HISTORY: RUSSIA - UKRAINE RELATIONS

 

Russia and Ukraine have had no formal diplomatic relations since 24 February 2022. The Russian Federation and Ukraine are currently in a state of war: the Russo-Ukrainian War began in 2014 following the Russian annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. In February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine across a broad front.

After the Soviet Union's collapse in 1991, the successor states' bilateral relations have undergone periods of ties, tensions, and outright hostility. In the early 1990s, Ukraine's policy was dominated by aspirations to ensure its sovereignty and independence, followed by a foreign policy that balanced cooperation with the EU, Russia, and other powerful polities.

Relations between the two countries have been hostile since the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, which toppled Ukraine's elected president Viktor Yanukovych and his supporters, because he refused to sign a political association and free trade agreement with the European Union that enjoyed majority support in Ukraine's parliament. Ukraine's post-revolutionary government wished to commit the country to a future within the EU and NATO, rather than continue to play the delicate diplomatic game of balancing its own economic and security interests with those of Russia, the EU, and NATO members. In 2004 the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, and Slovakia had joined the EU, followed by Bulgaria and Romania in 2007 (see Member state of the European Union). The Russian government feared that Ukraine's membership of the EU and NATO would complete a western wall of allied countries by restricting Russia's access to the Black Sea. With South Korea and Japan being allied to the US, the Russian government was concerned that Russia was being ring-fenced by potentially hostile powers. In the wake of the Revolution of Dignity, Russia backed separatist militias in the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic in a war in Ukraine's economically important Donbas region, on its eastern border with Russia. This region has a Russian ethnic majority. By early 2022 the Russo-Ukrainian War had killed more than 13,000 people, and brought some Western sanctions on Russia.

In 2019, amendments were made to the Constitution of Ukraine, which enshrined the irreversibility of the country's strategic course towards EU and NATO membership. Throughout 2021 and 2022, Russian military buildup on the border of Ukraine has escalated tensions between the two countries and strained bilateral relations, with the United States sending a strong message that invasion would be met with dire consequences for Russia's economy. On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, which prompted Ukraine to break diplomatic ties with its eastern neighbour.

History of relations

Both Russia and Ukraine claim their heritage from the Rus (also known as Kyivan Rus or Ancient Rus), a polity that united several tribes and clans of different ethnicities under the Byzantine church in the 10th century. According to old Russian chronicles, Kyiv, the capital of modern Ukraine, was proclaimed the mother of Rus (Russian/Ruthenian) cities as it was the capital of the powerful late Medieval state of Rus.

Muscovy and the Russian Empire

After the Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus', the histories of the Russian and Ukrainian peoples diverged. The former, having successfully united all remnants of Rus's northern provinces, evolved into the Russian state. The latter came under the domination of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, followed by the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Within the Commonwealth, the militant Zaporozhian Cossacks refused polonization, and often clashed with the Commonwealth government which was controlled by the Polish nobility.

Unrest among the Cossacks caused them to rebel against the Commonwealth and seek union with Russia, with which they shared much of their culture, language and religion. This was eventually formalized through the Treaty of Pereyaslav in 1654. Starting in the mid-17th century, Ukraine was gradually absorbed into the Russian Empire, which entirely absorbed into Russia by the late 18th century with the partition of Poland. Soon after the Cossack host was forcibly disbanded by the Russian Empire and most Cossacks were relocated to the Kuban region on the southern edge of the Russian Empire.

The Russian Empire considered Ukrainians(and Belarusians) to be ethnically Russian, and referred to them as "Little Russians". Until the end of World War I this view was only opposed by a small group of Ukrainian nationalists. Nevertheless, a perceived threat of "Ukrainian separatism" set in motion a set of measures aimed at the russification of the "Little Russians". In 1804, the Ukrainian language was banned from schools as a subject and language of instruction. In 1876 Alexander II's secretary Ems Ukaz prohibited the publication and importation of most Ukrainian language books, public performances and lectures in the Ukrainian language, and even the printing of Ukrainian texts accompanying musical scores.

Ukrainian People's Republic

The February Revolution saw establishment of official relations between the Russian Provisional Government and the Ukrainian Central Rada (Central Council of Ukraine) that was represented at the Russian government by its commissar Petro Stebnytsky. At the same time Dmitry Odinets was appointed the representative of Russian Affairs in the Ukrainian government. After the Soviet military aggression by the Soviet government at the beginning of 1918, Ukraine declared its full independence from the Russian Republic on 22 January 1918, as the Ukrainian People's Republic which existed from 1917 to 1922. The two treaties of Brest-Litovsk that Ukraine and Russia signed separately with the Central Powers calmed the military conflict between them, and peace negotiations were initiated the same year.

After the end of World War I, Ukraine became a battleground in the Ukrainian War of Independence, linked to the Russian Civil War. Both Russians and Ukrainians fought in nearly all armies based on personal political beliefs.

In 1922, Ukraine and Russia were two of the founding members of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and were the signatories of the treaty that terminated the union in December 1991.

The end of the Russian Empire also ended the ban on the Ukrainian language. This was followed by a period of korenizatsiya that promoted the cultures of the different Soviet Republics.

Holodomor

In 1932–1933 Ukraine experienced the Holodomor (Ukrainian: Голодомор, "Extermination by hunger" or "Hunger-extermination"; derived from 'Морити голодом', "Killing by Starvation") which was a man-made famine in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic that killed up to 7.5 million Ukrainians. During the famine, which is also known as the "Terror-Famine in Ukraine" and "Famine-Genocide in Ukraine", millions of citizens of the Ukrainian SSR, the majority being ethnically Ukrainian, died of starvation in an unprecedented peacetime catastrophe. Scholars disagree on the relative importance of natural factors and bad economic policies as causes of the famine, and the degree to which the destruction of the Ukrainian peasantry was premeditated by Soviet leaders.

The Holodomor famine extended to many Soviet republics, including Russia and Kazakhstan. In the absence of documentary proof of intent, scholars have also argued that the Holodomor was caused by the economic problems associated with the radical changes implemented during the period of liquidation of private property and Soviet industrialization, combined with the widespread drought of the early 1930s. However, on 13 January 2010, Kyiv Appellate Court posthumously found Stalin, Kaganovich, Molotov, and the Ukrainian Soviet leaders Kosior and Chubar, amongst other functionaries, guilty of genocide against Ukrainians during the Holodomor famine.

SOURCE 

1.  Shyrokykh, Karina (June 2018). "The Evolution of the Foreign Policy of Ukraine: External Actors and Domestic Factors". Stockholm University. Archived from the original on 25 February 2022. Retrieved 30 September 2021.
2. ^ Ukraine sticks to positions on Russia but leaves room for "compromises" Archived2020-04-05 at the Wayback Machine, Reuters(12 February 2020)
3. ^ "Russia is stoking tension with Ukraine and the EU". The Economist. 14 November 2021. Archived from the original on 14 December 2021. Retrieved 14 December 2021. Rumours of wars: Russia is stoking tension with Ukraine and the EU: Destabilisation rather than invasion is probably its goal, but that leaves plenty of room for miscalculation
4. ^ Crowley, Michael (10 December 2021). "Biden Delivers a Warning to Putin Over Ukraine". The New York Times.
5. Gumilyov, Lev (2005). Ot Rusi k Rossii От Руси к России [From Rus' to Russia]. AST. Moscow. p. ^{[page needed]}. ISBN 5-17-012201-2
6.  Shambarov, Valery (2007). Kazachestvo: istoriya volnoy Rusi Казачество: история вольной Руси [The Cossacks: History of a Free Rus']. Algorithm Expo. Moscow. p. ^{[page needed]}. ISBN 978-5-699-20121-1.
7. Abdelal, Rawi (2005). National Purpose in the World Economy: Post-Soviet States in Comparative Perspective. Cornell University Press. p. 106. ISBN 978-0-8014-8977-8. Archived from the original on 2021-04-10. Retrieved 2017-09-11
8.  Bassin, Mark; Glebov, Sergey; Laruelle, Marlene, eds. (2015). Between Europe & Asia: The Origins, Theories, and Legacies of Russian Eurasianism. University of Pittsburgh Press. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. p. 135. ISBN 978-0-8229-8091-9. Archived from the original on 2021-04-10. Retrieved 2017-09-11.

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