Pressure stroke or poker stroke? Since the end of October 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin has massed more than 100,000 troops in Russia, Belarus and annexed Crimea near the borders of Ukraine, where these troops have begun a series of maneuvers . Since then, the country of 603,000 km2 and its 44 million inhabitants, already fractured by the annexation of Crimea in 2014 by Moscow, and the creation of pro-Russian enclaves in the Donbass region, live in fear of a Russian invasion, presented by Washington as “imminent”.
In response, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), of which Ukraine is not a member, and the United States in the lead, placed their forces on high alert and sent ships and planes additional fighters as reinforcements in Eastern Europe. The Pentagon said about 8,500 US troops have been placed on high alert, awaiting possible deployment to the region in the event of a Russian attack on Ukraine.
Between diplomatic threats, military escalation and talks, Russia defends its right to deploy soldiers as it sees fit on its territory, as it has already done in the past, and denies any bellicose intention. She affirms, on the contrary, to see in the reaction of NATO the proof of an aggression.
How to understand this outbreak of fever in a region already heavily bruised in the past? And who holds the keys to de-escalation?
Ukraine, a part of Russian identity claimed by Putin
Vladimir Putin and Ukraine is a long story. His position can be summed up quite simply: Russians and Ukrainians, both heirs of the medieval Rus of Kiev – ancestor of the modern Slavic states – are “one and the same people”.
In 2008, he got carried away about it: “But what is Ukraine? Not even a state! Part of its territory is Central Europe, the other part, the most important, we gave it to it! »reported the daily Kommersant. In 2021, he reiterates. In a long theoretical article published in July on the Kremlin sitehe writes : “Russians and Ukrainians were one nation” belonging to “one and the same historical and spiritual space”.
That’s not all. Moscow regularly accuses the Ukrainian authorities of seeking to “derussify” their country, promoting the Ukrainian language. Ukraine counters that it is only correcting the forced Russification under the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Ukrainian and Russian, which belong to the same East Slavic language family, have many similarities, but also some pronounced differences. The first dominates in the West and the Center, the second in the East and the South.
After Ukraine’s independence and the collapse of the USSR in 1991, Ukrainian became the sole state language. While Ukrainians are most often bilingual, Ukrainian is considered the mother tongue by 78% of the population and Russian by 18%, according to a recent survey. The use of Russian has declined in reaction to the annexation of Crimea by Moscow and a law passed in 2019 imposes a Ukrainianification of several sectors, such as trade or services.
From the Kiev Rus to the independence of the USSR
These positions taken by Mr. Putin are based on a historical reading that goes back to the roots of Russia. Rus of Kiev, also called Kievan Rus, is an Eastern Slavic principality which existed from the middle of the XIand century to the middle of the 13thand century, before disintegrating into a multitude of principalities, then disappearing in 1240 under the blows of the Mongol invasion. Rous is the oldest common political entity in the history of the three modern Eastern Slavic states of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.
Ukraine itself is a recent creation of history. Vladimir Putin does not hesitate to hammer that she has been “created by Lenin” during the first years of the Soviet Union, a way of denying the specificities of this nation, thus presented as artificial. In fact, after the February Revolution, which put an end to the Tsarist Empire in 1917, Ukraine briefly became independent, before joining the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), between 1922 and 1991.
Proclaimed on August 23, 1991, the independence of Ukraine was confirmed by 90.5% of voters in the referendum of 1er December 1991. On December 8, 1991, the dislocation of the USSR was recorded by the Minsk agreement, signed by the Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian leaders.
After the “Orange Revolution”
Since the “Orange Revolution” of 2004, the flight of President Yanukovych to Russia and the division of the country between the West, which supports the new democratically elected power, closer to NATO, and the East of the country, where mostly its Russian-speaking minority, Ukraine is once again becoming a subject of major concern to Russia and its president.
Vladimir Putin fears that it will take the turn of “Western-style” democracy and set itself up as a counter-model at the gates of Russia. But Russia sees beyond Ukraine and its ambition of rapprochement with the West: it wants NATO to return to its pre-1997 borders. According to the projectRussia and the members of NATO as of 1997 – ie before the enlargement towards Eastern Europe – would undertake not to have forces on other European territories.
This conflict will crystallize around two regions. The Donbass, an economically vital mining and industrial basin for Ukraine, is the epicenter of the conflict which has pitted Kiev forces against pro-Russian separatists backed by Moscow since 2014. Populated by Russian speakers, the region owes its Russophilia in part to forced Russification and its repopulation after the Second World War, with the arrival of hundreds of thousands of Russian workers.
The situation in Crimea, annexed by Moscow in 2014 after a pro-Western revolution in Ukraine, is even more complex. In Russia, this peninsula is widely perceived as an integral part of the country. Under the USSR, generations of Russians spent their holidays there, which helped to develop a strong attachment to the region.
Integrated into the Russian Empire since the XVIIIand century, Crimea was then part of Russia under the Soviet Union, until its attachment to Soviet Ukraine in 1954 by a decree of Nikita Khrushchev. Its annexation by Moscow is not recognized by the international community and Ukraine demands its retrocession.
Seven years of skirmishes and broken ceasefires
Since the fall of 2014, eastern Ukraine has been at peace. In theory. A first Minsk Protocol (September 5, 2014) is signed, under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), by the representatives of Ukraine, Russia, the People’s Republic of Donetsk and the Luhansk People’s Republic, to end the war in Eastern Ukraine.
A few months later, with the Minsk 2 agreements (February 2015), the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany agree on measures concerning the war in Donbass: the Donbass region (which includes the administrative regions of Donetsk and Luhansk) is cut by a ceasefire line, which separates the territories that remained under the control of the government of Kiev and the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, held by separatist groups backed by Moscow. These agreements are not respected: a week after their signing, the separatists take the city of Debaltsevo.
However, the conflict is not frozen: more than 7,000 people have been killed since February 2015, more than the 6,000 killed before the ceasefire was signed. And election after election, Ukrainians are voting for parties that support the “partnership” concluded on 21 March 2014 between the European Union and Kyiventered into force on 1er September 2017. They have chosen to be associated with Europe, as a choice in favor of democracy and economic reform. Volodymyr Zelensky is elected president in April 2019. He promises to end this war in the East.
After years of diplomatic freeze, skirmishes which are so many strokes of the penknife in the Minsk agreements of 2015, Ukraine and Russia meet, in December 2019 during a summit in Paris in the presence of Emmanuel Macron , and German Chancellor Angela Merkel. It leads to a ceasefire, which entered into force on July 27, 2020 and was largely respected for five months. Until the renewed tension observed since the beginning of 2021.
2021, a year of mounting diplomatic pressure
For more than a year, violations of the ceasefire have multiplied in the Donbass, an area still held by separatist groups supported by Moscow. In the first three months of 2021, 19 Ukrainian soldiers died, compared to 49 in the whole of 2020. The observation mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) cannot access certain areas . Kiev and Moscow accuse each other of this escalation.
1er April 2021, Ukrainians and Americans report Russian troop movements in Crimea and on the Russian-Ukrainian border, near territories controlled by pro-Russian separatists. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accuses Russia of massing its troops on the border and warns of the risk of ” Provocation “Washington warns Moscow, against any attempt to“bullying”.
Moscow reacts by claiming to conduct military exercises intended to repel a drone attack. “Russia moves its armed forces on its territory as it sees fit”says Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, adding that “It does not pose a threat to anyone and should not worry anyone”.
A few weeks later, part of the Russian forces withdrew. ” What is happening cannot be called a withdrawal, Russian troops have massively remained in place”denounces, Monday, May 17, the Ukrainian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Dmytro Kuleba.
On October 30, US officials expressed concern in the washington post facing a “new reinforcement” Russian soldiers on the eastern borders of Ukraine. The American daily mentions videos posted on social networks, showing Russian military trains and convoys of trucks carrying large quantities of military equipment, including tanks and missiles.
The reaction of the Ukrainian authorities, on the other hand, sows confusion. At first, Kiev denies. Ten days later, the official discourse changes radically, Kiev negotiating with its partners to obtain additional deliveries of defensive weapons.
The whole question is to know when and how this escalation will end. French Presidents Emmanuel Macron and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed on Friday to “need for de-escalation” and a continuation of “dialogue” in the Ukrainian crisis, announced the Elysée. In the morning, the Russian Foreign Minister recalled that Russia did not want “no war”but refused that his “interests are grossly flouted”.