Abstract
To
understand the current ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, it is necessary
to understand the centuries old relationship between the two countries. A
panoramic view of the Ukrainian history suggests it has shared deep relations
with Russia. However, there is no doubt that the people of Ukraine have
suffered from invasions over the centuries. It has persistently been a victim
of war and deprivation. Ukraine, has been a victim of countless invasions from
all sides, the North, the South, the West and the East; Mongols, Swedes,
Lithuanians, Poles, French, Germans have all invaded this land. This is a land
that has been crossed by Empires. The article aims to highlight the root cause
of the current crisis by diving into the history of the land called Ukraine and
the author has summed it up by saying: to understand the war one needs to
reflect on history. It also points to the existing and emerging fault lines
between Russia and Ukraine.
Introduction
Ukrainians are at the heart of Russian history. They are the famed Cossacks and the noblest of Eastern Slavic families. Ukrainians were also top rulers of the Soviet Republic. Nikita Khruschev was born in Kalinovka, a village in what is now Russia’s Kursk Oblast, near the present Ukrainian border but was raised in eastern Ukraine. In time, Khrushchev became the head of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (SSR). After Joseph Stalin’s death, he led the Soviet Union between 1953 and 1964.
While
Khrushchev was ethnically Russian, he was Ukrainian in many ways. “In 1954, the
Crimean Region of the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic (RSFSR) was
given to the Ukrainian SSR, in gross violation of legal norms that were in
force at the time,” Putin said of Khrushchev’s act, which the latter described
as a “symbolic gesture”.1
Leonid Brezhnev hailed from Kamianske, a
city in Central Ukraine on the Dnieper River. He ruled the Soviet Union between
1964 and 1982, the second longest-reigning Communist leader of the state after
Stalin who incidentally was born in Georgia.2
Konstantin Chernenko was another
Ukrainian, whore ached the upper echelons of Soviet power. Though born in
Siberia, he was a Ukrainian by descent. He led the State for a brief period
from 1984 to 1985. Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, was half-Ukrainian.
His maternal family had Ukrainian descent and migrated from Chernihiv, a city
in northern Ukraine, he succeeded Chernenko as the General Secretary of the
Soviet Communist Party. Gorbachev established the office of the President of
the Soviet Union in 1990. He was the first and the last President of the Soviet
Union, overseeing its dissolution. He ruled the Soviet Union from 1985 to 1991.
From Stalin’s death in 1953 to the
disintegration of the USSR in 1991, the Soviet Union was led by Ukrainians for
31 of those 38 years. Clearly, Ukraine punched above its weight when it came to
political influence within the Soviet Union.
Relationship
between Ukraine and Russia
To
understand the war in Ukraine, a necessary starting point is to look at the
centuries-old relationship between Ukraine and Russia. It’s in Kyiv where one
of the holiest places of christianity stands: the great Medieval-era Saint
Sophia Cathedral, currently a museum, was built under the reign of the most
revered rulers of Kievan Rus, Vladimir the Great, originally a follower of
Slavic paganism, Vladimir converted to Christianity in 988 and Christianised
Kievan Rus’. This, along with other landmark shrines in Kyiv, is religiously
significant to both Ukrainian and Russian Orthodoxy. In this period, it was in
Kyiv that Christianity was brought from Byzantium to the Slavic people.
The birth of Kievan Rus, central to
Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian history – came in tandem with other great
kingdoms moulded into shape by Vikings, also known as Normans or Norsemen in
Europe. Following the fall of the Roman Empire, Norman warriors became some of
Europe’s most able and trusted fighters and rulers. In the short span of a
century, they founded flourishing kingdoms in France, England, southern Italy
and also in Kyiv. They cherished the idea of reconstituting the peace and
prosperity enjoyed under the Roman Empire. Norsemen solidified their footing in
the 9th century, traveling on large wooden river boats, conquering as they went
farther South. On the banks of the Dnipro River, they founded what is now Kyiv,
the jewel of early East Slavic history.3 The modern nations of Belarus, Russia, and
Ukraine all claim KievanRus’ as their lineage with Belarus and Russia deriving
their names from it.
The State eventually disintegrated into
rival regional powers and was ultimately destroyed by the Mongol invasions of
the 13th century. The area was then contested, divided, and ruled by a variety
of external powers for the next 600 years, including the Polish–Lithuanian
Commonwealth, the Austrian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Tsardom of
Russia.
The Cossack Hetmanate emerged in central
Ukraine in the 17th century, but was partitioned between Russia and Poland, and
ultimately absorbed by the Russian Empire. From the steppes of Ukraine, the
Cossacks helped turn Moscow into a great European power. Their grit and
fighting spirit was legendary and the fighting spirit being demonstrated by the
Ukrainians can possibly be traced back to their Cossack past. The Cossacks were
a tough people who had mastered the art of horseback fighting. Theirs was a
multi-ethnic, semi-nomadic, anarchic and democratic society that emerged in the
late Medieval period; in a loose semi-democratic military federation, they ran
affairs on the Ukrainian plains for centuries. They were early followers of the
East Slavic Christian Orthodox faith and withstood assaults from both the
Russian and Turkish Empires, each vying for control of the Black Sea.
Today, the Black Sea is back in focus as
one of the principal reasons for the Russian invasion of Ukraine is control of
the Black Sea. Russia’s Black Sea fleet remains harboured in Sevastopol in the
Crimea. Russia’s expansion on the Black Sea was beneficial to the Russians as
they developed Ukraine’s warm-water ports, and gained access to the booming
world trade in the Mediterranean Sea. The lands surrounding the Black Sea have
for centuries been a crossroads of empires, voyagers, diseases, wars and
revolutions. It was on the eastern shores of the Black Sea in present day
Turkey where Marco Polo launched his great overland voyage to Cathay. The
Bubonic plague also known as Black Death, arrived in Europe via Crimea.
Over the course of Moscow’s imperial
expansion, the Cossacks entered into alliances with the Tsars of Moscow and
provided crucial military strength. They fought on the side of the Kremlin in
the Great Northern War, the Seven Years’ War, the Crimean War, the Napoleonic
Wars, the Caucasus War, and in the many Russo-Persian Wars and Russo-Turkish Wars,
becoming the backbone of the Russian Empire.4
Chequered
Past
In
Kiev, a granite stele commemorates the Pereyaslav Council of 1654 at which the
Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky and other leaders of the autonomous Cossack Hetmanate
pledged allegiance to Russia in exchange for protection against the
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth – leading to the eventual Russification of the
region that is now Ukraine.5 In the late 1700s, they fought for
Russian Empress Catherine II and it was largely to their military prowess that
Moscow was able to push back the Ottomans from Crimea and Ukraine.
Catherine the Great was indebted to the
Cossacks and bestowed them with favours, wealth, and noble titles and they
played a major role in turning a large but land-locked Russia into a European
power. But in Ukraine, Catherine’s legacy is mixed and a source of deep
division. Catherine sent the Russian General Peter Tekeli to disband the
Zaporozhian Sich, a semi-autonomous and republican-style government in Southern
Ukraine run by Cossack Chiefs. Russian forces surrounded the Sich in May 1775,
forced its surrender and razed what buildings they had to the ground.With the
sacking of the Sich, Catherine renamed Southern and Eastern Ukraine
‘Novorossiya’ or New Russia. After the 1783 Russian annexation of Crimea from
the Ottoman Empire and liquidation of the Cossack Zaporozhian Sich, Grigory
Potemkin, a nobleman, became Governor of the region. Crimea had been devastated
by the war and the Muslim Tatar inhabitants of Crimea were viewed as a
potential fifth column of the Ottoman Empire.6
Potemkin’s major tasks were to pacify
and rebuild by bringing in Russian settlers. In 1787, as a new war was about to
break out between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, Catherine II, with her Court
and several Ambassadors, made an unprecedented six-month trip to New Russia.
Famously, Grigory Potemkin brought the Queen by river boat to see her new
possessions, an episode best remembered as Catherine’s ‘Potemkin village’ trip.
The destruction of the Sich led to
Ukrainian resentment against the Tsars and, in time an important narrative
about why Ukraine needed to become independent again from Russia. During the
spread of Ukrainian nationalism in the 19th century, references to the sacking
of the Sich were a rallying call. Going back in history, the word ‘Ukraine’
first appeared in 1187 AD, upon the death of Volodymyr Hlibovych, a great ruler
of the Principality of Pereyaslavl in the South Eastern extreme of the Kievan
Rus dynasty.
During the Russian Revolution, an
independent Ukrainian Republic briefly survived before it was crushed by the
Bolsheviks. To allay the seething anger raging across so many regions of the
now-decapitated Russian Empire, the Bolsheviks created new ‘Soviet republics’
roughly corresponding to regional, ethnic and geographic boundaries. Thus, the
borders of Ukraine were formalised. Ukraine, then, became a semi-state within
the Soviet universe in 1922. During World War II, Hitler invaded Ukraine and
millions were killed in his bid to possess the Black Sea, Ukraine’s fertile
wheat fields, and the untold riches farther East. In fact, in Babyn Yar, a ravine in Kyiv, more
than 33,000 Jews were killed within 48 hours in 1941, when the city was under
Nazi occupation in one of the largest mass killings at a single location during
World War II.7 Napoleon Bonaparte had made a similar attempt
more than 200 years before, though he invaded Russia with an eye to joining
forces with Ukraine’s anti-Tsarist population still fuming over the destruction
of the Sich.
The Soviet years saw Ukraine transformed
from a once wild and unspoiled steppe into an industrial heartland. Under
Stalin’s Soviet rule, Ukraine became the industrial engine as well as an
environmental wasteland with the Chernobyl nuclear disaster topping them all.8 Ukraine was a powerhouse among the Union of
Soviet Socialist Republics. Many of the biggest Soviet’s dams, highways,
government complexes, factories, mines, oil refineries, chemical plants, ships
and space rocket facilities came up in Ukraine. However, this was also marked
by one of Ukraine’s worst tragedies, the Holomodor or ‘death by hunger’. In the
drive to quickly industrialise and modernise, Stalin oversaw mass starvation
across the Soviet Union. The famine of the early 1930s hit Ukraine particularly
hard. To most, it remains a consequence of human made factors which included
the collectivisation of agriculture. Anne Applebaum, in her book ‘Red Famine:
Stalin’s War on Ukraine’, states, “It’s a piece of history, and it’s remembered
by Ukrainians as an attempt to eradicate them”.
Post
Parting of the Iron Curtain
With
the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine became an independent state,
formalised with a referendum in December 1991. Earlier on 21 January 1990, over
300,000 Ukrainians organised a human chain for Ukrainian independence between
Kyiv and Lviv. Ukraine officially declared itself an independent country on 24
August 1991 when the Communist Supreme Soviet of Ukraine proclaimed that
Ukraine would no longer follow the laws of USSR but only the laws of the
Ukrainian SSR, de facto declaring Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union.
On 01 December 1991, Ukrainian voters, in their first Presidential election,
elected Leonid Kravchuk.9 During his presidency, the Ukrainian economy
shrank by more than 10 per cent per year (in 1994 by more than 20 per cent).
The Presidency (1994–2005) of the second President of Ukraine, Leonid Kuchma,
helped the transition of Ukraine from a Soviet Republic to a capitalist
society, privatising businesses and working to improve international economic
opportunities. But in 2000, his presidency was rocked by a scandal over audio
recordings which revealed he ordered the death of a journalist. It was also
surrounded by numerous corruption scandals and lessening of media freedom.
In 2004, Kuchma announced that he would
not run for re-election. Two major candidates emerged in the 2004 Presidential
election. Viktor Yanukovych, the incumbent Prime Minister, supported by both
Kuchma and by the Russian Federation, wanted closer ties with Russia. The main
opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, called for Ukraine to turn its
attention westward and to eventually join the European Union (EU). In the
election, Yanukovych won by a narrow margin but Yushchenko and his supporters
alleged that vote rigging and intimidation cost him many votes, especially in
eastern Ukraine. The opposition started massive street protests ‘Orange
Revolution’ in Kyiv and other cities, and the Supreme Court of Ukraine ordered
the election results null and void. A second runoff found Viktor Yushchenko the
winner. Five days later, Yanukovych resigned from office and his cabinet was
dismissed on 05 January 2005.10 During the Yushchenko period, relations
between Russia and Ukraine were strained as Yushchenko looked towards improved
relations with the EU and less toward Russia. In 2005, a dispute over natural
gas prices with Russia caused shortages in many European countries that were
reliant on Ukraine as a transit country. A compromise was reached in January
2006.11
By the time of the Presidential election
in 2010, Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko — allies during the Orange Revolution,
had become foes. Tymoshenko ran for the Presidency against both Yushchenko and
Viktor Yanukovych, creating a three-way race. Yushchenko, whose popularity had
plummeted, persisted in running, and many pro-Orange voters stayed home. In the
second round of the election, Yanukovych won the elections. In November 2013,
President Yanukovych did not sign the Ukraine–European Union Association
Agreement and instead pursued closer ties with Russia. This move sparked
protests on the streets of Kyiv. With the protesters setting up camps in Kyiv’s
Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square). Battles between protesters and
police resulted in about 80 deaths in February 2014.12 Following the violence, the Ukrainian
Parliament on 22 February 2014 voted to remove Yanukovych from power, and was
replaced by Oleksandr Turchynov, who was subsequently installed as the interim
President. Yanukovych fled Kyiv, and subsequently gave a press conference in
the Russian city of Rostov-on-Don.
In March 2014, the annexation of Crimea
occurred. The Crimean Parliament voted to secede from Ukraine and join Russia.
A public referendum followed with 97 per cent of voters favouring secession,
although the results were denounced by the European Union and the United States
as illegal.13 The Crimean crisis was followed by pro-Russian
unrest in East and South Ukraine. In April 2014, Ukrainian separatists
self-proclaimed the Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic and
held referendums on 11 May 2014; the separatists claimed nearly 90 per cent
voted in favour of independence.14 Later in April 2014, fighting between the
Ukrainian Army and pro-Ukrainian volunteer battalions on one side, and forces
supporting the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics on the other side
escalated into a war in Donbas. By December 2014, more than 6,400 people had
died in this conflict, and, according to UN, over half a million people became
internally displaced within Ukraine, and two hundred thousand refugees fled to
Russia and other neighbouring countries.
On 25 May 2014, Petro Poroshenko was
elected President. He was pro-West politician and promoted reforms, including
measures to address corruption and lessen Ukraine’s dependence on Russia for
energy and financial support. By the second half of 2015, independent observers
noted that reforms in Ukraine had considerably slowed down, corruption had not
subsided, and the economy of Ukraine was still in deep crisis. In April 2019,
Volodymyr Zelenskyy was elected President in a landslide rebuke of Poroshenko,
which included a stagnating economy and the conflict with Russia. During his
campaign, Zelenskyy vowed to make peace with Russia and end the war in the
Donbas.15
In its three decades of independence,
Ukraine has sought to forge its own path as a sovereign state while looking to
align more closely with western institutions, including the EU and NATO.
However, Kyiv struggled to balance its foreign relations and to bridge deep
internal divisions. A more nationalist, Ukrainian-speaking population in
western parts of the country generally supported greater integration with
Europe, while a mostly Russian-speaking community in the East favoured closer
ties with Russia.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February
2022 marked an escalation of the eight-year-old conflict that began with
Russia’s annexation of Crimea and signifies a historic turning point for
European security. On the eve of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the
country was the poorest in Europe, the cause was attributed to high corruption
levels and the slow pace of economic liberalisation and institutional reforms.
Since its seperation from the Soviet Union, Ukraine has wavered between the
influences of Moscow and the West, surviving scandal and conflict with its
democracy intact.
Conclusion
In
the annals of time, there is no doubt that the people of Ukraine have suffered.
Victims of war, deprivation, and lost history. In 1991, they obtained their
independence as a Republic with the dissolution of the USSR. Yet, since gaining
independence, the past 32 years have seen the country continue to suffer with
the decline of 10 million people, a flat economic curve, and endemic
corruption.
In understanding this war, it seems
wise, therefore, to reflect on its history. History which is now repeating
itself as has happened so many times before. Ukrainians are born in a land
crossed by Empires. The struggle over control of Mackinder’s ‘Heartland’ and
Russia’s need to reclaim control over Ukraine, is now resulting in Europe’s
worst war since World War II, where the conflict is raging without an end in
sight. Yet, for as much as they’ve been at the centre of Russian history,
Ukrainians resent that history. The ‘historical reality’ of modern-day Ukraine
is undoubtedly complex. Encompassing ‘A thousand-year’ history of changing
religions, borders and peoples, conquests over the years and Ukraine’s diverse
geography have created a complex fabric of multi-ethnicity.
Endnotes
1 How Ukrainian-origin leaders dominated the
Soviet Union, TRT World
https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/how-ukrainian-origin-leaders-dominated-the-soviet-union-53932
2 Ibid
3 Cain Burdeau, A look at history helps to
understand the war in Ukraine, Courthouse News Service, 08 October, 2022, https://www.
courthousenews.com/a-look-at-history-helps-to-understand-the-war-in-ukraine/
4 Ibid
5 Akhil Bakshi,
Russia-Ukraine War: How Ukrainians Ruled USSR After Stalin for 31 Years, The
Quint 25 Mar 2022
https://www.thequint.com/ opinion/russia-ukraine-war-how-ukrainians-ruled-ussr-for-31-years-after-stalin
6 Muslims Invasions in India,
https://xtnia.theroacheway.com/ post/muslims-invasions-in-india/17615209
7 Mass Shootings at
BabynYar (Babi Yar), United States Holocaust Memorial
Museumhttps://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kiev-and-babi-yar
8 Cain Burdeau, A look at history helps to
understand the war in Ukraine, Courthouse News Service, 08 October, 2022, https://www.
courthousenews.com/a-look-at-history-helps-to-understand-the-war-in-ukraine/
9 Ukraine’s
Referendum on Independence and Presidential Election, December 01, 1991
https://www.csce.gov/international-impact/publications/ukraines-referendum-independence-and-presidential-election,
10 Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, The Kyiv
Independent https://kyivindependent.com/ukraines-orange-revolution/
11 TIMELINE: Gas crises between Russia and
Ukraine, The Reuters, January 11, 2009,
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-ukraine-gas-timeline-sb-idUSTRE50A1A720090111
12 Understanding Ukraine’s Euromaidan Protests,
Open Society Foundations, May 2019, https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/ explainers/understanding-ukraines-euromaidan-protests
13 Luke Harding
and Shaun Walker, Crimea votes to secede from Ukraine in ‘illegal’ poll,
The Reuters, March 16, 2014
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/16/ukraine-russia-truce-crimea-referendum
14 Pia Krishnankutty 23 February, 2022 Why
Donetsk & Luhansk, Ukraine’s rebel territories recognised by Russia,
matter, The Print, 23 February, 2022,
https://theprint.in/world/why-donetsk-luhansk-ukraines-rebel-territories-recognised-by-russia-matter/842664/
15 Ukraine conflict: Anger as Zelensky agrees
vote deal in east, BBC, October 02, 2019,
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49903996
@Major General Jagatbir Singh, VSM (Retd) was commissioned into 18 Cavalry in December 1981, a Regiment which he subsequently commanded. He is a second-generation officer and is an alumnus of Doon School, Dehradun and St Stephens College, Delhi. He retired in February 2018 as the Director General Resettlement under the Ministry of Defence. Currently, he is a Distinguished Fellow at the USI.
Journal of the United Service Institution of India, Vol. CLIII, No. 632, April-June 2023.