Russia – Ukraine conflict

The ongoing Russia Ukraine conflict sees the first thing that you have to understand is the tension between Russia and Ukraine primarily because of two reasons one Ukraine is a matter of strategic importance to Russia look at the size of Ukraine it is a big country that is right in between the European Union and Russia so this is very straightforward and I will describe more about it in a while and the second reason is there is also a territorial conflict between Russia and Ukraine as you may know currently Russia is in control of Crimea and then there are two regions on eastern Ukraine which are called disks and Luhansk so these together combine to form Donbas region of eastern Ukraine so Ukraine was once part of the Soviet Union after Ukraine became a separate country and declared itself an independent country.

 

As you can see from this map Ukraine shares borders with both the European Union and Russia but as a former soviet republic it has deep social and cultural ties with Russia and the Russian language is widely spoken there, especially on the eastern side of Ukraine now if you look at the eastern Ukrainian regions which are bordered with Russia it has more Russian-speaking people and that is very natural right if you go near the border areas of any country or state you will see that people from both sides of the border exist here also you will find both Ukrainian as well as Russian people but then as we know Ukraine was part of soviet union naturally after Ukrainian ethnicity Russian ethnic group is the largest and needless to say there will be more Russian-speaking people on the eastern regions of Ukraine now with that one more thing that is very common at border areas is that there will be groups who are both political as well as armed.

Who will have their own regional interests that means there are political as well as armed groups in eastern Ukraine who are pro-Russian naturally when politics is involved definitely Russia will have its own interests secured now if you look at it from a geopolitics point of view one should not be surprised if Russian political fraternity in Moscow support these eastern Ukrainian-Russian-speaking groups it's totally normal in geopolitics similarly even Ukraine can do it but then compared to Russia Ukraine is comparatively a new country so it's difficult for Ukraine to counter the Russian culture that has a long history that is why western liberal democracy is doing that job for Ukraine and giving the ideological support to Ukraine in opposing the Russian culture there is an old saying you cannot defeat a culture takes hundreds and thousands of years to evolve it's practically not possible to change any culture overnight or in few years so it is the same thing for Ukraine.

Ukraine comparatively is a young country in front of Russia there are subtle differences between the Russian and Ukrainian culture if one pays close attention otherwise, at first sight, you will not be able to figure out who is Russian or Ukrainian unless you start speaking about politics or carefully listen to their pronunciation or you see them wearing their national clothes both the cultures are very close yet there are subtle differences that are difficult to spot for an outsider it takes hardly two hours to go by train from Kyiv capital of Ukraine Moscow and years ago it was all one.

 

The country so ethnically Ukrainians Russia a very mixed there is hardly any difference in their cultures for Ukrainian people Ukraine is their own country there are no two thoughts in it, of course, any group or any section of the population that has pro-Russian sentiments inside Ukraine is not going to be acceptable to the Ukrainian political fraternity as well as

 

Ukrainian majority is also seen as a threat against Ukraine’s national sovereignty no country would like that so if you look at things from a Ukrainian political perspective and national

The interest these eastern Ukrainian Russian-speaking groups that support Russia are called as rebels separatists now to understand this whole conflict we need to go back in time at least two years behind that is how we will get a perspective of this issue I’ll give you a quick overview if you look at the

 

The current president of Ukraine he is Vladimir Zelinsky, before him from to the Ukrainian president was petro poroshenko and if you go further behind from to the president of Ukraine was viktor Yanukovych it is important to mention all these three presidents whose collective tenure spans over a decade in total there were seven presidents in Ukraine till now since but to understand the Russian and Ukrainian conflict we only need to know the events that took place during these three presidential terms now let me quickly tell you about the political parties in Ukraine.

After that, I will categorize these three precedents as per their political affiliation so that you somewhat get abroad political picture of Ukraine so basically the politics of Ukraine is divided into three categories actually the major ones are two but there are political groups who are in between so together there are three categories in which all the political parties in Ukraine irrespective of the ideology can be easily categorized the first category includes those political parties who are pro-western they also support nato they are pro-European they believe in the liberal democracy of the western countries and they are also anti-Russian the second category includes all political parties that are pro-Russia they like the old soviet culture they are Eurosceptic meaning they criticize European union and they are often anti-American and they are also not very liberal.

The third category includes political parties that only focus on regional and local interests in political science there is term for it it is called the ideology of regionalism and almost all the political parties in this category are comparatively new they were formed in the last five five-sixers or so basically you can think of them as new emerging political parties who are still figuring out the nerve of the Ukrainian public trying to build their foundation and once they garner enough supporters it will be interesting to see which side will they choose because once you transition out of regional politics you then have to face national politics and national politics of any country has a direct correlation with international relations

 

At the international level even if you don't like it you will be forced to take sides it's not at all possible to be neutral you can try to be neutral on less important matters but then when it comes to strategic interests you will end up taking sides so these are the three categories or you can say political camps in which all the political parties in Ukraine fall into now i will categorize these three precedents as per their political affiliation the current president of Ukraine Vladimir zelensky his political affiliation is with servant of the people party which basically falls in the first category then former president petro poroshenko belonged to the European solidarity party by the name European solidarity you can easily figure out that even this falls in the first category and finally if you look at the former president viktor yanukovych , he was part of the communist party of soviet union once Ukraine got separated he joined a political party called party of regions in late  which later on became the biggest party of Ukraine between  and .this political party in  merged with another political party by the name opposition platform for life which is basically a pro-Russian anti-American and Eurosceptic political party now, I will begin the story from viktor Yanukovych’s presidential term so he won the election on the February .

This election was generally considered as free and fair because he was quite popular at that time and one of the reasons for his popularity can also be given to his predecessor's government it was not competent and it was going through internal issues that is how Viktor Yanukovich became Ukraine’s favorite presidential candidate as soon as he became the president in march  in the very same year he made a couple of mistakes or blunders you can say the Ukrainian public saw it as a blunder so what happened was in April  that is one month after winning the election his government signed a landmark agreement with the Russian government in the city of Kharkiv at that time Dmitry Medvedev was the Russian president and the prime minister was Vladimir Putin......................cont...