Many states and international organisations reacted to the war in Donbas, a phase of the Russo-Ukrainian War that took place from 2014 to 2022 in the Donbas historical region in eastern Ukraine.
In contrast to the unanimous condemnation by western governmental spokespeople of the Russian role in the conflict, European politicians representing euroscepticism, mainly on the right of the political spectrum, criticised the role of western governments in allegedly precipitating the crisis, in some cases supporting Russian president Vladimir Putin's position. [51] [52] Agence France-Presse reported that "From the far right to the radical left, populist parties across Europe are being courted by Russia's Vladimir Putin who aims to turn them into allies in his anti-EU campaign" and that "A majority of European populist parties have sided with Russia over Ukraine." [53] Some of the parties have received Russian support and financing. [54] [55] After the May 2014 European parliament election, eurosceptic representation increased in that body from 92 seats to 150 (out of 751). Such opinions were expressed in Britain by Nigel Farage, leader of the UK Independence Party, [56] in France by Marine Le Pen, leader of France's far-right National Front, [57] in Austria by Heinz-Christian Strache, the chairman of the Freedom Party of Austria, [57] in the Netherlands by Geert Wilders, [57] founding leader of the Party for Freedom, and in Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, and Bulgaria. The shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over the Donbas conflict zone in mid-July moderated these opinions.
Reviewing votes in the EU Parliament on resolutions critical of Russia or measures not in the Kremlin's interests (e.g., the EU-Ukraine Association Agreement), Hungary's Political Capital Institute found that future members of Europe of Nations and Freedom voted "no" in 93% of cases, European United Left–Nordic Green Left in 78% of cases, and Europe of Freedom and Direct Democracy in 67% of cases. [58] The writers stated that "It would therefore be logical to conclude, as others have done before, that there is a pro-Putin coalition in the European Parliament consisting of anti-EU and radical parties." [58]
Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov said that Russian president Vladimir Putin sought to "punish" Ukraine to prevent an anti-corruption revolution like Euromaidan from taking place in Russia. [59] Former Georgian president Mikheil Saakashvili said that Ukraine "is [Putin's] West Berlin – the taking of which was a matter of principle for Stalin and the successful protection of which ultimately reversed the spread of communism in Europe. The dismantlement of Ukraine is how Putin seeks to erode the values of the transatlantic alliance, and the future of Europe is no less at risk than it was decades ago in Germany". [60] Garry Kasparov considered the West's response to be weak, saying politicians were "lining up to become a new Chamberlain." [61] [62] In February 2015, former Lithuanian president Andrius Kubilius said that he thought that "What we see in Ukraine is not a "Ukrainian crisis", nor is it a "conflict in Ukraine". This is Putin's war, which was initiated by him, which has been supported by him, which is being implemented by him, and which can only be stopped by him. [...] Mr. Putin, along with the mainstream political class in Russia, is still living with a lot of nostalgia for the imperial past". [63] The Major Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, Sviatoslav Shevchuk, stated that the signatories of the Budapest Memorandum were failing to honour their security assurances to Ukraine, which "has been attacked and needs such guarantees more than ever". [64]
In April 2014, historian Timothy D. Snyder wrote that Russia's foreign policy was "based openly upon the ethnicization of the world. It does not matter who an individual is according to law or his own preferences: that fact that he speaks Russian makes him a Volksgenosse requiring Russian protection, which is to say invasion." [65] Although majorities in all regions voted to be part of an independent Ukraine during the 1991 referendum, former Czech president Václav Klaus, said that Ukraine was an artificially created state, and that Ukraine was in a state of civil war. [66] In an article that appeared in Foreign Affairs , John J. Mearsheimer, an American neorealist international relations theorist at the University of Chicago, assigned most of the responsibility for the crisis to the United States and the European Union. [67] He offered an invitation to "imagine the American outrage if China built an impressive military alliance and tried to include Canada and Mexico", and recommended that "the United States and its allies should abandon their plan to westernise Ukraine and instead aim to make it a neutral buffer". His article was criticised by Anders Åslund of the Peterson Institute, who said that Mearsheimer showed "contempt for democracy, national sovereignty, and international law", and that his thesis gave "Russia has the right to decide the fate of the countries in its neighbourhood in its own interest". [68] Writing in World Affairs , Mariana Budjeryn also dismissed Mearsheimer's argument, saying "That the Russians failed to design a model of development and a security arrangement that would be equally attractive and did not require arm-twisting to keep together is not the west's fault. Turns out, democracy and rule of law is not the west's property to peddle around the world, but a political model post-Communist societies chose to pursue when they were free to do so". [69]
In April 2014, a survey by infratest dimap found that 49% of Germans preferred a "middle position" for Germany between the west and Russia. [70] This was reflected in the policy of moderation and mediation that Chancellor Angela Merkel espoused over the course of the Russo-Ukrainian War. [71] After the war escalated, German public opinion turned against Russia, with 79% saying they had an unfavourable view of Russia and 82% saying Russia could not be trusted in an August 2014 poll. [72] [73] Ukrainian-American historian Alexander J. Motyl criticised the Social Democratic Party of Germany for its approach to Russian aggression in Ukraine, saying that they "appear increasingly committed to doing everything possible to appease Russian imperialism". [74]
Gallup's 2014 world survey found that disapproval of the Russian leadership was highest in Norway (89%), the Netherlands (86%), Finland (86%), Switzerland (83%), Sweden (82%), Germany (81%), Ukraine (81%), Belgium (80%), Italy (78%), and Canada (77%). [75] According to a Pew survey conducted from March to May 2015, negative views of Vladimir Putin were held by three-quarters of western Europeans, North Americans, and Australians (81%), and a majority in the Middle East, with the most negative responses found in Spain (92%), Poland (87%), France (85%) and Ukraine (84%). [76] Outside of Russia (88%), the most favorable views of Putin were found in Vietnam (70%) and China (54%). [76]
Some minor organisations have been formed to support the pro-Russian militants in the Donbas region, among them the Donbas Association in Sweden. [77]
At the 30–31 August 2014 EU summit, European Commission President José Manuel Barroso told other EU leaders that, when he phoned Putin about the war in Donbas on 29 August 2014, during which Barroso said that he held Putin accountable for the military actions of separatists in eastern Ukraine, Putin allegedly replied: "The issue is not this. If I want, I can take Kyiv in two weeks." [94] In a 2 September statement to TASS, Kremlin spokesperson Yuri Ushakov did not deny Putin had made this remark, but said that "[i]t was taken out of context and had a totally different meaning." [94] The next day, Putin threatened to release the full recording and transcript of his phone call with Barroso, with ambassador Vladimir Chizhov adding that making details of a private conversation public was a breach of diplomatic protocol. [95] On 5 September, TASS stated that "EC admits Barroso's words on phone talks with Putin were made public out of context", [96] and that the Kremlin now considered the issue "closed" and no transcript would be published. [97]
However, according to a 18 September Süddeutsche Zeitung article, when Barroso visited Kyiv on 12 September 2014, Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko told Barroso that Putin had now also expressed similar threats to him (Poroshenko) on the phone, allegedly saying: "If I wanted to, Russian troops could not only be in Kyiv in two days, but also in Riga, Vilnius, Tallinn, Warsaw or Bucharest." [98]
Sergey Viktorovich Lavrov is a Russian diplomat who has served as the foreign minister of Russia since 2004. He is the longest-serving foreign minister since the Tsarist era.
Nikolai Platonovich Patrushev is a Russian politician, security officer and former intelligence officer who has served as the secretary of the Security Council of Russia since 2008. He previously served as the director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) from 1999 to 2008. Belonging to the siloviki faction of president Vladimir Putin's inner circle, Patrushev is believed to be one of the closest advisors to Putin and a leading figure behind Russia's national security affairs. He played a key role in the decisions to seize and then annex Crimea in 2014 and to invade Ukraine in 2022. He is considered as very hawkish towards the West and the US. Patrushev is seen by some observers as one of the likeliest candidates for succeeding Putin.
Russia–European Union relations are the international relations between the European Union (EU) and Russia. Russia borders five EU member states: Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland; the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad is surrounded by EU members. Until the radical breakdown of relations following the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the EU was Russia's largest trading partner and Russia had a significant role in the European energy sector. Due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, relations became very tense after the European Union imposed sanctions against Russia. Russia placed all member states of the European Union on a list of "unfriendly countries", along with Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, the United States, NATO members, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Switzerland, Micronesia and Ukraine.
Russia and the United States maintain one of the most important, critical and strategic foreign relations in the world. Both nations have shared interests in nuclear safety and security, nonproliferation, counterterrorism, and space exploration. Due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, relations became very tense after the United States imposed sanctions against Russia. Russia placed the United States on a list of "unfriendly countries", along with Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Singapore, European Union members, NATO members, Australia, New Zealand, Switzerland, Micronesia and Ukraine.
There are currently no diplomatic or bilateral relations between Russia and Ukraine. The two states have been at war since Russia invaded the Crimean peninsula in February 2014, and Russian-controlled armed groups seized Donbas government buildings in May 2014. Following the Ukrainian Euromaidan in 2014, Ukraine's Crimean peninsula was occupied by unmarked Russian forces, and later illegally annexed by Russia, while pro-Russia separatists simultaneously engaged the Ukrainian military in an armed conflict for control over eastern Ukraine; these events marked the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War. In a major escalation of the conflict on 24 February 2022, Russia launched a large scale military invasion across a broad front, causing Ukraine to sever all formal diplomatic ties with Russia.
The foreign policy of Vladimir Putin concerns the policies of the Russian Federation's president Vladimir Putin with respect to other nations. He has held the office of the President previously from 2000 to 2008, and reassumed power again in 2012 and has been President since.
Relations between Ukraine and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) started in 1991. Ukraine applied to integrate with a NATO Membership Action Plan (MAP) in 2008. Plans for NATO membership were shelved by Ukraine following the 2010 presidential election in which Viktor Yanukovych, who preferred to keep the country closer to Russia, was elected President. Yanukovych fled Ukraine in February 2014 during the Revolution of Dignity. The interim Yatsenyuk Government initially said that it had no plans to join NATO. However, following the Russian annexation of Crimea and Russian military support for armed separatists in eastern Ukraine, the Second Yatsenyuk Government made joining NATO a priority. In February 2019, the Ukrainian parliament voted to amend the Constitution of Ukraine to state Ukraine's goal of NATO and European Union membership.
The Russo-Ukrainian War is an ongoing international conflict between Russia and Ukraine, which began in February 2014. Following Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity, Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine and supported pro-Russian separatists fighting the Ukrainian military in the Donbas war. The first eight years of conflict also included naval incidents, cyberwarfare, and heightened political tensions. In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and began occupying more of the country.
From the end of February 2014, demonstrations by Russian-backed, pro-Russian, and anti-government groups took place in major cities across the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine in the aftermath of the Euromaidan and the Revolution of Dignity, which resulted in the ousting of Russian-leaning President Viktor Yanukovych. The unrest, which was supported by Russian military and intelligence, belongs to the early stages of the Russo-Ukrainian War.
The war in Donbas, or Donbas war, was a phase of the Russo-Ukrainian War in the Donbas region of Ukraine. The war began 12 April 2014, when a fifty-man commando unit headed by Russian citizen Igor Girkin seized Sloviansk in Donetsk oblast. The Ukrainian military launched an operation against them. It continued until it was subsumed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Media portrayals of the Russo-Ukrainian War, including skirmishes in eastern Donbas and the 2014 Ukrainian revolution after the Euromaidan protests, the subsequent 2014 annexation of Crimea, incursions into Donbas, and the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, have differed widely between Ukrainian, Western and Russian media. Russian, Ukrainian, and Western media have all, to various degrees, been accused of propagandizing, and of waging an information war.
The Minsk agreements were a series of international agreements which sought to end the Donbas war fought between armed Russian separatist groups and Armed Forces of Ukraine, with Russian regular forces playing a central part. The first, known as the Minsk Protocol, was drafted in 2014 by the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine, consisting of Ukraine, Russia, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), with mediation by the leaders of France and Germany in the so-called Normandy Format. After extensive talks in Minsk, Belarus, the agreement was signed on 5 September 2014 by representatives of the Trilateral Contact Group and, without recognition of their status, by the then-leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LPR). This agreement followed multiple previous attempts to stop the fighting in the region and aimed to implement an immediate ceasefire.
Events in the year 2021 in Ukraine.
In March and April 2021, prior to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Armed Forces began massing thousands of personnel and military equipment near Russia's border with Ukraine and in Crimea, representing the largest mobilisation since the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. This precipitated an international crisis due to concerns over a potential invasion. Satellite imagery showed movements of armour, missiles, and heavy weaponry towards the border. The troops were partially withdrawn by June 2021, though the infrastructure was left in place. A second build-up began in October 2021, this time with more soldiers and with deployments on new fronts; by December over 100,000 Russian troops were massed around Ukraine on three sides, including Belarus from the north and Crimea from the south. Despite the Russian military build-ups, Russian officials from November 2021 to 20 February 2022 repeatedly denied that Russia had plans to invade Ukraine.
Many states, international organizations, and civil society actors worldwide had expressed their reactions to the then-escalating crisis between Russia and Ukraine that started in March 2021. The crisis eventually culminated in a Russian invasion of Ukraine, beginning on 24 February 2022.
On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in an escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War that started in 2014. The invasion became the largest attack on a European country since World War II. It is estimated to have caused tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilian casualties and hundreds of thousands of military casualties. By June 2022, Russian troops occupied about 20% of Ukrainian territory. About 8 million Ukrainians had been internally displaced and more than 8.2 million had fled the country by April 2023, creating Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. Extensive environmental damage caused by the war, widely described as an ecocide, contributed to food crises worldwide.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine received widespread international condemnation, leading to new sanctions being imposed on Russia, which triggered a Russian financial crisis. Reactions among governments have most often been negative, with criticism and condemnation, particularly in Europe, the Americas, and Southeast Asia.
"On conducting a special military operation" was a televised broadcast by Russian president Vladimir Putin on 24 February 2022, announcing the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
There have been several rounds of peace talks to halt Russia's 2022 invasion in Ukraine and end the Russo-Ukrainian War in an armistice. The first meeting was held four days after the start of the invasion, on 28 February 2022, in Belarus. It concluded without result, with delegations from both sides returning to their capitals for consultations. A second and third round of talks took place on 3 and 7 March 2022, on the Belarus–Ukraine border, in an undisclosed location in the Gomel region of Belarus. A fourth and fifth round of talks were respectively held on 10 and 14 March in Antalya, Turkey.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the Russo-Ukrainian War:
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: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)The Russian invasion of Ukraine must be considered by the UN Security Council as act of aggression, the UN must react accordingly – this is war,
"It's a hybrid war that Russia has begun against Ukraine, a war with the participation of the Russian security services and the army," Turchynov said.
"[A]t the 30–31 August [2014 EU summit[,] Commission President José Manuel Barroso (...) shared what Putin told him over their last telephone conversation, held on 29 August. Barroso said he held Putin accountable for the military action of the separatists in Ukraine. At this point, Putin erupted: "The issue is not this. If I want, I can take Kyiv in two weeks," he is reported to have said.
Laut einer Gesprächszusammenfassung des Auswärtigen Dienstes der Europäischen Union, die der Süddeutschen Zeitung vorliegt, berichtete Poroschenko dem EU-Kommissionspräsidenten José Manuel Barroso am vergangenen Freitag während dessen Besuchs in Kiew von den Drohungen. Wörtlich habe Putin zu ihm, Poroschenko, gesagt: "Wenn ich wollte, könnten russische Truppen in zwei Tagen nicht nur in Kiew, sondern auch in Riga, Vilnius, Tallinn, Warschau oder Bukarest sein."