Thoughts on the Ukraine Crisis

I feel that the threat of Russia invading Ukraine doesn’t get the attention it deserves. There’s headlines but the importance of the threat seems discounted. If a war breaks out tomorrow and we get dragged into it, most people would be surprised. This could get ugly really fast. If I was living in Europe right now, especially Eastern Europe like Ukraine or Poland, I would be freaking out.

I know, there’s a pandemic and I heard Kim Kardeshian has a new boyfriend. I’m kidding a little bit. Look I get it. Who has the time to be on the top of everything. It’s impossible. I’m at home, with two young kids, trying to be a teacher, a daycare, a dad, a husband, an IT technician, a cook, a cleaner, and there’s work to be done (update: kids are back at school this week).

This is serious. Ukraine is far away. The story is complicated. There’s history. There’s propaganda. Everybody is trying to spin the news in their favor. I’ve been reading mostly from Western sources. It’s possible that I’m being fed garbage. But I also looked at Russian news and it’s basically a PR tool for the government. If somebody has good independent sources feel free to share. The problem with this situation is that it’s hard to know what’s going on. Is it the truth or propaganda?

I’m in Canada. I’m lucky and grateful. It’s definitely not perfect. It’s easy to find things to complain about. But I traveled enough to recognize that we have it good. We have never been invaded, well not really if you include the War of 1812. Canada has been involved in military conflicts overseas but never once we felt a foreign power could invade us. So my views might not grasp the reality of what’s going on.

If you are from a country where there’s a constant threat of war, a history of war, where people have died and lost everything, it changes your psyche. 

What’s Going On?

Russia has over 100,000 troops on the border of Ukraine. Russia has also moved troops south of Belarus.

The civil war that started in 2014 already claimed the lives of 13,000 people. That year Russia annexed Crimea, a region that the Soviet Union ceded to Ukraine in 1954. Russia says they have no intention of invading and that they are responding to West aggressiveness.

Background

We can go way back in time but I think there’s two key period that led to this mess. Pre-2014 and 2014 to now.

According to the prevailing wisdom in the West, the Ukraine crisis can be blamed almost entirely on Russian aggression. The US and its European allies share some of the responsibility for the crisis. At the center of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West. At the same time, the EU’s expansion eastward and the West’s backing of the pro-democracy movement in Ukraine. Basically the West had been moving into Russia’s backyard and threatening its core strategic interests.

At the end of cold war (1945-1989), Russian leaders wanted assurances that U.S. forces remain in Europe and NATO stays intact, an arrangement they thought would keep a reunited Germany pacified (can’t blame them, historically speaking an angry Germany is not good).

But Russia did not want NATO to grow any larger and assumed that Western diplomats understood their concerns. Secretary of State James Baker assured Gorbachev that NATO wouldn’t expand one inch to the east. But after a while I guess the West didn’t care. The first expansion phase took place in 1999 when Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland joined NATO. Russia agreed to the enlargement in exchange withdrawing huge numbers of troops from Europe.

But it didn’t stop there. In 2004 NATO brought  Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia.

In 2008 President Bush supported admitting Ukraine and Georgia. Not everybody was on board fearing it would antagonize Russia. Long story short, Russia invaded Georgia. Putin had made his point.

NATO expansion continued marching forward, with Albania and Croatia becoming members in 2009. At the same time the EU was expanding east and promoting democracy. Ukraine joining Europe accelerates the demise of the ideology of Russian imperialism that Putin represents. Basically all these policies added fuel to the fire and Russia worried that they might be next.

Here’s the spark:

In 2014 protests led to an overthrow of the elected government for a pro-Western one. Protests were sparked in part by then President Viktor Yanukovych’s rejection of a pending trade treaty with the European Union and his embrace of more aid from Russia. You can add corruption to the list of grievance.

The deal that Yanukovych rejected would have opened up Ukraine to greater trade and investment from the EU, but it would have also required Yanukovych to fight corruption and make democratic reforms. Instead, he pivoted and made a deal with Putin. Russia lent Ukraine $15 billion. It’s giving a big discount on the price of natural gas that the country relies on for most of its energy. And probably didn’t require any reforms like tackling corruption. Protesters claimed that the deal made Ukraine so deeply indebted to Russia that it will never get out of Moscow’s orbit.

Yanukovych fled to Russia and the new government in Kiev was pro-Western and anti-Russian to the core.

Russia claims the U.S. is behind toppling the regime. Details are murky but it is clear that Washington backed the coup (leaked phone records). Who knows but I wouldn’t be surprised. Both governments are playing games. Nobody will admit it publicly. Under the former pro-Russian leader there was talk of bringing back Ukraine under Russia. 

For Putin the time to act against Ukraine arrived. Russia took Crimea from Ukraine. Easy target considering there’s a Russian naval base and the region is mostly Russian. Most of them wanted out of Ukraine. Then Russia supported Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine which led the country toward civil war. Putin said that if the government cracked down on the separatists he would invade. And he raised the price of natural gas, of course.

What does Russia want?

Russia wants a ban on Ukraine’s future membership to NATO. Russia wants the Western alliance to pull back its forces to where they were in 1997, before eastern European members joined.

Of course it won’t happen. These are sovereign nations. There’s also a game being played. Russia knows that such demands won’t be met and might give them a pretext to invade.

Also if you peel the onion. There are other motives at work. 

Throughout history Russia benefited from big open spaces. Owning Ukraine provides a security buffer in case of invasion.  Napoleonic France, imperial Germany, and Nazi Germany all crossed to strike at Russia itself. 

Putin wants to stem his country’s decline in global influence: Moscow’s leverage in places like Ukraine is one way to preserve that influence. Putin wants to bring Russia’s former glory back.

But there are other reasons why Ukraine is of deep interest to Russia — reasons that have more to do with history, faith, economics and culture. 

Yes Ukraine is a sovereign country…but it’s more like an estranged family member. They might not see eye to eye but share the same blood. Those ties date back to before the Soviet Union and even before the days of the Russian empire that began in the 18th century. Ukraine has a strong Russian heritage. It’s been part of Russia in the past. They share a special relationship. They share the Russian language. Russian media is omnipresent. And there’s also deep economic ties. Russia still holds influence over the country.

Despite that, Ukraine increasingly sees itself as part of the West. You could split the country. The Western parts of Ukraine, especially the ones that border Poland, are the most vocal against Russian aggression (there’s a lot of history behind why (i.e. famine, Chernobyl). Parts of the East are more sympathetic to Russia.

Putin wants Ukraine to fail becoming a thriving democracy because it will support his claim that Western values are unworkable in Orthodox, Slavic Russia. If the Ukraine social engineering experiment succeeds, and the country modernizes, it might become an attractive model for Russians who live on the other side of the border.

Putin benefits from the aggressor. He controls the scope of attack and timetable should there be an attack. And Ukraine matters more to him than any NATO country.

Ukraine in NATO?

Not anytime soon. This risk of war with Russia is too great. This is a blow to Ukraine’s reformers who have even written their aspiration to enter NATO into their constitution.

The same goes for Georgia. But NATO would inherit another open conflict.

Solutions

In an ideal world Ukraine should have the freedom to decide on its own if it wants to join NATO and the EU without external influence. But the world we live in is not ideal, it’s real.  

Avoiding armed conflict through constructive diplomacy is always preferable. Ending the stand-off  without bloodshed is the goal. There’s still room for diplomacy and both countries need to maintain dialogue. They need to ease tension. If they don’t talk the risk of miscalculation is growing.

Because the West is unlikely to meet Russia’s extravagant demands, a real war is now a distinct possibility, which would have far-reaching consequences for everyone involved, especially Ukraine’s citizens.

They have had similar situations in the past. The U.S. and the Soviet Union came close to nuclear war on two occasions, The 1963 Cuban Missile Crisis and the 1983 war games come to mind when the U.S. and the Soviet Union came close to nuclear war. 

Meanwhile you have to raise the cost of the invasion. Make it so unattractive to invade Ukraine. Make sure you put Moscow in a weaker strategic position. If Russia invades the responde the U.S. and the rest of the world needs to be robust. Do not be ambiguous. Make it clear what the consequences are.

If Ukraine looks weak, Russia will take it. I doubt Russia’s menacing of Ukraine will induce NATO to retreat. It will have the opposite effect. Russia’s aggression towards Ukraine has created a chance to enhance the security of Europe. It will reinforce current NATO members. Make Finland and Sweden NATO members (both neutral during the cold war).

The West can apply the most severe sanctions they can, like they have done to Iran. Take aim at the country’s economy. Measures against the top Russia officials, Putin and Mishustin, banks and important industries. You would be isolating Russia from the world. Putin hates sanctions.

Russia says his country is threatened. It is not. NATO is a defensive alliance. Russia can be an empire or a democracy, but it cannot be both. If Russia was a democracy it might have worked with Ukraine.

The optimist in me sees an opportunity. The crisis could help stop the long decay of relations between Russia and the West. A chance to reset and rebuild.

However it plays out, the region will remain unstable for the foreseeable future.