Conflict in Ukraine

Conflict in Ukraine Conflict in Ukraine The Unwinding of the Post–Cold War Order Rajan Menon and Eugene Rumer A Boston Review Book The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England © 2015 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, re- cording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales promotional use. For information, please email special_ [email protected]. This book was set in Stone by Boston Review and printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available. ISBN 978-0-262-02904-9 (hc. : alk paper) 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To Roger E. Kanet and Oles M. Smolansky (R.M.) and To the memory of Stephen M. Meyer (E.R.) Contents Introduction: Ukraine 2014 ix 1 The Making of Ukraine 1 2 Nobody Expected a Crisis 53 3 Impact of the Crisis on Russia 87 4 Europe and the Crisis 107 5 Ukraine’s Prospects 145 6 Conclusion 157 Acknowledgments 163 Notes 165 Index 211 About the Authors 221 Introduction: Ukraine 2014 “Crisis” is an overused word, one that has been cheapened as a result. Yet it aptly describes the train of events that followed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision in Novem- ber 2013 to back away from Ukraine’s Association Agreement (AA) with the European Union. (Ukraine and the EU had begun negotiations on the AA in March 2007; it was initialed, but not signed, in February 2012.1) Yanukovych’s choice proved fateful, for the AA was no ordinary document. It was a symbol of hope for those Ukrainians (well represented in the country’s central and western regions) who dreamed of integrating with Europe, but not for those (chiefly in the south and east) who favored retaining close ties with Russia. Soon, protestors swarmed Kyiv’s streets. Blood was shed fol- lowing Yanukovych’s decision to unleash riot police and snipers to quell the rebellion. This violence merely enraged and enlarged the crowds. By February, with the death toll mounting and his political position perilous, Yanukovych opted for the olive branch. On the 21st, with EU emissaries mediating, he signed a pact with the leaders of the revolt.2 Its provisions included forming a “national unity” government within ten days, prun- ing presidential powers, restoring the 2004 constitution, and x Introduction organizing early elections, under new guidelines, by year’s end. American and European leaders praised the compromise, and so did Russia, but it failed to stick on the street, and figures in the opposition bent on ousting Yanukovych rejected it. Any solu- tion involving him became impossible. Having already lost the support of the parliament (Verkhovna Rada), he fled the follow- ing day, Feburary 22. Yanukovych’s ouster merely moved the crisis to a new, more dangerous phase. What many Ukrainians, along with Western governments, hailed as a revolution against a corrupt, author- itarian regime, Russia denounced as an “extra-constitutional coup” against an elected leader. Things soon took a turn for the worse. With Yanukovych out of the picture, the leaders of Crimea, Ukraine’s sole Russian- majority province, organized a referendum on secession on March 16—in contravention of Ukraine’s constitution. Article 73 of that document stipulates: “Alterations to the territory of Ukraine shall be resolved exclusively through the All-Ukraine referendum.” Article 72 provides that only the Verkhovna Rada and the president can call a referendum and that a prerequisite is a petition signed by three million eligible voters, with at least 100,000 signatures collected from each of Ukraine’s provinces and a majority backing the referendum in at least two-thirds of them.3 The Crimea referendum, held while paramilitary forces and Russian troops roamed the streets, met none of these require- ments. Moreover, the vote was organized by pro-Russian politi- cians who had recently seized power by force and whose leader’s party, Russia Unity, won a mere four percent of the vote in the previous elections to the local parliament in October 2010. Russian forces, both those already based in Crimea and oth- ers sent to reinforce them, started sealing off the peninsula and Introduction xi taking over installations. Amidst the upheaval, the referendum passed, and within days, Russia formally annexed Crimea with a “treaty of accession.” This initiated another chain reaction. Armed rebels in the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk (the Donbas region) seized installations, proclaimed republics, and readied for Crimea-like referendums, doubtless banking on Russia’s backing. Ukraine seemed to be fragmenting. The Russian media began an information campaign to cast the Kyiv government in the worst light, linking it to the far-right and pro-Nazi forces of the 1940s and stoking the fears of the Russophone and ethnic Russian population in the Donbas. Speculation mounted about a Russian invasion in support of the insurgents. Together, these unexpected events produced an atmosphere of emergency and the urgency of a genuine crisis. Like most international political crises, this one was marked by mounting fears that war might soon erupt—and spread. Faced with a full-blown insurgency in Donetsk and Luhansk, the new Ukrainian government proclaimed an “anti-terrorism campaign” in April. Soon, Ukraine’s army and National Guard, together with an array of private militias acting as free agents, were at war with the rebels, and the violence intensified after the May referendums on self-rule in the two eastern provinces. That, in turn, heightened the fear of a Russian invasion in support of the insurgents—especially as Moscow massed troops along Ukraine’s border and staged military maneuvers in nearby Russian regions—even though Putin asked for the Donbas referendums to be delayed and failed to recognize the “republics” that were proclaimed in their aftermath. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, the NATO members most directly exposed to a wider military confrontation, implored their allies for demonstrations xii Introduction of support, including the deployment of troops. The question became how Russia would react if NATO obliged. Typically, opposing sides entangled in a crisis tend to believe—rightly or wrongly—that critical interests are at stake and that their adversaries will interpret signs of conciliation as weakness. This phenomenon was apparent in Ukraine, where the contending parties were disinclined to draw back and deter- mined to demonstrate resolve. That mindset increased the ten- sion, and with it the fear that misperception, faulty information, miscalculation, or even an accident would create a spiraling confrontation. There were (hyperbolic) comparisons between 2014 and August 1914. What has come to pass in Ukraine —and what is still, as of this writing, underway—is a crisis for yet another reason: the rapid pace of developments and the sense of those caught up in them that, to paraphrase Ralph Waldo Emerson, “events are in the saddle,” having acquired their own momentum and power. Those making critical decisions under such circumstances fear a loss of control. Entrenched assumptions harden, antagonists assume the worst, anxiety increases, and pessimism prevails. Ukraine has been no exception. Thus Ukraine 2014 qualifies as classic crisis—indeed the worst to emerge between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War—and one that will be explored and debated for decades to come. By the time it erupted, Western attitudes toward Russia had already begun to harden, thanks in large part to the 2008 Russia- Georgia war and Putin’s tightening of political controls within Russia. President Obama’s effort to improve the situation with a “reset” of relations with Russia was withering on the vine. This context made it even harder to calm the crisis, and the rhetorical salvos exchanged by Russia and the West did not help matters. Introduction xiii Amidst the rising political temperature, compromise by any of the contending parties risked being dismissed by critics as naïve, even pusillanimous. In all, it was an unpropitious setting for diplomacy. But the crisis in Ukraine had even wider ramifications. Con- vinced that Russia’s political support and supply of arms were the taproots of the Donbas insurgency, the United States and Europe imposed economic sanctions, which increased in sever- ity in July after a Malaysia Airways passenger jet was shot down over eastern Ukraine (almost certainly by a missile fired by the insurgents at what they had assumed was a military aircraft), kill- ing nearly 300 passengers and crew. Moscow responded to the sanctions with an amalgam of nonchalance and defiance, roll- ing out its own economic penalties and threatening more. The sanctions, the suspension of Russia from the G-8 bloc of global economic powers, and the cessation of NATO’s political coop- eration with Moscow shredded the relationship between Russia and the West and threatened the entire post–Cold War Euro- pean political-military order. The larger imperative of cooperat- ing to advance common interests fell by the wayside. Instead, in the press and among experts there was talk of a new Cold War, a colorful but facile comparison. By late September 2014, when we wrote this introduction, the death toll in eastern Ukraine was making global headlines. Over three thousand people had been killed, and even more seemed destined to die.4 The United Nations High Commission for Refu- gees estimated that many thousands more had fled their homes as refugees (mainly to Russia) or were “internally displaced per- sons.” In Luhansk and Donetsk, people risked life and limb to continue quotidian routines.

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