Russia-Ucrânia blues - Wilson Center

Russia has already invaded Ukraine—and elsewhere While everyone’s understandably focused on the more than 100,000 uniformed Russian troops gathering on Ukraine’s borders, it’s easy to forget that Russia and Ukraine have been in active conflict for years. Most notably, Russia invaded the Crimean Peninsula through an irregular warfare operation that began in February 2014 with the appearance of what were dubbed Putin’s “little green men.” In Kyiv, pro-European citizen activists had just forced the resignation of the Russia-backed President Yanukovych. In Crimea, which had supported Yanukovych in the previous election, loyalists to the former president protested against the interim government, and Putin saw his opportunity. Stoking the unrest, he ordered Russian special forces onto the peninsula, masked and in unmarked uniforms, and declaring themselves members of Ukrainian “self-defense” militias. Government buildings were occupied, and under duress the Crimean parliament replaced its prime minister with a Russian separatist whose party had won a mere 4 percent of the last vote. Next the captive parliament scheduled a referendum for May to determine the region’s future. That was apparently too long for Putin to wait—the date was later moved up first to March 30 and then to March 16. With Russian troops massed at the Ukrainian border and Russian operatives all around, voters chose to accede to the Russian Federation in an election few observers recognized as credible. Two days later, Putin signed a quickly prepared formal treaty of annexation. The fragile new government in Kyiv was in no position to intervene. Ukraine is far from the only country targeted for fracturing by Putin. Just ask Georgia, which lost 20 percent of its territory after a Russian invasion in 2008. Or ask Moldova, where Russian troops have sustained the breakaway region of Transnistria for decades.

While everyone desperately hopes that diplomacy will succeed, it’s also important to realize that over 13,000 Ukrainians have alreadybeen killed by Russian aggression Crimea isn’t the only place where Putin took advantage of Ukraine’s democratic revolution to further his expansionist aims. In eastern Ukraine, Moscow’s actions were far bloodier—and continue to this day. Again backed by Russian irregulars and justifying their actions as a proper response ethnic grievances, beginning in April 2014 insurgents in the Donbas region seized an area the size of Connecticut and Rhode Island combined, and then held it against counterattacks by the Ukrainian military. Although Russia has denied a direct role in the conflict, its fingerprints became unmistakable in July 2014 when Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was shot down at high altitude over Donbas, killing 298 passengers and crew, including 80 children. An international investigation concluded that a Russian missile system belonging to the 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade based in Kursk was used in the attack, and three Russians and one Ukrainian were eventually charged in connection. The international arrest warrants lay bare the depth of Russian infiltration of the breakaway region: one of the Russian suspects, a former FSB intelligence service colonel, had become the “minister of defense” of the Donetsk People’s Republic, and another former special forces operative, the deputy head of intelligence. In other words, contrary to what Moscow might claim, it’s not merely a domestic insurgency that is holding off the Ukrainian military, but rather trained personnel and lethal hardware from neighboring Russia. In 2015 the U.S. State Department said that it believed as many as 500 Russian soldiers had been killed during fighting in the Donbas. The toll for Ukrainians has been far higher, with the UN estimating more than 13,000 dead as of mid 2021.