecture as it stands now, towards something more conducive to Russian interests."

Other experts said that perhaps the most important motivating factor for Putin was his fear that Ukraine would continue to evolve into a modern Western-style democracy, which would inevitably undermine his autocratic rule in Russia and thwart his hopes of rebuilding a Russian-led sphere. . influence in Eastern Europe. “[Putin] wantsdestabilize Ukraine, frighten Ukraine,” writes historian Anne Applebaum inAtlantic🇧🇷 “He wants Ukrainian democracy to fail. He wants the Ukrainian economy to collapse. He wants foreign investors to flee. He wants his neighbors – in Belarus, Kazakhstan, even Poland and Hungary – to doubt that democracy will ever be viable in their countries in the long term.”

What are Russia's goals in Ukraine?

Putin's Russia has been described as a revanchist power eager to regain its former power and prestige. "It has always been Putin's goal to restore Russia to great power status in northern Eurasia," writes Gerard Toal, professor of international relations at Virginia Tech, in his bookclose to the outside🇧🇷 "The ultimate goal was not to recreate the Soviet Union, but to make Russia great again."

By conquering Crimea in 2014, Russia consolidated its control of a strategic position on the Black Sea. With a larger and more sophisticated military presence there, Russia can project its power deeper into the Mediterranean, Middle East and North Africa, where it has traditionally had limited influence. Some analysts argue that Western powers have not imposed significant costs on Russia in response to the annexation of Crimea, which they say only increased Putin's willingness to use military force to further his foreign policy goals. Until its invasion in 2022, Russia's strategic gains in Donbass were more fragile. Supporting the separatists had, at least temporarily, strengthened their bargaining power with Ukraine.

In July 2021, Putin wrote an article that many Western foreign policy experts found to be a threatening article.explains his controversial opinionsof common history between Russia and Ukraine. Among other things, Putin described Russians and Ukrainians as "one people" effectively occupying "the same historical and spiritual space".

Throughout the year, under the auspices of military exercises, Russia mustered tens of thousands of troops along the border with Ukraine and later in allied Belarus. In February 2022, Putin ordered a full-scale invasion, during which he crossed a force of around 200,000 troops from the south (Crimea), east (Russia) and north (Belarus) into Ukrainian territory in an attempt to capture major cities. . including the capital Kyiv, and overthrow the government. Putin said the overall goals were to "denazify" and "demilitarize" Ukraine.

What were the US priorities in Ukraine?

In the immediate aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Washington's priority was to pressure Ukraine — along with Belarus and Kazakhstan — to abandon its nuclear arsenal so that only Russia would retain the weapons of the former union. At the same time, the United States rushed to shore up Russia's fragile democracy. Some prominent observers at the time felt that the United States was premature in courting Russia and that it should work harder to promote geopolitical pluralism in the rest of the former Soviet Union.

Former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew BrzezinskiForeign Affairsdescribed a healthy and stable Ukraine as one in early 1994critical counterweight to Russiaand the axis of what he advocated would be the new grand strategy of the post-Cold War United States. "It cannot be overstated that without Ukraine Russia ceases to be an empire, but with the subordination and subordination of Ukraine, Russia automatically becomes an empire," he wrote. In the months following the publication of Brzezinski's article, the US, UK and Russia pledged in the Budapest referendum to respect Ukraine's independence and sovereignty in exchange for becoming a non-nuclear state.

Twenty years later, when Russian troops occupied Crimea, restoring and strengthening Ukraine's sovereignty again became a top US and EU foreign policy priority. After the 2022 invasion, US and NATO allies dramatically increased defense, economic and humanitarian aid to Ukraine and tightened their sanctions against Russia. However, Western leaders have been careful to avoid actions that they believe would draw their countries in or escalate war, which, in extreme cases, could pose a nuclear threat.

Timeline

Ukraine's struggle for independence in Russia's shadow

1991–2022

see the timeline

What are US and EU policies on Ukraine?

The United States remains committed to restoring Ukraine's territorial integrity and sovereignty. It does not recognize Russia's claims to Crimea or other regions illegally annexed by Russia. Before the 2022 invasion, the United States supported a settlement for the Donbass conflictthe Minsk agreements[PDF].

Western powers and their partners have taken many steps to increase aid to Ukraine and punish Russia for its 2022 offensive.$17 billion in security aid[PDF], including advanced rocket and missile systems, helicopters and deadly drones. Several NATO allies are providing similar security assistance.

meanwhile theInternational Sanctionsin Russia have expanded enormously, encompassing much of the financial, energy, defense and technology sectors and targeting the assets of wealthy oligarchs and others. The US and some European governments have also banned some Russian banks from participating in the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, a financial messaging system known as SWIFT; restrictions on Russia's ability to access its vast foreign exchange reserves; and blacklisted the Central Bank of Russia. In addition, many influential Western companies have ceased or ceased operations in Russia. The Group of Eight, now known as thegroup of seven, suspended Russia indefinitely from its ranks in 2014.

The invasion also cost Russia the long-awaited Nord Stream 2 pipeline after Germany withheld its regulatory approval in February. Many critics, including US and Ukrainian officials, rejected the pipeline as it was being developed, claiming it would give Russia greater political influence in Ukraine and the European gas market. In August, Russia indefinitely suspended operations on Nord Stream 1, which supplied the European market with up to a third of its natural gas.

What do Ukrainians want?

Russia's aggression in recent years has increased public support for the westernization of Ukraine. After Euromaidan, the country elected billionaire businessman Petro Poroshenko, a staunch supporter of EU and NATO integration, as president. In 2019, Zelenskyy defeated Poroshenko in a sign of deep public dissatisfaction with the political establishment and its faltering fight against corruption and an oligarchic economy.