In the early morning of February 26, local time, according to Ukrainian media reports, an exchange of fire broke out between the Shuryavka region in the western part of Kiev city and the zoo in the city.
Russian troops changed into the uniforms of the Ukrainian National Police and fired at the Ukrainian army stationed at the Vasilikov checkpoint southwest of Kiev.
In Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, the fighting between Russia and Ukraine is raging.
The day before, kiev had exploded and Russian soldiers were approaching the city.
This is a direct military operation against Ukraine after the political recognition of the two "republics" in eastern Ukraine by Russia on February 21. The crisis in Ukraine has once again taken a sharp turn for the worse.
It is hard not to wonder how the Ukrainian crisis got to this point.
People take refuge in a subway station in Kiev, Ukraine, on Feb. 25 (Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Lu Jinbo)
The word "Ukraine" means "border area, marginal land" in Russian. For European countries, especially Germany, France and other core European countries, Ukraine is also a "marginal land". For the United States, Ukraine is even more of a distant presence.
However, the evolution of the international political landscape has made this "marginal land" a battlefield in the strategic game between Russia and the United States and Europe.
Former Ukrainian President Kuchma once said: "Ukraine does not want to be a buffer zone, because it is suffocating to curry favor at both ends; Ukraine does not want to be a bridge, because if too many people walk on the bridge, the bridge will collapse." ”
Unfortunately, Ukraine has never escaped the fate of a major power strategic buffer zone.
Crisis 8 years ago
Today's crisis begins 8 years ago.
On November 21, 2013, the Government of Ukraine's Yanukovych announced the suspension of preparations for the signing of the Associated States Agreement with the European Union. The agreement is considered a "threshold" for Ukraine to join the EUROPEAN Union. Three days later, tens of thousands of Ukrainians, led by opposition parties, took to the streets of Kiev to protest the government's decision.
On January 23, 2014, in Kiev, Ukraine, an anti-government demonstration rallied, the opposition issued an ultimatum to President Viktor Yanukovych, demanding that the authorities hold a general election within 24 hours or else launch a larger protest (Source: Visual China)
On February 18, 2014, the situation took a sharp turn for the worse, with another large-scale demonstration in Kiev, triggering violence that killed 80 people and injured hundreds more.
On February 21, with the mediation of Germany, France and Poland, Yanukovych signed a settlement agreement with opposition leaders aimed at ending a three-month-long political crisis.
The agreement met almost all the opposition's demands, such as holding early presidential elections, reinstating the 2004 Constitution, and inviting the opposition to join the government.
But this "belated surrender" failed to ensure that Yanukovych was dignified. A day later, Ukraine's parliament declared President Yanukovych "automatically out of office" and decided to hold early presidential elections on May 25.
After Yanukovych stepped down, Poroshenko took on the presidency
At this point, the first season of political turmoil in Ukraine ended with Yanukovych's escape to Russia.
After the situation in Ukraine deteriorated, Russian President Vladimir Putin had telephone calls with then German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron and other European leaders to coordinate their positions on stabilizing the situation in Ukraine. On the same day that Yanukovych reached an agreement with the opposition leaders, Putin also spoke with Obama by phone, and the two sides agreed to quickly implement the reconciliation agreement between the Ukrainian authorities and the opposition, urging both sides to refrain from violent action.
After Yanukovych was "resigned," Russia's attitude toward the situation in Ukraine underwent a marked change.
On February 23, 2014, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov accused the Ukrainian opposition of not abiding by the agreement and seizing state power in a phone call with then US Secretary of State John Kerry. On the 26th, Putin announced that the Russian Ministry of Defense will conduct a surprise combat readiness inspection of the western and central military regions and various units.
In 2014, the Crimean government asked Russia for help, and Russia sent troops to Sevastopol, Ukraine, where the Russian Black Sea Fleet was stationed, patrolled by masked armed men
Since then, Russia has increased its troops to Crimea, the seat of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in southern Ukraine, and Russian armored forces have appeared on the streets of Crimea. On March 1, the Russian parliament approved Putin's request for the use of force against Ukraine. During this period, the United States repeatedly warned Russia that military intervention in Ukraine would pay a price.
On March 3 of the same year, the United States announced the suspension of trade and investment dialogue and military cooperation with Russia. In addition, the United States also announced that it will work with allies to impose economic sanctions on Russia.
On March 4, Putin made his first public statement on the Ukraine crisis, saying that "what happened between Ukraine and Kiev as a whole is an unconstitutional, armed coup d'état", and he also said that Russia reserves the right to use "all means" to defend Russian citizens in Ukraine.
As the "eye of the storm" of the Ukrainian crisis shifted from Kiev to Crimea (in March 2014, Russia annexed Crimea), the political struggle within Ukraine evolved into a game between Russia and Europe and the United States. The US Foreign Policy magazine said that the great power confrontation triggered by the Ukraine crisis heralded the "arrival of the second Cold War."
Dmitry Trinin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, also expressed concern about the "second Cold War," saying in an interview with The South Wind Window that given the openness of Russia's competition with the United States and the European Union in Ukraine, even if there is no war between Russia and Ukraine, the Crimean crisis could fundamentally change Russia's relations with the West, leading to changes in the international balance of power.
From left and right to left and right
The signing or non-signing of a paper agreement triggered a chain reaction in Ukraine's domestic politics and even international politics, with its profound historical origins and complex strategic background.
From a diplomatic point of view, the fall of The Yanukovych government by refusing to sign a "Linked Nations Agreement" with the EU also heralds the bankruptcy of Ukraine's long-standing "balanced diplomacy" between the EU and Russia.
Since independence in 1991, the biggest challenge in Ukrainian diplomacy has been how to maintain a modest balance between the West and Russia, that is, how to deepen economic and security relations with the West while maintaining stability in relations with Russia.
Ukraine's first president, Kravchuk, most successfully "balanced diplomacy" was the involvement of Latin America in negotiations on nuclear weapons in Ukraine after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1994.
The result of the negotiations was the Budapest Memorandum signed in 1994, the main content of which was that Ukraine maximized its interests by eliminating its nuclear weapons in exchange for the positive security assurances provided by major nuclear powers such as Russia, the United States, Britain, and France to Ukraine in writing.
But Kravchuk's success story has not been replicated. After that, when Kravchuk wanted the United States to coordinate between Ukraine and Russia on the issue of the Russian Black Sea Fleet stationed in Crimea, Russia explicitly refused the intervention of the United States.
Compared with Kravchuk, his successor, Kuch, President Ma's "balanced diplomacy" was much more successful, and it was a left and right source for a certain period of time.
Kuchma
Soon after Kuch took office, he established a "strategic partnership" with the United States, elevating Ukraine-US relations to the same level as US-Russian relations at the level of diplomatic relations. In September 1996, Ukraine and the United States also established a high-level dialogue mechanism led by President Ma Kuchi and then-US Vice President Al Gore.
At the NATO Summit in Madrid in July 1997, Ukraine and NATO signed the Charter of Special Partnership. In the same year, Yeltsin visited Kiev for the first time as President of Russia and signed a bilateral treaty of friendship and cooperation with Ukraine.
Ukrainian President Kuchma (left) and NATO Secretary-General Solana after signing the NATO/Ukraine Charter on July 9, 1997 (Photo: Visual China)
In 1998, after the entry into force of the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement with the EU, the Kuchma government requested the EU to negotiate the "Association Of Nations Agreement" to promote Ukraine's accession to the EU.
After Ukraine's arms sales to Iraq in 2002 led to tensions with the United States and Europe, and negotiations with the European Union reached an impasse, Kuchma played the "Russian card."
In 2003, the Kuchma government signed an agreement to join the Russian initiative of the "Unified Economic Space" program, which includes Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.
Later, President Yushchenko, who came to power through the Orange Revolution, publicly stated that Ukraine "has not only chosen Europe geographically, but its spiritual and moral values will also be integrated with Europe".
Ukrainian presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko (Source: The Paper)
On foreign policy, Yushchenko claimed to seek to develop stable relations with Russia, but made it clear that his diplomatic priorities were to bring Ukraine to the West, including joining the European Union and NATO. In April 2005, Ukraine joined the negotiations on the ACTION Plan for NATO Members. In August of the same year, Ukraine announced that it would abandon joining the Unified Space Program.
But Yushchenko's five-year term was hampered by political infighting and economic downturns, with neither substantial progress in "integration into Europe" nor "stabilizing" relations with Russia.
Although the EU agreed in September 2008 to hold "Association Country Agreement" and free trade agreement negotiations with Ukraine, the internal turmoil and stagnant reforms in Ukraine have made the already inconsistent intra-EU differences on Ukraine's "accession" issue more pronounced.
In addition, the deterioration of relations with Russia has also become a resistance for Yushchenko to move closer to NATO. At NATO's 2008 Summit in Bucharest, Germany and France joined forces to block proposals to ratify Ukraine and Georgia from joining the NATO Membership Action Plan for fear of angering Russia.
NATO Secretary-General Stoltenberg said on February 24, 2022, that NATO has no intention of sending troops to Ukraine, but has launched a coalition defense plan and urged Russia to immediately halt military operations in Ukraine (Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Zheng Huansong)
As Kuchma's supported successor, Yanukovych inherited the mantle of "balanced diplomacy", but in the process of implementation, he did not do it right and wrong, but was embarrassed.
In March 2010, less than a week after taking office as president, Yanukovych visited Brussels, the eu's headquarters, to reaffirm his willingness to sign the "Association Of Nations Agreement." A month later, he visited Moscow and reached an agreement with Russia to extend the lease term of the Russian Black Sea Fleet's station in Crimea for 25 years, while Russia supplied Ukraine with natural gas at a preferential price.
But the situation did not develop as Yanukovych had hoped.
The European Union pressured Yanukovych on grounds of "democratic regression" and "delay in reform," and even set a deadline at the February 2013 EU summit to demand that Ukraine "make concrete progress" by May.
In addition, the then President of the European Commission, Barroso, also publicly stated that it is impossible for a country to become a member of the "customs union" and sign a free trade agreement with the EU at the same time. At the same time, Russia has also increased the pressure on Ukraine to join the "customs union" between Russia and Belarus.
Trenin told the South Wind Window that the Yanukovych government originally intended to sign a "linked country agreement" and a free trade agreement with the EU, and at the same time to ease the pressure from Russia by obtaining the observer status of the "customs union" between Russia and Belarus, and also enjoy some of the benefits of the "customs union".
But Putin has made the same statement as Barroso, saying that Ukraine can only choose one of the two. In August 2013, The Russian Customs included all Ukrainian-produced goods in the risk control catalogue and indefinitely blocked Ukrainian exports to Russia.
The real reason for Yanukovych's sharp brakes on the "Associated States Agreement" with the European Union is unknown, but in the view of Stephen Piffer, a scholar at the Brookings Institution in the United States, the root of the problem lies in the regression of Ukrainian democracy and Yanukovych's two diplomatic inferences.
"One is that the 2010 Ukrainian-Russian agreement may make Russia more generous in its policy toward Ukraine, and the other is that the EU attaches importance to Ukraine's geopolitical significance and will back down on democratic issues." Both of these inferences proved to be miscalculations and were throwing Ukraine's diplomacy off balance. ”
The lost lamb kidnapped by interests
Ukraine's geographical location as a "land on the edge" and the ethnic, religious, and cultural differences between east and west have left the country hovering whether to the east or west.
The intricacies of interests make it difficult for Ukraine to find and effectively implement a clear national development strategy. A major feature of Ukrainian politics is the abduction of oligarchic interests, which makes any reform in Ukraine difficult.
Since the Orange Revolution in 2004, the dizzying switch of roles between friends and foes between politicians in Ukrainian politics has been fraught with the exchange of political interests.
Russia launched a special military operation in the Donbass region on February 24, 2022. Ukrainian President Zelenskiy announced that Ukraine has severed diplomatic relations with Russia. The international community is highly concerned about the situation in Ukraine and calls on all parties concerned to resolve their differences and resolve disputes through dialogue and negotiation. And many Kiev residents began their days of nervousness in panic and dazedness (Source: Xinhua News Agency)
For Yanukovych, it is in the country's long-term interest to promote domestic reforms and sign a "linked country agreement" with the European Union, but it is in his personal short-term electoral interest to accept $15 billion in Russian aid to stabilize the domestic economy.
Robert Otage, a professor of political science at Georgetown University in the United States, told Southwind Window that Ukraine lacks reform-oriented political leaders, "Yushchenko had a great opportunity to push for reform after the 'Orange Revolution,' but he didn't." Ukraine is bound by 'those in power' who care only about achieving their own personal ends, not in the public interest.".
The kidnapping of interests comes not only from within Ukraine.
The EU is divided on whether to absorb Ukraine, but also because of the interests of the countries involved.
Poland, Lithuania and other countries have a positive attitude toward Ukraine's accession to the European Union, in large part to prevent themselves from becoming a border between Russia and the Western powers in a power struggle.
Germany and France are cautious, mainly because Ukraine's geopolitical value is no longer as important to Russia's economic interests.
Russia is the EU's third-largest trading partner after the United States and China, and the EU has become Russia's largest investor.
Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was chairman of the board of directors of the Nord Stream gas pipeline project, which bypasses Ukraine and connects Russia with the Western European continent, which was jointly developed by Russia with Germany, the Netherlands and France.
With this relationship in place, Russia warned that it would use all possible means to prevent Ukraine from joining NATO, and on the other hand, it tried to woo Ukraine into a Regional Mechanism dominated by Russia.
On March 5, 2014, putin said at a meeting of the Supreme Council of the Eurasian Economic Commission held outside Moscow that Ukraine is an important economic partner of the customs union and a member of the CIS free trade area, and that the Russia-Belarusian -Kazakh "customs union" should do everything possible to help Ukraine get out of the current economic crisis.
On the same day, the European Commission unveiled a plan for short- and medium-term economic assistance to Ukraine totaling more than 11 billion euros. On March 6, Ukraine's new Prime Minister, Yazenyuk, visited Brussels. On this day, the leader of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea visits Moscow.
President Poroshenko, who came to power in June 2014, made the biggest "achievement" of his presidency in the Minsk Agreement. But this achievement is so fragile that it has even become the trigger for today's crisis in Ukraine.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, Then President Petro Poroshenko of Ukraine, Then-Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany and Then-President Hollande of France held talks in Minsk, Belarus, on February 11, 2015 (Source: Visual China)
According to this agreement, the Ukrainian authorities in fact lost actual control over the Declared Independent "Donetsk People's Republic" and "Luhansk People's Republic" in the Donbass region.
On the ceasefire line drawn according to the agreement, the Ukrainian government army and the civilian armed forces in eastern Ukraine have never stopped exchanging fire. In October last year, Russia began to deploy the Russian-Ukrainian border, one of the reasons for which the Minsk Agreement had not been implemented.
Comedians perform national tragedies
When Zelenskiy, a comedian by training, was elected president in 2019, he gave Moscow a glimmer of hope of easing Relations between Russia and Ukraine.
Because this ethnic Russian politician won the election without playing the anti-Russian card in an election with clear nationalism in Ukraine.
Moreover, after the Ukraine crisis in 2014, the independence of the two "republics" in eastern Ukraine, and the incorporation of Crimea into Russia, the nationalist sentiment in Ukraine can basically be equated with anti-Russian sentiment.
On May 12, 2014, in Luhansk, Ukraine, the local people celebrated independence. Donetsk and Luhansk regions announced their secession from Ukraine as a "sovereign state" according to the results of the referendum, and local people celebrated (Source: Visual China)
The left and right of Ukraine's independence, and the dilemmas that have followed, have ceased to exist. Joining the European Union and NATO "all the way west" has almost become politically correct.
According to relevant data, between 2014 and 2021, Ukraine's GDP increased from $91 billion to $180 billion (IMF estimates), almost doubling. Over the same period, Russia's GDP shrank from $2.06 trillion to $1.77 trillion.
In the process, capital from the United States and Europe, especially Europe, poured into Ukraine.
Late in the Trump administration (under pressure from Congress) and after Biden entered the White House, U.S. military aid also began to pour into Ukraine.
It is unknown how much courage Zelenskiy has given him to face Russia, but at least it has greatly compressed his room for compromise with Russia.
US President Joe Biden delivered a speech at the White House on February 24 on the situation in Ukraine, announcing a new round of economic sanctions against Russia and increasing military deployments to Europe (Source: Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Liu Jie)
"We're not going to give anything to anybody, I'm sure of that. Because now it's not February 2014 (the last Ukraine crisis broke out) but February 2022. [Ukraine is now] a different country, with a different army. Zelenskiy said in a Feb. 22 speech.
A day earlier, on February 21, Putin signed a presidential decree recognizing the "Donetsk People's Republic" and the "Luhansk People's Republic" in Eastern Ukraine and signing a treaty of friendship, cooperation and mutual assistance between Russia and the two "republics." Then, on February 24, there was a Russian "special military operation."
Before signing the presidential decree, Putin delivered a nationally televised speech (Source: Xinhua)
It is worth noting that after the outbreak of the Ukraine crisis in 2014, the main force of diplomatic mediation was Europe, whether it was the Minsk Agreement or the "Normandy model" that adjusted the contradictions between Russia and Ukraine since then, Germany and France played a major role. The Obama administration at the time only sent then-Vice President Joe Biden, and its role was almost only to "show existence."
And in this crisis, Moscow's anger is directed at the United States and NATO. The important reason is that in terms of turning tough on Russia, Zelenskiy and Biden have a considerable degree of "tacit understanding", so that Moscow can not see the hope of "solving the problem".
In April 2021, Zelenskiy asked for changes to the "unfair" Minsk Agreement. Also this month, Biden unveiled the first wave of economic sanctions against Russia since he became president (citing Russian hacking). After that, Russian troops began to assemble on the Russian-Ukrainian border.
Zelenskiy (Source: Xinhua)
But while Biden sanctioned Russia, he also offered to meet with Putin. After that, the Russian army division on the border of Chen Bing returned to the DPRK. In June, Biden and Putin met in Switzerland, but did not bridge their differences. U.S.-Russia relations continue to spiral downward.
In October 2021, Russia once again deployed troops on the Russian-Ukrainian border. This time, Moscow's demand is no longer just the Minsk Agreement, but also directly to the United States and NATO to propose written "security guarantees".
But Russia's asking price is so high that the United States "can't stand it." For example, NATO is required to make a written commitment not to expand eastward, especially Ukraine and Georgia will not join the Eu; not to establish military bases or engage in military activities in non-NATO member countries; and to withdraw NATO military assets to the state before the first round of eastward expansion in 1997.
If you agree to Russia's request, it is tantamount to making NATO surrender its "autonomy", so whether it is putin's video meeting and phone call with Biden since then, or the shuttle diplomacy between the two sides and Germany and France, it has not eased the situation.
When Russia sets its sights on the United States, whether the Crisis in Ukraine escalates or not is beyond Ukraine's control. This, perhaps, is the "fate of the land on the edge."
Un Security Council failed to adopt a draft resolution on the current situation in Ukraine on February 25, 2022 (Source: Photo by Xinhua News Agency reporter Xie Yi)
During Zelenskiy's campaign, a Ukrainian voter told the media: "For many years, we voted for serious candidates, and what we got was a farce. So, why not vote for a comedian and see what happens? ”
Ukrainians want change, but the result is a nightmare.
Author | South Wind Window senior lead writer Ray Mo
Edit | Lu Ming
Typography | Eight pounds