By Isaac Bigio on February 24, 2022
This is a thorough historical background primer of the crisis in Ukraine from a Latin American perspective – Editorial
At 5 am local time Russian military operations began over Ukraine. For weeks we predicted that as long as the Winter Olympics in Beijing were not over, Russia was not going to attack Ukraine in order not to affect the interests of its biggest global ally (China). The day after Sunday the 20th, when the sports games were over, the war games began.
On Monday 21, Moscow officially recognized the self-styled “people’s republics” of Luhansk and Donetsk in southeastern Ukraine, 8 years after they were born with the support of the Russian-speaking population. Russian President Vladimir Putin justified this on the grounds that he had to protect more than 10 million Russian-speakers living in Ukraine and, above all, these two regions which have been under constant bombardment. Since 2014, more than 14 thousand people have died in the conflict over Luhansk and Donetsk.
While the Ukrainian Russians have managed to retain control of the capitals of both regions, about 2/3 of both were previously recaptured by Kiev. Putin argues that there is”genocide” against his fellow Russians in Ukraine, while separatist leaders claim that their culture and language have been repressed and Russian has been removed as a co-official language.
In February 2014, eight years ago, the elected constitutional government of Viktor Yanukovych fell in what the West calls a color revolution, but which the Russians characterize as a racist coup against them. Something that has generated much annoyance in a good part of the 48 million Ukrainians, particularly in the trade union, leftist or Russian-speaking media, is that thousands or tens of thousands of ultra-right extremist militants or militiamen who openly claim Stepan Bandera’s army have actively participated in this rebellion. The Banderaites during World War II (1939-45) supported the German invasion and perpetuated massacres against Jews, Poles, Russians and Soviets living in Ukraine. Nowhere else on the planet are there as many and as active openly pro-Nazi paramilitary groups as in today’s Ukraine, something the Western press does not want to report.
After the collapse of Yanukovych, the leadership of the country passed into the hands of leaders who have wanted Ukraine to join the European Union and NATO, entities that the local opposition and Moscow claim to have been behind what they call a coup d’état. The new presidents have promoted a program of “Ukrainization” and “de-communization” that implies eliminating the status of the Russian language as co-official, suppressing or repressing unions or parties that claim the USSR and eradicating statues, names of streets, squares and buildings of heroes of the Soviet anti-Nazi war. Although the current president Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy is of Jewish origin, neither he, nor Israel, nor the West denounce the pro-Hitler gangs, which are used as a shock force against Russia. According to Russian TV right now these groups are preventing the exodus to the rest of Ukraine of the civilian population of Mariupol (the main coastal city of Donetsk, which the Russians have been shelling in an attempt to reincorporate it into the separatist republic of the same name).
Since its independence in 1991, Ukraine has had alternating pro-Russian and pro-European governments in power. The former have wanted to maintain the traditional pan-Slavic bloc with Russia and Belarus, nations with which they share a similar language written in the Cyrillic alphabet, the same majority Orthodox creed and centuries of common history. The latter have wanted to emulate their neighbors Poland, Slovakia and Romania to join the European Union and structure a more liberal model. The Biden family have powerful economic interests in Ukraine, something that was one of the main battle horses Donald Trump had against his rival in the US elections.
Both Ukrainian camps were more or less of similar demographic and geographic weight, but since 2014 Russia decided to encourage the separatism of the 3 main regions that speak mostly Russian. Crimea was annexed after it had a referendum in 2014 where 90% asked to return to the Russian federation (in which it was until 1954).
Today Moscow has not incorporated the 2 southeastern Ukrainian republics, but has begun by recognizing their independence and its right to send troops there “at the request of their legitimate national governments.” Crimea, its capital Sevastopol, Donetsk and Luhansk total some 80,000 km² and represent 4 of Ukraine’s 27 official regions, which Moscow has annexed or will seek to annex. They have been home to some 9 million inhabitants, who make up just under 20% of the population of 48 million Ukrainians as of the last census.
Putin
At the beginning of Thursday the 24th the Russian offensive began while Kiev has declared martial law. According to Russian TV the Ukrainian air defense has been destroyed. The main focus of the fighting is in the southeast of the country where Moscow claims that all the territory of Luhansk and Donetsk must return to the control of the Russian-speaking republics bearing that name. At the time of writing (midday in Russia and Ukraine on the first day of fighting) news reports that, apart from incidents in these 2 regions, explosions have occurred in several major Ukrainian cities such as Kharkov (located between Russia and Donbas), Kiev (the capital) and Odessa (Ukraine’s main port on its western border near Moldova and Romania).
Western media and Kiev report that Ukrainian military and air infrastructure has been targeted, but we do not yet know if Russian tanks will penetrate Luhansk and Donetsk. For the moment, Belarus has been lending its territory for Russian forces to operate from, but there are no reports that its own army has been engaged in combat, which could happen later if the conflict escalates.
Putin maintains that his intention is not to occupy Ukraine, but to “liberate” and “pacify” Donetsk and Luhansk, as well as to “demilitarize” Ukraine and put an end to the Nazi armed groups operating there. The West has been imposing strong economic sanctions against Russia, but it will not send troops, although it will continue to send weapons, trainers and logistical assistance.
The Kremlin claims that it has been forced to initiate these operations because the Russian population in Ukraine is discriminated against, and to prevent Kiev from joining NATO and thereby placing nuclear missiles within a 5-minute flight over Moscow. While Boris Johnson argues that NATO is a purely defensive pact, Putin counters by saying that it is offensive, something that has been demonstrated in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria.
NATO was born in 1949 as a military alliance against Moscow and its “socialist” allies in Eastern Europe and later Asia and Cuba. After its victory in the Cold War, when in 1991 it succeeded in disintegrating the USSR and the Warsaw Pact, NATO has been expanding until it has succeeded in getting capitalist West Germany to annex the “socialist” East Germany and all the former non-Soviet European partners of the Kremlin (the Czech, Slovak, Polish, Hungarian, Romanian and Bulgarian republics), as well as three former Soviet republics of the Baltic Sea (Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia) to join it.
Today the Kremlin argues that NATO has not wanted to incorporate them into its ranks, that it has not fulfilled its commitment not to expand further eastward and that NATO remains an anti-Russian military bloc.
Putinists argue that in 1962 Moscow was forced to withdraw its nuclear missiles stationed in Cuba to avoid a conflict with the US and that today the tables have turned, so the West should imitate what the Kremlin did 6 decades ago. After months of pressure and, seeing that Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and Zelenskyy insisted on Ukraine’s right to join NATO, the Kremlin justifies invading its southern neighbor to protect its internal security.
According to the BBC reporter in Moscow, what Putin wants is to destroy Ukraine’s military and aerial apparatus, forcing it to surrender; while Belarus may reserve the role of attacker to act as a hinge in an agreement between Kiev and Moscow. Other journalists of this British channel indicate that all the targets are military personnel trying to avoid civilian casualties. It seems that Ukraine is being attacked from the north, northeast, east, southeast and southwest.
The West
For the West, the entry of Russian troops is a violation of international law and of Ukraine’s sovereignty. Putin has previously recognized other separatist republics (Transnistria in Moldova and Abkhazia and South Ossetia in Georgia, thus avoiding NATO expansion).
Parties of the “moderate” right and center, and the liberals, greens and social democrats of Europe tend to unite in condemning Russia as an “aggressor” that is endangering a democracy and the unity and independence of the largest country that only has territories on its own continent. British Prime Minister Johnson argues that we are close to the worst war Europe has seen since 1945.
Russia and several other countries remind NATO that they have razed Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya or Syria illegally, without UN permission and with lies, while the invasion of Afghanistan left only dead (as the Taliban returned to power), that they continue to arm the worst autocracies in the world (Saudi Arabia and Emirates) to be destroying Yemen, that the US has a long history of invading and fomenting coups in its “backyard” (Latin America and the Caribbean) and that Washington has just recognized Israel’s annexation of Palestinian East Jerusalem and the Syrian Golan, despite the opposition of more than 90% of the United Nations.
However, for America and the European Union, Ukraine is a liberal democracy with open capitalism, which is considered a model to be protected and encouraged. NATO did not want to have avoided this war by making concessions to Moscow (such as committing itself not to expand further eastward) and Russia justifies its attack as a “preventive” measure to prevent Ukraine from having atomic weapons in the near future.
In this conflict, the US will try to make Germany and Europe stop buying so much cheap gas from Russia and buy from its multinationals a more expensive one (but justifiable for strategic reasons) coming from the Middle East or from new drilling in their country, which could endanger the glaciers of Alaska or the US aquifers with the fracking technique (pumping water underground to push hydrocarbons to the surface, which can contaminate water for irrigation or human consumption).
Joe Biden feels weakened at home by the inflation he cannot stop. The “teach Russia a lesson” is something that maybe can give him domestic revenues, reactivate a sector of his factories (to produce and sell weapons) and puncture Russian diplomacy (the same one that has just defeated its allies in the Syrian war and has woven an anti-Western alliance with China and Iran).
If Putin prevails, NATO’s and the European Union’s attempts to expand will be hit. For Putin, on the other hand, Kiev is a US puppet. For several Ukrainian parliamentarians, it is Russia that wants to rebuild its empire and have their country humiliated, mutilated or disintegrated.
The Western media speculate on what Moscow’s strategy might be. Initially, it was thought that there could be a localized conflict with the aim of having the whole of Luhansk and Donetsk “recovered” by the two pro-Russian separatist republics of the same name. However, an amphibious landing across the Black Sea to Odessa and the southern coast of Ukraine, where there is a large Russian-speaking population that may sympathize with the attackers, cannot be ruled out, as well as the march of tanks to capture Kharkov or Kiev.
Since Ukraine is not part of NATO, NATO’s status cannot be applied, which implies that all NATO members must unite to defend the attacked state militarily. Washington does not want a direct confrontation with Russia, the power that has the most nuclear weapons, even though its Armed Forces are superior in soldiers, airplanes and war vehicles. According to Moscow, NATO has had some 20,000 troops training and advising the Ukrainian army, which has been equipped with bazookas that can destroy airplanes or tanks with portable semi-aimed missiles.
It seems that Ukraine’s strategy could be to move its capital to the west (to Lvov) and prepare for a guerrilla resistance, which would seek to transform the country into a new Afghanistan, humiliating Moscow and causing heavy casualties and a severe economic crisis. For now, Kiev will seek to call in foreign forces. Since NATO cannot and will not do so, the first step may be to ask the UN General Assembly to authorize the blue helmets as peacekeepers, something the Kremlin will want to veto.
Joe Biden and Boris Johnson need to defeat Moscow in order to avoid being defeated by their respective oppositions at home. Boris Johnson’s future is at stake. This conflict has relegated the allegations made against him for breaking the anti-virus rules he himself decreed in the face of quarantines. If he does not stop Putin, he may fall, but what he wants is that this conflict (like the Falklands that took place 40 years ago) is won by him and his allies, and thus, as happened then with Margaret Thatcher (the first female Premier that his conservative party has had), he can avoid his departure from office and then be reelected.
The repercussions of this conflict will last for a long time. Although the negotiations have been suspended, it cannot be ruled out that diplomacy will play its part again when Russia is in a better position.
Source: Alainet, translation Resumen Latinoamericano – English