UKRAINE

Crossing the line

Ukraine map

Moscow sees the Wests meddling

encroachment on Russia itself.

in

Ukraine

as

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IN UKRAINE, the West is reaping the whirlwind it has sowed in Russia in the past
two decades.
Flush with its triumph in the Cold War, the West treated Russia as a fallen enemy
who would never rise again and whose interests and sensitivities could be safely
ignored. Western leaders cheated Mikhail Gorbachev when they solemnly promised
him not to move North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) borders to the East if he
agreed to the reunification of Germany. They cheated Boris Yeltsin by telling him
that NATOs eastward expansion would not bring the alliances military might to
Russias doorstep and then setting up military bases in Poland, Bulgaria and
Romania. And again they cheated Vladimir Putin in the Ukraine crisis.
It was the Russian leader who persuaded the embattled President Viktor Yanukovich
to make concessions to the opposition and sign the February 21 peace accord,

according to Polands Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, who mediated in the talks
together with the Foreign Ministers of Germany and France. A Russian diplomat
confirmed that United States President Barack Obama and the leaders of Germany,
France and Poland had asked Putin to weigh in on Yanukovich, promising in return
to make sure the Ukrainian opposition honoured their end of the deal. The
agreement called for Yanukovich to pull back security forces from the streets and for
the protesters to surrender their weapons. It further envisaged a coalition
government of national unity, constitutional reforms that would take care of the
interests of Ukraines Russian-speaking regions, and presidential election by
December.
However, as soon as Yanukovich ordered the riot police back to barracks, the
opposition took over government offices and forced Yanukovich to flee Kiev. Western
powers welcomed the instalment of an opposition-only pro-Western government and
turned down Russias calls to resolve the crisis on the basis of the February 21 accord.
It is not surprising that Putin refused to be taken in by Western assurances that
Ukraine is not about a strategic competition between East and West.
In fact, this is exactly how the Kremlin sees the Ukraine crisis. The West took
advantage of the massive protests against the kleptocratic and inept regime of
Yanukovich in order to push its agenda of tearing Ukraine away from Russia.
For Russia, it is not just a red line, its a solid double red line no one is permitted to
cross, said Fyodor Lukyanov, Chairman of Russias authoritative Council on Foreign
and Defence Policy.
Moscow sees the Wests meddling in Ukraine as encroachment on Russia itself.
According to Ukraines official statistics, ethnic Russians account for 17 per cent of its
population of 46 million people. But when Gallup pollsters asked Ukrainians in what
language they would rather be polled, 83 per cent chose Russian.
Russians are still reeling from the disintegration of the Soviet empire which made
them the largest divided nation in the world, with 25 million ethnic Russians finding
themselves in foreign countries. When Putin famously stated that the collapse of the
Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century, he
expressed the feeling of many Russians.
The West clearly underestimated Putins resolve to act to assert Russian interests in
Ukraine. He deployed additional troops in the peninsula, where Russia has a naval
base, and obtained a mandate from the Russian Parliament to send troops to other
parts of Ukraine to protect Russian speakers from far-Right Ukrainian nationalists.
After the West stonewalled his proposals to return to the February 21 accord, Putin
gave the green light to Crimeas bid to split from Ukraine and join Russia.
A dominant narrative today has it that Putin could not allow Ukraine to slip out of
his control because it is the birthplace of Russian civilisation. Moreover, Crimea
was part of Russia until 1954 when it was handed over to Ukraine by Soviet leader
Nikita Khrushchev in a symbolic gesture to mark the 300th anniversary of Ukraines
merger with Russia. What was a mere formality back then when both Russia and
Ukraine were part of the Soviet Union is seen today in Russia as an act of enormous
historical injustice.
Geopolitical compulsion

However, Putin had a far stronger geopolitical compulsion to interferethe all-tooreal prospect of Ukraine joining NATO. The new leaders in Kiev are the same people
who staged the orange revolution in Ukraine in 2004 and set Ukraine on the path
of NATO membership. After coming to power in 2010, Yanukovich reasserted
Ukraines non-bloc status by law and signed a pact with Moscow to extend the
Russian lease of the Sevastopol naval base from 2017 to 2042 in exchange for a
significant discount on Russian gas prices. The opposition vowed to retract both acts.
Russian strategists describe Ukraines possible accession to NATO as a strategic
catastrophe for Russia. NATO would come within 425 kilometres of Moscow,
squeeze Russia out of the Black Sea and the Caucasus and deny it projection of power
to the Mediterranean.
Conservative Russian philosopher Alexander Dugin, whose ideas of Russias
Eurasianism as opposed to Western ultra-liberalism increasingly resonate in the
Kremlin, views the current upheaval in Ukraine as the battle of the unipolar world of
U.S. hegemony against Russia.
Whereas in Libya we shunned the battle, because we had [President Dmitry]
Medvedev at the helm, in Syria and Ukraine we have taken up the gauntlet, Prof.
Dugin wrote recently.
Along with pursuing military encirclement of Russia, the West has sought to disrupt
Russias efforts for the economic reintegration of ex-Soviet states.
U.S. leaders publicly stated that their goal was to derail Putins plan to build the
Eurasian Economic Union (EEC), a Moscow-led version of the European Union
(E.U.), which they denounced as a disguised attempt to recreate the Soviet Union.
There is a move to re-Sovietise the region, Hillary Clinton said in 2012, when she
was still U.S. Secretary of State. Its not going to be called that. Its going to be called
a Customs Union, it will be called Eurasian Union and all of that.
But lets make no mistake about it, she added. We know what the goal is and we
are trying to figure out effective ways to slow down or prevent it.
The most effective way to wreck the EEC was to prevent Ukraine, the second most
powerful economy in the former Soviet Union, from joining the project.
The E.U. had negotiated with Yanukovich a free trade and association pact that
would have precluded Ukraine from entering any other economic alliances.
Yanukovich balked at signing it in November after failing to win any meaningful
financial assistance from the crisis-hit E.U. The move triggered mass protests that
eventually brought down his government as people felt robbed of hopes for a better
life as part of rich Europe.
Economists argued that had Yanukovich signed the accord on E.U. terms it would
have reduced Ukraine to Europes colonial appendage.
Apart from the geopolitical aspects and the historically predetermined standoff with
Russia, [Europes] key economic motive [for a free trade zone with Ukraine] is the
annexation of a new market for sales of the E.U. member-countries products, which
European leaders believe will help lead the economy out of the crisis, said Dr Nikita
Krichevsky, a leading Russian economist.
Domestic motives

Apart from geopolitical considerations, the Russian intervention in Ukraine has been
driven by important domestic motives. No matter how much the protests in Ukraine
were manipulated by the West, they reflected the rise of grass-roots-level civic
activity against corruption and authoritarianismthe same problems that brought
thousands of anti-government protesters onto the streets of Moscow two years ago.
By intervening in Ukraine, Putin sought to stop its pro-democracy agitation from
spilling over to Russia.
Putin is widely expected to seek a fourth presidential term in 2018. However, the
protest rallies against his return to presidency in 2012 were a sign of growing
wariness with his rule. A poll conducted by the respected Levada Centre last year
showed that half of Russians would like to see a new leader in 2018.
Putins move in Ukraine, if successful, could reverse the negative trend. Several
surveys in March showed that Putins popularity was at its highest since his reelection.
Experts said Putin needed a new agenda to retain voter supportreassembly of lost
Russian lands.
Putin has exhausted the limit of peoples gratitude to him for having saved the
country from chaos and ruin, said Dugin. He needs a new future-oriented strategy
to re-establish his legitimacy. Eurasian integration of the former Soviet space would
give him such a strategy.
However, Putins strategy in Ukraine is fraught with serious risks. He may be right in
his calculations that Western powers would not impose hard-hitting economic
sanctions on Russia for fear of hurting their own economies, but it is much harder to
predict how the situation evolves in Ukraine.
Yanukovichs downfall left Ukraine in shatters. The country is bankrupt and is
heading for default. The new authorities shaky grip on power may weaken further as
they embark on harsh austerity measures to qualify for urgent assistance from the
International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Western powers. The revolution, as
Ukraines new leaders call it, or the West-orchestrated coup, according to Putin,
widened the chasm between Ukraines pro-Russia southeast and pro-Europe west.
If Ukraine breaks up along the east-west divide, its western part will join NATO. This
would be a dubious victory for Russia.
Putin has made it clear he would prefer Ukraine to switch to a federative structure,
with the Russian-speaking regions getting enough autonomy to block any sharp
swing towards the West.
The stakes for Putin are very high. If he reasserts control over Ukraine, his popularity
in Russia will shoot up, but if the crisis drags on and Russia ends up with a hostile
Ukraine and spoiled relations with the West, he may face a dangerous surge in
discontent at home.