Russia and the Ukraine

There has been a lot of saber-rattling going on lately about potential war in the Ukraine. I confess to not understanding that much about the situation, so decided to do some studying up and write a blog about what I found out. Any corrections and your own takes are more than welcome.

Historically, Russia emerged as a great empire over the 400 years from 1500-1900. It originally took some of the territories now considered part of Ukraine in 1667, and the remainder between 1770-1795 under Catherine the Great and her Minister Potemkin. So the Ukraine had been a part of Russia for a very long time (as long as the USA existed). Taking it away from Russia is like ceding California to Mexico.

Ukraine and environs was important as it provided access to the Black Sea, which importantly did not freeze over in winter unlike Russia's Northern sea access. This allowed Russia to have a year round navy and connect to trade routes through the Mediterranean. Russia's most important sea port is Sevastopol in the Crimea, until 2014 nominally a part of the Ukraine (but really controlled by Russia).

Russia had to defend the Crimea vigorously during the Crimean War 1853-1856 when France, Austria, and England beat back Russia's attempts to expand into territories occupied by the fading Turkish Ottoman Empire. That war ended with the Crimea ceded back to Russia and Russian ceding its territorial advances in the Ottoman Empire. There is a 0% chance that Russia will ever give up its control and access to Sevastopol without a terrific fight, it's that strategic to them

Revolution and civil war rocked Russia between 1905-1923, ending with Lenin winning and establishing the Soviet Union. Ukraine emerged during this time as an independent state, and became one of the founding states of the Soviet Union. Ukraine grew during WWII when Russia annexed the Ukrainian half of Poland to the Ukraine (as did Germany annex the other half).

Ukraine suffered horribly during the Russian Civil war, during WWII, and after WWII under Stalin, with brutal mass starvations, genocides, and ethnic cleansing taking place under the Soviets in order to solidify complete control and crush any hopes of independence for the Ukrainians from the abusive Soviet Union.

After Stalin died in 1953, Ukraine under Kruschev became an almost equal and important partner to Russia within the Soviet Union. The Crimea was even ceded to Ukraine by Kruschev as a show of good will, because Russian and Ukraine were very much seen as equal partners in the Soviet Union. Soviet Ukraine became a European leader in industrial production, and central to the Soviet arms industry and high-tech research. Many Soviet leaders came from Ukraine, including Brezhnev who ousted Khrushchev and became the Soviet leader from 1964 to 1982. However, the people of Ukraine maintained their own cultural identity and for the most part intensely disliked their Soviet overlords.

With the Soviet Union failing, Ukraine officially declared itself an independent state in August, 1991, when Ukraine proclaimed it would no longer follow the laws of the USSR, and only follow the laws of the Ukrainian SSR, de facto declaring Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union. On December 1, Ukrainian voters approved a referendum formalizing independence from the Soviet Union. Over 90% of Ukrainian citizens voted for independence, with majorities in every region, including 56% in Crimea, which had a 75% ethnic Russian population. The Soviet Union formally ceased to exist on December 26, when the presidents of Ukraine, Belarus and Russia (the founding members of the USSR) met to formally dissolve the Union in accordance with the Soviet Constitution.

The leaders of the Ukraine tried to keep a foot in both doors, one with Russia and one with the European Union and NATO, but for the most part remained more friendly with Russia. Ukraine is in fact divided between an ethnic Ukrainian-speaking part in the west that is more pro EU, and an ethnic Russian-speaking part in the east that is more pro Russia. Voting within Ukraine breaks down along those lines.

In 1994, Ukraine along with Belarus and Kazakhstan gave up their stockpiles of nuclear weapons left over from the Soviet Union after signing the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances with Russia, the UK, the US, France, and China, which "guaranteed" their territorial integrity and political independence. However, the agreement had no teeth behind it, committing no country to go to war if those countries were attacked with conventional weapons.

In the year 2000, Ukrainian President, Leonid Kuchma

was involved in the so-called "Cassette Scandal" when a recording came out of him engaging in many wrongdoings including the kidnapping of a journalist critical of him. One of the items was selling advanced weapon systems to Iraq's Saddam Hussein. The FBI validated the recording as legitimate, however, even at the time there was widespread doubt as to its legitimacy. And in light of the made-up "weapons of mass destruction", and revelations as to what chicanery the FBI can get itself up to (e.g., Russiagate), who knows? At any rate, the Ukranian people and the West turned against Kuchma (including major economic sanctions), but Putin supported him, which caused an unpopular re-alignment of Russia and the Ukraine.

In 2004, Kuchma announced that he would not run for re-election. The two major candidates for President who emerged were Viktor Yanukovych,

the Prime Minister, supported by Kuchma and by the Russian Federation; and Viktor Yushchenko

of the Orange Party who called for Ukraine to turn its attention westward and eventually join the EU (but, wisely, not NATO).

In the runoff election, Yanukovych officially won by a narrow margin, but Yushchenko and his supporters cried foul, alleging that vote rigging and intimidation cost him many votes, especially in eastern Ukraine. A political crisis erupted after the opposition started massive street protests and the Supreme Court of Ukraine ordered the election results null and void. A second runoff declared Yushchenko the winner, however, as part of a coalition in parliament, Yanukovych was again made Prime Mininster.

In 2007, Yuschenko dissolved the parliament because members of his own party were crossing the floor and threatening his grip on power. When the court declared this unconstitutional, he dismissed three of the opposing judges under the pretense of corruption. This, and an ever-worsening economic situation due to energy disputes with Russia, made him deeply unpopular with the public.

In the election of  2010, Yushchenko and his fellow Orange Party member and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko had completely fallen out with one another and went up against each other in the election.

Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko (hot!)

Tymoshenko was very pro-EU and pro-NATO. She got into politics in 1996 and became an important player. She was accused by then President Kuchma of fabricated corruption charges and jailed. Later on, all charges were retroactively dismissed.

Her entry in 2010 made it a three-way Presidential race with the pro-Russian candidate Yanukovych. Despite the fact that Tymoshenko was way more popular than Yushchenko, Yushchenko refused to throw his support to her even when it was clear he was going to lose badly. As it turned out, in the first vote Yanukovych received 48% of the vote, Tymoshenko 45%, and Yushchenko less than 6%. Had Yushchenko dropped out and thrown his support to her, she would have beat Yanukovych on the first round. As it was, because no candidate reached >50%, there was a runoff, which Yanukovych won (many of the Orange Party supporters stayed home due to the rancor within the party).

You can see how divided the country is from this map of 2010 presidential election results.

The Donbas region (where all the current separatist action is taking place) voted 95% for the pro-Russian candidate (the two darkest regions on the far right).  And in the Crimea it was 82% (the dark region on the bottom).

In 2011 Yanukovych had Yulia arrested on fabricated (according to the EU) corruption charges.

in 2013 Yanukovych refused to sign an EU-coalition agreement negotiated by Parliament and instead sought closer ties to Russia. This created mass protests in the street, demanding that he step down and that Yulia be freed. In 2014 Parliament turned against Yanukovych and voted to remove him from power, and to free Yulia from prison. The same day a Yanukovych supporter resigned as speaker of the Parliament, and was replaced by Tymoshenko loyalist Oleksandr Turchynov, who was subsequently installed as interim President. Yulia was freed and all charges against her completely voided. Yanukovych fled Kyev to Russia where Russia maintains that his ouster constituted an illegal "coup". The anti-Russian parliament then voted to repeal minority language laws, enraging the heavily pro-Russian eastern part of Ukraine.

With Putin seeing that control of the Ukraine was slipping out of his grasp, he annexed the Crimea in February of 2014 in a bloodless coup (Russia was always there in force). As I said above, there was no way Russia was going to lose control of their most strategic naval base in Sevastopol. At the time, Obama was the President of the US, and he mostly just let it go (what else was he going to do? It's NOT at all strategic to the US).

Perhaps to take focus off of the Crimea, right afterwards Putin strongly supported pro-Russian separatists (likely more than "supported" - more like instigated) in the Donbas, an Easterly region of Ukraine nearest Russia and with a majority ethnically Russian-speaking population.

In the 2014 election Tymoshenko ran against Ukranian oligarch Petro Poroshenko, owner of, amongst other things, the Roshen Chocolate Company, hence the "Chocolate King".

I guess everybody loves chocolate, because he trounced 2nd place Tymoshenko as an independent, with 55% of the vote against her 13%. Poroshenko was seen as taking a hard line against the insurrectionists in the Donbas and taking a hard line against Russia and being competent to manage the situation.

In 2019, Proshenko was defeated by newcomer Volodymir Zelensky, a populist candidate who was an actor and a comedian (he played a schoolteacher who became President of Ukraine and tirelessly fought corruption - sort of like a Ukrainian "West Wing"), with a stunning 73% of the vote. Looks like a bit of a CIA psyop!

A newly formed party supporting him also took a clear majority in Parliament, and for the first time in a long time no coalition was required. Zelensky ran on a populist , "drain the swamp" sort of platform, and is also pro-EU, pro-NATO, and pro-US. He is moving strongly and quickly towards membership in the EU and joining NATO, which of course has Russia and Putin freaked the fuck out and is the proximate cause of the current Russian saber-rattling.

War with Russia can be avoided by ratifying their ownership of the Crimea,  by promising not to take Ukraine and the nearby countries bordering Russia into NATO, and by guaranteeing Russian-speaking minority rights. Yeah, hate to be pro-Putin on this, but I would advocate for that over war.

The alternative is to take them into NATO, and then there is the requirement to defend it when it's not at all of any strategic importance to the West, but is of massive strategic importance to Russia. Russia has lots of nukes, a giant army, supplies natural gas to most of Europe, and almost half of Ukraine is pretty pro-Russian already. Plus, the West needs Russia cooperation in Iran and Syria, and an ally against China. Extremely unwise to tangle with Russia over Ukraine. And not least because the ultimate loser would be the Ukraine itself.

Here is distinguished University of Chicago Prof. John Mearsheimer on Ukraine who helped me form my views and agrees on the above.

Mind you with the Democrats so down in the polls, and the Military-Industrial complex itching for a conflict so they can make and sell weapons, I am concerned that the US will encourage a hot conflict.

Having read all this, what are your thoughts? And, if you know the situation better than I could find out in my research, please let us know your thoughts.