Russia and Ukraine are currently in a state of war. CNN reports that Russia has been tightening its military grip around Ukraine since last year, amassing tens of thousands of troops, equipment and artillery on the country’s doorstep. The aggression has sparked warnings from US intelligence officials that a Russian invasion could be imminent. What is the cause of the conflict between the two countries?
The Russo-Ukrainian War began in 2014 following the Russian annexation of Crimea from Ukraine. 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.
The roots of the current crisis grew from the breakup of the Soviet Union
When the Soviet Union broke up in the early ’90s, Ukraine, a former Soviet republic, had the third largest atomic arsenal in the world. The United States and Russia worked with Ukraine to denuclearize the country, and in a series of diplomatic agreements, Kyiv gave its hundreds of nuclear warheads back to Russia in exchange for security assurances that protected it from a potential Russian attack.
Those assurances were put to the test in 2014, when Russia invaded Ukraine. Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula and backed a rebellion led by pro-Russia separatists in the eastern Donbas region. (The conflict in eastern Ukraine has killed more than 14,000 people to date.) Source: VOX
What is now Ukraine, Russia and neighboring Belarus were born on the banks of the Dnieper River, almost 1,200 years ago in Kievan Rus, a medieval superpower that included a huge chunk of Eastern Europe.
Ukraine went through two revolutions in 2005 and 2014, both times rejecting Russia’s supremacy and seeking a path to join the European Union and NATO.
Putin is particularly enraged by the prospect of NATO bases next to his borders and says Ukraine joining the US-led transatlantic alliance would mark the crossing of a red line.
After Ukraine’s 2014 Revolution of Dignity, which saw months-long protests ultimately topple pro-Moscow Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych, Putin used the power vacuum to annex Crimea and back separatists in the southeastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk.
The rebels carved out two authoritarian, economically weak “People’s Republics”, where the death penalty was restored. They ran dozens of concentration camps where dissidents were tortured and executed. Read more on Aljazeera
Russia doesn’t want Ukraine of any member of the defunct Soviet Union to join NATO, the most powerful military alliance of 30 members. Russia opposes NATO bases near its border.
Source: Aljazeera.