WHO IS MOST RESPONSIBLE FOR THE TRAGEDY CURRENTLY TAKING PLACE IN UKRAINE?

The conflict in Ukraine is a tragedy for both sides that would never have occurred if the intent of all parties had been to find peace and reconciliation at all costs.

The death, injury, mental trauma and destruction is enormous and will colour relations between Russia and Ukraine and between Russia and the collective west for generations to come.

An open-minded inspection of past events cannot help but reveal that there were great variations among the parties involved when it came to avoiding this situation.

None of those involved can be totally absolved of all responsibility. Having said this, certain facts point to which of the several protagonists made the most effort to avoid what is happening now.

In looking at the events which have brought us to the current lamentable situation I would argue that the primary factors to look at when attempting to attribute blame are ‘motivation’ and ‘inclination toward violence’.

The tragedy begins well before the winter of 2013-14 with the political turmoil and disputation surrounding the electoral process where powerful elites vied for power. Both Russia and the USA had powerful motivations that brought their involvement in Ukraine in the years after the fall of the Soviet Union. Russia, as neighbour to Ukraine was inextricably linked to it economically and as a fellow majority Slavic nation.

The motivations of the USA which were seen at their height during the ‘Orange Revolution’ of winter 2004-15 can be framed in both a positive or negative light depending on who is sourced. That it was involved at least in attempting to influence the result of the presidential election at that time however, cannot be denied.

U.S. officials would claim that they are motivated by and solely interested in spreading the democratic process and individual freedom worldwide where they see deficits in them. Through organisations such as the ‘National Endowment for Democracy’ the USA involves itself in every election worldwide where it conceives there is a lack of either freedom or democracy.

The events most crucial to establishing which side in the current conflict bears most responsibility however leads us to the events of winter 2013-14 on Kyiv’s main square, The Maidan. It is here that we see the ‘inclination toward violence’ exhibited most clearly and the question of ‘motivation’ reveals itself as crucial to establishing guilt.

It is clear that the initial protests on Kyiv’s Maidan Square were peaceful. It is also clear that elements within Ukraine’s then security forces, the ‘Berkut’ at times acted with violence against some of those initial relatively peaceful protests.

As the initial peaceful protests continued the level of violence became ever more heightened as more radical and indeed extreme elements took over, by reports seen at the time, threatening the initial protesters with violence and gradually changing the whole tenor of the protest movement. Soon Molotov Cocktails were being thrown at the police and a variety of other life-threatening weapons began to be deployed.

The then president Yanukovych is understood to have rejected a request to arm the police who were armed only with a baton and shield. It was also requested by the same authorities that they be allowed to clear the square. If such requests were made he rejected them as neither eventuality transpired. It has been said that he instead favoured establishing a ‘dialogue’ with the protesters rather than acquiesce to any form of draconian move against them. This, it seems to me, indicates a motivation on the part of Yanukovych to avoid violence and to instead favour efforts to find common ground with the protesters.

Meanwhile, as deaths among the police force mounted (eventually reaching thirty eight fatalities) U.S. president Barack Obama called upon the Ukrainian authorities to safeguard the well being of those he referred to as ‘peaceful protesters’. This while government buildings were being taken over by the protesters and in once case at least burned down. In my opinion, in taking this stance he was directly condoning the violence on the Maidan by refusing to acknowledge it and instead lending his support to what was going on.

Obama’s stance was mirrored by several other U.S. officials, some of whom appeared on the Maidan offering the protesters their unambiguous support. While clubs of many kinds, bricks, toxic sprays, heavy chains and even a fork-lift truck were used to injure and kill the police figures such as Senator John McCain, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt and Victoria Nuland, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State arrived on the square to lend their unequivocal support.

Once again officials of the USA would without doubt state that the motivation for their involvement were once again freedom and democracy.

Events on the Maidan led to the overthrow of the president and government of that time and their replacement with those approved of by the USA. This then led to a more peaceful, largely non-violent insurrection in eastern Ukraine where government offices were taken over by protesters against what was framed as a coup on the Maidan. 

The response of the new authorities in Kyiv was to send the Ukrainian military to quell the insurrection there and to reassert the central authority of Kyiv. This almost immediately took a violent form and over the next eight years to the present day an estimated total of fourteen thousand individuals have died. Once again I see the advocacy of violence being clearly from one side rather than from both.

The violence in eastern Ukraine raged through the rest of 2014 into 2015 with a ‘self-defence’ force having been raised to confront and fight the forces sent by Kyiv and those of nationalist militias who had joined them. However, in mid to late 2015 it had become clear that the underfunded and badly equipped Ukrainian forces were being comprehensively beaten by the self-defence forces. It was at this point that the Kyiv authorities agreed to talks with Russia also involving France and Germany. These talks eventuated in what became known as the Minsk Accords or Agreements.

The authorities in Kyiv agreed at Minsk to establish direct talks with the leaders of the two new republics which had been formed after the insurrection in the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk/Lugansk. In addition they agreed that the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine would receive a special status providing it with enough autonomy to preserve its own unique culture, loyalties and language.

For the seven years following the agreements at Minsk, subsequently ratified at the United Nations, Russia continued to press for Ukraine to implement its commitments. Meanwhile, during this time Ukrainian forces continued their military assault on the largely Russian-speaking civilian population of Donetsk and Luhansk/Lugansk regions. Despite daily reports of death among the civilian population and destruction of residential tower blocks, schools, hospitals, single-storey homes and urban centres the Russian authorities rejected calls by the republics to be accepted into the Russian Federation and put all hopes into the Minsk process.

In my view the patience of the Russian authorities demonstrates a desire to move forward toward a peaceful resolution of the situation where reconciliation between the two parties could maintain the integrity of the Ukrainian state and bring about renewed peaceful relations.

This patience by Russia lasted for seven years thereafter while no perceivable progress was made by the Kyiv authorities toward peace and reconciliation. On the contrary, with the years Ukraine was seen to be rearming and quite clearly intent on a military solution rather than a peaceful one. In recent times Petro Poroshenko, the previous Ukrainian president to Zelensky and the ex-chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel have both admitted that the Minsk Agreement was merely a stalling tactic at a time the Ukrainian army was weak.

Here again we see the ‘motivation’ factor coming into play with a vengeance. Though Kyiv claimed it was on the path to peace it was instead intent on war. This was exacerbated for Russia by two connected factors. Ukraine began to link in an ever-closer relationship with NATO, with joint training exercises and myriad related aspects which were aimed at strengthening the Ukrainian military.

Then, in late 2021 when Russia began to object most strongly to the ever-increasing encroachment of NATO on its borders with Ukraine clearly becoming a de facto NATO state, the U.S. authorities and in particular those of NATO demonstrated in their responses that Russia had little say in the matter.

Ukraine had been taken into the western political, economic and military orbit since the insurrection of 2014 and it was clear that sooner or later it would join both the EU and NATO, the former as a full member, the second in de facto form. Meanwhile Ukraine’s president Zelensky called for Ukraine to regain its nuclear status and began calling for a military campaign against Crimea.

Zelensky had been elected upon a ticket of ending the conflict in eastern Ukraine in 2019, but by 2021 had begun taking the diametrically opposite stance, one of increasingly draconian moves against the political opposition which favoured better relations with Russia. His rhetoric also increasingly hardened regarding Russia and the authorities within the new republics.

While this change in attitude by Zelensky in the spring of 2021 was becoming clear there were commensurate movements of Ukrainian troops to the contact line in the east. Then, toward the end of the year in what was to be the last Minsk meeting of the Normandy Quartet a marathon session of nine hours took place at the conclusion of which the Ukrainian representatives stated they no longer believed the Minsk Accords to be worthy of activation.

The rejection of Russian attempts to gain an agreement on Russia’s border security with the USA and NATO, followed by Ukraine’s rejection of the only available pathway to peace, the Minsk Accords was followed by OSCE reports through January and February of 2022 showing a massive increase in Ukrainian shelling of Donetsk and Luhansk/Lugansk. Then, only weeks before Russia initiated its operation in Ukraine Russian intelligence reportedly discovered a plan by Kyiv to mount an all-out attack upon the republics.

Looking over the history of this conflict stretching back to 2014 and beyond it is clear to me that the motivations of both the USA and the Kyiv authorities could hardly be personified as those directed toward peace. Instead, the combined effort appears to have been directed toward a variety of deceptions and machinations leading ultimately to the destruction of those in Russia they regarded as enemies.

Russia on the other hand appears to have been genuinely intent on a peaceful outcome that would preserve the sovereignty of Ukraine while guaranteeing the rights of the Russian-speaking majority in eastern Ukraine to live in peace with an adequate degree of autonomy in perpetuity.

It is my conclusion therefore that Russia was ultimately forced to take action against the Kyiv authorities and their military forces due to having no good choice remaining to them and having hoped with great patience for the better part of a decade that they and their U.S. allies would take the path to peace in good faith.

On this basis I find the USA and the Kyiv authorities to be most responsible for what is happening now and bear the guilt for all the loss of life, trauma, injury and destruction taking place now.

WHO IS MOST RESPONSIBLE FOR THE TRAGEDY CURRENTLY TAKING PLACE IN UKRAINE?