A Look Back at the History of Ukraine- Russia Conflict as Tensions Continue to RiseSince World War II, the violent changing of European borders has been considered taboo, given the cascade of turmoil that could follow. For that reason, 2014 was, ina sense, a pivotal year, as Eastern Europe again saw borders altered by violence and the threat of force, as part of Ukraine (Crimea) was annexed by Russia. In light of continuing conflict, we look back at that disruptive event, and the continuing ramifications brought up by it.......
.........The tinder for the Ukraine conflict didn’t spontaneously come into being in 2014. Rather, t
he background is a slow-motion identity crisis involving both Ukraine and Russia, and extending back over centuries............For Ukrainians, their identities are both linked to those of a past shared with Russia, but also with historic ties and affinities with the West. Ukraine is marked by a diversity of historical memories and orientations, and in that sense, it’s like a microcosm of larger Eastern European patterns.
The tides of history carved out divides in Ukraine that still persist today. First Mongols came and receded, leaving Tartars; then Poland-Lithuania moved in, leaving their own imprint...................
...............In 1654, the Cossack warlord Bohdan Khmelnytsky, who had led an uprising against Poland and sought to create an independent state, signed a treaty with Russia at Pereyaslav.
Khmelnytsky received the Tsar’s protection, along with Russian promises for Ukrainian autonomy. Instead of getting an ally who would defend their existence, the Cossacks discovered that they had a set of new rulers. In 1667, Poland and Russia came to an agreement for partition: They divided the contested Ukrainian lands along the Dnieper River................
.............Between the World Wars, Ukrainians found themselves divided by borders, most living in the Soviet Union, others in Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia. Inside the Soviet Union, Stalin cracked down on Ukrainian cultural leaders and brought mass death with the Terror Famine, or Holodomor, of the 1930s.
With the coming of the Second World War, some Ukrainian nationalists hoped that Nazi Germany might help their cause. Among their leaders was Stepan Bandera. At the start of the Second World War, they allied with Nazi Germany and some participated in the Nazi campaigns against the Jews. But as Ukrainian hopes for independence were frustrated, relations deteriorated and the Nazis imprisoned Bandera.
Toward the end of the Second World War, borders and populations were shifted. Ukraine saw key examples of this. Stalin deported all the Crimean Tartars from their homes, expelling them overnight. Poland shifted westward, ethnic Poles were evicted from ancestral homes, and the city of Lwow became Lviv, in western Ukraine. By the end of this process, Ukraine’s borders included most Ukrainians for the first time in centuries, but all of them under Moscow’s rigid control..............
...........With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine became independent. However, the newly independent Ukraine revealed complexities. Along with Russia and Belarus, Ukraine was one of the founding members of the CIS, the Commonwealth of Independent States, to the east. Yet many Ukrainian leaders avowed that they wanted to be part of an Eastern European “return to Europe,” which would mean orienting themselves to the west....................
......Corruption at multiple levels of government ate away at ordinary people’s confidence in the system, and economic productivity lagged. Ukraine found itself hugely dependent on Russia for energy supplies, some 75 percent of its gas and 80 percent of its oil. To overcome its troubles, Ukraine sought international financial aid, and giving up its nuclear stockpile left over from the Soviet era in 1994 helped win them some assistance............
............Disappointment with insider politics as usual produced a popular movement called the Orange Revolution in 2004. The Ukrainian opposition to the government was led by Viktor Yushchenko.
On September 5, 2004, Yushchenko became desperately ill after dinner. Medical tests showed dioxin poisoning symptoms, and the symptoms were visible in his bloated, pockmarked face.
Image of Viktor YushchenkoViktor Yushchenko (Image: Tasnim News Agency, CC BY 4.0
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons)
Who had done it? Several suspects fled to Russia and were not questioned. Was the intention to kill him outright? Or “merely” to disfigure him in his outward appearance and, thus, scuttle his chances for election? Whatever the case, it backfired.
When the government announced fraudulent election returns, people took to the streets. They chose the vivid color orange to rally people to their cause and kept protesting even in the bitter winter cold of the streets. After 17 days, the protestors won; and in a new election, Yushchenko became president.................
..........At the end of 2013, when Yanukovych negotiated and then bizarrely refused to sign an Association Agreement with the European Union, protests erupted again in Kiev, Lviv, and other cities. These protests, in coldest winter, came to be called the Euromaidan, or “Euro Square.”
Government forces tried to quell the protests. Dozens of protestors were killed. But by February 2014, President Yanukovych felt his power crumbling and fled, finding refuge in Russia................
..............Putin, who had been Yanukovych’s patron, declared his ouster and the change of government illegitimate. Russian forces moved into Crimea. At first, the Russian government denied that it had sent troops into the region, which had an ethnic Russian majority. The troops bore no insignia, but they did wear masks. Russia then annexed Crimea officially, over international protests.
Later, in March 2015, Putin proudly admitted openly what his government had denied: Russian involvement was not a spontaneous response to calls for help, but a plan, and the annexation was ordered weeks before the referendum was staged under the watchful eyes of gunmen..................
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