Jubilee Post News & Views
Special Desk
Though nothing official has been announced and Russia denying it’s plan for any invasion, but it has an estimated 100,000 troops deployed near its borders.
Ukraine shares borders with both the EU and Russia, but as a former Soviet republic it has deep social and cultural ties with Russia. Russia has long resisted Ukraine’s move towards European institutions, and Nato in particular.
Tension is high and President Vladimir Putin has threatened appropriate retaliatory military-technical measures if what he calls the West’s aggressive approach continues. Ukraine, which was part of the Russian empire for centuries before becoming a Soviet republic, won independence as the USSR broke up in 1991. It moved to shed its Russian imperial legacy and forge increasingly close ties with the West.A decision by Kremlin-leaning Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to reject an association agreement with the European Union in favour of closer ties with Moscow led to mass protests that saw him removed as leader in 2014.
Russia responded by annexing Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and throwing its weight behind a separatist rebellion that broke out in Ukraine’s east. Ukraine and the West accused Russia of sending its troops and weapons to back the rebels. Moscow denied that, saying the Russians who joined the separatists were volunteers.
For its part, Moscow has strongly criticised the US and its NATO allies for providing Ukraine with weapons and holding joint drills, saying that such moves encourage Ukrainian hawks to try to regain the rebel-held areas by force.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly said Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO are a red line, and expressed concern about plans by some NATO members to set up military training centres in Ukraine. This, he has said, would give them a military foothold in the region even without Ukraine joining NATO.
It is more about what Russia doesn’t want. Russia does not want Ukraine in NATO – and has said as much in its list of security demands which were sent to the US last December. The demands included a halt to any NATO drills near Russia’s border.
Many of these ultimatums have been slammed as non-starters by the West. It also wants NATO to withdraw from Eastern Europe.
In March and April 2021, Russia massed about 100,000 soldiers and military equipment near its border with Ukraine, representing the highest force mobilization since the country’s annexation of Crimea in 2014. This precipitated an international crisis and generated concerns over a potential invasion. Satellite imagery showed movements of armor, missiles, and other heavy weaponry.
The ongoing crisis stems from the protracted Russo-Ukrainian War that began in early 2014. In December 2021, Russia advanced two draft treaties that contained requests of what it referred to as “security guarantees” including a legally binding promise that Ukraine would not join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) as well as a reduction in NATO troops and military hardware stationed in Eastern Europe and unspecified military response if those demands were not met in full.
The United States and other NATO members have rejected these requests, and warned Russia of swift and severe economic sanctions for invading Ukraine. Bilateral U.S.-Russia diplomatic talks were held in January 2022, but those failed to defuse the crisis.
