The war in Ukraine has intensified. Russian forces are indiscriminately shelling cities and civilians, and casualties are mounting. Kyiv is under attack and almost a million are already refugees. The world community has largely rallied against Russian President Vladimir Putin’s premeditated and totally unprovoked aggression by imposing severely biting sanctions, and the U.N. General Assembly has voted to condemn Russia’s invasion. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has galvanized the people to fight for Ukrainian independence and sovereignty, but the country’s future remains uncertain.
How did all this come to pass? To appreciate the tumultuous and strained Russia-Ukraine relations and Putin’s strategy in Ukraine, a look back into history is essential.
The history is complicated — here is a snapshot. The Ukrainian territories were primarily part of the Russian Empire until 1919 and then became part of the Soviet Union, as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Russia forcefully suppressed any moves for an independent Ukrainian state or Ukrainian nationalism, until the dissolution of the USSR in 1991, when Ukraine became independent along with the other Soviet Republics. The relations were tense from the beginning, with the dispute centering on the Crimean territory and the city of Sebastopol. Russia formally recognized Ukraine’s independence in 1997, but remains wary of the West and NATO’s expansion toward its borders.
Ukraine has gone through political turmoil ever since it became independent. In the 1990s, the pro-Russian parties were victorious in presidential elections, but in 2004 after the Russian-backed Viktor Yanukovych won the presidency, supporters of the pro-Western candidate Viktor Yushchenko, challenged the results. Clad in orange, they staged mass protests in what came to be known as the Orange Revolution. Russia considered the Orange Revolution to be a ruse by the U.S. to destabilize the region and drive a wedge between it and Ukraine. The Supreme Court annulled the election results and ordered a run-off, which Yushchenko won.
In June 2010, Yanukovich again won the presidential election and the Ukrainian government officially abandoned its goal of joining NATO, which Russia had opposed. In November 2013, Yanukovich withdrew Ukraine’s planned association agreement with the European Union, under which its political and economic ties would have been closely integrated with the EU. Demonstrations and street protests followed in Kyiv and continued until January 2014, eventually resulting in bloody clashes between protesters and police.
Government security forces and police used lethal force, killing scores and injuring hundreds in this Maidan Revolution. The EU imposed sanctions against Ukraine for its violent police crackdown on protesters. Opposition forces continued their protest, occupying police stations and government offices in several cities. The EU brokered an agreement between Yanukovych and opposition leaders in February 2014 and an interim unity government was formed. The Parliament appointed an opposition leader as acting president and charged Yanukovych with mass murder in connection with the deaths of the protesters, issuing a warrant for his arrest. Yanukovych fled to Russia, insisting that he was the victim of a coup d’état and was still the president of Ukraine.
Political turmoil continued, and in March 2014, the pro-Russia Crimean Parliament voted to secede from Ukraine. Putin responded by formally integrating Crimea into Russia. Starting in April 2014, separatists in the Eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk continued fighting government forces in their efforts to secede from Ukraine. After multiple negotiations, several failed ceasefires, and over 13,000 confirmed deaths, on February 21, 2022, Russia officially recognized the two dissenting regions in Eastern Ukraine, the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic, as independent states and positioned its armed forces in Donbas.
On February 24, Putin launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. On his part, President Zelensky is providing exemplary leadership in the face of heavy odds, and the Ukrainian people are courageously resisting the Russian onslaught. Even those initially ambivalent about him are saying they’re proud to follow his lead.
To accomplish his goal of Russia remaining a regional hegemon and ensuring its reemergence as a respected world power, Putin demands that Ukraine remain in Russia’s orbit and out of NATO. That is his endgame in invading Ukraine, but Ukraine’s steely and resolute resistance is getting in his way. The world must not abandon Ukraine after it has worked so hard for so long to shed the yoke of Russia.
Ved Nanda is a distinguished university professor and director of the Ved Nanda Center for International Law at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law. His column appears the last Sunday of each month and he welcomes comments at vnanda@law.du.edu.
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