The Russian invasion of Ukraine began on 24 February 2022, and still continues. It is the largest conventional military attack in Europe since World War II. The invasion by land, air and sea began after a pre-dawn TV address where Russian President Vladimir Putin demanded that Ukraine’s military lay down its arms. Russia had positioned almost 200,000 troops and thousands of combat vehicles on Ukraine’s borders ahead of the invasion. Gradually Russian tanks were moved towards the outskirts of Kharkiv, a city of 1.4 million people, the second largest in Ukraine. Russian forces also landed by sea at Ukraine’s major port cities of Odesa on the Black Sea and Mariupol on the internal Sea of Azov. Later Russian troops also moved towards the capital Kyiv, home to almost three million people. As the warning sirens blared out and traffic queued, the people were trying to leave the city and crowds sought shelter in metro stations. Kyiv’s Boryspil international airport was among a number of airfields that had been bombed, along with military headquarters and warehouses in the big cities of Kyiv, Dnipro, Kharkiv and Mariupol. Much of the fighting appears to be centred around the eastern border of Ukraine.
The sequence of the events
On 21 February 2022, Russia recognised the Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic, two self-proclaimed states controlled by pro-Russian separatists in Donbas. The next day, Russia’s Federation Council unanimously authorised use of military force, and Russian soldiers entered both territories. On 24 February, at the onset of dawn (5 am), Putin announced a “special military operation” to “demilitarise and denazify” Ukraine. Minutes later, missiles struck places across Ukraine, including the capital Kyiv. The Ukrainian Border Guard reported attacks on the borders with Russia and Belarus. Shortly afterwards, Russian Ground Forces entered Ukraine. Subsequently Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy enact martial law and general mobilisation in defense of the country and people.
The underlying reason of war
Russia believed that the breakaway countries from the dissolution of Soviet Union were being cajoled by the Western powers to join their defense alliance called the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This is one of the reasons of Russia’s concerns as it suspects that NATO would be anchored in its backyard which would be a strategic threat to it in the medium and long terms. The developments after the dissolution of Russia was followed by increased fascination among the breakaway countries to join the Western security alliance as they feared Russia would not respect their sovereignty.
The developments in subsequent years bred more and more suspicion between Russia and breakaway countries of the erstwhile Soviet Union. The United States and its NATO allies found it as an opportunity to take them in their security alliance framework and encircle Russia for asserting their hegemony in the region. Russia was never comfortable with this.
Background
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union (USSR) in 1991, Ukraine and Russia maintained close ties. In 1994, Ukraine agreed to accede to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as a non-nuclear-weapon state. Former Soviet nuclear weapons in Ukraine were removed to Russia and dismantled. In return, Russia, the United Kingdom (UK), and the United States (US) agreed to uphold the territorial integrity and political independence of Ukraine through the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances. In 1999, Russia was one of the signatories of the Charter for European Security, which “reaffirmed the inherent right of each and every participating State to be free to choose or change its security arrangements, including treaties of alliance, as they evolve”. In the years after the dissolution of the USSR, several former Eastern Bloc countries joined NATO, which Russian leaders described as a violation of Western powers’ assurances that NATO would not expand eastward.
At the June 2021 Brussels Summit, NATO leaders reiterated the decision taken at the 2008 Bucharest Summit that Ukraine would become a member of the Alliance with the Membership Action Plan (MAP) as an integral part of the process and Ukraine’s right to determine its future and foreign policy, of course without outside interference.NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also stressed that Russia will not be able to veto Ukraine’s accession to NATO “as we will not return to the era of spheres of interest, when large countries decide what smaller ones should do.”
On 14 September 2020, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky approved Ukraine’s new National Security Strategy, “which provides for the development of the distinctive partnership with NATO with the aim of membership in NATO.” On October 8, 2020, during a meeting with Prime Minister Boris Johnson in London, President Zelensky stated that Ukraine needs a NATO Membership Action Plan, as NATO membership will contribute to Ukraine’s security and defense. On April 10, 2021, the Minister of Defense of Ukraine Andrii Taran stated that the top priority of the Ukrainian political leadership was to obtain the Action Plan for Membership (MAP) in the North Atlantic Alliance in 2021.
A hegemony game
It is not that war was sudden as the conditions of the war were brewing since 2014 and it may be seen as an escalation of the war that first took place in 2014 between the two countries. There were regions within Ukraine which had more affinity with Russia. After the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity in 2014, Russia annexed Crimea, and Russian-backed separatist forces seized part of the south-eastern Ukrainian region of the Donbas, launching an ongoing war in the region. Subsequently questioned Ukraine’s right to statehood, and accused NATO of threatening Russia’s security, demanding that Ukraine be barred from ever joining the alliance. On the other hand the United States and others accused Russia of planning to invade Ukraine.
Excerpts from the Guardian: Demands of Russia
Approximately two months before the Russia-Ukraine war broke out, Russia had put forward a highly contentious list of security guarantees from the West in order to lower tensions in Europe and defuse the crisis over Ukraine. The demands included a ban on Ukraine entering NATO and a limit to the deployment of troops and weapons to NATO’s eastern flank. This demand in effect was a demand returning NATO forces to where they were stationed in 1997, before an eastward expansion.
Vladimir Putin had also demanded that the west provide Russia “legal guarantees” of its security. The West did not agree to the Kremlin’s aggressive proposals and viewed it as an attempt to formalise a new Russian sphere of influence over eastern Europe.
Moscow has said ignoring its interests would lead to a “military response” similar to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. The Russian demands were handed over to the US in the third week of December 2021. They include a demand that NATO remove any troops or weapons deployed to countries that entered the alliance after 1997, which would include much of eastern Europe, including Poland, the former Soviet countries of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, and the Balkan countries. Russia has also demanded that NATO rule out further expansion, including the accession of Ukraine into the alliance, and that it does not hold drills without previous agreement from Russia in Ukraine, Eastern Europe, in Caucasus countries such as Georgia or in Central Asia. The Russia document also calls for the two countries to pull back any short- or medium-range missile systems out of reach, replacing the previous intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) treaty that the US left in 2018. The US and its western allies declined to accept Russian demands. The NATO head, Jens Stoltenberg, had ruled out any agreements denying Ukraine the right to enter the military alliance, saying it is up to Ukraine and the 30 NATO countries.
The US and other NATO allies appeared inclined to convince Ukrainian leaders about the benefits of joining NATO. Ukrainian public support of NATO membership remained low between 2005 and 2013, However, since the Russo-Ukrainian War and Annexation of Crimea in 2014, public support for Ukrainian membership in NATO increased substantially. Since 2014, the United States committed more than $5.4 billion in total assistance to Ukraine, including security and non-security assistance. In addition, the United States provided three sovereign loan guarantees totaling $3 billion. The United States is the largest humanitarian donor to Ukraine. The United States was doing all those things for gaining a strategic leverage against Russia, who treated the region as its own sphere of influence.
After, the Russian action in Georgia, the lingering apprehension of most of the breakaway countries from Soviet Union since early increased further nineties. Their doubts on Russian intention regarding their sovereignty and security increased which the US intended to leverage for its strategic advances in the region and to encircle Russia, its arch rival during the cold war era. Russia aggravated the apprehension of Ukraine in this regard by forcibly occupying Ukraine’s Crimea region and parts of eastern Ukraine. Under President Zelensky, Ukraine confronted Russia’s occupation of Crimea region, and Russia could not succeed through means. Zelensky’s mistake was that he attempted to reinvigorate the conflict resolution process and tried to drawn greater international attention to the situation in Ukraine’s occupied Crimea region. The US and its NATO alliance partners had an opportunity in the name of sovereignty of Ukraine and cause of saving democracy. While Russia continued with cold war time arrogance of military power to maintain its control in its sphere of influence, the US and its allies tried to grab the opportunity for their hegemony in the region with increasing doubts in the countries about the intention of Russia.
The Immediate Consequences of Ukraine invasion
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has already shown up in rising crude oil prices to 14 year high and prices of other commodities including wheat is spiraling up due to disruption in the global supply chains. Although the past economic sanctions on Russia have not been very efficient in checking its military aspirations, once again the western powers have increased the sanctions in response to Ukraine’s invasion of Russia. Russia has also been removed from the global payment mechanism known as SWIFT. Some western companies like Shell, McDonalds, Pepsico and Cocacola have decided to boycott Russia, all these do not auger well for the global economic recovery post Covid-19. The IMF has warned that the war could lead to inflation and increase burden on the poor households while breakdown of supply chains can affect growth adversely. Isolated by the international community, Putin placed Russia’s nuclear forces on higher alert on February 27, raising tensions between the West and Russia, and increasing fears of nuclear war. Russia’s Ukraine invasion has also led to forced migration of over two million people from Ukraine to safer destinations mostly neighbouring countries. This would add to budgetary burden on the host countries and the multilateral agencies would need to fund refugee arrangements in these countries. Uncertainty is looming large despite two meetings between the Russian and Ukrainian delegations to find a meeting point on declaring a ceasefire and ending the war. The humanity is looking with awe that if things are not contained, the Russo-Ukraine war may flare up a bigger war and this need be avoided at all costs.