Everyone Loses: The Ukraine Crisis and the Ruinous Contest for Post-Soviet Eurasia

18 March 2014 — Putin delivers blistering speech denouncing Western foreign policy and announcing the ‘reunification’ of Crimea with Russia

15 April 2014 — Ukrainian government launches ‘anti-terrorist operation’ against Russia-backed anti-Maidan protesters who had taken up arms and seized administrative buildings in southern and eastern Ukraine

25 May 2014 — Petro Poroshenko elected president of Ukraine

27 June 2014 — Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine sign AAs with EU

16 July 2014 — US Treasury Department implements sanctions on Russia’s financial, defence and energy sectors

17 July 2014 — Downing of Malaysia Airlines passenger jet over the Donbas

7 August 2014 — Russia retaliates against sanctions with bans on imports of agricultural goods and foodstuffs

2 September 2014 — Separatist counter-offensive, backed by Russia, ends in major Ukrainian defeat at Ilovaisk

5 September 2014 — Representatives of Ukraine, Russia, the DNR and LNR sign ceasefire in Minsk, Belarus (‘Minsk I’)

1 January 2015 — EEU launched

14 January–20 February 2015 — Second Russian direct military intervention ends in capture of Debaltseve

12 February 2015 — Angela Merkel, François Hollande, Putin and Poroshenko agree on second peace plan (‘Minsk II’)

12 August 2015 — Kyrgyzstan joins EEU

21 December 2015 — Russia–Ukraine–EU trade talks break down in acrimony

1 January 2016 — Ukrainian DCFTA goes into effect; Russia suspends CIS trade preferences for Ukraine in retaliation

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Samuel Charap is Senior Fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, based in the Institute’s Washington DC office. Prior to joining the Institute, Samuel served as Senior Advisor to the US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, and on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff.

Timothy J. Colton is Morris and Anna Feldberg Professor of Government and Russian Studies, Harvard University. He is a specialist on Russian and Eurasian politics and the author of Yeltsin: A Life (Basic Books, 2008), Russia: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford University Press, 2016) and other works. He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

MAPS

Map 1: Cold War military alliances, 1989

Map 2: Military alliances and economic blocs, 2016

Map 3: East Central Europe and Post-Soviet Eurasia

Map 4: Separatist-controlled territory in eastern Ukraine, November 2016

INTRODUCTION

Western readers of the morning’s headlines in 2014 realised to their surprise and dismay that post-Cold War Europe was at war. The local conflagrations triggered by the break-up of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia in the 1990s were bloodier, but the Ukraine crisis occurred long afterwards and revived fears of a clash between major world powers. The United States and the member states of the European Union (EU) adopted positions diametrically opposed to those followed by post-Soviet Russia. Ukraine and its people were caught in between. Today, Europe is divided once again, although the divisions lie farther east than they did before the fall of the Berlin Wall. These new demarcation lines are unstable and reflect neither local affinities nor great-power consensus. There is talk in world capitals of a new cold war, a protracted period of tensions when destabilising and even catastrophic conflict is an ever-present danger.

The troubles in Ukraine began as an essentially internal affair. In November 2013 a crackdown on students demonstrating against the government’s decision not to sign an agreement to link the country more closely with the EU led to a mammoth street protest in the capital city, Kyiv. Several months of clashes between the authorities and the protesters produced, unexpectedly for all, the violent overthrow in February 2014 of a harsh and erratic but democratically elected president, Viktor Yanukovych, in what came to be known as the Maidan Revolution. The domestic imbroglio blew up into an international confrontation in March when Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered measures taken to occupy and then annex the Crimean peninsula, situated on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast.