Russia S War On Ukraine

In February 2014, Russia initiated a war in Ukraine, its reasons for aggression unclear. Each of this volume's authors offers a distinct interpretation of Russia's motivations, untangling the social, historical, and political factors that created this war and continually reignite its tensions. What prompted President Vladimir Putin to send troops into Crimea? Why did the conflict spread to eastern Ukraine with Russian support? What does the war say about Russia's political, economic, and social priorities, and how does the crisis expose differences between the EU and Russia regarding international jurisdiction? Did Putin's obsession with his macho image start this war, and is it preventing its resolution? The exploration of these and other questions gives historians, political watchers, and theorists a solid grasp of the events that have destabilized the region.

Explaining and illustrating the immediate background to the current Russian invasion of Ukraine, this book investigates the Ukrainian and Russian regular and irregular forces which have been fighting in the Donbas region since 2014. In February 2014, street protests in Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities led to the ousting of the Russian-backed President Yanukovych. Simultaneously, Russia carried out an almost-bloodless seizure of Ukraine's Crimean peninsula. Ukraine's 'Euromaidan Revolution' would see many changes to the country's constitution, and a turn towards the West for civic assistance and military training. Meanwhile, a violent reaction in the mainly Russian-speaking south-eastern industrial Donbas region led to a local armed counter-revolution, backed by Russia from April 2014. This conflict became an essential example of Russia's policy of so-called 'hybrid warfare', which pursues its strategic aims by a blend of propaganda and misinformation with the clandestine deployment of Special Forces and regular troops, alongside 'deniable' proxies and mercenaries. Meanwhile, Ukraine's efforts to reform its government culminated in the landslide election of President Zelensky in April 2019. Using his extensive contacts in both Russia and Ukraine, Prof Mark Galeotti presents a thorough and intriguing primer on all the forces involved in the conflict up to 2018. Supported by orders-of-battle, colour photos and specially commissioned artwork, his book also analyses the background and the stuttering progress of the war, and addresses the Russian military capabilities which are today being tested in all-out battle.

In early 2014, sparked by an assault by their government on peaceful students, Ukrainians rose up against a deeply corrupt, Moscow-backed regime. Initially demonstrating under the banner of EU integration, the Maidan protesters proclaimed their right to a dignified existence; they learned to organize, to act collectively, to become a civil society. Most prominently, they established a new Ukrainian identity: territorial, inclusive, and present-focused with powerful mobilizing symbols. Driven by an urban “bourgeoisie” that rejected the hierarchies of industrial society in favor of a post-modern heterarchy, a previously passive post-Soviet country experienced a profound social revolution that generated new senses: “Dignity” and “fairness” became rallying cries for millions. Europe as the symbolic target of political aspiration gradually faded, but the impact (including on Europe) of Ukraine’s revolution remained. When Russia invaded—illegally annexing Crimea and then feeding continuous military conflict in the Donbas—, Ukrainians responded with a massive volunteer effort and touching patriotism. In the process, they transformed their country, the region, and indeed the world. This book provides a chronicle of Ukraine’s Maidan and Russia’s ongoing war, and puts forth an analysis of the Revolution of Dignity from the perspective of a participant observer.

This book focus on national identity as the root of the crisis through Russia's long-term refusal to view Ukrainians as a separate people and an unwillingness to recognise the sovereignty and borders of independent Ukraine.

This edited collection contributes to the current vivid multidisciplinary debate on East European memory politics and the post-communist instrumentalization and re-mythologization of World War II memories. The book focuses on the three Slavic countries of post-Soviet Eastern Europe – Russia, Ukraine and Belarus – the epicentre of Soviet war suffering, and the heartland of the Soviet war myth. The collection gives insight into the persistence of the Soviet commemorative culture and the myth of the Great Patriotic War in the post-Soviet space. It also demonstrates that for geopolitical, cultural, and historical reasons the political uses of World War II differ significantly across Ukraine, Russia and Belarus, with important ramifications for future developments in the region and beyond. The chapters 'Introduction: War and Memory in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus', ‘From the Trauma of Stalinism to the Triumph of Stalingrad: The Toponymic Dispute over Volgograd’ and 'The “Partisan Republic”: Colonial Myths and Memory Wars in Belarus' are published open access under a CC BY 4.0 license at link.springer.com. The chapter 'Memory, Kinship, and Mobilization of the Dead: The Russian State and the “Immortal Regiment” Movement' is published open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 license at link.springer.com.

Fully revised and updated, this book explores the long-term dynamics of international conflict between Ukraine, Russia and the West, revealing the historic background to the invasion of Ukraine.

This book is the first to provide an in-depth understanding of the 2014 crisis, Russia’s annexation of Crimea and Europe’s de facto war between Russia and Ukraine. The book provides a historical and contemporary understanding behind President Vladimir Putin Russia’s obsession with Ukraine and why Western opprobrium and sanctions have not deterred Russian military aggression. The volume provides a wealth of detail about the inability of Russia, from the time of the Tsarist Empire, throughout the era of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), and since the dissolution of the latter in 1991, to accept Ukraine as an independent country and Ukrainians as a people distinct and separate from Russians. The book highlights the sources of this lack of acceptance in aspects of Russian national identity. In the Soviet period, Russians principally identified themselves not with the Russian Soviet Federative Republic, but rather with the USSR as a whole. Attempts in the 1990s to forge a post-imperial Russian civic identity grounded in the newly independent Russian Federation were unpopular, and notions of a far larger Russian ‘imagined community’ came to the fore. A post-Soviet integration of Tsarist Russian great power nationalism and White Russian émigré chauvinism had already transformed and hardened Russian denial of the existence of Ukraine and Ukrainians as a people, even prior to the 2014 crises in Crimea and the Donbas. Bringing an end to both the Russian occupation of Crimea and to the broader Russian–Ukrainian conflict can be expected to meet obstacles not only from the Russian de facto President-for-life, Vladimir Putin, but also from how Russia perceives its national identity.

One of The New York Times’ “6 Books to Read for Context on Ukraine” “A short and insightful primer” to the crisis in Ukraine and its implications for both the Crimean Peninsula and Russia’s relations with the West (New York Review of Books) The current conflict in Ukraine has spawned the most serious crisis between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War. It has undermined European security, raised questions about NATO's future, and put an end to one of the most ambitious projects of U.S. foreign policy—building a partnership with Russia. It also threatens to undermine U.S. diplomatic efforts on issues ranging from terrorism to nuclear proliferation. And in the absence of direct negotiations, each side is betting that political and economic pressure will force the other to blink first. Caught in this dangerous game of chicken, the West cannot afford to lose sight of the importance of stable relations with Russia. This book puts the conflict in historical perspective by examining the evolution of the crisis and assessing its implications both for the Crimean Peninsula and for Russia’s relations with the West more generally. Experts in the international relations of post-Soviet states, political scientists Rajan Menon and Eugene Rumer clearly show what is at stake in Ukraine, explaining the key economic, political, and security challenges and prospects for overcoming them. They also discuss historical precedents, sketch likely outcomes, and propose policies for safeguarding U.S.-Russia relations in the future. In doing so, they provide a comprehensive and accessible study of a conflict whose consequences will be felt for many years to come.