The Sources of Russia's Great Power Politics
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i TARAS KUZIO & PAUL D’ANIERI The Sources of Russia’s Great Power Politics Ukraine and the Challenge to the European Order This e-book is provided without charge via free download by E-International Relations (www.E-IR.info). It is not permitted to be sold in electronic format under any circumstances. If you enjoy our free e-books, please consider leaving a small donation to allow us to continue investing in open access publications: http://www.e-ir.info/about/donate/ i Russia’s fraught relationship with Ukraine is an essential element of Europe’s evolving landscape. Taras Kuzio and Paul D’Anieri offer a refreshing look at the sources of Russian conduct toward Ukraine. They challenge conventional analyses by exploring deeper roots of Russian-Ukrainian conflict and placing Russian tactics against Ukraine in a broader historical context. Their study is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the future of Russia’s relations with Ukraine. – Daniel S. Hamilton, Austrian Marshall Plan Foundation Professor, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University. Taras Kuzio and Paul D’Anieri provide an invaluable guide of the complexities of current developments in and Russia’s military aggression against Ukraine. The book draws on comprehensive field research, demonstrates deep knowledge and understanding of Ukrainian-Russian relations, and presents an alternative to much of the Western writing on the crisis. The book will be an invaluable source for journalists, policymakers and teaching in academia. – Andriy Meleshevych, President, National University Kyiv Mohyla Academy. Two of the West’s preeminent Ukraine scholars have written an indispensable book that clearly, concisely and persuasively demonstrates that Vladimir Putin’s war against Ukraine is not a response to Western behaviour but the product of longstanding tendencies within Russian policy. Taras Kuzio and Paul D’Anieri’s book is a much welcome antidote to the superficiality and ignorance that characterise so much of Western writing on Russia and Ukraine. – Alexander Motyl, Professor of Political Science, Rutgers University. ii iii The Sources of Russia’s Great Power Politics Ukraine and the Challenge to the European Order TARAS KUZIO AND PAUL D’ANIERI iv E-International Relations www.E-IR.info Bristol, England 2018 ISBN 978-1-910814-39-0 (paperback) ISBN 978-1-910814-40-6 (e-book) This book is published under a Creative Commons CC BY-NC 4.0 license. You are free to: • Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format • Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material Under the following terms: • Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. • NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes. Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission. Please contact [email protected] for any such enquiries, including for licensing and translation requests. Other than the terms noted above, there are no restrictions placed on the use and dissemination of this book for student learning materials/scholarly use. Production: Michael Tang Cover Image: Maksymenko Nataliia A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. v E-IR Open Access Series Editor: Stephen McGlinchey Copy-editors: Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska & Cameran Clayton Editorial Assistants: Gaia Rizzi, Farah H. 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The website is run by a non-profit organisation based in Bristol, England and staffed by an all-volunteer team of students and scholars. http://www.e-ir.info vi Abstract The 2014 Russia–Ukraine conflict has transformed relations between Russia and the West into what many are calling a new cold war. The West has slowly come to understand that Russia’s annexations and interventions, interference in elections, cyber warfare, disinformation, assassinations in Europe and support for anti-EU populists emerge from Vladimir Putin’s belief that Russia is at war with the West. This book shows that the crisis has deep roots in Russia’s inability to come to terms with an independent Ukrainian state, Moscow’s view of the Orange and Euromaidan revolutions as Western conspiracies and, finally, its inability to understand that most Russian-speaking Ukrainians do not want to rejoin Russia. In Moscow’s eyes, Ukraine is central to rebuilding a sphere of influence within the former Soviet space and to re-establishing Russia as a great power. The book shows that the wide range of ‘hybrid’ tactics that Russia has deployed show continuity with the actions of the Soviet-era security services. About the Authors Taras Kuzio is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Centre for Transatlantic Relations at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Study and Professor, Department of Political Science, National University Kyiv Mohyla Academy. He is the author and editor of 21 books and think tank monographs, including Putin’s War Against Ukraine. Revolution, Nationalism, and Crime (2017), Ukraine. Democratization, Corruption and the New Russian Imperialism (2015), The Crimea. Europe’s Next Flashpoint? (2010) and Ukraine-Crimea-Russia: Triangle of Conflict (2007). Paul D’Anieri is Professor of Political Science and Public Policy at the University of California, Riverside. In the fall of 2017, he was Eugene and Daymel Shklar Research Fellow in Ukrainian Studies at Harvard University. He is the author and editor of numerous books and articles on Ukrainian politics and Ukraine’s relations with Russia and the West, including Economic Interdependence in Ukrainian–Russian Relations (1999) and Understanding Ukrainian Politics (2006). vii Acknowledgements Taras Kuzio acknowledges the generous financial support over four years provided by the Ukrainian Studies Fund (USF) of the US and the enthusiastic encouragement of Bohdan Vitvitsky and Roman Procyk. USF funding enabled 15 research visits to cities, villages and military frontlines in Eastern and Southern Ukraine and the ATO (Anti-Terrorist Operation) conflict zone which became the basis for the publication of this book and the earlier published Putin’s War Against Ukraine. Paul D’Anieri acknowledges the generous support of the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute, where he spent the fall semester of 2017 as the Eugene and Daymel Shklar Research Fellow in Ukrainian Studies. The Institute provided exceptional academic resources and a congenial atmosphere for work on this project and on a more in-depth study of Ukraine’s relations with Russia since 1991. He is also grateful to the University of California, Riverside for research leave and generous research support. viii The Sources of Russia’s Great Power Politics Contents 1. CAUSES AND CONSEQUENCES: ASSESSING THE DEBATE 1 2. THE SOVIET ORIGINS OF RUSSIAN HYBRID WARFARE 25 3. RUSSIA-WEST-UKRAINE: TRIANGLE OF COMPETITION, 1991–2013 61 4. ANNEXATION AND HYBRID WARFARE IN CRIMEA AND EASTERN UKRAINE 86 5. INTERNATIONAL RAMIFICATIONS OF THE CRISIS: TOWARDS A NEW COLD WAR? 114 6. CONCLUSION 143 NOTE ON INDEXING 150 Contents ix x The Sources of Russia’s Great Power Politics List of Abbreviations ATO Anti-Terrorist Operation CIS Commonwealth of Independent States DCFTA Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement DNR Donetsk People’s Republic FARA Foreign Agents Registration Act FSB Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation GRU Main Intelligence Directorate (Soviet & Russian military intelligence) IMF International Monetary Fund KGB Committee for State Security of the Soviet Union LNR Luhansk People’s Republic MAP Membership Action Plan NKVD People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs (Soviet secret police) OSCE Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe SBU Security Service of Ukraine RSFSR Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic SVR Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation xi Preface Russia’s seizure of Crimea and prosecution of hybrid war in Eastern Ukraine prompted scholars, analysts, and policy-makers around the world to ask why it happened, what it means for international security in the region and beyond, and how the conflict might be ended or at least managed. Those three questions are inevitably linked. We have written this book to fill what we see as important gaps in the literature, beginning with the question of why the war happened. We contend that the roots of the crisis go back further than is widely understood and therefore we see the cause of the conflict in long-term factors underlying Russia’s policy toward Ukraine. We trace Russia’s goals and tactics from the beginning of the post-Soviet era in 1991, and in some cases to the Soviet era. Rather than focusing on historical breaks, we stress the continuity between the Soviet era, the early post-Soviet era, and the crisis since early 2014. The key break was that Russia, in pursuing goals that it held since 1991, chose to use military force in 2014. Therefore, we contend that Russia’s actions in 2014 were not a response to specific events, such as NATO enlargement, EU policy, democracy promotion or revolution in Ukraine because the main drivers of Russian policy were visible prior to those events.