Ukraine Crisis and G-8 Summit: Civil Services Mentor Magazine - June 2014

Ukraine Crisis and G-8 Summit

Introduction

The emerging Ukraine crisis has cast a deep shadow over Russia’s relations with Europe. The severity of the issue was of the level that the European leaders canceled their summit with Russia. The EU claimed that Russia used economic pressure to block the EU’s trade agreement with Ukraine and Armenia.

The usual three-day summit was curtailed to a three-hour talk between Russian President Putin and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and the EU.

Russia and EU have blamed each other for the crisis in Ukraine. The tensions started when Ukrainian President V. Yanukovych ditched an EU Free trade and association pact in favor of building closer ties with Russia.
The issue has given wind to the Cold war kind of situation at the international level. With USA and Russia taking the opposite sides, the world fears the revival of the cold war.

Background

The uprising in Ukraine has divided the country into a series of tensions between Russia and the West. Public Protests started in December 2013 over President Viktor Yanukovych’s decision to abandon a deal with the European Union in favor of aid and natural gas agreements with Russia.

Though the protests were initially peaceful, it later turned ugly, with protesters seizing the government offices across the country. Their main demands include an end to corruption and self-enrichment by the ruling political elite.

President Yanukovych softened his attitude by granting pardon to the protesters through the Parliament, and offering the seat of Prime Minister to the respective Opposition leaders- Arseny Yatseyuk and Vitali Kiltschko. However, the opposition is furious over the condition that protesters require to vacate the occupied buildings.

Ukraine hold a strategic geophysical location between the West and Russia.

Yanukovych’s policies, since 2010, had already been troubling a significant proportion of masses in Ukraine, particularly in the western regions, where a support for accession to Europe has been emerging. Eastern Ukraine, on the other hand, has been favoring closer links with Russia.

Another tension has been related to the agreement with the EU, wherein the deal was tied to an IMF bailout package, whereby government had to cut expenditure and bear higher gas prices.

Thirdly, NATO and Ukraine had been participating in joint exercises, which were progressively enlarged, despite of Parliament’s opposition. The EU association agreement proposes deeper Ukraine-NATO links, but only 30% Ukrainians favor links with NATO. These controversies have fuelled the ethno-nationalist right-wing groups.

On his part, Russian President Vladimir Putin has blocked the Kiev-EU agreement with a 15 Billion Euro aid, cheaper gas and trade deals. Russia is suspicious of NATO for trying to encircle Russia.

Ukraine Crisis Genesis

In the wake of growing protests, Ukraine’s PM Mykola Azaroc resigned in order to facilitate peaceful settlement of the political crisis, even as the Parliament repealed the harsh anti-protest laws, that were responsible for the anti-government protests. The President V. Yanukovych accepted the resignation of the PM and the government, but it could not appease the opposition, which is demanding amnesty to all protesters and a constitutional change to curtail the sweeping powers of the President.

The Opposition leader turned down the offer to become the PM. Under the existing system, the President has all the power of the government. Opposition has been demanding a return the parliamentary system. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian president is coming under great pressure from the West as well.

Russian president Putin has criticized the West for interfering in Ukraine’s domestic affairs, and argued that Russia would not withdraw its multi-billion aid package to Ukraine if the opposition comes to power. Putin is against international mediation in the Ukraine issue.

Ukrainian Parliament is struggling to handle the threats of civil war. Russian Parliament has blamed the opposition of encouraging aggression against police, and also criticized the western leaders for destabilizing the situation. Russian leaders have expressed indignation at the western politicians for interfering in the internal affairs of Ukraine.

Ukrainian president has been trying to ease out the differences, by accepting the resignation of the PM, and then scraping out the anti-protest law.

US President, on the other hand, has expressed the principle that everyone has a right to expression and protest. US has been making pressure over Ukraine to pull back the riot police.

Ukraine government has launched a military operation to crush the anti-government protests in the Russian-speaking eastern part of the country, with thousands of troops, armour and aircraft. Many protesters were killed in the counter-protest measures. This was marked by further protests against the killing of civilians.

Russia has affirmed that Ukraine is tottering on the brink of a civil war. The protests have been continuing despite the end of the deadline for the enforcement of the full-fledged anti-terrorist operation by Ukrainian government.

To the surprise of many, the Ukrainians decided to convene a referendum to decide for the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Even the European Union leaders have shown interest in the referendum. However, the proposal of referendum failed to contain the rising protests in Eastern Ukraine.

Russia has refused to intervene in Ukraine militarily. However, Russian President is keen to get the mandate from the Russian Parliament, to use the Russian forces to protect the Russian nationals and Ukrainian Russians living in Ukraine. Russia has earlier warned about the danger of a civil war in Ukraine. Russia has been suspecting the hand of USA in the disturbances of Ukraine, and assert that the chances of preventing a civil war in Ukraine rest with the West.

On the other hand, the Western nations blame Russia for inciting protests and instability in Eastern Ukraine.

However, Ukraine’s acting President Aleksandr Turchynov asked the UN Secretary General Ban-Ki-Moon to deploy the international peacekeeping force to help Kiev regain control of the rebellious regions. He also mentioned that the armed forces were launching a full-scale anti-terrorist operation to quell the pro-Russian protests in the East parts of the country. He also offered immunity to the protesters who would lay down their arms.

Russia has approached the UN Security Council to discuss the crisis in the Eastern Ukraine. Russia has also denounced the action of the Ukrainian authorities, to crush the popular protests.

In order to put pressure on Russia, NATO decided to freeze its bilateral cooperation with Russia. The EU has also promised Ukraine to help reduce its dependence on Russia. Thus, after a long interval, distances has reemerged between Russia and NATO. NATO announced that it would enhance the cooperation with Ukraine in different programmes. Thus, the Ukrainian crisis has become the focal point of the Russian-US rivalry.

US-Russian Claims

Both the parties- The USA and the Russia- have been blaming each other, at the United Nations Security Council, for adding to the Ukrainian crisis.

The US has been arguing that the Russians are intruding into Ukraine with forces that number more than tens of thousands. Russia has been supporting the demand for federalization of Ukraine as the only way of preventing the country from splintering into pro-Russia and pro-Europe fragments. Russia has also denounced the Ukrainian proposal to hire foreign militias to suppress the protest movement in the east and southern regions.

Russia has denied the US reports of a threatening buildup of its armed forces along the Ukrainian border.

After stating that Russia and the U.S. differed on the causes of the crisis in Ukraine, Mr. Lavrov and Mr. Kerry said they had agreed on the importance of “finding a diplomatic solution” towards four priority goals:

1. Assure minority and language rights;
2. Disarm irregulars and provocateurs;
3. Launch an inclusive constitutional reform; and,
4. Hold free and fair elections.

Moscow and Washington seem to have different views on what should be the end result of the constitutional reform process. Moscow has been insisting that Ukraine should transform itself from a unitary state into a federation with broad autonomy rights for its regions. US, on other hand, insisted that it is up to Ukrainians to decide “what kind of definitions work for them.”

US, while agreeing that “nobody can impose any configuration on Ukrainians,” made it clear that federalisation was the only way to prevent Ukraine from splitting along the east-west fault lines. The U.S. opposes the federal structure for Ukraine for the same reason as Kiev does — the reform would give Russian-speaking eastern and southern regions veto power over a possible decision by the central government to join NATO or the European Union (EU).

The new Ukrainian government has angrily rejected the proposals of federalization, saying it would amount to “complete capitulation of Ukraine, its dismemberment, and the destruction of Ukrainian statehood.”

G-8 Summit

The United States and its closest allies cast Russia out of the Group of 8 industrialized democracies, their most exclusive club, to punish President Vladimir V. Putin for his lightning annexation of Crimea, while threatening tougher sanctions if he escalates aggression against Ukraine.

But they stopped short, at least for now, of imposing sanctions against the vital sectors of the Russian economy: energy, banking and finance, engineering and the arms industry. Only further aggression by Mr. Putin — like rolling his forces into the Ukrainian mainland — would prompt that much-harsher punishment, the countries indicated in their joint statement, called the Hague Declaration.

Some critics of the administration said the suspension of Russia from the G-8, which administration officials acknowledged was largely symbolic, showed a lack of resolve among the allies to take tougher steps to undo Mr. Putin’s annexation of Crimea.

But it signified a firming of Western resolve compared with the early days of the Crimea crisis, when Germany and some other allies said it was premature to consider excluding Russia from the club of industrial democracies. Having Russia as part of that group since 1998 was meant to signal cooperation between East and West, and its exclusion inevitably raises new echoes of Cold War-style rivalry.

The G7 announced in what it called the Hague Declaration — made on the sidelines of the global Nuclear Security Summit — that it would not attend the forthcoming G8 summit in Sochi and would instead meet as the G7 in Brussels.

Russia has been a G8 participant since 1998, under a general plan to strengthen East-West relations. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had earlier shrugged off the possibility of expulsion, pointing out that as the G8 has no formal membership no country can be expelled from it.

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