Looking back at the causes of the current Ukraine crisis

(Baonghean) - The political crisis in Ukraine was sparked by the event when President Yanukovych's government suddenly canceled the signing of historic political and trade agreements with the EU at the end of last year, instead, Kiev chose the path of establishing closer relations with Moscow. After bloody protests in Maidan Square, President Yanukovych was overthrown and a new government was formed.

Residents of the town of Ilovaisk, eastern Ukraine, amid the rubble of a building hit by shelling on August 31. Photo: Internet

To understand the causes of the current Ukrainian crisis, we need to look at the situation in Ukraine in a comprehensive way, from history, geography, culture, ethnicity, religion to economic and political issues.

1. Historical and geographical causes

The territory of present-day Ukraine has a complicated history. Historically, Ukraine and Russia were once one country, but over time, the territories of Ukraine and Russia were repeatedly divided and annexed by neighboring empires, especially the western part of Ukraine, which had once belonged to the territories of Poland, Lithuania, Mongolia, Turkey, Tatar, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. During World War I, the people of western Ukraine joined the army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, while the people of the east joined the Russian army. Along with the birth of Soviet Russia, some provinces of eastern and southern Ukraine today such as Donetsk and Odessa also established Soviet Republics. In 1919, the Soviet and Polish governments signed the Peace Treaty of Riga, according to which the western part of Ukraine was officially annexed to Poland. In September 1939, after the German invasion of Poland, a treaty between Germany and the Soviet Union re-divided the territory of Poland, and the former western part of Ukraine was reunited with the rest of the country. In 1922, Ukraine was a founding member of the Soviet Union. Under the Soviet Union, in the years 1923-1933, the Donbas and Novorossi regions of Russia were annexed to Ukraine, and in 1954, the Crimean peninsula was also “gifted” to Ukraine by the Soviet government.

With such a complex history, Ukraine has been a contrast for decades between two distinct regions. The western and central regions border Europe and are heavily influenced by Western politics. People here support increased ties with the European Union and NATO. The rest of the Black Sea coastal region and the east have many elements associated with Russia and nostalgia for the Soviet Union. Therefore, people in the east support ties with Russia and want to join the Eurasian Economic Union (including Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan).

Thus, the “two states” in one country have led to two opposing development trends in Ukraine. That is one of the reasons leading to internal conflicts and secessionist tendencies. The evidence is that the Crimean peninsula has been annexed to Russia, while the eastern and southern provinces such as Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkov, Odessa… have seceded and established people’s republics with governments independent of Kiev.

2. Ethnic, cultural and religious causes

In terms of ethnicity, the territory of Ukraine is currently home to many ethnic groups, of which Ukrainians account for 77.8% of the population, Russians account for 17.3% (2011), the rest are other ethnic minorities such as Crimean Tatars, Belarusians, Bulgarians, Hungarians, Poles, Jews, etc. In particular, in some places like the Crimean peninsula, up to 60% of the population is Russian.

Regarding language, according to the Constitution, the state language of Ukraine is Ukrainian, but due to historical factors, Russian is widely used, especially in the East and South of Ukraine. According to the 2001 census, 67.5% of the population declared Ukrainian as their mother tongue and 29.6% declared Russian. The majority of native Ukrainian speakers know Russian as a second language. In particular, in Crimea, Russian speakers make up the vast majority of the Crimean population (77%), Ukrainian speakers account for only 10.1%, and Crimean Tatar speakers account for 11.4%. But in everyday life, the majority of Crimean Tatars and Crimean Ukrainians use Russian.

Culturally, Ukraine lies between two major civilizations, Western Christianity and Eastern Orthodoxy, and is located next to a large country that is emerging as a regional power with an Islamic civilization, Turkey. Therefore, Ukrainian culture also shows a clear East-West divide. The Western region, because it is located right next to the West and has a culture influenced by neighboring Western countries, so the majority of people in this region often support the pro-Western government and are anti-Russian. Meanwhile, the majority of people living in the Eastern region of Ukraine follow Orthodoxy; cultural attachment makes the residents of this region support the pro-Russian government. Thus, the cultural difference between Eastern and Western Ukraine has always made Ukrainian politics tense.

3. Economic reasons

Along with historical and cultural reasons, the economic and social crisis in recent years has increased people's dissatisfaction with the government of pro-Russian President Yanukovich to the extreme. That is an important cause leading to the prolonged political crisis.

In terms of GDP per capita, Ukraine is inferior to neighboring Eastern European countries. In 2011, the American magazine Forbes published a list of the 10 weakest economies in the world, including Ukraine. Currently, Ukrainian enterprises owe about 20 billion USD to Russian banks. In addition, the high unemployment and inflation rates, the widening gap between rich and poor, have caused social instability. The reason is that Ukraine has not carried out extensive reforms to modernize the industrial production sector, with traditional products such as iron, steel and chemicals. The state economic system is dominated by corporations and individuals, leading to increasing power conflicts, making national development programs impossible to implement. The long-term regionalization of economic life has caused Ukraine to lack the development of a common national market.

In addition, Ukraine depends on Russia for 60% of its gas. Currently, Ukraine has to pay 485.5 USD to buy 1,000 m3 of Russian gas, while Armenia only has to pay 189 USD. Every year, the government has to spend up to 7.5% of GDP to subsidize gas prices. As a result, the budget deficit is getting bigger and bigger and the government is forced to borrow to compensate. According to a report by the World Bank, Ukraine's economy is also ruined by rampant corruption. The 2013 ranking of Transparency International ranked Ukraine 144/175 countries in the organization's corruption perception index.

These difficulties forced Ukraine's leaders to rely on external assistance, putting the economy in a difficult choice. Although the EU is a rich export market, Ukraine finds it difficult to penetrate it due to the low quality of its goods. To receive the EU's annual financial support of 500 million euros, Ukraine must commit to reducing its budget deficit and upgrading its weak economy to meet European standards. Meanwhile, if it joins the Russian Customs Union, Ukraine will immediately enjoy many incentives that its economy urgently needs, first of all, a cheap gas price from Russia. In that context, President Yanukovich stopped signing Ukraine's EU accession agreement and turned to Russia to receive funding from Russia. This decision pushed economic disagreements to a climax, leading to serious political consequences as is happening now.

4. Political reasons

In addition to the above causes, the current Ukrainian crisis is the result of long-standing shortcomings in Ukrainian political life and is a manifestation of the struggle for influence between Russia and the West.

4.1. Inadequacies in Ukraine's political life

In the early stages of its establishment in 1991, the new leaders' primary goal was to build Ukraine into a unified state, otherwise the country faced disintegration. To achieve this goal, the leaders chose Ukrainian nationalism as the driving force for social unity, increasing the use of the Ukrainian language, while discouraging Russian, which was banned or restricted in the media and films. The government's policy of distancing itself from Russia led to discontent among some people, especially in the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine, which have close historical and cultural ties to Russia.

In addition, the Ukrainian government's false propaganda about the Soviet era and its relations with Russia, denying all the achievements of the Soviet Union, and even distorting the history of the Patriotic War against Nazi Germany, has caused discrimination among Ukrainians against Russians.

After the transformational reforms of the late 1990s and early 2000s, Ukraine failed to modernize its political system due to internal conflicts. The political system was almost powerless and ineffective. The executive branch of government was constantly experiencing internal conflicts and low management skills, the judiciary was weak, the courts were corrupt and unfair, political parties were underdeveloped, and civil society was underdeveloped.

In addition, the corruption of financial groups and families in political parties leads to a situation where both pro-Russian and anti-Russian factions are in internal turmoil after each political coup, due to the constant struggle for power between internal parties. As a result, Ukrainian politics is never peaceful.

4.2. The struggle for influence between Russia and the West

With its sensitive strategic location and complex economic and cultural life, the Ukrainian people have turned themselves into a natural buffer zone between the East and the West, and as a result, they have been stuck in a long-standing battle for influence. It is believed that the recent developments in Ukraine are considered a “fight” between Russia, the United States and Europe to compete for the Eastern European country.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia sought to strengthen relations with the republics of the Soviet Union, especially Ukraine, through credits and economic contracts that benefited its allies, and provided cheap oil and gas to prevent a trend toward the West. Political scientist Emmanuelle Armandon, an expert on Ukraine, commented in the French newspaper Le Monde: “Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, one of the top priorities in Moscow's foreign policy has been to keep Ukraine under control. Russia has always considered Ukraine and the former Soviet Union countries to be naturally within its sphere of influence. This explains why Moscow does not accept the EU expanding its borders to the East.”

On the other “front”, the US and the West are also taking every measure to lure Ukraine and the CIS countries away from Russia. In his latest speech at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, President of the European Council Herman Van Rompuy bluntly declared that “Ukraine’s future belongs to the EU”. US Secretary of State John Kerry also chimed in, saying that “nowhere is the fight for Europe’s democratic future more important than in Ukraine today” and that “the United States and the EU stand with the Ukrainian people in their fight for democracy”. In addition to economic promises, the West also uses political tricks, the most common of which is to carry out “color revolutions” to overthrow the Ukrainian government, as has happened now and in 2004.

Meanwhile, on March 8, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov stated that the reason for the current complicated situation in Ukraine is that the West has not implemented the agreements signed on February 21 between President Viktor Yanukovych and representatives of the opposition, in the presence of European Union Special Envoys. In response to the West's democratic revolution, Russia has encouraged the separatist movement, resulting in a series of "People's Republics" being established in Eastern and Southern Ukraine.

Thus, it can be said that, like the divided Germany before, the current Ukraine crisis shows that the battle for influence will become increasingly fierce and recreate a version of the East-West confrontation that was the nature of the Cold War.

In short, the current Ukrainian crisis is the result of long-standing economic difficulties, political inadequacies, historical and cultural complexities, and a manifestation of the struggle for influence between Russia and the West. Therefore, to explain the current situation in Ukraine, it is necessary to consider all of the above causes comprehensively, not just stopping at a certain cause.

Vu Van Dat

Researcher at the Institute of Culture