Target: Donbas
The state of play in eastern Ukraine and how we got here, from a different perspective
There are two sides to every story. Let me tell you Russia’s side to the current Ukraine crisis, since you won’t get it from media sources in the United States. And when I say “Russia’s side” I mean just that. Not all of the following represents my own views, although some of it does, as will be clear by the way I express it.
The operation that has unfolded in the last 24 hours looks much like operations the US and its allies have carried out in places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and other places (it’s hard to keep count). Precision cruise missile strikes to take out discrete military command targets deep into enemy territory, followed by ground action to secure whatever objective the operation is seeking to achieve.
In this case, the near-term objective seems to be to secure the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk breakaway republics that Russia, and Russia alone, recognized just this week, and to convince Ukraine that Russia won’t permit the country to become an outpost for NATO. If Putin is to be believed, no occupation of what they consider to be the remaining territory of Ukraine is contemplated. The strikes in non-breakaway Ukraine so far have been precision strikes to take out military assets that might impede the operation unfolding in the east. We’ll see if that holds.
I’ll admit I was surprised by all this. Days of American warnings of an invasion rang hollow to me. Russia was pursuing a diplomatic path to get the West to listen to its demands for security guarantees after decades of NATO encroachment toward its borders and increasing violations of the Minsk Agreement by Ukrainian forces along the zone of contact in the east of the country, terrorizing the largely ethnic Russian population of the region who have never trusted the Kiev regime installed by a US-sponsored coup in 2014.
Just as the United States has claimed a right to intercede in the foreign affairs of countries across the Western Hemisphere for almost two centuries, owing to its unique power and history (see the Monroe Doctrine), Russia claims one for its traditional sphere of influence. The region known as “the Ukraine” was a part of the various incarnations of the Russian empire, in one way or another, for centuries. Modern-day Ukraine as a defined political entity has existed only since the end of the First World War, and for most of that era as a constituent of the Russian-dominated Soviet Union.
Crimea, the diamond-shaped peninsula connected to mainland Ukraine, jutting south into the Black Sea, was likewise part of Russia for hundreds of years, and has been the home of a key Russian naval base at Sevastopol for just as long. The Crimean War in the 1850s solidified Russian sovereignty over the area, and to this day the population is overwhelmingly Russian, evidenced by Western opinion polling in Crimea showing continued overwhelming approval of the region’s 2014 re-annexation into Russia.
Crimea was never legally considered a part of Ukraine until 1954, when the Soviets under Premier Nikita Kruschev, never dreaming that Russia and Ukraine would once be fully independent states, gifted the region to the Ukrainian Soviet republic in a political move that would come back to haunt Russia after the USSR’s collapse in 1991.
After that collapse, although Crimea legally remained a part of the new state of Ukraine, recognized even by the Russian Federation (the official name of the modern-day, multi-ethnic Russian state), it always retained a substantial degree of autonomy under the Ukrainian constitution. And Russia retained legal rights, recognized even by the state of Ukraine, to keep its naval base and station large numbers of naval personnel there (a fact conveniently neglected by Western media when reporting Russia’s occupation of Crimea in early 2014 in response to events in Kiev).
As in Russia, Ukraine’s largest administrative divisions are called “oblasts”. The two easternmost oblasts in Ukraine, self-declared republics since 2014, recognized only by Russia as of this week, are called Donetsk and Luhansk. Ukraine’s elected president who was overthrown in the 2014 US-sponsored Maidan coup, Viktor Yanukovych, was a native of Donetsk. The entire region comprising Donetsk and Luhansk is known by the name “Donbas”. Like Crimea, Donbas is majority Russian in ethnicity.
Prior to 2014, the Russian language retained equal status with Ukrainian as official languages of Ukraine, and ethnic Russians and Ukrainians were treated equally under the law as citizens of the state. For many years after the end of the Cold War, Ukraine remained politically, culturally, militarily, and economically within Russia’s sphere of influence, much like its neighbor and fellow former Soviet republic Belarus to the north.
But a growing number of ethnic Ukrainians, traditionally from the more westerly regions of the country, longed to extricate themselves from Russian influence and join the European Union and the West’s anti-Russian military alliance NATO. The US, the EU, and NATO, flush with victory following the end of the Cold War but eager to retain an enemy to slay for their military budgets and politically and financially powerful industries, were happy to encourage such aspirations. This was true especially in the face of what they considered to be insolence on the part of Russia since the rise of Vladimir Putin in its refusal to accept its place as a supplicant, vassal state on the fringes of Europe, with no right to an independent foreign policy.
Russia is a complicated nation. It’s always dangerous to try and describe an entire society with a few adjectives. None are as monolithic as the stereotypes we create. But even most Russians would identify their country with these words: proud, stoic, and essentially conservative in cultural outlook — unwilling to allow their country to be treated with a lack of respect in the face of its achievements and remarkably complex history. It’s this very conservatism that causes the country to be out of step with the postmodern West, its identity politics, and evolving sexual and gender norms, creating another way for elites here to demonize them — as knuckle-dragging, anti-woke bigots.
As for Westerners’ views on Russia, most of us can’t seem to get past our Cold War mindset, especially since tensions ratcheted up in the post-Ukrainian revolution era. So thorough has been the demonization of the country and its leaders over the decades that it’s common for uneducated American politicians to assume Russia is still a communist dictatorship, one that would love to bury America if given the chance.
When Democrats were indoctrinated into believing that all their problems represented by the rise of Trump were down to the machinations of the maniacal, all-knowing, all-seeing Vladimir Putin, a lifetime of viewing Russia as a proxy for the Soviet Union, and more recently Vladimir Putin as a proxy for Hitler, had primed them to think in such terms. All nuance went out the window.
This dynamic is also seen in the way many people regard any expression of international affairs from a Russian perspective as something akin to treason against one’s own country. No one thinks you’re disloyal to America for recognizing the interests of countries like Ukraine, or Israel, or even brutal and repressive regimes like Saudi Arabia in their bombardment of Yemen, but daring to consider or express Russia’s side of things is giving voice to tyrants and the equivalent of religious heresy.
And this is despite the fact that, from the perspective of history, Russia, even in the Putin era, has been proven right in a not-insignificant number of areas as they relate to international affairs. In a number of cases, Russia has assisted US foreign policy. And in a number of areas where it has opposed our foreign policy, we’d have done much better to listen to them — their warnings about the dangers of starting a war in Iraq being one of the most notable.
The crux of what has happened vis-à-vis Russia this week is blowback for decades of America and NATO treating them as a vanquished Cold War foe, not considering their legitimate security concerns, hypocritically applying standards of international law to the country that the US and NATO would not apply to themselves, and molding their domestic media machines to portray the country and Vladimir Putin in the most negative light possible.
This is how they treat the country that actually defeated the terrorist Islamic State in Syria. That’s right, Russia did that, not the US. The US was leveraging that organization and other jihadi organizations in an attempt at overthrowing the Assad government in Syria. Russia came in in September 2015 at the request of the Syrian government and slowly but methodically all but wiped out ISIS there while the US only pretended to oppose them.
In 2014, after years of American funding of opposition groups to the tune of billions of dollars, including some with neo-Nazi sympathies and tactics (look up Right Sektor and its role in the Maidan events), the US succeeded in fomenting an uprising in the western parts of the country. This was done in the context of negotiations on a deal that would have pulled Ukraine in to the EU’s orbit politically and economically. The then-president of Ukraine Victor Yanukovych was attempting to play both sides, wanting a deal with the West but also wanting to retain the advantages of their economic ties with Russia. The US and its allies were having none of it. They gave Ukraine an ultimatum — it’s us or the Russians. It can’t be both. Yanukovych realized the much greater importance of Russian gas supplies and other ties to the Ukrainian economy and reluctantly chose Russia.
It was in this context that the uprising in Maidan Square in Kiev reached its crescendo. Funded by the US, thousands of Ukrainians who legitimately wanted their country to become part of the Western world rose up against the Yanukovych government. When Yanukovych chose wrongly after the US ultimatum, that was all the US needed to give the signal to ramp up the “revolution”. Firefights broke out in the streets of Kiev even as US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland — a Neocon’s Neocon if there ever was one — delivered cookies to the street fighters. A quaint symbol of the much more important support she was providing in the form of billions of dollars for regime change. Atrocities committed by snipers were blamed on the government, but evidence has always pointed to the likelihood of a false flag operation.
In February 2014, a hacked phone call between Nuland and US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt appeared on YouTube and caused a sensation in diplomatic circles. The Western media focused on the fact that Nuland had exclaimed to Pyatt “fuck the EU!” at one point, frustrated at their lack of sufficient enthusiasm for American mischief-making in the volatile Ukraine situation near their borders.
What was more important about the leaked call, though, was that it revealed, without a shadow of doubt, that the US was pulling the strings in the upcoming Maidan coup, still in the planning stages at that point. In the call, Nuland and Pyatt talk about how they’re going to “glue this thing” and “midwife this thing”. They openly plot who will replace the soon-to-be-deposed Yanukovych, considering and dismissing several prospects before Nuland declares “Yats is the guy”, referring to Arseniy Yatsenyuk. And Yats did indeed become the guy, at least for a while, replacing Yanukovych in a procedure that violated the Ukrainian constitution.
It was after the coup was a fait accompli, with an American stooge as its chief beneficiary, that the ethnic Russian citizens of the country decided they’d had enough. The new Kiev regime was composed of individuals and organizations, like the neo-Nazi Right Sektor, who were hostile to Russia and the Russian population of the country. The law was changed to remove Russian as an official language of the country. Further clampdowns on the Russian population occurred or were planned. Uprisings in some cities, such as Odessa, where dozens of separatists were burned to death in a building, turned violent.
Soon, just like the pro-West Ukrainians at Maidan rose up to spark a revolution, many ethnic Russians in the east of the country began standing up to the coup regime in defiance. They took over government buildings in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, formed militias, and eventually succeeded in gaining control over significant territory along Russia’s border. When the coup regime refused to negotiate with them, they declared themselves independent republics and held their ground.
Though there was no official involvement in this by the Russian Federation, there were no doubt Russian military personnel and equipment assisting the separatists. Russia claimed they were volunteers on leave from the Russian military who chose to go on their own. That was certainly cover for covert, unofficial Russian operations in Donbas of the type the US does all the time in places like Syria.
What evolved into the War in Donbas in 2014 was a full-on, bloody affair. Hundreds were killed or had their homes destroyed by shelling and combat between opposing tank forces. Ukrainian military planes were shot down. Then in July 2014 a Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 was shot out of the sky over a village in Donetsk. Ukraine and the West immediately blamed Russia and Russian separatists; Russia blamed Ukraine.
The US claimed to have satellite intelligence showing that a Russian BUK missile (a type of weapon that Ukraine also possessed) was fired from separatist-controlled territory to shoot the plane down, but they released no evidence to back it up. This is a common problem with the US government: they make all kinds of claims — “assessments”, they often like to call them — and then they expect them to be accepted on face value, without any evidence presented to back them up. This from the country that started a war that destroyed a country of more than 30 million people (Iraq) over a false claim of weapons of mass destruction.
By early 2015, Russia had organized a referendum in occupied Crimea in which the mostly Russian population voted overwhelmingly to join the Russian Federation. That same year, front lines in Donbas eventually stabilized and Germany, France, and Russia brokered the Minsk Protocol between Ukraine and the self-proclaimed separatist republics.
The Minsk Agreement kept an uneven peace in the subsequent years, but each side kept accusing the other of not fulfilling its obligations under the agreement or violating it in other ways. Russia never recognized the breakaway republics (until this week), maintaining its stance that Ukraine should keep its territorial integrity, but under a political system that protected the rights of ethnic Russians and treated Donbas as a special region.
Barack Obama had resisted hawks in his Administration and refused to provide Ukraine with lethal offensive weapons. Trump changed that policy and approved supplying the weapons that the warmongers in the Pentagon wanted in Ukrainian hands. It’s ironic that the president accused of being a Russian asset was the first one to provide the very weapons to Ukraine that would anger Russia the most. Republican defenders kept bringing this up during the impeachment hearing over the Ukraine affair, but it fell on deaf ears.
For Joe Biden’s part, his greatest involvement while still vice president was to get his son installed on the board of Burisma, a major Ukrainian energy company, despite having no experience in the industry, and blackmailing the Ukrainian government with a threat to withhold billions in funds if they didn’t fire a prosecutor pursuing Burisma for corruption. Yes, America has oligarchs too and Joe Biden is one of them.
All that led up to the recent Russian demand for security guarantees from the US and NATO that the alliance wouldn’t advance one inch further toward Russian borders, and that offensive weapons that could threaten Russia be pulled back to 1997 positions (prior to major expansions of NATO into former Soviet or Warsaw Pact territory). As usual in dealing with Russia, their counterparts arrogantly dismissed their concerns and proposals, calling them non-starters and threatening more sanctions due to Russia’s amassing of military forces within their own borders.
Finally, after years of diplomacy and speeches about how Russia desired a mutually respectful relationship with the West, with the vital security interests of both sides considered and arms control agreements reinstated, Putin had had enough. He had wisely built up Russia’s military capability in the previous decade, spending $60 billion a year (which is still less than a tenth of the annual US military budget), and he knew his country was ready. If Ukraine, the US, the EU, and NATO wanted a hostile confrontation with Russia, that’s exactly what they would get. Threats of sanctions ring hollow when your country has successfully endured them for years and when your fossil fuel economy produces the biggest share of world supply.
Russia’s recent actions all have precedent. The US recognized Kosovo as a breakaway republic from Serbia in 2008 despite its secession being illegal under the Serbian constitution. The US and NATO had bombed Serbia in the 90s, destroying its infrastructure and killing its people. Russia had opposed that, and warned of the precedent set by recognizing Kosovo. The fallout of that is being felt in eastern Ukraine this very week.
Whether Russia is justified in the actions currently unfolding in Ukraine is something that could be debated ad nauseum. Any military action results in loss of life and, unless directly conducted in self-defense, is deplorable. When politicians have to resort to force, they’ve failed, and so in some sense, Putin’s a failure. But success in maintaining peace requires a willing partner. The recent intermittent shelling by Ukrainian forces against the Russian-populated Donbas region, and the Ukrainian military buildup along the front lines there, had reached the point that the beleaguered civilian population was being evacuated to Russia. The US and NATO had repeatedly refused to recognize Russia’s increasing security concerns, treating the country like an unruly child who was violating international norms that always seem to apply only to the US’s adversaries and never to the US itself.
My hope is that the Russian operation extends no further than Donbas, where they’re likely to be welcomed by the majority of the public who have wanted Russian intervention for years to protect them from a hostile American puppet regime in Kiev. That won’t be the case in parts of the self-proclaimed republics that are currently under Ukrainian government control, where fewer ethnic Russians live. Scenes there could be ugly. Further cruise missile strikes on targets deep in Ukrainian territory, or, even worse, an actual Russian invasion of previously uncontested Ukrainian territory, would be a disaster.
One thing is for sure, though: the United States, the country that has bombed, invaded, and occupied more countries than any other in the post-Cold War era, and that claims for itself the unique right to police the entire globe, has no business lecturing any other country on territorial integrity or international law. Russia is finished with being pushed around.
Richie Graham is based in Little Rock Arkansas USA and writes from a free-market libertarian, anti-interventionist perspective.