The latest Russia/Ukrainian conflict. What happened?
Two Ukrainian gunboats and a tug were sailing towards the Kerch Strait, the only route for ships to enter the Sea of Azov from the Black Sea.
Russia’s FSB border guard force says the flotilla violated Russian territorial waters.
But coordinates released later by the FSB and Ukraine confirm that the Russian attack happened in international waters near the strait.
Ukraine called it Russian aggression, because the Black Sea is free for shipping and annexed Crimea belongs to Ukraine.
A 2003 Russia-Ukraine treaty stipulates unimpeded access to the Kerch Strait and Sea of Azov.
Good grief. Isn’t this similar to the same mess we saw a few years back? Yep. Let’s review what happened back then.
Ukraine gained independence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and has since veered between seeking closer ties with Western Europe and rejoining its alliance with Russia, which sees its interests as threatened by a Western-leaning Ukraine.
Europe’s second largest country, Ukraine is a land of wide, fertile agricultural plains, with large pockets of heavy industry in the east.
While Ukraine and Russia share common historical origins, the western part of the country has closer ties with its European neighbors, particularly Poland, and nationalist, independence, sentiment is strongest there.
However, a minority of the population wants to rejoin Russia and uses Russian as its first language, particularly in the cities and the industrialized east.
An uprising against pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 ushered in a new, Western-leaning government, but Russia used the opportunity to seize the Crimean peninsula and arm insurgent groups to occupy parts of the industrialized east of Ukraine.
So bottom line, Ukraine used to be a part of the Soviet Union, but when the USSR collapsed, Ukraine sought, and is still seeking its independence.
How serious is this?
It is the most dangerous clash at sea off Crimea since Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula in 2014.
Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko urged Nato to send ships to the Sea of Azov, warning of a threat of Russian invasion.
Nato shows no sign of doing so – Ukraine is not a member – but NATO says they support Ukraine. Western leaders condemned Russia’s actions.
Mr Poroshenko has put Ukraine’s border regions under martial law until December 26th and barred Russian men aged 16-60 from entering, except for “humanitarian cases” (funerals, etc.).
Russian President Vladimir Putin accused him of staging a “provocation” to boost his poll ratings.
Russia is holding the three boats in Kerch. One was rammed by an Russian vessel in the clash.
The Russian forces opened fire and several Ukrainian sailors were injured. All 24 are in Russian detention.
So this whole conflict could flare up again. The pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine have Russian heavy weapons; Ukraine has Western support. They have been fighting off and on since April 2014.
Outnumbered and outgunned on the water, there is very little Ukraine’s small navy could do if Russia wanted to take control of the Sea of Azov.
Under the terms of a 2003 agreement, the Azov sea and its access point through the Kerch Strait are supposed to be shared by Ukraine and Russia.
The 2003 deal didn’t put any dotted lines on the chart. Instead, the vessels of both countries were given carte blanche to pretty much roam as they wished.
It worked, up to a point. Then in 2014 when Russia seized Crimea, the dynamic changed.
The Kerch Strait was no longer flanked by the Russian authorities to the east, and the Ukrainians in the west.
The straits were now fully under Moscow’s control, and the Russians had big plans.
Crimea was part of Ukraine, but now is under Russian control. So the west side of the Kerch Strait was Ukrainian the east side Russian. Now it is Russian held territory on both sides of the strait.
Moscow wanted to link Crimea to Russia, so a 12-mile bridge was quickly constructed. It was formally opened in May of this year (2018) when Russian President Vladimir Putin triumphantly drove a truck across it.
The bridge was bad news for eastern Ukraine.
Citing the need to increase security, Russia dramatically increased the number of armed vessels both near the Kerch Strait and in the Sea of Azov.
Cargo ships that wanted to reach Ukraine’s Azov ports now found themselves subject to more inspections and lengthy delays that sometimes stretched to a week.
With an extra day at sea costing a shipping company up to $15,000 picking up steel or grain from the former Ukrainian port of Mariupol was now a risky proposition, and some shipping companies have opted to stay away.
Ukraine began complaining that it was facing an economic blockade, and that Russia was in breach of the 2003 “sharing” agreement.
Much to Ukraine’s frustration, there was little international response, and the life was slowly starved out of Ukraine’s Azov ports.
That brings us to Sunday, when Ukraine attempted to send three navy vessels – a tugboat and two small armored ships through the Kerch Strait.
Those dramatic events have been well documented and – as is now the case with everything to do with Russia – endlessly debated.
Put in the simplest terms, Russian coastguard vessels rammed and then shot at the Ukrainian boats before capturing them and the 24 sailors on board.
It marked the most serious development in Ukraine’s relationship with Russia since the annexation of Crimea back in 2014.
On Monday evening, 24 hours after he lost three of his boats and nearly two dozen men, Commander Voronchenko, of the Ukrainian Navy spoke to the BBC office in Kiev and stated:
“I’ll tell you this – we will fight for our land till our last breath. We’ll do all we can so our land remains ours and our sea remains ours. We’ll take all necessary measures to defend and protect our country.”
Hopefully you all now have a better idea of what recently happened.
But man, there is a lot of hatred between these two countries.
Maybe a little history will help explain the passion of the Ukrainians in all of this.
Have you ever heard the term Holodomor?
The term Holodomor (Hollow-doe-more) death by hunger, in Ukrainian, refers to the starvation of millions of Ukrainians in 1932–33 as a result of Soviet policies.
The Holodomor can be seen as the culmination of an assault by the Communist Party and Soviet state on the Ukrainian peasantry, who resisted Soviet policies.
This assault occurred as a campaign of intimidation and arrests of Ukrainian intellectuals, writers, artists, religious leaders, and political groups, who were seen as a threat to Soviet ideology and state-building.
Between 1917 and 1921, following WWI, Ukraine briefly became an independent country and fought to retain its independence before falling to Vladimir Lenin’s Red Army and being incorporated into the Soviet Union.
In the 1920s, Soviet central authorities, seeking the support of the populace, allowed for some cultural autonomy through the policy known as “indigenization.”
By the end of the 1920s, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin decided to curtail Ukraine’s cultural autonomy, launching the intimidation, arrest, imprisonment and execution of thousands of Ukrainian intellectuals, church leaders, as well as Communist Party officials who had supported Ukraine’s distinctiveness.
At the same time, Stalin ordered the collectivization of agriculture.
The majority of Ukrainians, who were small-scale or subsistence farmers, resisted.
The state confiscated the property of the independent farmers and forced them to work on government collective farms.
The more prosperous farmers (owning a few head of livestock, for example) and those who resisted collectivization were called kulaks (rich peasants) and declared enemies of the state who deserved to be eliminated as a class.
Thousands were thrown out of their homes and deported.
In 1932, the Communist Party set impossibly high quotas for the amount of grain Ukrainian villages were required to contribute to the Soviet state.
When the villages were not able to meet the quotas, authorities intensified the requisition campaign, confiscating even the seed set aside for planting and levied fines to be paid in meat and potatoes for failure to fulfill the quotas.
Special teams were sent to search homes and even seized other foodstuffs.
Starving farmers attempted to leave their villages in search of food, but Soviet authorities issued a decree forbidding Ukraine’s peasants from leaving the country.
As a result, many thousands of farmers who had managed to leave their villages were apprehended and sent back, virtually a death sentence.
A law was introduced that made the theft of even a few stalks of grain an act of sabotage punishable by execution.
In some cases, soldiers were posted in watchtowers to prevent people from taking any of the harvest.
Although informed of the dire conditions in Ukraine, central authorities ordered local officials to extract even more from the villages. Millions starved as the USSR sold crops from Ukraine abroad.
Kulaks were summarily executed for failing to turn over their crops and livestock. I retaliation, the Kulaks, burned their own crops and slaughtered all their livestock rather than let the government confiscate it while they starved.
The Russian winter now set in. with the crops and livestock destroyed, and the farmers all dead, millions of Russians living in the cities now starved as well.
It is estimated that as many as 60 to 90 million Russians died as a result of the policies Stalin imposed on the Ukraine.
So let’s jump back to our current situation.
Although very few Ukrainians are still alive today who lived through the Holodomor, their children have been told of the horrors of what their parents and grandparents endured under the control of the Russian empire.
Does anyone out there think the Ukrainians will lay down their arms without a fight and allow themselves to be annexed by Russia?
So now the big question. Should the US and our western allies step in on the side of the Ukraine or should we stand on the sidelines and see how this plays out?
“Of course we will step in”, some of you say. Well, I hate to disappoint you but unfortunately we may very well choose a path we have taken before in a similar situation.
I’m referring to The Hungarian Uprising of 1956
Hungary in 1956 seemed to sum up all that the Cold War stood for. The people of Hungary and the rest of Eastern Europe were ruled over with an iron fist by Communist Russia and anybody who challenged the rule of Stalin and Russia paid the price.
The death of Stalin in 1953 did not weaken the grip Moscow had on the people of Eastern Europe and Hungary, by challenging the rule of Moscow, paid such a price in 1956.
From 1945 on the Hungarians were under the control of Moscow.
All wealth of whatever nature was taken from Hungary by the Russians who showed their power by putting thousands of Russian troops and hundreds of tanks in Hungary.
See a similarity here to Ukraine’s history with Russia?
The Hungarian leader, a fellow by the name of Rakosi, was put in power by Stalin.
When Stalin died in 1953 all people in Eastern Europe were given some hope that they might be free from Soviet (Russian) rule.
In February 1956, the new Russian leader Khruschev made a bitter attack on the dead Stalin and his policies and in July 1956 in a gesture to the Hungarians, Rakosi was forced to resign.
This situation, combined with 1) a bad harvest 2) fuel shortages 3) a cold and wet autumn all created a volatile situation.
On October 23rd 1956, students and workers took to the streets of Budapest (the capital of Hungary ) and issued their Sixteen Points which included personal freedom, more food, the removal of Russian control, etc.
Imre Nagy was now appointed prime minister of Hungary. He was thought to be liberal and in Moscow this was felt to be the best way to keep the “hooligans” happy, as the Moscow media referred to the protesters.
Nagy now allowed political parties to start again.
On October 31st, 1956, Nagy broadcast that Hungary would withdraw itself from the Warsaw Pact. This pushed the Russians too far.
On November 4th, Soviet tanks went into Budapest to restore order and they acted with total brutality even killing wounded people.
Tanks dragged bodies through the streets of Budapest as a warning to others who were still protesting.
Hundreds of tanks went into Budapest and probably 30,000 people were killed.
To flee the expected Soviet reprisals, probably 200,000 fled to the west leaving all they possessed in Hungary.
Nagy was tried and executed and buried in an unmarked grave. By November 14th, order had been restored. Soviet rule was re-established.
President Eisenhower of USA said “I feel with the Hungarian people.” J F Dulles, American Secretary of State, said “To all those suffering under communist slavery, let us say you can count on us.” But America did nothing more.
So why did Europe and America do nothing except offer moral support and condemn Russia ?
There are several reasons. Because of the geographic location of Hungary, how could you actually help without resorting to war? Look where Ukraine is located folks.
Both sides in the Cold War were nuclear powers and the risks were too great. Although there are several new nuclear powers in the world since 1956, Russia still has nuclear capability.
Any economic boycott of the Soviet Union would have been pointless as Russia took what it needed from the countries it occupied. Russia may no longer have its satellite states, but it does now have economic ties worldwide.
So folks, let’s go back to my two questions.
Does anyone out there think the Ukrainians will lay down their arms without a fight and allow themselves to be annexed by Russia?
Should the US and our western allies step in on the side of the Ukraine or should we stand on the sidelines and see how this plays out?