Posted on 12/22/2021 2:23:54 AM PST by tlozo
Ukraine is again looking warily over its eastern border as Russia threatens its territorial integrity.
In recent weeks, a buildup of Russian troops along the Ukrainian border has rattled Western leaders fearful of an incursion similar to, or perhaps even more wide-ranging than, Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014.
Then, on Dec. 17, 2021, Vladimir Putin demanded that no former Soviet states, such as Ukraine, be added to NATO – the Western alliance that Ukraine has long expressed a desire to join – and that NATO cease all military cooperation in Eastern Europe.
Such rhetoric harks back to the Cold War, when global politics revolved around an ideological struggle between a communist Eastern Bloc and a capitalist West. It also serves Russia’s ideological and political goal of asserting its position as a global power.
As scholars of the politics and culture of Ukraine and Russia, we know that underpinning Putin’s goal is Russia’s historical view of Ukraine as a part of its greater empire, which at one time ranged from present-day Poland to the Russian Far East. Understanding this helps explain Putin’s actions, and how he leans into this view of Ukraine to advance his agenda.
The view from Russia:
Ukraine today comprises 44 million people and is the second-largest nation by area in Europe.
But for centuries, within the Russian Empire, Ukraine was known as “Malorossiya” or “Little Russia.”
The use of this term strengthened the idea that Ukraine was a junior member of the empire. And it was backed by czarist policies dating from the 18th century that suppressed the use of the Ukrainian language and culture. The intention of these policies was to establish a dominant Russia and later strip Ukraine of an identity as an independent, sovereign nation.
A similar ploy has been used to downplay Ukrainian independence in the 21st century. In 2008 Putin’s then-spokesman, Vladislav Surkov, claimed that “Ukraine is not a state.”
Putin himself recently wrote an article claiming Russians and Ukrainians are “one people – a single whole.” This concept of a single people derives from the history of “Kyivan Rus” – the medieval federation that included parts of modern-day Ukraine and Russia and had as its center present day Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital.
In recent years, commemorations in Russia of Kyivan Rus’ history have increased in prominence and scale.
In 2016, a 52-foot statue of Prince Vladimir of Kyiv, considered a saintly ruler by Ukrainians and Russians alike, was unveiled in Moscow. The statue caused consternation among Ukrainians. Placing a mammoth depiction of Vladimir in the center of Moscow signaled, to some, Russia’s attempt to own Ukraine’s history.
The fact that it came just two years after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the invasion of the eastern Ukrainian Donbass region didn’t help.
Ukraine’s Russian citizens
The Donbass and Crimea are both home to large numbers of ethnic Russians and people who primarily speak Russian.
In the years leading up to Russia’s military actions, Putin and his allies often invoked the concept of the “Russian World” or “Russkiy Mir” – the idea that Russian civilization extends to everywhere that ethnic Russians live.
The ideology also asserts that no matter where Russians are in the world, the Russian state has a right and an obligation to protect and defend them.
Ukraine – both in 2014 and with Putin’s seemingly increasingly belligerent stance now – provides the perfect landscape for this concept. And Russia has allegedly been promoting “Russian World” ideology through the arming of pro-Russian separatists in the Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk since 2014.
Viewing Ukraine as a country split between pro-Moscow ethnic Russians and pro-Western Ukrainians, however, is a gross oversimplification.
Ethnic tensions?
Ukraine’s ethnic makeup today – with an especially large minority of Russians living in the east – reflects the country’s absorption into the Soviet Union from 1922.
Ethnic Ukrainians lived across the country before it was incorporated into the Soviet Union. In 1932-33, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin orchestrated a famine that killed some 4 million Ukrainians in the eastern regions. The famine, known as “Holodomor,” made it possible for ethnic Russians to move into the territory of Ukraine.
These new residents drove Stalin’s industrialization campaign. To this day, the Donbass remains the heart of Ukraine’s industrial economy.
When Ukrainians voted for independence from the Soviet Union in 1991, all of its 24 “oblasts,” or regions – including Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea – supported independence. The large minority of ethnic Russians – 17.3% of the population at Ukraine’s last census in 2001 – were included as Ukrainian citizens in an independent state. For the most part, they too voted for independence.
For most of the first two decades after independence, ethnic Russians have lived peacefully with Ukrainians and the country’s other ethnic minorities.
But that changed in 2010 when Viktor Yanukovych, a politician from Donetsk, became Ukraine’s president. Though he did not state outright that he preferred a pro-Russian future for Ukraine, many of his policies marked a move away from the pro-European policies of his predecessors and played into Vladimir Putin’s designs on Ukraine.
Ukraine was on track to sign an association agreement with the European Union in 2013. Instead, Yanukovych decided to join an economic union with Russia. This set off mass protests around the country that resulted in Yanukovych’s being ousted. Putin then annexed Crimea on the pretext of protecting ethnic Russians living on that peninsula.
Meanwhile, pro-Russian separatists took over multiple cities in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the hope that Russia would have a similar interest in protecting Russians in eastern Ukraine.
But ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in Ukraine’s east did not automatically support the separatists or want to be part of Russia. Since 2014, some 1.5 million people have left the Donbass to live in other parts of Ukraine. Meanwhile, at least a million people have left for Russia.
Many of those who remain in the territories occupied by separatists are now being offered a fast track to Russian citizenship. This policy allows Putin to increase pro-Russian sentiment in eastern Ukraine. Ukraine’s strengthening identity
While Putin claims that ethnic Russians living in Ukraine are part of the Russian World, in reality, ethnicity is not a predictor of political affiliation in Ukraine. In other words, being an ethnic Russian or a Russian speaker does not indicate that one sees oneself as part of the Russian World. Rather, across Ukraine, there has been an increase in sentiment of a strong, unified Ukrainian identity since 1991. Meanwhile, the vast majority of Ukrainians support entrance into NATO.
Most Ukrainians see their future as a sovereign country that is part of Europe. But this directly contradicts Putin’s goals of expanding the Russian World. They are conflicting visions that help explain why Ukraine remains a flashpoint.
― Zbigniew Brzeziński,
Putin has no issue with Ukraine being a Sovereign State....but they can’t manage their country without being dependent on other nations. They will always be a debtor state. In over their heads all the time and then cry wolf when the kitchen gets hot....more times than not they like the conflicts as revenue flows with it.
That’s baloney.
LOL. Putin is threatening nuclear war, over Ukrainian independence.
No the press is saying that.
Russia needs eastern Ukraine. Specifically Crimea. Specifically the Sevastopol Naval Base, which hosts their Black Sea fleet.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevastopol_Naval_Base
Putin has already annexed Crimea from Ukraine. The battle is now whether the Ukrainian government in Kyiv will continue to be free and independent, or will become a vassal of Russia.
I’m no fan of Putin but let’s remember the Obama Administration instigated a coup in Ukraine to overthrow a Kremlin friendly government with one friendly toward with the EU and NATO....one of the prime organizers in the US was Victoria Nuland who under Biden is back in a position to have some effect over Ukraine policy...
U.S. Assistance to Ukraine Overview-—US Embassy in Ukraine Report
U.S. assistance to Ukraine since 2014 totals over $3.7 billion, plus three $1 billion sovereign loan guarantees. For FY 2020, Congress has appropriated $698 million: $448 million for State/USAI programs and $250 million for USAI, including $50 million for lethal assistance. The $448 million appropriation for State/USAI programs includes approximately $285 million in the development accounts and approximately $163 million in the security accounts.
To combat COVID, thus far the United States has provided over $26 million in assistance in new and redirected funding. This funding will prepare laboratory systems, activate case-finding and event-based surveillance, support technical experts for response and preparedness, bolster risk communication, and support water, sanitation and hygiene interventions for the most vulnerable populations in eastern Ukraine.
US Assistance will also counter disinformation, bolster media’s health reporting capacity, expand the government’s ability to continue operating under pandemic-related restrictions, and support Ukraine’s economic recovery.
U.S. assistance priorities:
Security: U.S. programs provide technical assistance, training, and equipment to the Ukrainian Armed Forces and security services to defend Ukraine’s territorial integrity
and enhance border and internal security.
Countering Russian Aggression: U.S. assistance works to demonstrate the positive effects of national-level reforms for Ukraine, combat the spread of disinformation, and improve Ukraine’s commercial and energy linkages with Western economies.
Anti-Corruption and Rule of Law: Programs support law enforcement and justice sector reform and governance reforms to increase accountability and effectiveness of governance.
Energy Security: Programs improve Ukraine’s energy security by diversifying supply, establishing competitive markets, accelerating legal regulatory reforms to combat corruption, and ensuring compliance with EU standards and commitments.
Economic Growth: Programs support pro-growth reforms such as an improved land market, privatization, increased competition, and transparent corporate governance. U.S. assistance also supports the growth of small- and medium-sized enterprises.
Cybersecurity: Programs help Ukraine protect itself against Russian cyber-enabled attempts to destabilize it. This includes efforts to support Ukraine’s cyber strategy and legal framework, strengthen incident response capabilities, and harden critical infrastructure.
Humanitarian Assistance: Since the conflict began in 2014, the United States has provided nearly $246 million in humanitarian assistance to date for conflict-affected populations. Assistance includes emergency shelter, provision and distribution of relief commodities, protection of children and the elderly, psychosocial support, water infrastructure repair, and livelihoods and business development support for internally displaced persons.
Election Support:Programs strengthen Ukraine’s election system; increase citizen participation; increase representativeness and responsiveness of political parties; support effective civic oversight; and promote issue-focused media coverage.
The United States is the largest contributor to OSCE’s Special Monitoring Mission, a comprehensive source of information on military and humanitarian developments in areas of eastern Ukraine controlled by Russia. The United States supports the United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, an important source of information and advocacy for human rights in Crimea and eastern Ukraine.
Please visit each section/agency’s page for further information.
Wsj.com
Hillary Clinton and Ukraine
A letter raises questions beyond the Bidens.
By James Freeman, Sept. 30, 2019 6:15 pm ET
The Biden clan still needs to explain why a vice president’s son was enjoying a $50,000-per-month gig for which his principal qualification appears to have been his last name. But Joe Biden isn’t the only pillar of the Democratic establishment who won’t enjoy the new spotlight on American relations with Ukraine. And President Donald Trump isn’t the only one who wants a fuller accounting of that country’s role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
In a letter released on Monday morning, Republican senators Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin ask U.S. Attorney General William Barr if he’s trying to answer the lingering questions:
We write to follow up on Senator Grassley’s July 20, 2017 letter, which highlighted brazen efforts by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign to use the government of Ukraine for the express purpose of finding negative information on then candidate Trump in order to undermine his campaign. That letter also highlighted news reports that, during the 2016 presidential election, “Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump” and did so by “disseminat[ing] documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggest[ing] they were investigating the matter[.]”
Ukrainian officials also reportedly “helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers.”
The senators aren’t relying on reports from conservative bloggers. The quotations come from a 2017 story in Politico, hardly a pro-Trump outfit. “Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire,” read the headline on the article by Kenneth P. Vogel and David Stern. “Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends with the president-elect after quietly working to boost Clinton,” said the subhead of the article, which was published shortly before Mr. Trump’s inauguration.
The authors reported that Ukrainian government officials “helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers” with the goal of “advancing the narrative that Trump’s campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine’s foe to the east, Russia.”
With the benefit of hindsight and the results of the Mueller investigation, it’s now clear that there was no evidence of Trump campaign collusion with Russia. What is not clear and what demands further investigation is how this baseless claim managed to consume the first two years of an American presidency.
Among the questions to resolve: the Politico story featured what appear to be contradictory statements about the level of help provided to Democrats by people who worked at the Ukrainian embassy in Washington in 2016. “Politico’s investigation found evidence of Ukrainian government involvement in the race that appears to strain diplomatic protocol dictating that governments refrain from engaging in one another’s elections,” according to the report.
The reporting certainly appears solid but one should not simply accept all the particulars of the Politico story as proven fact, just as—to take an extreme example—a reasonable person would not authorize the wiretap of an opposition political campaign based on a dispatch from Yahoo News. But the Politico piece may be helpful in figuring out exactly how the surveillance tools of America’s national security apparatus were turned against the party out of power in 2016.
Politico.com
Circa 2017
Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire
Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends after working to boost Clinton.
By KENNETH P. VOGEL and DAVID STERN 01/11/2017 05:05 AM EST
President Petro Poroshenko’s administration, along with the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, insists that Ukraine stayed neutral in the American presidential race.
Donald Trump wasn’t the only presidential candidate whose campaign was boosted by officials of a former Soviet bloc country.
Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office.
They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found.
A Ukrainian-American operative who was consulting for the Democratic National Committee met with top officials in the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington in an effort to expose ties between Trump, top campaign aide Paul Manafort and Russia, according to people with direct knowledge of the situation.
The Ukrainian efforts had an impact in the race, helping to force Manafort’s resignation and advancing the narrative that Trump’s campaign was deeply connected to Ukraine’s foe to the east, Russia. But they were far less concerted or centrally directed than Russia’s alleged hacking and dissemination of Democratic emails.
Russia’s effort was personally directed by Russian President Vladimir Putin, involved the country’s military and foreign intelligence services, according to U.S. intelligence officials. They reportedly briefed Trump last week on the possibility that Russian operatives might have compromising information on the president-elect.
And at a Senate hearing last week on the hacking, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said “I don’t think we’ve ever encountered a more aggressive or direct campaign to interfere in our election process than we’ve seen in this case.”
There’s little evidence of such a top-down effort by Ukraine. Longtime observers suggest that the rampant corruption, factionalism and economic struggles plaguing the country — not to mention its ongoing strife with Russia — would render it unable to pull off an ambitious covert interference campaign in another country’s election. And President Petro Poroshenko’s administration, along with the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, insists that Ukraine stayed neutral in the race.
Snip-—long read-— rest at politico.com
Poroshenko and his team were US Appointed for Ukraine....and the first thing his crew did was remove billions out of Ukraine to the US in the dead of night.
1. The stance he’s taking with regard to NATO is no different than the Russian version of the Monroe Doctrine. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander, right?
2. The U.S. political events of 2019-2020 made it abundantly clear that Ukraine is little more than a vassal of the U.S. We saw an outrageous process unfold with the “election” of a U.S. president who had been on Ukraine’s payroll for years … while the entire U.S. political-media-corporate-legal establishment went out of its way to hide the evidence of this from public view.
I honestly don’t give half a sh!t about what happens over there.
Complete Russian myth. President Yanukovitch was elected by promising to join the EU. Instead he announced Ukraine would join the Russian CIS, tried to enact "dictatorship laws"(criticism of president's wife could get you jail time) and sent out the police to brutally beat peaceful protesters. Massive protests resulted in Yanukovitch fleeing with billions. Ukraine's parliament, which stayed in session, then voted him out. Free elections soon followed. I would not call this a "coup".
That’s exactly right....I and a couple others here on FR “reported” consistently how our media and Kievs were lying about what was going on in Ukraine throughout the Maidan....Obama wanted Regime change just like the Demorats do in every country they want to control. It was hideous what McCain and Nuland were doing and as much the leaders they organized in Ukraine to run things.
Mostly because Russians are a-holes.
Always have been, always will be
Hey nobody liked Yanukovitch including Putin. But he always supports an elected leader even if he proves to be a bad deal and Yanukovitch was indeed that. The resentment arose most when the US interfered.....not only did the Ukrainians resent it but also many other countries. They wanted Europe to help not the US.
Russians are people just like you find in the rest of the world that love their country and support the leadership. They are however often on the defensive because they see how often they and their country are depicted by media and those who spread it.
You meet with Russian people and they often will say they like Americans they just hate our leaders.
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