Yanukovych’s decision to reject an economic association agreement with the European Union and forge closer relations with Moscow triggered demonstrations in which violent demonstrators took over government buildings in Kiev’s center. Such protests were easy to organize since the capital was located in the country’s west, dominated by the opposition and oriented toward America and Europe.
https://original.antiwar.com/?p=2012340695
Should the U.S. be ready to go to war with Russia over Ukraine? NATO’s answer is yes. At least, leaders of the transatlantic alliance continue to encourage Kiev’s ambition to join NATO, thereby becoming yet another costly Washington defense dependent.
US policymakers should remember that alliances are supposed to be a means to the end, America’s security, not the end itself. Absent necessity to protect an overriding, genuinely vital interest, risking war with a nuclear-armed power, in this case Russia, would be a particularly stupid policy.
Ukraine has a long, storied, and tragic history. Subsumed by the Russian Empire, Kiev briefly gained independence amid the Russian Revolution, German victory over the Bolshevik regime, and the bitter Russian civil war. (Poland also was intimately involved in the ludicrously complicated period of chaos and conflict.)
Unfortunately, the territory, augmented by lands that had been governed by Austro-Hungary, ultimately was reabsorbed by Moscow, this time through the new but not improved imperial Russia in the form of the Soviet Union. Ukraine suffered through the murderous Stalin-induced famine, known as the Holomodyr, which killed millions. Estimates vary widely but range up to about ten million.
Unsurprisingly, many Ukrainians initially welcomed German troops as liberators in 1941. However, Adolf Hitler viewed Slavs as untermenschen and saw Ukrainians no differently. Berlin’s murderous mistreatment turned the population against the Nazis. Perhaps six million Ukrainians died during the war – and another 1.4 million were killed fighting with the Red Army. After Moscow’s forces returned Ukrainian resistance, this time against the Soviets, continued for years. The territory was beset by famine, again. About one-fifth of Ukraine’s population, including ethnic Germans and Tartars, was deported.
Freedom finally came. In 1990 a popularly elected parliament approved the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine, which set Ukrainian law before that of the Soviet Union. In late 1991 Ukraine voted for independence and a president. A nation then of 52 million, it was the largest constituent republic to break away from the U.S.S.R. Alas, the new country suffered from economic decline, corruption, awful leadership, and Russian meddling.
Kiev inherited some 3000 nuclear weapons, stationed in its territory during the Cold War. In 1994 Ukraine joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and two years later transferred the warheads to Russia to be dismantled. Through the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances the US, Russia, and the United Kingdom promised to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty and offered vacuous security assurances. The agreement was a presidential proclamation, not ratified by the US Senate, and provided no practical recourse, backed only by a promise to go to the UN Security Council for redress. Which in practice was no promise at all.
Ukrainians’ choice in leaders seemed perennially suspect. The first two presidents were essentially apparatchiks from the past. Among the least competent leaders was American favorite Viktor Yushchenko. This president won just 5.45 percent of the vote in his 2010 reelection campaign and his party garnered only 1.11 percent of the vote in the 2012 legislative election. His successor was the egregiously corrupt but freely chosen Viktor Yanukovych, who represented Ukraine’s Russia-friendly east.
Yanukovych’s decision to reject an economic association agreement with the European Union and forge closer relations with Moscow triggered demonstrations in which violent demonstrators took over government buildings in Kiev’s center. Such protests were easy to organize since the capital was located in the country’s west, dominated by the opposition and oriented toward America and Europe. As violence mounted Washington and Brussels promoted what amounted to a street putsch, even discussing their preferred candidates for prime minister. Yanukovych agreed to early elections, but his support dissipated and the Rada removed him.
Moscow responded violently, seizing Crimea, in which Sebastopol naval base is located. Russia subsequently held a referendum, which backed annexation. The vote was highly unfair but probably reflected local sentiment. The territory historically was part of Russia, transferred to Ukraine only in 1954. The shift caused little practical difference in the Soviet Union; the move likely reflected political maneuvers involving Ukrainian Communist Party officials as Nikita Khrushchev and his Politburo colleagues fought for supremacy in the aftermath of Joseph Stalin’s death.
Vladimir Putin’s government also backed ethnic-Russian insurgents in Donetsk and Luhansk. Some 13,000 people so far have died in the ensuing conflict. In 2016 both sides agreed to the Minsk Protocol, in which Kiev agreed to constitutional changes enhancing regional autonomy in the Donbas and Russia promised to end military support for opposition forces, after which the region would be reintegrated into Ukraine. The pact has not been fulfilled due to failures on both sides, especially by Kiev: nationalists opposed the accord from the start and some Ukrainians reconsidered retaining areas with a heavy ethnic Russian presence.
Although Ukraine is not a member of NATO – it was promised membership, along with Georgia, in 2008, without any timetable given – much of official Washington urged American military intervention. Some policymakers proposed rushing Kiev into the transatlantic alliance. Others urged sending US troops to Ukraine to serve as a tripwire for war to discourage further Russian action. Almost everyone backed arming Kiev’s armed forces.
The Obama administration provided non-lethal aid. Despite the Trump administration’s supposed pro-Russia bias, it ramped up tensions by shipping Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine. Read the rest of this entry »
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