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Ukraine and Russia: People, Politics, Propaganda and Perspectives EDITED COLLECTION E-IR.INFO Ukraine and Russia: People, Politics, Propaganda and Perspectives Ukraine and Russia: People, Politics, Propaganda and Perspectives i Ukraine and Russia: People, Politics, Propaganda and Perspectives EDITED BY AGNIESZKA PIKULICKA-WILCZEWSKA & RICHARD SAKwa Ukraine and Russia: People, Politics, Propaganda and Perspectives ii E-International Relations www.E-IR.info Bristol, UK 2015 The material herein is published under a Creative Commons License CC BY-NC-SA 3.0. You are free to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt this work under the following conditions: You must attribute the work to both 1) the author, who retains copyright and 2) to the publisher, E-International Relations - but not in any way that suggests that either party endorses you or your use of the work. You may not use this work for commercial purposes. If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you must make this clear when doing so and you must distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one. For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. The best way to do this is with a link to this web page: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission. Please contact [email protected] for any such enquiries. Series Editors: Stephen McGlinchey, Marianna Karakoulaki, and Robert Oprisko Copy Editing: Michael Pang Production: Ran Xiao Cover Image: Paganelj E-International Relations is the world’s leading open access website for students and scholars of international politics. The website was established in November 2007, and is run by a UK registered non-profit organisation staffed with an all-volunteer team. The website has over 200,000 unique visitors a month (2014 average) from a worldwide audience. We publish a daily range of articles, blogs, essays, reviews and interviews. Our venture into producing print copies of our publications, starting in 2015, has come as a result of demand from libraries, readers, and authors – but also to help us cover the significant costs of producing these publications. As E-International Relations is committed to open access in the fullest sense, this book is also available as a free PDF download on the E-International Relations website on our publications page: http://www.e-ir.info/publications/ Paperback: ISBN 978-1-910814-00-0 Digital: ISSN 2053-8626 Ukraine and Russia: People, Politics, Propaganda and Perspectives iii Note on transliteration The editors of this collection decided to use the more common, anglicised, version of Russian and Ukrainian words in order to make the publication readable for a diverse audience. Please note that in the case of the word ‘Donbas/Donbass’ we left the choice of transliteration to authors’ discretion. Ukraine and Russia: People, Politics, Propaganda and Perspectives iv Abstract The intense and dangerous turmoil provoked by the breakdown in Russo-Ukrainian relations has escalated into a crisis that now afflicts both European and global affairs. Since the beginning of the confrontation, a lot has been written about its root causes, the motivations of the main actors, and possible scenarios for the future. However, few have looked at what came to be called the ‘Ukraine crisis’ from the point of view of Russo-Ukrainian relations, and grasped the perspectives of various groups involved, as well as the discursive processes that have contributed to the developments in and interpretations of the conflict. --- Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska is Blogs Editor with E-International Relations, and a member of the website’s Editorial Board. She holds a double MA degree in International Relations from the University of Kent and the Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Since 2012, she has worked in the human rights sector with various non- profit organisations in Ireland and the UK, focusing on areas such as ethnic minority, refugee rights and migration. She can be contacted at [email protected]. Richard Sakwa is Professor of Russian and European Politics at the University of Kent, an Associate Fellow of the Russia and Eurasia programme at Chatham House, and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. His main research interests are Russian domestic and international politics, European international relations and comparative democratisation. Recent books include The Crisis of Russian Democracy: The Dual State, Factionalism, and the Medvedev Succession (Cambridge University Press, 2011), Putin and the Oligarch: The Khodorkovsky - Yukos Affair (I. B. Tauris, 2014), Putin Redux: Power and Contradiction in Contemporary Russia (Routledge, 2014) and Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands (I. B. Tauris, 2015). He can be contacted at [email protected]. Ukraine and Russia: People, Politics, Propaganda and Perspectives v Contents 1 INTRODUCTION Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska 8 SECTION ONE: PEO PLE 9 ETHNIC AND SOCIAL COMPOSITION OF UKRAINE’s REGIONS AND VOTING PATTERNS David Marples 19 UNDERSTANDING THE OTHER UKRAINE: IDENTITY AND ALLEGIANCE IN RUSSOPHONE UKRAINE Nicolai N. Petro 36 BrOTHERS GRIMM OR BROTHERS KARAMAZOV: THE MYTH AND THE REALITY OF HOW RUSSIANS AND UKRAINIANS VIEW THE OTHER Olga Onuch 59 ROOTS AND FEATURES OF MODERN UKRAINIAN NATIONAL IDENTITY AND NATIONALISM Denys Kiryukhin 69 EVERYDAY LIFE AFTER ANNEXATION: THE AUTONOMOUS REPUBLIC OF CRIMEA Greta Uehling 80 CrIMEA: PEOPLE AND TERRITORY BEFORE AND AFTER ANNEXATION Ivan Katchanovski 90 RUSSIANS IN UKRAINE: BEFORE AND AFTER EUROMAIDAN Mikhail Pogrebinskiy 100 SECTION TWO: pOLITICS 101 UKRAINIAN POLITICS SINCE INDEPENDENCE Andrew Wilson Ukraine and Russia: People, Politics, Propaganda and Perspectives vi 109 THE ORIGINS OF PEACE, NON-VIOLENCE, AND CONFLICT IN UKRAINE Taras Kuzio 123 THE UKRAINIAN CRISIS AND ITS ImpaCT ON TRANSFORMING RUSSIAN NATIONALISM LANDSCAPE Marlene Laruelle 129 AN UNNECESSARY WAR: THE GEOPOLITICAL ROOTS OF THE UKRAINE CRISIS Peter Rutland 141 BeTWEEN EAST AND WEST: NATO ENLARGEMENT AND THE GEOPOLITICS OF THE UKRAINE CRISIS Edward W. Walker 155 SECTION THREE: PROPAGANDA 156 ‘HYBRID WAR’ And ‘LITTLE GREEN MEn’: HOW IT WORKS, AND HOW IT DOEsn’t Mark Galeotti 165 Putin’s NATIONALISM PROBLEM Paul Chaisty & Stephen Whitefield 173 VLADIMIR PUTIN: MAKING OF THE NATIONAL HERO Elena Chebankova 183 DOMINANT NARRATIVES IN RUSSIAN POLITICAL AND MEDIA DISCOURSE DURING THE UKRAINE CRISIS Stephen Hutchings & Joanna Szostek 197 THE UKRAINE STORY IN WESTERN MEDIA Marta Dyczok 206 RUSSIA AS UKRAINE’s ‘OTHER’: IDENTITY AND GEOPOLITICS Mikhail A. Molchanov Ukraine and Russia: People, Politics, Propaganda and Perspectives vii 222 SECTION FOUR: PERSPECTIVES 223 WESTERN ECONOMIC SANCTIONS AND RUSSIA’s PlACE IN THE GLOBAL ECONOMY Richard Connolly 233 DemOCRACY AND GEOPOLITICS: UNDERSTANDING UKRAINE’s THREAT TO RUSSIA Paul D’Anieri 242 PERSPECTIVES FOR RUSSIA’s FutuRE: THE CASE FOR NARRATIVE ANALYSIS Edwin Bacon 251 DIVERSITY POLICY IN UKRAINE AND ITS NEIGHBOURS: RUNNING ON THE SPOT AGAIN? Alexander Osipov 260 CONCLUSION: MONISM VS. PLURALISM Richard Sakwa 271 CONTRIBUTORS Ukraine and Russia: People, Politics, Propaganda and Perspectives 1 Introduction AGNIESZKA PIKULICKA-WILCZEWSKA E-INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS Ukraine and Russia: People, Politics, Propaganda and Perspectives 2 When, on 21 November 2013, former Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych decided to postpone the EU Association Agreement, few would have predicted that this, in consequence, would lead to a prolonged conflict in Europe’s borderland. What started as a peaceful demonstration of support for Ukraine’s pro-European course by thousands of people in Maidan Square in Kiev has developed into a vicious confrontation dividing families, communities and the Ukrainian nation. According to the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), since the beginning of the conflict, over 500,000 people have left their homes looking for a safe place elsewhere in the country, and hundreds of thousands have fled from Ukraine, mainly to Russia. By February 2015, over 5,000 have been killed and well over 10,000 seriously injured in the conflict in the Donbass. The scale of the human tragedy is immense and, at the time of writing, the conflict is getting increasingly intense and militarised, despite the official ceasefire imposed as a result of the Minsk Accords of 5 September 2014 and various subsequent agreements. Since the beginning of the confrontation, a lot has been written about its root causes, the motivations of the main actors, and possible scenarios for the future. However, in spite of the large number of analyses produced, few have looked at what came to be called the ‘Ukraine crisis’ from the point of view of Russo-Ukrainian relations, and grasped the perspectives of various groups involved, as well as the discursive processes that have contributed to the developments in and interpretations of the conflict. With this in mind, the editors of this volume have invited twenty-three world- leading academics, specialising in different areas related to Russia and Ukraine, to contribute to the following collection. The studies are divided into four sections: People, Politics, Propaganda, and Perspectives. People The first section looks at the social make-up of Ukraine and focuses on its ethnic and linguistic diversity, as well as relations between the different ethnic groups. Due to the fact that the Ukrainian conflict has developed, at least partly, as a consequence of existing divisions that have exacerbated the differences between various groups,
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