Geopolitical conflicts are more frequent than ever now-a-days. Just a few months back, we witnessed the Israel-Palestine conflict, Taliban issue in Afghanistan, military troops in Myanmar; a latest addition to this list which has seized worldwide attention is the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Ukraine, a part of eastern Europe, is located between Russia and the European Union. Ukraine has borders with Belarus in the north and Moldova to the south. More importantly, Ukraine shares a border with Russia. In order to understand the reasons for increasing tensions between Russia and Ukraine, let’s dig deeper into their history which has shaped the present circumstances.

BRIEF GEO-POLITICAL HISTORY OF UKRAINE -

The Soviet Union or USSR, created in 1922, was a union of 15 republican states, one of which was Ukraine. The Cold War that started after the second World War ended with the great collapse of the USSR in 1991 leading to the formation of 15 independent nations.The present conflicts between Russia and Ukraine date back to the events that followed the disintegration of the USSR; and Crimea, a peninsular region lying between Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, has had a significant role. Crimea on one hand is a huge asset for Russia for oil extraction and exports, and on the other hand it holds considerable strategic and economic significance for Ukraine. In 1954, Crimea was downgraded from being an autonomous republic as it was transferred to Ukraine, the then member of the USSR. But with the dissolution of the USSR, Crimea became an autonomous part of the newly independent Ukraine. Crimea was illegally annexed by Russia in 2014 which is explained in detail later. Also, Eastern Ukraine has deep social, cultural and economic ties with Russia, while the western part of Ukraine identifies more with Europe. After Ukraine’s independence, the country didn’t have a smooth path of democracy. There have been two major revolutions, even before the current state of affairs, in 2005 and 2014. In both of them, Ukranians have asserted their stand on living as an independent nation and become affiliated with the European Unionand NATO, while disregarding Russian domination.

WHAT IS HAPPENING ON THE BORDERS -

Russia has its military presence at borders with Ukraine with an estimated 100,000 soldiers concentrated along the frontier and around 20,000 stationed near the Donetsk and Luhansk “republics” which have the majority of population inclined to Russia. Russia has also sent 30,000 combat troops to Belarus, its biggest military deployment in the region after the cold war. In response to Russia’s hostile steps, the US has deployed 3000 troops in Germany, Poland and Romania. Countries like Denmark, Spain, France and the Netherlands are already planning to send fighter jets and warships to eastern Europe to support the defense in the region. On the other hand, Moscow has shown absolutely no sign of de-escalating the tensions.

PAST RUSSIAN-UKRAINE CONFLICTS

Election of pro-western leader ‘Viktor Yushchenko’ to power in 2004 acted as a trigger to the 2005-06 conflict between Russia and Ukraine over natural gas prices. Russia in 2004 restricted the supply of natural gas to Ukraine and this subsequently halted the supply to Europe as well. The commercial factors behind such a step were the subsidized price that Ukraine paid for natural gas like any other former member of the USSR and the debt that Ukraine owed to Russia. Apart from these, political factors like the election of Yushchenko and increasing bent towards the West and NATO were also responsible for the conflict.

Russia has always remained anxious of Ukraine establishing close ties with the West and becoming the member of the NATO because of varied reasons such as ancient ties of Russia with Ukraine, welfare of the eight million ethinic Russians living in Ukraine, maintaining Russia’s dominance over Ukraine or the gas pipeline route that pass through Ukraine to reach the European Customer which contribute to the 40% revenue of the Russians economy.

The second major revolution followed in 2014. The much awaited association with the EU was at the threshold of getting materialized in 2014, but the then president Yanukovych gave into the immense pressures from Russia and subsequently the agreement with the EU was scrapped. This was not accepted by the people of Ukraine, numerous protests were organized and the protesters took over the capital, Kyiv. Several illegal and undemocratic laws were passed for restricting the right to protest and violence was used to take back the control. But, what followed was the removal of Yanukovich from Office. A new election process started where the Ukrainians chose pro west leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk as president. Russia responded by illegitimately annexing Crimea by its military forces. From the USSR's disintegration in 1991 to 2014, Crimea was an integral part of Ukraine. This was called by Russia as a ‘rightful liberation’ and it further claimed that the majority of the Crimeans voted in favor of being a part of Russia with turnout rate to be 83% and 96.7% voting to join Russia.This survey, though, has not been recognised by any international organization till date because it was conducted under hostile military occupation and intimidation and a later leaked report by Putin’s human rights council on their website showed turnout rate to be 30% and half in favor of joining Russia.

RUSSIA’S ENERGY ROLE IN EUROPE

The Russian economy is dependent on its natural gas and crude oil production that comprises the nation’s 14% output and is responsible for more than 40% of the federal budget. It uses a Soviet-era-pipelines crisscrossing Ukraine and other Eastern European countries. The dependency of Europeans can be understood from the fact that ⅓ of European natural gas consumption and ¼ of crude oil imports are facilitated by Russia. Germany being the largest EU country which gets more than half of its natural gas and 30% of its crude oil from imports which led to the new project of NS2 which will carry natural gas from west Russia through Baltic sea directly to Germany. This project also created a threat to other EU nations raising the concern of raising the fuel prices in terms of transit fees. But this project launch was delayed due to rising western tensions with Russia and political scrutiny.

Current situation is that the EU has one month of “cushion gas” kept in storage and is aiming to reduce its fuel requirements and also the efforts are made by the White House with the EU to scrap together additional liquefied natural gas supplies. If Russia responded with cutting of gas supplies that would surely raise the price of fuel in the EU nations and drive inflation affecting the recovery of Europe's economy.

Source: Eurostate

NATO AND ITS ROLE -

Formed in 1949, NATO is - North Atlantic Treaty Organization which has 30 members including countries like Italy, Norway, The United states and the United Kingdom. It’s purpose is to guarantee the freedom and security of its members through military means. It follows the principle of collective defense and handles multinational crisis management operations together.

With the European nations on the west and Japan on east, Russia is surrounded by its enemies and that is the main reason it does not want Ukraine to join NATO. Putin and his fellow officials have made their disapproval of Ukraine’s alliance with NATO very clear in the past few months. However, Ukraine has time and again highlighted its priority to join NATO.

CURRENT SCENARIO AND ARGUMENTS -

With all the military established and troops on alert from the US, Russia is demanding a legal guarantee that Ukraine will not join NATO. In reality, Russia wants NATO to return to its position prior to 1997 so that the threat of the NATO nation recapturing Crimea does not threaten Russia. Russia does not want NATO to expand eastwards and asks them to fulfill the promise made in 1990 that NATO would expand ‘not an inch to the east’. Russia addresses Ukraine and Russia as one nation and accuses Ukraine current leaders of running an “anti - Russian project”. There have also been speculations that Russia might invade Ukraine repeating the history of Crimea’s annexation.

Written by-

Charvi Jain and Tarun Jain

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