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

Whereas in the past it had allowed for notes of ambiguity and compromise, Russia now presented Western interlocutors with rough-edged demands. In crisis talks on 15 March, on the eve of the Crimea referendum, Foreign Minister Lavrov gave US Secretary of State John Kerry a draft text of a ‘Friends of Ukraine’ international action plan.[40] The document contained five actionable points: the fulfilment of the pledges contained in the 21 February agreement to disband armed groups and de-occupy buildings; a new constitutional order for Ukraine, providing for, inter alia, neutrality, federalism and the direct election of oblast governments with significant new powers (including on economic policy and trade links with neighbouring countries); the elevation of Russian as an official state language along with Ukrainian; a new round of regional and national elections to take place after the constitutional reform; and recognition of the right to self-determination of the people of Crimea ‘in accordance with the freely expressed will of its population as manifest in the 16 March referendum’. There were to be EU, US and Russian guarantees of all the above, which was to be codified in a resolution of the UN Security Council. The core objectives – neutrality, undisturbed economic ties with Russia and ‘federalisation’ of Ukraine to ensure the pro-Russian oblasts have a veto over decision-making in Kyiv – have remained unchanged ever since. The Russians now wanted ironclad guarantees regarding Ukraine’s geopolitical and geo-economic future. Rejecting the West’s geo-ideational emphasis on the unalloyed right to choose, Russia wanted the deal clinched by the great powers and imposed on Ukraine.

Doubling down

In the wake of the Crimea annexation, the West and Russia effectively doubled down on the very policies that had precipitated the crisis in the first place. The annexation had failed to further Moscow’s objectives as set out in Lavrov’s action plan of 15 March 2014. So Russia seized on a wave of anti-Maidan, anti-government protests that were now breaking out across southern and eastern Ukraine. After local activists, many of them voicing separatist slogans, seized administrative buildings in Donetsk, Luhansk and several smaller towns in the two eponymous oblasts, declaring themselves the Donetsk People’s Republic (DNR) and Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR), the Ukrainian government ordered a military assault on them under the banner of an ‘anti-terrorist operation’. Initially, it was haphazard and underpowered, leaving volunteer paramilitary battalions to take the lead. A motley crew of Russian civilian volunteers along with special forces and operatives streamed across the border, adding fuel to the fire. The Kremlin also turned up the economic heat by rescinding not only the gas discount accorded to Yanukovych in December but the earlier price cut traded for the extension of the lease on the Black Sea Fleet base in 2010, and demanding prepayment for the following month’s gas delivery.

Russia continued playing the military card. The border-area drills were transformed into a sustained build-up of a strike force estimated at the better part of 50,000 strong. Russia could now invade its neighbour at a moment’s notice. It also sent more sophisticated weapons across the border. Anti-aircraft systems proved particularly lethal, leading to the grounding of the Ukrainian air force after several planes were shot down. Russia was resorting to increasingly destructive means to get its way.

Kremlin statements telegraphed an interest in sowing chaos. In mid-April, Putin declared, ‘We believe that we ought to do everything we can to help these people [in southern and eastern Ukraine] defend their rights and independently determine their fate…. The essential issue is how to ensure the legitimate rights and interests of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in the south and east of Ukraine.’ He ‘reminded’ the audience that the Donbas and other oblasts were part of the Russian Empire, and ‘were given to Ukraine in the 1920s by the Soviet government. Why they did this, God only knows.’[41] Russia was unsubtly egging on anti-Maidan sentiment and encouraging destabilisation. Given the implications of Putin’s questioning of ownership rights over much of Ukraine’s south and east, the build-up on the border, and the lightning-fast evolution of the Crimea operation, neither Kyiv nor Western capitals could have any degree of certainty about Moscow’s next move.