Анджела Стент - Putin's World - Russia Against the West and with the Rest

But Yanukovych was not an easy client. He also continued to seek closer ties with the European Union, something the oligarchs from Eastern Ukraine—who supported him—favored because they wanted better access to European markets for their metals and industrial equipment. The Obama administration decided to scale back its involvement in Ukraine and let its European allies focus on encouraging Ukraine to commit to a reform program. After Yanukovych became president, he began negotiations with the EU for an Association Agreement and a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement. The EU bureaucrats who carried out these negotiations focused on technical details, perhaps failing to comprehend the broader geopolitical impact of their actions, so there was little consideration given to how Moscow might react. It is also true, however, that Moscow rebuffed several EU attempts to bring it into these discussions. Initially, the Kremlin appeared to be indifferent to these talks. But as the negotiations neared their conclusion in 2013, the Kremlin began to focus more intensely on the content of the EU agreements. A critical point came when it realized they were much more far-reaching than Russia had originally understood. If Ukraine signed them, it could not join the Eurasian Economic Union and its economic relationship with Russia would be disrupted. The economies of Russia and Ukraine—especially Eastern Ukraine—are quite interdependent, and the EU was offering Ukraine a deal that involved a great deal of economic pain while reforms were implemented in return for a more prosperous economy somewhere further down the road.

Once the Kremlin understood the full implications of the EU deal, it sprung into action. Russia used a mixture of sticks—including preventing Ukrainian trucks from crossing the border to deliver goods into Russia—and carrots to dissuade Yanukovych from signing the Association Agreement. They worked. On November 21, 2013, Ukraine announced that it had suspended its talks with the EU. 41At the November 28–29 EU summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, where Ukraine had been expected to sign the agreement, Yanukovych pulled out. 42Soon thereafter, it was announced that Moscow would loan Ukraine $15 billion to bail out its faltering economy. The Kremlin breathed a sigh of relief. It had stopped Ukraine moving closer to the EU.

But Putin had not reckoned with the Ukrainian street, which almost a decade earlier had mobilized to oust Yanukovych. Since his election in 2010, his administration had become increasingly corrupt. Symbolic of the regime’s excesses was his palatial estate north of Kyiv, which housed a zoo with wild boars and a mansion with ornate furnishings, marble staircases, vintage automobiles—and golden toilets. 43Even though the palace was only opened to the public after his flight from Ukraine, Ukrainians understood the scale of corruption under which they were living. For them, signing an agreement with the EU meant committing to a more democratic, less corrupt Ukraine. So when they once again poured into Kyiv’s central square in protest, they called their movement EuroMaidan. Three days after Yanukovych’s announcement, 100,000 protestors went out into the streets of Kyiv.

For the next three months, the number of protestors in Maidan grew to 800,000, demanding that Yanukovych change course. Protestors ranged from pro-Western liberals to right-wing nationalists, and as the demonstrations continued, the government’s response became more violent. 44US assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs Victoria Nuland and Senator John McCain both visited the protestors in the Maidan and offered food and support. US secretary of state John Kerry expressed “disgust with the decision of the Ukrainian authorities to meet the peaceful protest in Kyiv’s Maidan Square with riot police, bulldozers, and batons rather than with respect for democratic rights and human dignity.” 45“Yanukovych,” wrote one eyewitness, “claimed to the Western media that Maidan was filled with fascists and anti-Semites—while telling his own riot police that the Maidan was filled with gays and Jews.” 46Things came to a head between February 18 and 20, 2014, when Ukrainian special forces and Interior Ministry snipers launched an attack on the Maidan, eventually killing one hundred people and wounding hundreds more. Today the Maidan commemorates the Heavenly Hundred with a permanent exhibition of their photographs and biographies lining the outer perimeter of the square.

Two days later, the German, French, and Polish foreign ministers arrived to try to broker a settlement between Yanukovych and opposition politicians. Russia sent former diplomat Vladimir Lukin to take part, but he did not sign the agreement negotiated by his colleagues. On February 21, Yanukovych and the leaders of three opposition parties agreed that presidential elections would be moved up to December 2014, that constitutional reform would be undertaken, and that there would be an independent investigation into the slaughter in the Maidan. The EU officials left convinced they had negotiated a compromise that would de-escalate the crisis. They were, therefore, stunned to find out the next day that Yanukovych had fled Kyiv during the night, eventually turning up in Rostov in Southern Russia a week later. 47Apparently his security detail had abandoned him when they realized he would soon be out of power and no longer able to protect them, and he feared for his safety. It was subsequently ascertained that he had begun packing his belongings a few days earlier. Shortly thereafter, opposition politicians announced the formation of a new government and set new presidential elections for May. In what was a provocative gesture, they also voted to deprive the Russian language of its official status—although that unwise decision was soon reversed.

The issue of how and why Yanukovych fled inflamed relations between the Kremlin and the West. Russia’s version of the facts differed radically from that of the West. Given that the Kremlin controlled all major Russian news outlets, it served a unitary and consistent diet of news. A “fascist junta” had taken over in Kyiv, illegally ousting a democratically elected president. Russian media excoriated the appearance of posters in Kyiv bearing the picture of Stepan Bandera. Russians consistently speak of a “coup” in Ukraine, orchestrated by the US and EU. The truth is more prosaic. Yanukovych was not overthrown. He simply fled. While Putin was known to hold Yanukovych in contempt, he was demonstrating that, unlike Obama—who had abandoned such allies as Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak during the 2011 revolution in Egypt—he would stand by his allies and welcome them to Russia.

Nevertheless, Putin was convinced that the United States and its allies were responsible for Yanukovych’s ouster. Actions by US officials reinforced this view. Nuland was overheard on a phone call leaked by the Russians bluntly discussing with the US ambassador in Kyiv which of Yanukovych’s opponents they should support. Since Putin was already convinced that Washington was out for regime change in the post-Soviet space, he viewed Yanukovych’s ouster as a direct threat to Russian interests. It is also likely that he feared the next Ukrainian president might renege on the deal for the Black Sea Fleet. Moreover, to have not reacted to the Maidan events and to Yanukovych’s ouster would have left him looking weak.

A few days after Yanukovych fled, and just after the Sochi Winter Olympics had ended, President Putin ordered surprise military exercises of ground and air forces on Ukraine’s doorstep. Suddenly hundreds of troops with no insignia (“little green men”) began appearing in Crimea. The decision to invade was made by Putin in consultation with only four advisers: his chief of staff, the head of the National Security Council, his defense minister, and the head of the Federal Security Service (FSB). Foreign Minister Lavrov was apparently not consulted. 48In the name of protecting Russians in Crimea from oppression by the “illegal fascist junta” in Kyiv, unidentified militiamen took over Sevastopol’s municipal buildings, raising the Russian flag, and then proceeded systematically to repeat these moves around Crimea and intimidate the Ukrainian naval forces in Sevastopol. Ukrainian forces in Crimea, on the advice of the United States, remained in garrison and did not challenge the Russians. The Russian military soon controlled the whole peninsula. After that, events moved very quickly. Crimea held a referendum in which 96 percent of the 82 percent of the eligible population who went to the polls voted to join Russia. 49On March 18, Putin walked into the Kremlin and announced, to thunderous applause, the reunification of Crimea with Russia, proclaiming, “In people’s hearts and minds, Crimea has always been an inseparable part of Russia.” 50