A background to this never-ending war and why we once again find ourselves in conflict in 2022.
The Russo-Ukrainian war has been an ever-occurring conflict since the Soviet Union was dissolved at the end of the Cold War in 1991 and Ukraine became independent. Ukraine was considered a significant loss for Russia seeing it had the biggest population of all the Soviet states and Putin blamed this markdown on the ever-encroaching Western hostility. Still though, Russia did not accept this defeat and once Putin was in power in 1998, the Kremlin started attempting to gain control over its former territories in a more subtle and affable approach.
The 2004 presidential election in Ukraine can be seen as a turning point in the relationship between the two countries. Putin-backed candidate Yanukovych of ‘Party of Regions’ beat the pro-Western views of Yushchenko and the ‘Our Ukraine’ party in a head-to-head battle. Contention arose, however, when Yushchenko called out the clear election rigging to international observers. What ensued were peaceful protests dubbed the “Orange Revolution”, and a following re-election ousted Yanukovych as Yushchenko triumphed with 52% of the votes.
Yushchenko’s presidency represented a step towards Ukraine further integrating with European ideologies and demonstrated its potential to join the EU and NATO. This clearly opposed Putin’s plans of having Ukraine join the ‘Commonwealth of Independent States’** and maintain Russian Russia did not react v lightly to this, and that year proved to be a pivotal point in its approach to Ukraine; a relationship that quickly went from sweet to sour and showed that Russia was not going to shy away from contention.
Yushchenko served presidency from 2005. In 2010 Yanukovych seized the power back but by 2014 he was once again ousted through protests for having rejected an association agreement with the EU in order to boost Ukraine’s relations with Moscow. After these protests Russia then offered him political asylum.
The sacking of Yanukovych consequently led to Russia’s aggression reaching a culmination point in 2014. Moscow’s response was undertaking the illegal annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea.
Russia’s history with Crimea dates all the way back to 1856 when Russia signed the Treaty of Paris, accepting defeat in the Crimean War, a which decimated its military and ruined its economy. The Black Sea is vital for Russia’s geo-economic strategy; to project Russian power and influence in the Mediterranean by protecting its trade links in the European market and making southern Europe more dependent on Russian oil and gas.
Nevertheless, the seize of Crimea in 2014 sparked a war that ravaged through the country; displacing over 2 million people and destroying its infrastructure. This annexation demonstration Putin’s desperation to recover Russia’s prestige from its pre-Soviet days, a narrative of imperial glory that goes back to the 10th century, a not so shrewd mentality.
In 2014 Russian troops invaded and took over the Crimean Parliament, key airports, and territories. Russia also strategically hacked and shut down all Ukraine government media communicators, news websites, and social media, limiting communications to NATO and between political members. Russia’s overwhelming military power caused Ukraine to withdraw and declare Crimea as ‘temporarily occupied’.
At this point, Ukraine was receiving attacks on all sides; Russia was also sending troops to Donetsk and Luhansk (Ukraine region known as Donbas) to support separatists in the country. Since then, there have been more than 14,000 deaths in the Donbas region due to this conflict.
This fighting raised many humanitarian red flags and in 2014 France and Germany intervened by setting up the Minsk Protocol; an agreement set to end the war in the Donbas region. This quickly failed as Russia did not comply and in 2015, Minsk II was put in place but also failed to stop the conflict. In 2018 it was confirmed by Ukraine that Russia had, unsurprisingly, not followed through with a single point in the agreement.
Since then Ukraine had continuously been a victim of the cyberattacks from Russia but conflicts had remained level and managed to not escalate, up until spring 2021. By 2019 Ukraine’s parliament voted in favor to change its constitution in order to join NATO and European Union, a line that Russia had warned them not to cross.
Consequently, in June of 2021, there was an escalation of violence, Russia mobilised 100,000 soldiers and large amounts of military equipment on the Ukrainian, largest movement since the 2014 annexation of Crimea. Russia’s justifications for this were considered unpersuasive and seemed to be performative of their military power to the new Biden administration. However, by June it seemed that Putin had deflated, and Russian troops were partially removed from the border.
By December 2021 Russia once again mobilised more than 170,000 troops to the border. This caused a worldwide alarm that a war could break out on the grounds that many of the troops had been strategically and ostensibly placed near Ukraine's capital, Kyiv.
In Putin’s annual news conference, December 2021, the world was able to see more into Russia’s point of view, a victim of the insufferable attacks from NATO and their persistent hypocrisies. ‘Not only did NATO lie about not expanding in Soviet-Union countries, but they did so with five waves of expansions’, claimed Putin. These actions have made Russia’s mind up, that Europe will be relentless in beating down its power and will never be satisfied until it is sufficiently wrecked.
Following much-applied pressure from the UN for Russia to communicate, a list of demands had since been made, most of which is to reduce the Western influence in Ukraine and Belarus. This encompasses a guarantee that Ukraine won’t become a member of NATO and that the majority of NATO troops be removed from Eastern Europe. The big question looming over everyone, are Russia’s demands indicative of war or simply economic strategies?
US and NATO allies have rejected these terms of the agreement for being “completely unreasonable” and have warned Russia of the consequences if it invades Ukraine. These include; economic, political, and financial sanctions and assistance being deployed in Ukraine of small arms and defensive weaponry. They also announced after weeks of tense negotiations that NATO is still open to new members.
The president of Ukraine, Zelensky, has acclaimed that Putin’s aim is to destabilize and weaken the country to oust him, seen in Russia’s crippling sanctions on fuel imports of Ukraine that have led to a winter energy crisis. Zelensky has also insisted that Moscow has no authority if Ukraine enters NATO.
This strain affects Russia’s relations with the West and increases tensions so that other major problems will be much harder to tackle such as political unrest in Syria, terrorism, and arms control. The Russo-Ukrainian war could be the dawn of a new strategic era in global affairs.
Russia’s recklessness is assisted by its financial insulation that it has been building up since 2014, following Crimea’s annexation. Gemcorp’s chief economist confirmed that “Russia has become more introverted, it has lowered external debt and higher FX reserves, they need the outside world less now”. This means that sanctions may not be the solution after all because if Russia’s financial system is squeezed too hard, western banks will start to squeal, with far less impact on the Russian economy.
Overall, it is undeniable that this current situation poses the real threat that Russia properly invades Ukraine. However, due to Russia revising its global economic influence, it is difficult to determine the retaliatory response from the West, and whether or not this will simply be another case of the Ukrainian conflict slowly finding its way out of the publics concern.
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