The Russo-Ukrainian Conflict: Crimea, Donbass and permanent neutrality.

Introduction. Since the end of the Cold War, the Western World has gradually extended to the East into the former Soviet territories, and this expansion has increasingly threatened the Russian Bear. From 1990 to 2010, the EU and NATO added respectively 11 and 12 Eastern European countries in three subsequent rounds of enlargement. Ukraine was for Russia the drop that broke the camel's back.            In 2014, taking advantage of the Ukrainian political instability, Moscow annexed Crimea sending a strong message to the West. According to Vladimir Putin's narrative, the "not one inch eastward" Western promise should have been respected[1]; the Western World now aims to include Ukraine, and, consequently, Russophone Ukrainian populations must be protected. To be deeply understood, the Russian-Ukrainian Conflict must be read in an international key: Ukraine is the arena of the concealed confrontation between the American-led West and Russia. These hidden international pressures make the conflict more complex and the solution more difficult to achieve. The Donbass conflict worsened the situation: armed demonstrators in eastern Ukraine rebelled against the new constituted power and proclaimed independence.

           In the first section, this paper presents the key events before and after the conflict and deepens the typology of actors involved and their positions and interests. In the second section, after analyzing the various possible scenarios, the paper develops a Ukraine strategy briefing.

First Section: Context Analysis.

           Background of the Conflict. After the Rose Revolution in Georgia in 2003, the so-called Coloured Revolutions spread in several post-Soviet countries. These revolutions follow a similar pattern: in Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Azerbaijan and Mongolia, after the election of a pro-Russian candidate, demonstrations broke out against the elected government. In the first three states, these revolutions succeeded by establishing a new government closer to the Western World's principles; in the last three countries they failed.

           The Western countries' narrative presented the Coloured Revolutions as spontaneous popular movements born from the will of the people to reform the government in a more democratic sense, reduce corruption and build a state based on liberal values and better aligned with the West (Kuzio and D'Anieri, 2018). On the contrary, according to Putin's view, the Coloured Revolutions were induced and supported by the US-led Western world to remove pro-Russian governments and move the Atlantic alliance axis further to the East. The revolutions were not really about democracy, but rather about geopolitics (Kuzio and D'Anieri, 2018). This narrative is also plausible, given the variation of NATO's boundaries in recent decades, as shown in figure 1.

           When he came to power in 2000, Putin optimistically believed that Russia could improve relations and intensify trade with the West, to the point that Russia could have joined NATO (Caracciolo, 2019). However, the events from 2003 to 2005 (Coloured Revolutions and the fifth NATO enlargement) led him to change Russian foreign policy, now perceiving NATO as a threat and working to avoid the encirclement of the Atlantic member states[2]. Additionally, during the 1990s, several international meetings between Georgia, Ukraine, and NATO paved the road for their future entry into the Atlantic Alliance, validating Putin's fears.

           In 2008, the Georgian attack against the insurgents in South Ossetia and Abkhazia was the opportunity for Russia to intervene militarily alongside the two regions and implement the freezing strategy[3]. Frozen conflicts are those in which a ceasefire is reached, but no political agreement that addresses and resolves the reasons for the conflict is achieved (Legucka, 2017). First, Russia intervenes militarily in defense of ex-Soviet states' separatists - usually Orthodox Christian minorities – then, it takes a formal position of neutrality, promoting a ceasefire followed by peace monitoring missions. In this way, Russia strengthens the rebels’ position: the injured state cannot reopen the conflict to take back the insurgent-held territory because, given the ceasefire agreements, it would appear as an aggressor state antagonizing the West (Dascalu, 2019). Since the EU and NATO do not accept any new member with territorial disputes within the state, this strategy allows Russia to block the Western aspirations' progress and maintain a sort of influence in the former Soviet states (Matsaberidze, 2015). The same happened in Ukraine, but with some exceptions due to the Russian annexation of Crimea.

           As a consequence of the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the elections won by Viktor Yanukovych (pro-Russian) were invalidated, new elections were called, and they were won by the candidate Viktor Yushchenko (pro-Western). At the end of his presidential term, in the 2010 general election, Yushchenko was defeated, receiving only 5.45% of the vote, while Yanukovych     won the presidency at the ballot against the other pro-Western candidate Julija Tymo?enko. Four years later, the "Euromaidan" protests broke out in response to the postponement of the political and economic association agreement between the EU and Ukraine favoring a $15 billion Russian loan that would have tied the country even more to Russia. On 21 February 2014, the Ukrainian parliament (pressured by the Euromaidan) dismissed president Yanukovych without following the regular impeachment procedure and replaced the government (unconstitutionally and without consulting the citizens in the South-East)[4]. Yanukovych fled to Russia, and, on 1 March 2014, he formally requested the armed intervention of the Ukrainian police forces and of the Russian army to restore order in his country and protect the people of Ukraine. With the excuse of securing the Russian-speaking minorities in Crimea, Russian troops moved to the peninsula and controlled the border with Ukraine. On 16 March 2014, the Crimea population decided to enter the Russian Federation by a referendum with 95.32% of votes in favor and a voter turnout of 84.2% (clearly, the Western world did not recognize the referendum)[5].

           The Euromaidan was halfway between a revolution and a coup d'état since constitutional procedures have not been respected, the legitimate government has been subverted (Mearsheimer, 2014; Feffer, 2014) and, as several (impartial) polls highlighted, the Ukrainian nation was split in two on the protests of Euromaidan and the entry to the EU. While the citizens of the capital Kyiv and most young people were pro-European, the South-East regions and the older generations, over 50 years old, preferred the Eurasian Union (Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, 2013). As a result, residents of the South-Eastern parts of the country - predominantly Russian-speaking who had previously supported and voted for President Yanukovych - felt harmed in their rights for these developments (BBC News, 2014; NEWSru.com, 2014; Ayres, 2014). Consequently, the Donetsk and Luhansk regions decided to proclaim independence from this "new" Ukraine before the snap presidential elections in May 2014[6]. Thus, began the conflict of Donbass.

           After these events, the West condemned Russian aggression and imposed sanctions still in force against Russia. There were some minor incidents in the Crimean border, while in Donbass times of violent confrontation have alternated with periods of respite. In particular, there have been three significant but unsuccessful attempts to end hostility and begin solving the issue:

-          On 5 September 2014, Ukraine, Russia, Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and Lugansk People's Republic (LPR) 's representatives signed the Minsk Protocol under the auspices of the OSCE.

-         On 12 February 2015, to revive Minsk-1, Ukraine, Russia, LPR and DPR's representatives signed the Minsk-II agreement, overseen again by the OSCE.

-         Finally, on 9 December 2019, the Normandy Four Summit was held in Paris and saw the participation of the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany.

The agreements stipulated various points such as a ceasefire, the exchange of prisoners, the withdrawal of Russian-backed troops, elections in Ukraine areas held by the separatist rebels and some other military limitations in Donbass. Among all, two are the most controversial points. First, although the agreements contain the signatures of the two leaders of the de facto separatist republics, Ukraine does not formally recognize them[7] and continues to want to negotiate with Russia because the two republics are able to resist the armed confrontation with Ukraine only thanks to Russian support. On the other side, Russia denies any involvement in Donbass (except for some "Russian volunteers") and insists that Ukraine should negotiate with the separatist authorities to end the civil war. Second, according to the Minsk-2, to carry out decentralization of power, local elections, and Ukrainian control restoration, Ukraine will regain full control of the state border throughout the conflict area "starting on day 1 after the local elections". However, how can free democratic elections be held in an occupied area? In the 2019 Summit, the new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky openly declared that Ukraine has to regain the control over the state border before the elections are held, and that the Minsk agreements should be reviewed in this direction. Besides, he rejected the federalization proposal and reiterated that Ukraine aims at restoring its territorial integrity by having Donbas and Crimea returned (Ukraine Crisis Media Center, 2019). To solve the disagreement, Putin reproposed the 'Steinmeier Formula' that seems this time to satisfy all the actors involved. In exchange for a special self-governance status in the East-Ukraine regions, it provides for free and fair elections in those regions. The formula described an intricate sequencing of troop withdrawal and elections in the contested territories that will lead to the restoration of Ukrainian control (Fischer, 2019; Everett, 2020). However, there are two other conditions:

-         Local elections will be considered valid only if the OSCE monitoring mission considers them consistent with OSCE standards (Haran & Burkovsky, 2018).

-         Ukraine must recognize the separatists as a legitimate side in any peace talks and negotiate the implementation of agreement terms directly with them (Haran & Burkovsky, 2018).

Although all these meetings so far resulted in a null or partial implementation of the Minsk Agreements, confirming that Russia and Ukraine have very distant views on how the conflict should be resolved, the 'Steinmeier Formula' could be the trigger for implementing them. However, the negotiations are currently in a diplomatic stalemate.

           In conclusion, the problem behind the conflict seems to be West and Russia's opposite interpretations of what has happened. If for the West, the Euromaidan protests were a revolutionary moment aimed at obtaining true democracy[8], for Russia, it was a golpe. For the second time (the first was the Orange Revolution), rebel groups, supported by the US, deprived the democratically elected leader of his authority only because of pro-Russian ideas. The USA and in general the Western states have openly declared themselves in favor of the Euromaidan insurgents, and this has confirmed Putin's conception, already formed following the Kosovo issue, that the USA were progressing in their plan to encircle Russia by exploiting institutions and more generally the international law for their purposes. Needless to state, the US and the EU on the one hand and Russia on the other are materially backing the two sides. For the effectiveness of the negotiation and durability of the final agreement, the two narratives, since both factional, will be considered on an equal footing[9].

           Actors involved. Drawing on geopolitics' tools and perspectives, the positions of the various actors involved are analyzed below.

           Ukraine. Internationally and geopolitically, Ukraine is not only the disputed area between two worlds, the Western and the Russophone, but also represents the crucial piece of this international clash that is aggravating and highlighting the internal divisions of the newly established country. Indeed, Ukraine is divided internally: North-West versus South-East, young generations versus old generations, id est pro-Westerns versus pro-Russians.

           The Russo-Ukrainian conflict has been going on for over six years, with more than 13,000 deaths and nearly 1.5 million displaced people. Ukraine is straining its economy for two expensive purposes: making war and making the state. At the same time, it is facing other serious problems such as massive internal corruption, the management of Covid-19 and serious socio-economic problems. Ukraine remains significantly economically dependent on Moscow, even though in the past five years it has started a trade reorientation from Russia to the EU.

           For now, given the strong Western support, Ukraine has maintained a firm stance on its ideological position, determined to claim Donbass, Crimea and its external sovereignty without yielding on anything, and convinced that the path towards the EU and NATO will be the panacea for all its problems.

           In conclusion, Ukraine is a recently-established Nationalizing State with a difficult economic situation struggling to consolidate itself as a unitary actor (Chimiris, 2020). Accordingly, Kyiv's vital interest should be ending the war as soon as possible in order to be able to restore its sovereignty, form a national robust identity and protect its borders.

           Crimea. Historically, Crimea has been under the Russian Empire's sphere of influence since 1774 as a result of the Turkish defeat of the Fifth and Sixth Russian-Turkish Wars. To celebrate the 300 years of the union between the two countries and demonstrate the importance of Ukraine for the central state in terms of security and integrity, in 1954, Nikita Khrushchev (who lived his childhood in Ukraine) decided to donate Crimea to Ukraine. The more pragmatic motivation behind this contested choice was a matter of administrative convenience for the USSR, as Crimea was connected to and supplied from Ukraine (Kuzio and D'Anieri, 2018). When called to vote on 16 March 2014, 95.32 % of the Crimean people expressed their willingness to join the Russian Federation. The international community does not recognize the Crimean status referendum because it is considered a plebiscite contrary to the Ukrainian Constitution since not all the Ukrainian population voted and since it took place in the presence of Russian armed troops on the territory and. However, numerous polls before (and after) the Russian invasion indicate the presence of a secessionist majority that would like Crimea to join Russia (Razumkov Centre, 2008; GFK, 2014; BBG and Gallup, 2014; Pew Research Center, 2014; O'Loughlin and Toal, 2015; Sasse, 2017; Toal et al., 2020). Additionally, the ethnic composition within the peninsula seems to confirm these polls: more than 58% of the population is Russian, between 16% and 24% Ukraine and 13% Crimean Tatars (Ukrainian Census, 2001; Russian Census, 2014).

           Given his geopolitical position, the largest Black Sea peninsula seems to be an object disputed between Russia and Ukraine, rather than an active player in the conflict.     

           Donbass. The conflict between Ukraine and the DPR and LPR is considered an internal Ukrainian conflict, although Russia had a paramount role in the beginning of hostilities and continues to back the two de facto republics (Mykhnenko, 2020). The LPR and DPR objective is to join Russia, but Moscow has no interest in annexing the Donbass[10] (International Crisis Group, 2019). There are three main reasons for this:

-         it does not consider the two regions to have such great geostrategic importance.

-         it does not want to expose itself to further accusation of annexation avoiding an international crisis;

-         it wants the dispute to remain unresolved at low or no intensity so as to implement the frozen conflict strategy and maintain an influence over Ukraine;

           Despite the great dependence on Russia's aids, the East-Ukrainian marginal area can be defined as a "society without a State" since it maintains a certain degree of autonomy. Such kind of autonomous society, once formed, tend to be very hard to reintegrate in a Nation-State (Scott, 2009).

           To summarise, the two republics are limited actors highly dependent on Russian support. Although formally independent in their decisions, the republics are largely influenced by Moscow, especially in foreign policy decisions (Mykhnenko, 2020, p. 554).

           Russia. From the collapse of the USSR in 1991, the Russian Federation is a former empire that aspires to return such, especially during Putin's era. In other words, it can be defined as a quasi-Empire because it acts like an empire without having all the power requirements that make it so (Chimiris, 2020). The two strengths that distinguish Russia are the military force (the second in the world) and an abundance of natural resources. Indeed, Russia is a fully-fledged rentier state: its economy is over-reliant on natural resources and therefore dependent on the raw material price trend. Putin benefited from a positive trend, but now he must prioritize the diversification of Russian production sectors to avoid economic failures and maintain his power (Schmidte, 2020, p. 8; Rinaldi, 2014, pp. 31-40). Additionally, Putin should find a way to attract back foreign capital inflows fled as a result of Russian aggressive behavior.

           Russian general goals are to rebuild a regional sphere of influence through a new and modern narrative of the Russckij Mir, avoid yielding any other state to the Western sphere of influence and avoid NATO/EU encirclement through the smart strategy of the frozen conflict. Russian actions in Ukraine should be understood according to this reading key. It annexed Crimea to prevent that the geostrategic port of Sevastopol would host a NATO naval base and to secure the energy resources around the peninsula. It (arguably) fomented the separatists in Donbass intending to destabilize Ukraine, freezing the conflict and thus preventing its entry into the West Institutions (Mearsheimer, 2014).           In conclusion, since Ukraine serves as a buffer state of enormous strategic importance to Moscow, Russian vital interest is to prevent Kyiv from turning into a Western bastion (Mearsheimer, 2014)[11]. The frozen conflict strategy and the proposal for a federal Ukraine are aimed precisely at achieving this objective: the neutrality of Ukraine. Regarding the annexation, Russia will leave Crimea only if militarily forced.

           Western Countries. The USA, the hegemonic empire, directly or indirectly lead the western world. Washington is facing the second and third states in the world simultaneously. Over the past three decades, China and Russia have increasingly developed a kind of informal strategic understanding that threatens the US's hegemony (Limes, Nov. 2019). The strategy of encirclement is the US response to both. Through NATO and the EU[12], the US is extending its sphere of influence and given its closeness to Russia, Ukraine is a crucial state. The US legitimized, economically supported, and probably backed both the Orange Revolution and the Euromaidan Revolution. In fact, according to the US assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland (2013), since Ukraine's independence in 1991, the US has invested five billion dollars in assisting Ukraine to achieve "the future it deserves". 

           Instead, the EU's first interest is to have a stable Ukraine at the border for energy, trade and migratory security reasons[13] (Shumylo-Tapiola, 2013). The second interest is to allow Ukraine to enter the EU (under the EU's conditions).

           To sum up, the NATO enlargement, the EU expansion and "true" democracy promotion make up the West's package of policies against Russia (Mearsheimer, 2014).

Second Part: Briefing for Ukraine.

           Possible outcomes. As shown in Figure 7, eight are the possible outcomes of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. The A, B, C and D scenarios are the consequence of the diplomatic route, while the E, F, G, and H ones are the medium/long-term outcomes of maintaining the status quo.

           If the Minsk agreements continue not to be implemented and a diplomatic agreement that really satisfies all the parties involved continue not to be found, the conflict will continue until:

-          Ukraine is able to continue the conflict (outcome E - probable); 

-          a severe domestic crisis damages Russia (outcome F - hardly probable);

-          NATO or the EU change their internal regulations, allowing states with open disputes, such as Ukraine, to join the two institutions (Coffey and Mrachek, 2020) (outcome G - highly unlikely).

-          the frozen conflict strategy is utterly implemented, as in Georgia (outcome H – highly probable);

-          One of the parties is prepared to make more concessions and negotiations are resumed (option 1 - probable).

           The first two scenarios are extremizations that states will probably not reach. Following the realistic theories of International Relations, states will resize their interests according to their internal and external power changes. Therefore, to avoid a domestic crisis or avoid failure, states will prefer to reach an agreement with the other party under more unfavorable conditions than before. Given the power divergence between Russia and Ukraine, outcome E seems to be more likely than outcome F, while outcome G is the most unlikely because states generally have no interest in joining an alliance with a state involved in a dispute, especially against a superpower like Russia. Among the outcomes of option 2, the H seems to be the most probable, given that in 2008 the strategy of the frozen conflict successfully applied to Georgia and still prevented it from entering NATO.

           Turning to the diplomatic solutions, Ukraine and Russia's positions continue to be very distant and the interests very conflicting. Although the Steinmeier formula could be the beginning of a peace process, it certainly does not represent the solution (Everett, 2020). Rebus sic stantibus, the final agreement is very far from being reached and the peace process is still extremely long. To date, the continuation of the conflict (option 2) appears more likely than the diplomatic solutions (option 1).

           Outcome A, B and C require Ukraine's sacrifice of its external sovereignty. The first two depend on Ukraine's initiative, while the third on a western choice. In outcome A (unlikely), Ukraine declares its international neutrality in exchange for the end of the Russian support to East-Ukraine separatists. Without it, the separatists cannot resist the Ukrainian army, so they will allow the implementation of Minsk agreements, following Ukrainian procedural steps. In outcome B (probable), Ukraine becomes a federation. Russia insists with this solution because, in this way, it can exert its influence on some federated states (South-East Ukraine regions) in order to create a veto within that system and block Kyiv from attempting to integrate with any western organizations (Niland, 2016). In outcome C (highly unlikely), the US and its allies abandon their plan to westernize Ukraine and Georgia by publicly ruling out NATO/EU's expansion into these countries and instead aiming to make it a neutral buffer between NATO and Russia (Mearsheimer, 2014). Ukraine and Georgia constitute a red line for Russia, and this western move would also benefit both the US and the EU. The USA needs Russian cooperation in Afghanistan, Iran and Syria and will someday need Russia's help containing a rising China (Mearsheimer, 2014). Ukraine's NATO membership would put the West and Russia on a collision course and bring the two hegemonic challengers, China and Russia, closer together (Mearsheimer, 2014). Furthermore, the EU should have as primary interest a stable Ukraine since its migratory and energy security depend on this and since the neutrality would not preclude Ukraine from enjoying close relations with the EU and Eurasian Economic Union. There is room to negotiate the degree of neutrality. Finally, outcome D (extremely unlikely) consists in the Russian downsizing of its interests. For instance, it could start considering Crimea negotiable in exchange for Ukrainian neutrality, or vice versa. Excluding outcome F or D, Crimea will not return under any circumstances to be Ukrainian given the strong will of the Crimean population to enter Russia and the Russian military power.

           Ukraine's strategic plan. In accordance with the reading of the conflict given in this essay, the conflict's continuation could lead to F and G results, the most preferable for Ukraine but also the most unlikely. At the same time, however, the more Ukraine continues the conflict, the more likely it will fall into outcomes E or H, the most probable and worst scenarios for Ukraine.

           Also, Ukraine (and the EU, although to a lesser extent) has a greater interest in changing the status quo than Russia[14]. While the current situation fits perfectly into the Russian strategy of the frozen conflict, Ukraine needs to resolve its internal conflicts as soon as possible in order to focus on solidify the National State. In the last seven years, Ukraine rightly clamors for Crimea and Donbass and reclaims the (sacrosanct) right to determine its allies and, therefore, the will to join the EU and NATO. However, the sad truth is that this current foreign policy strategy did not get Ukraine anywhere: the conflict in Donbass is still ongoing and Ukraine has so far achieved nothing significant. Ukraine should remember the realist school basis: international relations are intrinsically anarchist and power determines the results. Put differently: abstract rights succumb to international power dynamics. "Did Cuba have the right to form a military alliance with the Soviet Union during the Cold War?" (Mearsheimer, 2014, p. 88). Moreover, Ukraine should understand that an actual agreement will be reached and the conflict will really end if and only if Russia is satisfied in its vital interest. Otherwise, it will be impossible to solve the issue diplomatically because Russia will not allow it. Consequently, Ukraine should prioritize the end of the war to be able to focus then on its economic, political and institutional internal development. Accordingly, Ukraine should choose the diplomatic path with an attitude more willing to compromise and stop dealing with Russia by invoking international law or ideological positions and start talking about interests (Fisher, et al., 2011). Offering its international neutrality and giving up on Crimea, although extreme renunciations, will allow Ukraine to ask Russia important conditions in return. For example, Ukraine could avoid federalization remaining a unitary actor, regain full control over Donbass, cancel the debt to Russia.

           Outcome A is the scenario that Ukraine can and should pursue. Outcome B and C produce less benefit to Ukraine: in Outcome B, Ukraine renounces being a unitary state by becoming a federation and indirectly renounces its external sovereignty; in Outcome C, the western countries publicly rule out NATO/EU's expansion into Ukraine, eliminating the possibility for Ukraine to offer its neutrality in the negotiation phase. Ultimately, the outcome D is extremely unlikely.

           Conclusion. Russian demand for a permanently neutral state is something that has already been seen in recent history. On 15 April 1955, Austria declared its perpetual neutrality over international disputes[15] in exchange for Soviet permission to proceed with the Austrian State Treaty. Similarly, in 1952 Iosif Stalin offered through the famous March Note the reunification of all Germany on the only condition that united Germany should have committed itself to maintain permanent neutrality in foreign policy. German FRG Chancellor Conrad Adenauer replied that although as a German his goal was to promote the country's reunification, he was not willing to sacrifice external sovereignty for unity. Twenty-seven years later, Germany managed to achieve both unification and full sovereignty. Will Ukraine behave like Austria or like Germany? Will it prioritize its unity, or will it wait for full sovereignty?

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-         The editorial staff. (2014, 26 Feb.) “На Украине протестуют против начатой новыми властями борьбы с русским языком” - [Ukraine is protesting the new authorities' campaign against Russian]. NEWSru.com. Available at: https://www.newsru.com/world/26feb2014/ukr_russian.html .

-         The editorial staff. (2014, 23 Feb.) "Ukraine: Speaker Oleksandr Turchynov named interim president". BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26312008 .

-         The editorial staff. (2014, 23 Feb.) “На Украине отменили закон о региональном статусе русского языка” – [In Ukraine, the law on the regional status of the Russian language was repealed]. Lenta.ru. Available at: https://lenta.ru/news/2014/02/23/language/.

-         The editorial staff. (2014, 26 Feb.) "Ukraine Crimea: Rival rallies confront one another". BBC News. Available at: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26354705 .

-         The editorial staff. (2019, Dec.) "Paris summit of the Normandy Four: Ukraine's tactical wins". Ukraine Crisis Media Center. Available at: https://uacrisis.org/en/74330-paris-summit-normandy-four-ukraine-s-tactical-wins .

-         Toal, G.; O'Loughlin, J.; Bakke, K. M. (2020) "Six years and $20 billion in Russian investment later, Crimeans are happy with Russian annexation". The Washington Post.

-         Traynor, I. (2014, 24 Feb.) "Western nations scramble to contain fallout from Ukraine crisis". The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/23/ukraine-crisis-western-nations-eu-russia .

-         Traynor, I., Walker, S., Salem H. and Lewis, P. (2014, 8 May) "Putin says eastern Ukraine referendum on autonomy should be postponed". The Guardian.

-         Ukrainian Centre for Economic and Political Studies. (2008) "Prospects of Crimea: Regional Status". Razumkov Centre, National Security & Defence, No. 10, pp. 20-21. Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20140317075919/https://www.razumkov.org.ua/eng/files/category_journal/NSD104_eng_2.pdf .

-         US Embassy, Kyiv. (2011, 06 Aug.) "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 8 February 2016. Available at: https://web.archive.org/web/20160304025646/https://ukraine.usembassy.gov/government-statement-tymoshenko.html .

[1] There is an open debate about this promise made by Western leaders to Michail Gorbachev from 1989 to 1991. Western and Russian sources differ on the value of this promise and on the interpretation of the words expressed. In any case, both American and Russian sources reported that in February 1990, US Secretary of State James Baker told Gorbachev that “there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east” and agreed with Gorbachev’s statement that “any extension of the zone of NATO is unacceptable.” However, it is also true that the internal political crisis of the Soviet Union in 1991 had considerably weakened Gorbachev’s credibility and position in international negotiating tables with Western leaders. So afterward, he had not enough bargaining power to have the promise formally written down.

[2] The encirclement strategy is also used towards China by the USA.

[3] Since the 1990s, Russia has facilitated the spread of frozen conflicts in many countries in its historic sphere of influence: Georgia (South Ossetia and Abkhazia); Armenia and Azerbaijan (Nagorno-Karabakh); Moldova (Transnistria); and Ukraine (Donbass).

[4] On 23 February 2014, the second day after Yanukovych’s escape, one of the first laws passed was the repeal of the law (enacted by Yanukovych) which granted to the Russian idiom the status of the country’s second official language in some regions (BBC news, 2014; Ian Traynor, 2014). The law’s repeal was received with great contempt in Crimea and South-East Ukraine, causing waves of anti-government protests (Lenta.ru, 2014; Ayres, 2014). The interim president-elect Oleksandr Turchynov decided to veto this provision to appease these protests.

[5] Putin justified the legitimacy of the Crimean referendum through the right of self-determination and referring to the Kosovar case in which only the Albanian linguistic minority, id est the majority in the Kosovar autonomous region, participated in the referendum and not the entire Serbian population. While the severe Serbian violations of Human Rights in the Kosovar case justified the referendum, Putin justifies the Crimean Referendum with the Euromaidan coup and the constitutional violations. However, the International Community did not recognize the referendum in the Crimean case. So, Putin has again accused the West of a lack of coherence and objectivity in the application of international law.

[6] In fact, given the respective referendums, Crimea and (most of) the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk did not participate in the early Ukrainian Presidential elections in May 2014 that saw the victory of Petro Poro?enko.

[7] Although at the end of the two agreements there are the two signatures of the separatist leaders, there is no mention of the positions they hold in the two de facto republics (while for the Russian and Ukrainian representatives this mention is present). Therefore, while Russia insists that the presence of the signatures of the two leaders of the republics is equivalent to a tacit recognition of them, Ukraine counter-argues that the Minsk Agreements refer to the leaders of the two de facto republics always as the “representatives of certain areas of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions”; hence Ukraine continues not to recognize them.

[8] Indeed, during his presidency, Yanukovych and his Party of Regions were accused of trying to create a "controlled democracy" in Ukraine and trying to destroy the main opposition party, Bloc Yulia Tymoshenko. The 2011 sentencing of Tymoshenko, which has been condemned by Western governments as potentially being politically motivated, was one frequently cited example of Yanukovych's attempts to centralize power (Robertson, 2014; US Embassy, Kyiv, 2011).

[9] Both views about the Revolution of Dignity are biased and not entirely factual, even western reading. While the Russian version is blatantly propagandistic, the Western version has some unclear elements: Why did Euromaidan not follow the procedures laid down in the Constitution? What relevance and role did the neo-fascist groups play in Euromaidan? Is Euromaidan a democratic revolution or the will of the most active part of the population? In other words, is Euromaidan a revolution representative of the majority of the population? If so, why was the President voted by the majority of Ukraine in the 2010 elections (the elections were not contested)? Finally, why the urgency of the revolution since the President would conclude his term and new general elections called in 2015?

[10] As a matter of fact, for instance, Putin initially asked Donbass separatists to postpone the Referendum on autonomy, fearing that after it they would ask to join Russia (Traynor et al., 2014). However, the Donbass separatists eventually chose to do the referendum anyway on the scheduled day.

[11] Putin made this point very clear when he transparently hinted to George W. Bush that if Ukraine was accepted into NATO, it would cease to exist (Mearsheimer, 2014).

[12] “In the eyes of Russian leaders, EU expansion is a stalking horse for NATO expansion” (Mearsheimer, 2014).

[13] Indeed, among the EU’s Eastern neighbours, Ukraine is the country with the second-largest joint border with the EU at over 1,300 kilometres. Ukraine is ranked fifth among non-EU suppliers of migrants to the EU27.

[14] It could be argued that sanctions against Russia force it to prioritize conflict resolution, but this is not true because Russia can still endure the current regime of sanctions for a long time. Having said that, of course, both Russia and the EU's economies would benefit from the liberalization of bilateral trade and the abrogation of sanctions. Indeed, in 2013, before the Ukrainian-Russian War, Russia was the EU’s second-largest import partner and fourth-largest export partner (Shumylo-Tapiola, 2013); while, in 2019, Russia was the EU’s fifth-largest import partner and fourth-largest export partner (European Commission, 2020). This decrease in European exports to Russia is mainly due to the recession that has hit Russia since 2014-2015 and slightly to the damage caused by sanctions to the Russian economy (Gros and Mustilli, 2016).

[15] 19 are the countries which today declare themselves neutral. There are, however, various types of neutrality and different countries interpret their neutrality different.