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INTRODUCTION
Ukraine in crisis
Nicolai N. Petro
Department of Political Science, University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI, USA
ABSTRACT
In this special issue a distinguished group of Canadian, Ukrainian, and American scholars examine various aspects of the Ukrainian crisis, and consider its impact on Europe. Topics include Russian narratives about Ukraine; the conflicting assumptions underlying their divergent nation-building agendas; new findings about the far right’s involvement in the Maidan protests; the Ukrainian crisis from the perspective of Western grand strategy; the security implications of Russia’s geopolitical agenda in Ukraine; the factors that contributed to the rise of separatism in Donbass; and the economic costs for Ukraine of choosing economic integration with Europe rather than Eurasia. Two persistent threads emerge throughout this discussion. The first is that the current crisis in Ukraine is much more complex than comes across in the media. The second is that since Russia and Ukraine will always be neighbors, some sort of modus vivendi between them will have to be found.
The tragedy that has engulfed Ukraine has a wide array of contributing factors. They range from military intervention and territorial loss, to precipitous economic decline and a refugee crisis involving more than two million of its people. A catastrophe of this magnitude could not but have wider international implications.
The authors who have contributed to this special issue were asked to write about aspects of the current Ukrainian crisis, but also to consider what broader implications it might have for Europe. They have provided both a detailed discussion of many controversial issues, and a sober assessment of the impact of this crisis on Europe as a whole.
We begin with a review of Russia perceptions of Ukraine by the distinguished Canadian historian David R. Marples, who teaches at the University of Alberta. Through a careful exploration of both official and unofficial Russian narratives, he finds certain similarities between Russian narratives dismissive of the Euromaidan, and the Ukrainian government’s efforts to eradicate communism from Ukraine’s historical consciousness. In both instances governments are trying to override historical and cultural themes that resonate in popular consciousness, thereby creating deeper social rifts within and between the two nations.
The next essay, by Denys Kiryukhin of the Skovoroda Institute of Philosophy at the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, continues to explore the complicated relationship between Russia and Ukraine. He sees the origins of the present conflict in the assumptions underlying their respective post-Soviet nation-building agendas.
Kiryukhin argues that, while nation-building efforts in Ukraine have focused on forging a political community that corresponds to a national cultural ideal that views Russia as the hostile Other, nation-building efforts in Russia have centered on forging strong state institutions and reinforcing the social and cultural identity that Russia is presumed to share with Ukraine. The absence of clear social boundaries between the two, when coupled with efforts to impose such boundaries politically, made conflict all but inevitable.
The next two essays look at several key events that have shaped the vastly different narratives about the crisis that have emerged in Ukraine and Russia. The first, by Volodymyr Ishchenko, deputy director of the Centre for Social and Labour Research in Kyiv, looks at the widely discussed but little documented involvement of the far right in the Maidan protests.
Relying on a unique data set of protest events throughout Ukraine, he finds that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, the participation of far right groups in the Maidan grew steadily in both number and intensity as the crisis unfolded. He highlights in particular the role played by the far right in local Maidans throughout western and central Ukraine, and suggests that they were vital in the successful removal of president Yanukovych from power. But, at the same time that the far right’s involvement increased popular support for the Maidan in the western and central regions of Ukraine, it was also one of crucial factors leading to its unpopularity in Donbass and Crimea.
In his contribution, Ivan Katchanovski, a native of western Ukraine who now teaches at the University of Ottawa in Canada, asks what factors contributed most to the rise of separatist sentiment in Donbass. He concludes that what began as a civil conflict quickly expanded into a full-scale civil war that was sustained by subsequent Russian intervention. While there are substantial and persistent reasons for the popularity of separatist attitudes in the Donbass region, he deems these to be sui generis, and therefore not transferable to other regions of Ukraine.
The next two essays deal with the international and security implication of the Ukrainian crisis from the perspective of NATO and Russian security concerns.
Hall Gardner, a professor of international politics at the American University of Paris who has written widely about NATO and European security, looks at the Ukrainian crisis in the context of the West’s grand strategy toward Russia. He argues that the West has long tried to encourage Ukraine to make foreign policy choices that Russia finds incompatible with its security. To counter these efforts, Russia has engaged in what Hall terms ‘preclusive imperialism’. Since the West shows no signs of abandoning its strategy, Russia feels it must continue to put pressure on Ukraine and seek to undermine its NATO aspirations. As a result, both sides are now locked in a vicious circle that perpetuates instability in Europe.
Former British military intelligence officer, Paul Robinson, now a history professor at the University of Ottawa, is only slightly more optimistic. Like Gardner, he believes that Russia has been reacting to, rather than initiating events in Ukraine. Ultimately, however, he believes Russia is trying to restore a modicum of control over its geopolitical and security agenda by forcing Kiev and Donbass into a peace settlement that will end the conflict (Minsk-2). With respect to the Europe as a whole, Robinson believes Russia’s objectives are limited and that it does not pose a serious threat to European security.
In conclusion, Mikhail Molchanov, a professor at St. Thomas University in Canada who is also originally from Ukraine, asks the hypothetical question: what economic price is Ukraine actually paying for having chosen economic integration with Europe rather than Eurasia? While some economic decline was anticipated by the supporters of EU association, Molchanov believes that it will persist much longer than expected because the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA) has structurally increased Ukraine’s vulnerability to external shocks and rapidly accelerated the decline of its domestic industries.
In the short- to mid-term perspective, therefore, Ukraine would almost certainly have been better off as a member of the common economic space with Russia and other Eurasian Customs Union states. While the longer term benefits are more uncertain, this alternative might have offered a less painful, albeit more protracted, path to economic modernization.
A common thread that emerges in all of these articles is that the current crisis in Ukraine is much more complex than comes across in the media. As Marples puts it, ‘The typical portrayal of a “democratic” pro-European Ukraine fighting an authoritarian Russia is deeply flawed. Ukrainian society faces endemic problems that need to be addressed, not least corruption and oligarchic control of resources and even entire regions’.
The situation within Ukraine itself might be compared to a bad marriage. Sometimes divorce seems like the only possible solution (indeed all of Ukraine’s former presidents, with the exception of Yanukovych, have suggested that Donbass may not worth be keeping because it would be a permanent drag on the pro-western remaking of Ukraine). At other times, however, the parties seem willing to at least discuss the possibility of reconciliation. Perhaps even more importantly, under any conceivable circumstances Russia and Ukraine will still be neighbors. Some sort of modus vivendi will therefore have to be found, no matter how the leaders of each country perceive the events of the distant and recent past.
There are some who argue that, whether they like it or not, Russians and Ukrainians are doomed to friendship. That may be hard to imagine today, but then it is equally difficult to imagine a prosperous Ukraine that does not have close economic ties with its most populous and prosperous neighbor. The same holds true for Europe which, even as it has imposed sanctions on Russia, is eager to talk about forging ties between the European Union and Eurasian Economic Union.1
It would be a bitter irony indeed if, having sunk so much blood and treasure into trying to sever ties with Russia in order to join Europe, Ukraine were ultimately led back to closer ties to Russia by Europe itself.
Note
1.“Juncker opens the door to EU-Eurasian Union rapprochement”, 20 November 2015, EurActiv.com. http://www.euractiv.com/sections/europes-east/juncker-opens-door-eu-eurasian-union-rapprochement-319681
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Russia’s perceptions of Ukraine: Euromaidan and historical conflicts
David R. Marples
Department of History and Classics, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada
ABSTRACT
This paper examines Russia’s view of contemporary Ukraine from the period of the Euromaidan protests that peaked in February 2014 to the present. It looks at both the official Moscow view, as well as that of leading Russian think tanks, and how these opinions are being disseminated in narrative form through media and social networks with a prime focus on two pivotal months: February 2014 and February 2015, though the interpretation could be applied to the entire period of the conflict, including the present. It provides an assessment of why Russian opted to intervene in Ukraine. It then focuses on the significance of historical questions in the rift between the two states that began with Russia’s annexation of Crimea in March 2014 and continued as fighting broke out in the Donbas. How do the two states differ on the interpretation of the past and how is it reflected in Russian and Ukrainian initiatives today?
Introduction
The events of Euromaidan have not surprisingly attracted the interest of the scholarly community. The event, which featured as a headline on social media for almost two years, effectively polarized opinions. In terms of scholarly output, several books have appeared in English (Balaklytskyi, 2015; Kurkov, 2014; Marples & Mills, 2015; Sakwa, 2015; Wilson, 2014; Yekelchyk, 2015), and numerous scholarly articles (Baysha, 2015; Dickinson, 2014; Diuk, 2014; Horvath, 2015; Kulyk, 2014; Kuzio, 2015; Minakov, 2015; Onuch, 2015; Popova, 2014; Shveda & Park, 2014). Though some have focused on social media, there has not been as yet a detailed discussion of the focus and content of the Russian media approach to the conflict in Ukraine, which is often dismissed as the work of hired ‘trolls,’ paid to produce propaganda on behalf of the Russian government. This paper suggests that such an approach is simplistic and that there is a clearly defined methodology and purpose to the treatment of Euromaidan by the Russian media, that is somewhat more subtle in nature and by no means static. Because the subject matter is so large, this paper concentrates on two specific time periods of February 2014 – the period of the overthrow of former president Viktor Yanukovych and installation of a new Ukrainian government – and February 2015, when the second Minsk agreement came into effect (http://ria.ru/world/20150212/1047311428.html) and the fighting eased after the separatist takeover of the town of Debaltseve.
The paper provides an analysis primarily of Russian media narratives but provides also a postscript on the Ukrainian response, which at the time of writing is still emerging and is taking the form of a process of ‘Decommunization’ under the auspices of the Institute of National Culture and its director, Volodymyr Viatrovych.1 In addition to the changing of names of over 600 cities, towns, and villages, and thousands of street names, the goal appears to be to eliminate the Communist Party from national life and the Soviet period from national memory. To some extent, Ukraine is following the practices carried out in Eastern Ukraine in the first decade of the twenty-first century, but it is much more difficult, not only because of the continuing conflict in some parts of the east and on the border with Crimea, but also because the Soviet period still resonates with nostalgia in several regions. The topic deserves much fuller treatment but the time is premature because it is not yet possible to make an assessment of the success of the project. This paper perceives certain similarities between Russian narratives on Euromaidan and Ukraine’s attempt at removing Communism as a facet of current and past life.
The ‘coup’ and the rise of extremist forces
Russian official media, which has become the predominant voice under the presidency of Vladimir Putin (2000–2008, and 2012–the present), portray the removal of P...
