The annexation of Crimea and war in Ukraine, 2014
Russian military actions in Ukraine, and the annexation of Crimea in particular, have been interpreted as a ‘paradigm shift’ in Moscow’s foreign policy and as evidence of a ‘seismic change in Russia’s role in the world’ (Rutland 2014). The assessment of these actions as a dramatic and sudden turnaround was based on the fact that, for the first time since the creation of the Russian Federation, the country grabbed a piece of another sovereign state’s territory. This seemed to suggest a qualitative change in the Kremlin’s perceptions of its historical rights and responsibilities in the ‘near abroad’ from more indirect forms of domination to an expansionist vision. It caused concerns that further expansion of territory into the CIS region and even beyond was likely and had to be deterred. The use of force for territorial expansion was certainly new inasmuch as it had not previously featured in Russian military operations during the post-Soviet years. The clear illegality of this move also makes the focus on this aspect understandable. However, the assumption that the acquisition of territory was Russia’s foremost motivation for the use of military force in this case represents a limited explanation of the war in Ukraine. A more contextualized understanding of Russian motivations is required not to justify these actions, which are in any case unjustifiable. Rather, it is needed to enable the identification of responses that will not inadvertently cause tensions to spiral.
The annexation of Crimea did not occur in a vacuum. Developments leading up to the event indicate that Russian actions were not the result of a ‘paradigm shift’, but a continuation of interests and threat perceptions that had driven Moscow’s foreign policy for a long time. As was the case in Georgia in 2008, regional status concerns were significant. Fears in Russia over its waning influence over Ukraine date back to the Orange Revolution in 2004. This had brought to power a political regime in Ukraine that questioned what Russia saw as the status quo in the region. Although the new leaders’ Western leanings were expressed more strongly in rhetoric than in actual policies, they advocated NATO and EU membership and there was a sharp swing in foreign policy towards the West. The Orange Revolution was followed by a period of Russian coercive economic diplomacy in its efforts to bring Ukraine back into line (Charap and Colton 2017: 74–81). When Ukraine elected Viktor Yanukovich, a Russian-friendly politician, as president in 2010, Moscow’s most acute geopolitical concern – the prospect of Ukraine’s membership in NATO, however remote – was alleviated. However, the new leadership did not decisively reorient its foreign policy towards Russia and also continued cementing closer relations with the West, and especially with the European Union as a major trading partner. Preparations for an association agreement (AA) on trade with the EU proceeded. Russia in turn sought to enforce Ukraine’s reintegration into its own ‘sphere of influence’. It importuned the leadership with sticks and carrots to join the Customs Union, which it had formed with Belarus and Kazakhstan in 2009. Much political see-sawing followed as the Ukrainian leadership decided where the country’s priorities should lie. In autumn 2013, Yanukovich abandoned imminent plans to sign the AA at short notice, a decision that was met with significant economic rewards by Moscow. Demonstrations in Kyiv followed and quickly turned into demands for Yanukovich to go. In spite of, or perhaps because of, the brutal suppression of demonstrators, the protests gathered momentum and lasted for months. Negotiations in February 2014, which included Yanukovich and Ukrainian opposition leaders, as well as official representatives from EU countries and Russia, failed to solve the crisis. Yanukovich fled the country and was replaced by a Western-oriented government that put the EU AA back on the table (Charap and Colton 2017: 114–26). A few days later, Russian military operations in Crimea commenced.
The developments in Kyiv aggravated Moscow’s fears that it was in danger of losing Ukraine as part of its ‘sphere of influence’. Even the prospect of this is unacceptable for Russia. As a large country located in the westernmost part of Russia’s ‘near abroad’, Ukraine is of particular strategic importance, forming a buffer against NATO territory in Europe’s north and east. Ukraine’s status as a transit state for Russian gas to lucrative Western markets is also significant. Access to Crimea is non-negotiable in the Kremlin’s eyes, because the Sevastopol naval base is central for power projection in the Black Sea region and beyond. Disputes over basing rights have led to tensions with Ukraine in the past. Annexation deprived any future Ukrainian government of the opportunity to revoke them. Long periods of shared history have contributed to Russia’s view of Ukraine as an indispensable part of its ‘sphere of influence’. Crimea is of particular symbolic importance in this respect (Wydra 2004). As Trenin wrote in 2011, when the dissolution of the Soviet Union led to a significant reduction in the territory controlled by Moscow, ‘Crimea was the only territory outside of the perimeter of the new borders of the Russian Federation about which most Russians, irrespective of their political orientation, felt strongly’ (2011: 45). In this sense, imperial legacy and the view of Russia’s privileged rights in the CIS region factored into the decision to use military force.
International status concerns heightened Russia’s preparedness to opt for military action. As was the case in Georgia in 2008, the Kremlin acted on the assumption that political developments in Ukraine over the past decade had been steered, or at least heavily encouraged, by the West in its efforts to expand its influence into Russia’s orbit in the CIS region. The EU’s offer of an association agreement and discussions in NATO of the possibility of a Membership Action Plan for Ukraine following the Orange Revolution were interpreted as evidence of this. Moreover, Moscow believed that the Orange Revolution itself had been fermented by the US. This cemented its view that revolutionary change had become a tool in the West’s strategic contest against Russia in the CIS region, used ‘to shift local foreign and security policy alignments in their favour by replacing incumbent leaders’ (Allison 2013a: 133–4). When in February 2014 the US and other Western governments officially welcomed the new Ukrainian government only a few days after the change in power had occurred, Moscow was convinced that it had yet again become the victim of a ‘Western plot’, this time ‘to install a loyal government in Kyiv that would move Ukraine toward the EU and even NATO’ (Charap and Colton 2017: 126). The importance of international status concerns in Russia’s decision to use military force in Ukraine was confirmed by Putin’s heavy emphasis on the West’s responsibility for the events in his ‘Crimea speech’ in March 2014 (Putin 2014a).