Increasing hostilities with Ukraine and the West is advantageous to Russia given the tattered relationship between the USA and its European allies, the domestic support for Putin’s need for a popularity boost ahead of the 2024 Russian Presidential elections. But how do the Ukrainians perceive the current state of affairs, and what they are prepared to do in order to protect their national sovereignty? When the Soviet Union broke up in the early 1990s, Ukraine, a former Soviet Republic, had the third-largest atomic arsenal in the world. Anticipating a friendly relationship with Moscow moving forward, Kyiv gave its considerable nuclear stockpile back to Russia in exchange for security guarantees that protected it from a potential Russian attack. At the time, Ukrainians had little to fear from Russia, especially given the fact that in a 1991 referendum, more than 83 per cent of Donbass residents and 54 per cent of Crimea residents voted to have Ukraine secede from the USSR.
Even Russians-speaking Ukrainians overwhelmingly supported Ukraine’s independence and following years of military and economic decline during the Cold War, Russia seemed to be a toothless power on the international stage. In 2014, Kremlin-leaning Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych rejected an association with the European Union (EU) in favor of closer ties with Moscow. This resulted in a series of protests across Ukraine, ending with Yanukovych’s removal from power the same year. Russia in turn responded by annexing Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and throwing its weight behind a separatist rebellion that broke out in eastern Ukraine.
Conversely, Russia continued to adopt a series of unconventional tactics against Ukraine including cyber-attacks, funding and arming irregular militias, and spreading mass disinformation. Russia also installed puppet governments in Donetsk and Luhansk, creating military dictatorships in the occupied territories, which were initially run by Russian citizens. Over time, the Kremlin began to change the narrative of the conflict, framing it as a Ukrainian civil war that Russia was involved in simply as a mediator. Ukrainians have staunchly rejected this notion. Vorozhbty stresses that the conflict was between Ukraine and Russia and not nationalists and separatists. The fact that many Ukrainians speak Russian and parts of Ukrainian territory were incorporated into the Russian Empire is therefore “irrelevant” akin to any claim that the Brits may have over America due to their shared cultural similarities. However, the devils in the margins, and even with limited Ukrainian support, Russia can point to the interests of the few Russian ‘citizens’ in eastern Ukraine as justification for its involvement in the conflict.
Russia has gathered as many as 130,000 troops along different parts of the Ukrainian border, with 30,000 troops stationed in Belarus (near Kyiv) alone. The Kremlin seems to be making all the preparations for war, including moving military equipment, medial units and blood to the front lines. Diplomatic talks between Russia and the West have thus far not yielded any solutions. Putin has issued a series of demands on Ukraine and NATO, ranging from the removal of NATO forces in Eastern Europe, a guarantee that Ukraine will not be allowed to join the alliance, the granting of autonomy to the Donbass and a recognition that the conflict in Ukraine is a civil war. Those demands have been hotly rejected by all parties involved.
A full-on invasion of Ukraine would be something Europe hasn’t seen in decades. Russia has amassed troops alongside Ukraine’s eastern border and, more concerning, has placed 30,000 troops in Belarus under the guise of routine military exercises. Were those troops to advance, Putin could take Donbass in the east and launch an attack on Kyiv in the west from Belarus. The US has estimated that such an attack would result in a civilian death toll exceeding 50,000.
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