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UKRAINE 2022

Henry Kissinger about Ukraine (2014) The issue at hand was which side Ukraine should join , the West or the East side but the Ukrainian attitude had to remain neutral. Ukraine can never be just a foreign country to Russia. Ukraine has been a part of Russia for centuries and their stories are intertwined.Treating Ukraine as part of an East-West confrontation would wipe out for decades any prospect, Russia and Europe-of a cooperative international systemHenry addressed that Putin should realize that, whatever his grievances, a policy of military coercion would provoke another Cold War.The US should avoid treating Russia as a deviant that will patiently accept the rules of Washington.Kissinger’s ideas for an outcome compatible with the security values ​​and interests of all sides.Ukraine should be free to choose its economic and political alliances and should not join NATO. Also Ukraine should be free to form any government compatible with the expressed will of its people,It is incompatible with the rules of the existing world order for Russia to annex Crimea. However, it should be possible to put Crimea’s relationship with Ukraine on a less problematic basis. To this end, Russia will recognize Ukraine’s sovereignty over Crimea.HISTORY OF UKRAINE

Early history

In the 5th and 6th centuries, the Antes people lived in Ukraine. The Antes were the ancestors of Ukrainians: White Croats, Severians, Eastern Polans, Drevlyans, Dulebes, Ulichians, and Tiverians. Migrations from the territories of present-day Ukraine throughout the Balkans established many South Slavicnations. Northern migrations, reaching almost to Lake Ilmen, led to the emergence of the Ilmen Slavs, Krivichs, and Radimichs, the groups ancestral to the Russians. Following an Avar raid in 602 and the collapse of the Antes Union, most of these peoples survived as separate tribes until the beginning of the second millennium.

Golden Age of Kyiv

The Golden Age of Kyivan Rus’ began with the reign of Vladimir the Great (980–1015), who turned Rus’ toward Byzantine Christianity. During the reign of his son, Yaroslav the Wise (1019–1054), Kyivan Rus’ reached the zenith of its cultural development and military power. The state soon fragmented as the relative importance of regional powers rose again. After a final resurgence under the rule of Vladimir II Monomakh (1113–1125) and his son Mstislav (1125–1132), Kyivan Rus’ finally disintegrated into separate principalities following Mstislav’s death

The 13th-century Mongol invasion devastated Kyivan Rus’ and Kyiv was completely destroyed in 1240. On today’s Ukrainian territory, the principalities of Halych and Volodymyr-Volynskyi arose, and were merged into the state of Galicia–Volhynia. Daniel of Galicia, son of Roman the Great, re-united much of south-western Rus’, including Volhynia, Galicia and the ancient capital of Kyiv. He was subsequently crowned by the papal archbishop as the first king of the newly created Kingdom of Ruthenia in 1253.

Foreign domination

In the mid-17th century, a Cossack military quasi-state, the Zaporozhian Host, was formed by Dnieper Cossacks and by Ruthenian peasants who had fled Polish serfdom.Poland exercised little real control over this population, but found the Cossacks to be a useful opposing force to the Turks and Tatars,and at times the two were allies in military campaigns. However, the continued harsh enserfment of peasantry by Polish nobility and the suppression of the Orthodox Church alienated the Cossacks. The Cossacks sought representation in the Polish Sejm, recognition of Orthodox traditions, and the gradual expansion of the Cossack Registry. These were rejected by the Polish nobility, who dominated the Sejm.

Cossack Hetmanate

In 1768, the Cossacks led yet another anti-Polish uprising, called Koliivshchyna, in the Ukrainian borderlands of Poland–Lithuania. Ethnicity was one root cause of this revolt, which included the Massacre of Uman that killed tens of thousands of Poles and Jews who settled Ukraine in the previous centuries. Religious warfare also broke out between two Ukrainian groups. Increasing conflict between the Ruthenian Uniate Church and Orthodox parishes along the newly reinforced Polish-Russian border on the Dnieper eventually led to the uprising. As Uniate religious practices had become more Latinized, Orthodoxy in this region became even more dependent on the Russian Orthodox Church. Faith also reflected the opposing Polish (Western Catholic) and Russian (Eastern Orthodox) political allegiances.

After the annexation of Crimea by the Russian Empire in 1783, the newly acquired lands, now called Novorossiya were opened up to settlement by Ukrainians and Russians Despite promises in the Treaty of Pereyaslav, the Ukrainian elite and the Cossacks never received the freedoms and the autonomy they had expected. However, within the Empire, Ukrainians rose to the highest Russian state and church offices. In a later period, tsarists established a policy of Russification, suppressing the use of the Ukrainian language in print and in public.

19th century, World War I and revolution

The short-lived Unification Act was an agreement signed on 22 January 1919 by the Ukrainian People’s Republic and the West Ukrainian People’s Republic on the St. Sophia Square in Kyiv] This led to civil war, and an anarchist movement called the Black Army (later renamed to the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine) developed in Southern Ukraine under the command of the anarchist Nestor Makhno during the Russian Civil War. They protected the operation of “free soviets” and libertarian communes in the Free Territory, an attempt to form a stateless anarchist society from 1918 to 1921 during the Ukrainian Revolution, fighting both the tsarist White Army under Denikin and later the Red Army under Trotsky, before being defeated by the latter in August 1921.

Poland defeated Western Ukraine in the Polish–Ukrainian War, but failed against the Bolsheviks in an offensive against Kyiv. According to the Peace of Riga, western Ukraine was incorporated into Poland, which in turn recognised the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in March 1919. With establishment of the Soviet power, Ukraine lost half of its territory, while Moldavian autonomy was established on the left bank of the Dniester River. Ukraine became a founding member of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in December 1922.

Inter-war Soviet Ukraine

The Russian Civil War devastated the whole Russian Empire including Ukraine. It left over 1.5 million people dead and hundreds of thousands homeless in the former Russian Empire territory. Soviet Ukraine also faced the Russian famine of 1921 (primarily affecting the Russian Volga-Ural region).During the 1920s,under the Ukrainisation policy pursued by the national Communist leadership of Mykola Skrypnyk, Soviet leadership encouraged a national renaissance in Ukrainian culture and language. Ukrainisation was part of the Soviet-wide policy of Korenisation (literally indigenisation).

World War II

Following the Invasion of Poland in September 1939, German and Soviet troops divided the territory of Poland. Thus, Eastern Galicia and Volhynia with their Ukrainian population became part of Ukraine. For the first time in history, the nation was united.

In 1940, the Soviets annexed Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. The Ukrainian SSR incorporated the northern and southern districts of Bessarabia, Northern Bukovina, and the Hertsa region. But it ceded the western part of the Moldavian Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republicto the newly created Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. These territorial gains of the USSR were internationally recognized by the Paris peace treaties of 1947.The vast majority of the fighting in World War II took place on the Eastern Front. By some estimates, 93% of all German casualties took place there The total losses inflicted upon the Ukrainian population during the war are estimated at 6 million,including an estimated one and a half million Jews killed by the Einsatzgruppen, sometimes with the help of local collaborators. Of the estimated 8.6 million Soviet troop losses, 1.4 million were ethnic Ukrainians. Victory Day is celebrated as one of ten Ukrainian national holidays.] The losses of the Ukrainian people in the war amounted to 40–44% of the total losses of the USSR.

Independence

On 21 January 1990, over 300,000 Ukrainians organised a human chain for Ukrainian independence between Kyiv and Lviv, in memory of the 1919 unification of the Ukrainian People’s Republic and the West Ukrainian National Republic. Citizens came out to the streets and highways, forming live chains by holding hands in support of unity.

Orange Revolution

In 2004, Viktor Yanukovych, then prime minister, was declared the winner of the presidential elections, which the Supreme Court of Ukraine later ruled had been largely rigged . The results caused a public outcry in support of the opposition candidate, Viktor Yushchenko, who challenged the outcome. During the tumultuous months of the revolution, candidate Yushchenko suddenly became gravely ill, and was soon found by multiple independent physician groups to have been poisoned by TCDD dioxin. Yushchenko strongly suspected Russian involvement in his poisoning.All of this eventually resulted in the peaceful Orange Revolution, which brought Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko to power, while casting Yanukovych in opposition.

Euromaidan and the Revolution of Dignity

he Euromaidan (Ukrainian: Євромайдан, literally “Eurosquare”) protests started in November 2013 after the president, Viktor Yanukovych, began moving away from an association agreement that had been in the works with the European Union and instead chose to establish closer ties with the Russian Federation.Some Ukrainians took to the streets to show their support for closer ties with Europe.

2014 Russian armed interventions and invasion

Using the Russian naval base at Sevastopol as cover, Putin directed Russian troops and intelligence agents to disarm Ukrainian forces and take control of Crimea. After the troops entered Crimea, a controversial referendum was held on 16 March 2014 and the official result was that 97 percent wished to join with Russia.In February 2015, after a summit hosted in Minsk, Belarus, Poroshenko negotiated a ceasefire with the separatist troops. The resulting agreements, known as the Minsk Protocol, included conditions such as the withdrawal of heavy weaponry from the front line and decentralisation of rebel regions by the end of 2015.They also included conditions such as Ukrainian control of the border with Russia in 2015 and the withdrawal of all foreign troops from Ukrainian territory. The ceasefire began on 15 February 2015. Participants in this ceasefire also agreed to attend regular meetings to ensure that the agreement was respected.

On 1 January 2016, Ukraine joined the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area with the European Union, which aims to modernize and develop Ukraine’s economy, governance and rule of law to EU standards and gradually increase integration with the EU Internal market. In 2017 the European Union approved visa-free travel for Ukrainian citizens: entitling Ukrainians to travel to the Schengen area for tourism, family visits and business reasons, with the only document required being a valid biometric passport.

2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine

In spring 2021, Russia began building up troop strengths along its border with Ukraine On 22 February 2022, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered military forces to enter the breakaway Ukrainian republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, calling the act a “peacekeeping mission”. Putin also officially recognized Donetsk and Luhansk as sovereign states, fully independent from the Ukrainian government.

In the early hours of 24 February 2022, Putin announced a “special military operation” to “demilitarize and de-Nazify” Ukraine, and launched a large-scale invasion of the country. Later in the day, the Ukrainian government announced that Russia had taken control of Chernobyl.On 28 February 2022, Ukraine asked for immediate admission to the European Union on in response to the invasion.

Two weeks into Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it appeared that early Russian predictions of a quick victory in Ukraine may have been based on faulty Russian intelligence. Russia’s two primary initial objectives, the capture of Ukraine’s two largest cities, Kyiv and Kharkiv had not yet been achieved while it was reported that such mistaken Russian intelligence may have driven the war into a stalemate.

SOURCES

SOURCES

Silvia Ralli, EleniE, Marialenatsavala, Ανδριάνα Μανιώτη,ZENIA BARRY, Mania Xenou, Betty Tsakarestou

Betty Tsakarestou

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ZENIA BARRY
Crisis Management Simulation Lab by ADandPRLAB at Panteion University

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