Ukraine must be protected – but the West has itself to blame

It is all getting a bit 1914. For Bosnia-Herzegovina read Donetsk and Luhansk; for some reason, major wars seem to originate in squabbles over areas that not many people would regard as prime real estate. Poor old Boris: like all incoming British prime ministers since 1990, he must have fantasised about presiding over his own Falklands War; instead, he gets a bit part in Crimean War II. This conflict promises few rewards for Britain: our leaders are no improvement on 1853 and our brigades have never been lighter. It did not need to be like this. Anyone who accepts the children’s bedtime storybook narrative of big bad wolf Vladimir Putin versus the enlightened democratic champions of the West is only perpetuating the simplistic delusions that brought the West to this crisis.

There can be no excusing the repeated breaches of international law and the use of force by Russia; but in all those outrages it has been matched by Ukraine. To insist that Russia does not have some valid grievances is to embrace the jingoist mentality that blinkered public opinion during the First World War. The origins of the present crisis lie in the era of Mikhail Gorbachev, while the Soviet Union was still precariously in existence. To induce Gorbachev to acquiesce in the reunification of Germany, the United States pledged that NATO would not take a further step eastwards. That was an irresponsible promise, since it would have left post-Soviet states such as Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia bereft of collective security arrangements. When those countries were later admitted to NATO membership and a furious Boris Yeltsin denounced the West’s broken promises, he was fobbed off with the response that the guarantee had been given to the now non-existent Soviet Union, not to Russia, a new state with different boundaries.

When Vladimir Putin became president he startled Western leaders by canvassing Russian membership of NATO, to be sharply rebuffed. Was this an attempt to craft a new geopolitical pattern for Europe, or a cynical ploy to disrupt NATO from within? NATO countries were understandably unwilling to house the fox among the chickens; but they could have taken the opportunity to negotiate some new security agreements that would have made the world a safer place. Instead, they made their attitude clear, that Russia was a former superpower, fallen to second-class status.

Western news reports were full of images of rotting hulks of Soviet submarines and warships, and deserted towns falling into ruin. All of this was seen as deeply insulting by the Russian public, whose pro-Western sentiments changed to dislike or downright hostility. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin set about rebuilding Russia’s military power, with considerable success. But the constant, short-sighted failure of the West to secure Russia’s friendship, or at least benevolent neutrality, was a blunder of enormous magnitude.

Relations with Russia even became embroiled in the West’s culture wars, with the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi boycotted by many Western leaders, mainly on the grounds of objections to Russian laws against “homosexual propaganda” in schools, a ridiculous pretext for muddying diplomatic waters with a nuclear power of high geopolitical importance. David Cameron, Barack Obama and Angela Merkel stayed away, but Xi Jinping attended – an early portent of the Sino-Russian alignment that has blossomed into the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of Moscow-Beijing cooperation today.

This is the crowning blunder by formerly diplomatically astute Western powers; they have driven Russia into the arms of China, when it could have been a crucial ally against Beijing’s ambitions. Like the original Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the Sino-Russian alliance is contrary to Russia’s ideological and geopolitical interests. The Soviet Union, which supposedly shared an ideology with China, was seldom on good terms with Mao and serious border clashes were commonplace. There are fewer Russian troops on the Chinese border today than has been the case for decades.

In moral terms, the West cuts no better a figure than its opponents. An “ethical” foreign policy means imposing sanctions on Russia, perceived as less powerful and prosperous, while begging, spaniel-like, for trade pickings from China, powerful and cash-rich. But, in the present crisis, what should not be forgotten is the role of the European Union in provoking a long-smouldering conflict that could yet ignite a Third World War.

The so-called Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine occurred because its pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign a political association and free trade agreement with the EU at a meeting of the Eastern Partnership at Vilnius in November 2013. In the auction that was being conducted by rivals for Ukraine’s allegiance, the EU offered loans of $838m, but Russia bid $15bn and cheaper gas prices. Yanukovych accepted $2bn from Russia in “bail-out” cash and, incited by the EU, its supporters, waving EU flags, began three months of protests and rioting which culminated in revolution and the violent overthrow of Yanukovych.

Yanukovych was spectacularly corrupt, but so were many politicians in both Ukraine and Russia. He had been validly elected president in 2010 and was willing to hold early elections to resolve the situation. But had he done so, the inbuilt demographic Russian majority in the electorate could well have returned him to power. Instead, the “Euromaidan” rebels preferred to stage a revolution which cost nearly 130 lives in the preliminary stages and has cost 14,000 more in the inter-communal warfare waged since. It is worth remembering, whenever the European Union audaciously claims to have preserved peace in Europe since 1945 (actually NATO’s achievement) that the only war taking place on the continent today was instigated by the EU.

The 2014 revolution was subsequently quasi-legitimised by elections in which the new regime gained convincing majorities – hardly surprising, with Crimea detached and only 20 per cent of polling stations in the Donbass participating. The sanctioning of Russia and moral outcry against her for annexing Crimea typified the incapacity of Western leadership. Because the annexation breached international law, it was necessary to condemn it. But what was the moral essence of the situation and what could have been done to resolve it?

Crimea was part of Russia from 1783 to 1954, when Nikita Khrushchev arbitrarily allocated it to Ukraine, supposedly as a gesture because he had once lived there, actually to increase the ethnic Russian demography of Ukraine. Crimea’s inhabitants are overwhelmingly Russian, around 90 per cent of them want to live in Russia. A referendum which confirmed that desire was not recognised by Western countries. Yet the only real objection to the voluntary return of Crimea to Russia is that it violated Ukraine’s sovereignty. In essence, the paperwork was not in order.

It is over a century since US President Woodrow Wilson blundered into European geopolitics, proclaimed the doctrine of “self-determination”, then left after laying the groundwork for the Third Reich. Even then, self-determination was a selective principle, as was evidenced by the handing over of Hungarian Transylvania to Romania.

Yet Western nations still pay lip service to the doctrine of self-determination. On what grounds, therefore, can insisting that the Russians of Crimea should live under foreign governance, in a foreign country, because of a whim of the First Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in the 1950s, be morally justified? And the same applies to Russians living in Donetsk and Luhansk.

The West should have found peaceful and legal means of reordering frontiers following the demise of the Soviet Union. Even now, perhaps a solution could be found, though the problem is that, due to Putin’s actions, it would look like capitulation to force. On the other hand, had Putin not acted, who would have taken any notice of the aspirations of separatists in Ukraine?

The misrepresentation of the Ukraine crisis as morally black and white is naive. The Ukrainian revolution had little dignity about it. After the Euromaidan, eight former Yanukovych officials were found to have committed “suicide”. When Newsweek investigated, the office of Ukraine’s General Prosecutor said all information about them was a state secret. It later admitted four of the deaths were being investigated as murders and a suspect had been charged with murder in a fifth case. None of the parties to this conflict are wearing white hats.

That said, there is now one area exhibiting a clear moral imperative. Irredentist issues are one thing, an attempt to snuff out a sovereign nation is quite another. If Vladimir Putin’s known fascination with Kiev as the cradle of “Rus” and his apparent conviction that the state of Ukraine is an intrinsic part of Russia, with no right to a separate sovereign existence, leads him to invade and attempt to subjugate that country, then the whole world will rightly condemn such an aggression and retaliate with the strongest available sanctions.

The relationship between Russia and Ukraine has changed considerably in the period of more than a millennium since Rurik ruled Kievan Rus. Both countries have great historical heritages and should be encouraged to find ways of peaceful coexistence. Until now, Russia has not, as some critics claim, been universally in the wrong, nor without some entitlement to reproach the West for lack of understanding and respect. Certainly the West’s leadership, over the past three decades, has been guilty of short-sightedness and even stupidity. But the military invasion of a sovereign state, unleashing bloodshed and destruction, cannot be excused, rationalised or absolved in the eyes of the world community and of history.