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ABSTRACT
The military conflict between Russia and Ukraine that is also a conflict between Russia and the United States and its NATO allies is fundamentally a result of two interconnected factors. The first is the threat to the security of Russia posed by the enlargement of NATO in violation of commitments made at the time of the reunification of Germany and of the principle of indivisible security. The second is deeply rooted internal divisions in Ukraine that were exacerbated by ethnic nationalism and the imposition of divisive national identity that led to demands for a degree of regional autonomy and a civil war that successive governments and external parties did not or did not want to resolve. In these years Ukraine served as an instrument in a US strategy to weaken a strategic rival, prevent Eurasian integration and preserve the unipolar order that had emerged with the collapse of the Soviet Union. On present trends the losers will be Ukraine as it existed until February 2022, Europe and Germany although, depending on the outcome, it may also accelerate the transition to a new multipolar world order.
Acknowledgements
The author wishes to thank very much the editors and in particular four anonymous referees for their very incisive and constructive comments on an earlier draft and Zixu Liu for his careful editing and helpful suggestions for improvement. The usual disclaimers apply.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Correction Statement
This article was originally published with errors, which have now been corrected in the online version. Please see Correction https://doi.org/10.1080/21598282.2023.2215950
Notes
2 Ukrainian names are often spelled in different ways. Ukrainian with Russian are East-Slavic languages that use Cyrillic alphabets with few letters that differ, and are Romanized using Latin characters. Romanization systems differ with a major distinction between those that represent individual characters and permit reconstruction of the original text and those that seek to represent the sound and depend on the orthographical conventions of other languages. After independence Ukraine replaced Russian with its own Romanization system. As a result geographical and personal names were written differently, while many place names were also changed. For example, the capital is Київ in Ukrainian and transliterated as Kyïv or Kyiv (in Russian Киев-Kiev). The geographical focus of the conflict is called Донбас in Ukrainian (Донба́сс, Donbass), an abbreviation for the Severski (Seversky) Donets Basin. Other important differences include: Kharkiv (Kharkov), Lviv (Lvov), Luhansk (Lugansk), Mykolaiv (Nikolaev), Odesa (Odessa), and Zaporizhzhia (Zaporozhye). In this article except for the contested Donbass and Lugansk and in quotations and historical references, Ukrainian Romanization is used.
3 Some 1.5 million were murdered with the worst atrocity at Babi Yar in 1941. Attacks on Jewish communities often occurred in the past. In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth an arenda system developed with many Jewish people employed to manage farms and enterprises and collect taxes on behalf of absentee Catholic owners. Performance of these roles led to the hostility of Orthodox and Cossack peasants. At that time Ottoman controlled, Crimea was occupied largely by Tartar Muslims (Miller Citation2022).
4 Is Russian action imperialist? In relation to Nazi Germany Stalin (Citation1941) remarked:
As long as the Hitlerites were engaged in assembling the German lands and reuniting the Rhine district, Austria, etc., it was possible with a certain amount of foundation to call them nationalists. But after they seized foreign territories and enslaved European nations … and began to reach out for world domination, the Hitlerite party ceased to be a nationalist party, because from that moment it became an imperialist party, a party of annexation and oppression.
5 Paul Wolfowitz, “Defence Planning Guidance for the 1994–99 Fiscal Years,” dated February 18, 1992 and not intended for public release. It was leaked to The New York Times on March 7, 1992 and reported next day in Tyler (Citation1992a, Citation1992b).
6 At that stage Privat Bank was Ukraine’s largest and was controlled by Gennadiy Boholubov and Ihor Kolomoyskyi. The influence of the latter increased dramatically after Maidan, while Rinat Akhmetov who controlled First Ukrainian International Bank found an accommodation with the new government (Konończuk Citation2017; Gorchinskaya Citation2020).
7 The Ukrainian neo-Nazi movement contains a number of strands. The Right Sector which was involved in Maidan and the Odesa massacre was rooted in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUA). In revering Nazi collaborators as heroes, it was unlikely to gain a strong foothold in the southeast. The notorious Azov regiment, however, grew out of Kharkiv neo-Nazis and marginalized layers in Russian-speaking cities in May 2014 under the leadership of Andrei Biletsky and oligarch Arsen Avakov (Minister of the Interior, 2014–2021 and former governor of Kharkiv) initially to destroy “separatists.” Headquartered in Mariupol, it escaped the ethnic-national limits of the Bandera ideology by employing a racist ideology of superiority and technical perfection and making territorial claims in Russia. Alongside its military arm, it was involved in education and politics with its own violent street militias. Another group active in the southeast was Aidar, an assault battalion of the Ukrainian ground forces originally established in 2015 to repress and defeat “separatists” and sympathizers with Russia and the Soviet past (Sankin Citation2022).
8 Neo-Nazism is used to denote the ideology of the movements involved (Svoboda All Ukraine Nationalists and Right Sector) referring to the continuity with earlier Ukrainian nationalist support for Nazi Germany and their militaristic, racist and nationalist characteristics along with reference to a mythical past and the rights of the exceptional individual and capitalist/corporatist economic ideologies, although the validity of this term and alternatives such as retronazism, ethnonationalism, extreme nationalism and integral nationalism requires further consideration.
9 “According to a British Home Office report, in the March/April 2014 recall of reservists, 70% did not show up for the first session, 80% for the second, 90% for the third, and 95% for the fourth” (Baud Citation2022b).
10 As in the case of recent Western international interventions, the Russian SMO raises serious questions about “national sovereignty,” “non-interference,” and “territorial integrity.” The UN Charter (United Nations Citation1945) notes: “All members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations.” To justify its action Russia claimed that it is protecting Russian-speaking people in the Donbass region from genocide and referred to responsibility to protect (R2P). Also relevant is Article 1(2) of the UN Charter on the right to self-determination and Article 1 of both the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESR) which state: “All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.” However, self-determination is limited by the principle of the territorial integrity of states. In examining these issues, Lenin argued:
The several demands of democracy, including self-determination, are not an absolute, but only a small part of the general-democratic (now: general-socialist) world movement. In individual concrete cases, the part may contradict the whole; if so, it must be rejected. It is possible that the republican movement in one country may be merely an instrument of the clerical or financial-monarchist intrigues of other countries; if so, we must not support this particular, concrete movement. … (Lenin [Citation1915] 1974, 341; italics in the original)
11 In Russia a new “vertical oligarchic system” left oligarchs with their economic wealth as long as they contributed to national survival and development, paid some taxes and no longer played a direct role in political affairs. Constant rivalry set liberal pro-Western interests who played an important role in economic affairs against more nationalist “silovki” who entered politics from security, military, or similar services. Instead of rule by presidential decree as in the Boris Yeltsin era, Vladimir Putin has ruled by laws promulgated by a bicameral parliament constituted of several parties. Overall somewhat illiberal, this model and system of governance enabled Russia to recover from the 2014 sanctions but did not permit dynamic development of the kind observed in East Asia (Drweski Citation2022b).
12 In Ukraine a “horizontal oligarchic system” survived: originally Russified Ukrainian elites refused to accept a state system in which they would no longer play a direct political and judicial role and would have to contribute more to national development. In order to preserve their economic and political privileges when faced with a population in the east and south of the country that supported economic and cultural rapprochement with Russia, these elites moved in the direction of a new social compromise: on the one hand they mobilized and funded with international assistance domestic nationalist political and armed groups and legitimized opposition to Russia; on the other they offered the promise of democracy, European integration and Western European ways of life to gain the support of liberals and even social democrats and assuage the discontents of the masses. The interests of this coalition and these politically connected “separatist” oligarchs coincided with the US goal of containing Russia and preserving trans-Atlantic leadership. Together they joined the Orange Revolution of 2004, and after its disappointing results the Maidan led ultimately by an activist minority (Drweski Citation2022b).
13 Ukraine is a country in which corruption is rampant (Gorchinskaya Citation2020) with large black, informal and criminal economies. In principle GDP estimates should capture the size of these sectors. A great deal of the income created in Ukraine is transferred overseas so that its Gross National Product which measures the income of people living in Ukraine was in the last four years 5% to 15% less than its GDP (The World Bank Citation2022).
14 Due to the concentration of farmland in the hands of domestic oligarchs and foreign corporations, in 2001 a moratorium was imposed on further privatization and land sales though land continued to be leased. In 2020, however, it was announced that 5 million of 6.8 million hectares had been illegally privatized (Matuszak Citation2020). To meet the preconditions for IMF loans, in 2021 the moratorium on sales was lifted. These multilateral agency conditions also include the reversal of a ban on genetically modified crops to enable agribusiness companies to operate freely using patented genetically engineered seeds to grow crops able to tolerate herbicides such as those produced by Monsanto (Oakland Institute Citation2015; Mousseau and Reicher Citation2021). To sell land to foreign owners local authorities re-designated land, changing it back to agricultural use once a sale was completed.
15 Despite its preferential trade regime with Russia, Ukraine consistently avoided participation in Russian multilateral (Customs Union and Eurasian Economic Union) and bilateral integration projects. Of the latter proposals included:
a fuel fabrication plant for Ukrainian nuclear power plants on the territory of Ukraine, a gas transport consortium, an OPEC marketing regime for wheat, placement of Russian vessel orders at Ukrainian shipyards, joint projects in the aviation industry, large investments in Ukrainian assets such as the Odessa and Lysychansk refineries, the Krivoy Rog iron-ore refinery, the Krivorozhstal steel production complex, the Odessa Port Plant, the Zaporozhye Aluminium Refinery [ZALK], etc. (Storozhenko Citation2022)
16 In 2021 the China Society for Human Rights Studies reported that the US had waged 201 of 248 armed conflicts that occurred in 153 regions from the end of the Second World War in 1945 to 2001 (State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China Citation2021).
17 In 2021 US military expenditure was US$801 billion, Chinese US$293 billion, Russian US$65.9 billion (SIPRI Citation2022).
18 Volodymyr Zelensky, Decree of the President of Ukraine No117/2021. [In Russian.] https://www.president.gov.ua/documents/1172021-37533.
19 “Zelensky’s full speech at Munich Security Conference.” The Kyiv Independent, February 19, 2022. https://kyivindependent.com/national/zelenskys-full-speech-at-munich-security-conference; Kyiv: Government of Ukraine, February 19, 2022, Munich Security Conference Citation2022—Agenda and Recordings: Europe’s Permacrisis: Ukraine and European Security. https://securityconference.org/en/msc-2022/agenda/europes-permacrisis-ukraine-and-european-security/.
20 International Energy Agency (IEA), 2022. “Russian Supplies to Global Energy Markets. https://www.iea.org/reports/russian-supplies-to-global-energy-markets; Statista, 2022, “Natural Gas Prices for the Industrial Sector Worldwide as of 2020, by Select Country.” https://www.statista.com/statistics/253047/natural-gas-prices-in-selected-countries. https://www.statista.com/statistics/253047/natural-gas-prices-in-selected-countries/.
21 It was 24.3% of imported crude oil and 29.5% of crude oil, natural gas liquids and feedstocks in November 2021. See International Energy Agency. “Russian Supplies to Global Energy Markets: Oil Market and Russian Supply.” https://www.iea.org/reports/russian-supplies-to-global-energy-markets. Author’s calculations.
22 A 2018 US Rand Corporation document entitled Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground, alongside providing “lethal aid to Ukraine” (Dobbins et al. Citation2019, 96–103), identified reducing Russian natural gas exports and hindering pipeline construction as ways of weakening Russia and ensuring the continuation of US hegemony.
23 FiscalData, created by US Department of the Treasury and Bureau of the Fiscal Service. https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/datasets/debt-to-the-penny/debt-to-the-penny.
24 The votes for were 99.23% (97.5% turnout) in the DPR; 98.42% (92.6%) in the LPR; 93.11% (85.4%) in Zaporizhzhya; and 87.05% (76.9%) in Kherson. See Sputnik International, 2022, “Results of Referendums on Joining Russia in Donbass, Kherson and Zaporozhye Regions.” https://sputniknews.com/20220928/results-of-referendums-on-joining-russia-in-donbass-kherson-and-zaporozhye-regions-1101303653.html.
25 The Central Bank of the Russian Federation. “Key Aggregates of the Balance of Payments of the Russian Federation, January–February, 2022.” https://cbr.ru/eng/statistics/macro_itm/svs/bop-eval/; and “Bank of Russia Foreign Exchange and Gold Asset Management Report.” https://cbr.ru/Collection/Collection/File/39685/2022-01_res_en.pdf. See also TASS, “International Reserves of the Russian Federation for the Week Increased to $ 630.6 billion.” https://tass.ru/ekonomika/13419521.
26 At the Forum Xi said:
It has been proven time and again that the Cold War mentality would only wreck the global peace framework, that hegemonism and power politics would only endanger world peace, and that bloc confrontation would only exacerbate security challenges in the 21st century. To address growing threats posed by hegemony and increasing deficits in peace, security, trust and governance, he proposed a six-point Global Security Initiative that included respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries, non-interference in internal affairs and each nation’s choice of its own development path and social system, respect for the UN Charter and the principle of indivisible security, a rejection of Cold War mentality, unilateralism, group politics and bloc confrontation, and peaceful resolution of differences and disputes as well as rejection of double standards, wanton use of unilateral sanctions and long-arm jurisdiction. (Xi Citation2022; emphasis added)
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Michael Dunford
Michael Dunford is Emeritus Professor at the School of Global Studies, University of Sussex, Visiting Professor at the Institute of Geographical Sciences and Natural Resources Research (IGSNRR), Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Managing Editor of Area Development and Policy. He graduated with B.Sc. in Geography and M.Sc. in Quantitative Economics from the University of Bristol. His interests are in global development (at multiple geographical scales and with special reference to Europe and the Western world, China and Eurasia), drawing on materialist conceptions of history and geography and on theories of uneven and combined development, regulation, and international political economy.