NEW UNIT
THE CONFLICT IN UKRAINE
People from crime believe that they are russian.
The Land and the people
The different aspects of ukraine
Southeastern of europe.
Has border with russia
also poland slovakia hungary and romani that are in the europen union, and also in NATO
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Security dilemma- circular conflict that emerged everytime in history.
If a country increases its own defense, the neighbouring country feels a threat in front of the country. So the other country does the same . Thius is one of the main reason why Ukraine didnt join nato.
HAs black sea and is connected with turkey and bulgaria which are two ceconomic allies of ukraine. Tiurkey could block the balck seas and teh communications with russia.
IT has a lot of fertile terrain and it was the aim of the european countries, one of the most valuable territories.
DNIPRO is the best area and russia is wanting to extend russian border up to the dnipro. It has the fertile terrain ( rich in wheat)
It also has a lot of seposit of coal and iron. The easternmost region- donbas region- extreme value.
Crimea has a lot of renewable energy, an din a decade ukraine thehy could have been gas free from russia, therefore that is why russia conquered and annexed crimea.
WOrlds arms trader.
The people is having a decreasment of peoplek, thgere are more poeple that die than thet they are born.However ukraine does not get immigrnats, and preople are leaving ( especIlly young people) also a problem with fertility rate.
Oligarchs in russia and ukrain, control directly the political institutions of their countires, whcih slowed down of the countries.. SUCH AS abrhamovic.
The population is amassing toward sthe biggest cities, and in there, there is more pro european support, the population has pro russian and pro european. The population is slowly becoming pro european. SDuc h as kiebv liviv and donetsk. Life expectancy 65 yrs old.
78 % of population percieves themselves as ukranians. 1285 asd ethnically russian and others as romanians. 17% russians, and then other ethnic groups. They are both slavic.
Putin says that russian and urkains should be thsame and not divided into two different countries.
Peopel in ukraine boths peak ukraniana nd russian, the population that percieves themselves as ethnic russian do not percieve tehmseleves as a minority, they thanink that they are the represenattive of teh majority f the population in the soviet union
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Therefore they are percieved as a homogenous slavic gorup, compared to the middle ages or the midern ages there were a lot of different minorities, such as armenians. After the soviet union its a homogenous group as the minorities are 1%. They are either russian or ukranian which are both slavic
The firts political formtion is rus de kiev, Thejn it became kievan rus whihc ihas the political center in kiyv, This was during the middle ages
Ukraine has had a lot of different borders in its history. VIKINGS CONQUERED EASTERN EUROPE. They represented themselves as a people of the frontier,. THey identidied tas the people of the fromntier. Its an idea of identification, its different.
Afters llenins death, dtalin banished the use of different languages, he forced ukranians to speak only russian, they could speak ukranian on ly in their home. The people under the USSR had to feel russian. He tries dot obliterate the ethnic differences to make it more homogenous. USSrR was a union, and ideally all the countries had the same weight, LENIN HELPED cUT A CLEAR BORDER FOR UKRAINE:
STalin thought that havong different countries was weak, and that the states had to be mandated by an authoritarian way.
WHen it fell, all of the republics bcame independednt. And when they came , it had to adjust itself and write a constitution. It is indetifired the foundation of the atate in the constitution. Meaning that the source of the power is teh citizebns and the people. But in ukraqine there is an ethnicd difference, mno mat
so they cfrreated a citizen of ukraine and create the civic constitution, that the social power are the citizens of ukraine, not th epeople, so also the srussian living in ukraine, THis was done to avoid an ethnic conflict between russians and ukranianas
It has worked until the 2014
Putin, 2 days before declaring war satted that tehj fall of the USSR was the worst incident in the last stwo centuries, just because lenin gave half indipendence to the USSr states and that it was bound fail becaus eof it.
In a mind of a nationalist riussian, ukariane issnt ukrain, its a little russia lika an appendix of russia. They were rgarded as a tribe of russian people
In order to foster the idea of russian nationalism,, ukrainian was banend from being used. It was considered as a dialect. It is not d
the west part of ukraine never considered itself as russian.
In order to create an emotional link with tehc ountry, they used ukraine as and a official language, and now the official language is ukraine, with a. new anthem and symbols and eklements to foster a sense of belonging to the state. They started to revive the traditions that were banished by stalin.
But after 1991 in ukraine and ex USSR, had a huge economic crisis. But this is because the industriues couldn't compete with the western world. The economiuc system was very inadequate to compete at teh same level. In the beginningt, the politicians blamed the USSR for this.
They said tthat the problem was to modernize their inedequate system, and they didn't have the conomic skill to improve their economy, They attackled teh esatren part of the ukraine, they started to blame the russiajns for the countrys downfall. When they started to have a
Then there started a conflict with the use of the language and join the EU and cut all connections with russia. But on the other side people that wanted to stay with russia as tehy were USSR nostalgics. The miners of dobas were the miners that gave the porimare resoiurces to fiunction to the soveit union. Espevially the crimean are was nostaligv
The galicia region, is closely linked to teh idea of ukranian indipendence, and identity.
The last president of teh USSR was girbachev, said that decisions should be less centralized and epopel should have more power on the decisions, so democratize. The reopublics therefore state dthat they wanted more independence if he wanted to democratize. All of these republics wnate to ghet mroe indipendence, and the republic that fought the most was the russian republic. Then boris yelzin became the first russian president, each of the republics had a president, however they didn't have a lot of power, cuz the soviet union was reigning.
So he wanted to expolit teh power of russia, so there were two presidents, gorbachev which was the presidento fthe USSr and yelzin which was competing for the reign of russia.Yelcin wanted to grant freedom to the peopple, he interoduced himself as a follower for the west.
But then therew as the presidnet of ukraine krachuck, when they were fighting for power, he didnt take a stand, because he knew ukrainew was weeak, and he didnt know who was goijng to win so he didnt support anyone.
But in august of 1991 yelcin, in thsi situyation the more conservative parts, wanted to overthrow theiur current leaders,. The areas said that they are ruinign the coubntry, and they wanted to remove from power, and attempted a coup. It failed, however because yelzin lead all of the people and move them against the leader of the communist party so they stopped the coup. tHe communsit party didn't take control back, and then they hosted an election if they wanted to be under the soviert union or to have independence. In ukraine when the vited was custed in 1991 1 December 92% voted for independence and even in crimea 54% voted for the indipendence
The ussr states were dipendent from eachother, they depended on the natural resources. A union was a copmplete political identity. A commonwealth is just an ecobnomic union. They create the CIS to allow the new nations states to mamntain an econoomicc interdependence. On the first of dec they. became independent, and on the. eighth of dec the other new states joined the CIS
They should havd the same power but then russia started to cease the power and control. SO also in the CIS INITALLY TEHY WERE ALL FOUNDING MEMBERS BUT ALMOST IMMIDIETALY AND RUISSIA STARTED TO TAKE THE LEAD. This lead a lot to internal conflicts inside of the CIS. form the beginning of the 90s till 2014 ukraine tried to keep a balance between the alliance with the west and the alliance with russia. Ukrained wanted to sign with the EU unless it didn't affect their relation with russia.
ukranian always didnt want to sign for the eurasian union which was a union created by russia as it wanted to joijn the EU sometime. YANKOvich the prseident of Ukraine was foirced to sign the deal with the EU. The preseident was pro russian, but tyhere was a protest, there were dozens of people that diesd and there were many deaths. Yanukovich then stepped downas preseident, whioch angered russia a lot which then in 2014, so then they invaded crimea and people think that the beginning of the war and they also triggered the war in donbas
When they annexed crimea, russia violated a treaty which was the one in 1994 where they signed a treaty in which ukraine would give all of its nuclear power to russia to be dismantled and russia would have respedcted ukranian indipendence and its sovereignity and ukraine current border. since it was the third country in the world with the miost nuclear weapons. however in the end of the soviet. WHen russia triggered the crimean was violated the treaty. In 2014, there was a huge discussion as regarding the problem.
Ukraine when the USSR fell, they didnt know who to sell their goods to as they sold them to the USSR. Therefore food went upo 10000%. Therefore they sent people to the countryside. WHich heloped but didnt change the state of the country, Their economy fell as they diudnt produce other goods, ukraine nirmally produced weapons and huge slabs of metal which were used for construction. The state manged the conmomy in the USSR, there wasn't copetitiveness.
The products of ukraine weren't good and nobody wanted to buy them , so the state gave money to the industries, and then had to print money which caused inflation. THEY CHANGED THE CURRENCY AND THE Privatize the industries, and create capitalism. to gain some money. The oligarchs were insanely rich , and bought the industries, they sold the assets to the west and gained even more, especially for the epeople.
They had a lot oil form russia during the CIS, and the private entities sold it to th ewest. In this way, the oligarchs used the money to corrupt the political elite and the parties, the presidents in ukriane before zelensky were both oligarchs. Used a couple of unethical ways with their money. THe ruling class was controlled by the political elite, and restricted group, called an oligarchy.
ANother point was crony capitalism , since oligarchs had a lot of dirty they wanted to create new market roots,. MISSING PART All of the ex societ republics had this eocnomic history, and was close to the EU. The oligarchs invested in consumer goods and media, and strengthen the connection with the EU and also with russia, and they continued to have treaties with both partners.
kuchma ruled from 91 to 94, and in 91 the conomic crisis started and lasted till the mid 90's
There are two competing opinions that are clashing themselves, democracy can cause the people to choose the ruler and democracy doesn't let war happen. russai has the right to influence the decisions mad by other nations, the best wayt o achieve pieace is by respecting others spheres of influence, The expansion of democray is negative for russia, as everytime that a country became a democrscy the immediately joined EU and NATO. This means that the people want to join.
In the moment eastern countries wnated to join Nato to feel safer as it is bound to protect them, they therefore became allies with the USA which means that USA put military bases in the eastern european countries, so russai becomes threatened by the sphere of NATO and EU. Russia is saying that the problem isn't democracy but the expansion of the USA but disguised as democracy.
There are different schools of thought, of why war starts: War is very costly, and since it is costly, nations try to resolve and implement and international order. But the country goes rogue and doesn't comply with the law and doesn't comply with the order. Another school of thought is that war is the norm and should happen. History without war, is a. blank book we have to understand the geopolitical context that leads to the war. The first school of thought is about the will of the leader.
Its a vicious cycle to an esalation. The security dilemma is relevant as by having an agreement between two countries, other countries feel that they could get more resources than they could. The countries in the middle east could have been blackmailed by giving their natural gas and not getting any grain from russia. sanctions in itan are bigger than the one in russia, if Italy wants oil they give the money and Iran can only spend the money on food and medicine. Russia was afraid that it would be the same in russia, so he implemented a law saying that he could accept euros, but to buy oil you needed to open a bank account in euros and one in rubles using gazprom.
When a defr
There is. anew school of thought, the neoclassical realism and that agrees with offensive realism. Tken into account the security dilemma, and the gopolitical dilemma, and we also have to take into account the political interests and enviroment of the own country. Until 2014, ukraine had both ties with russia and EU because the oligarchs had the power. In the same way there is an identitarian problem, there is a domestic affair. Alex navalny is right now in jain, back in 2014 alex said that crimea should be part of russia, but even him he is in favor of annexing crimea. after ww2 they gave a lot of economic aid to the European countries, and if they helped the countries they will be forever grateful and become their allies, bush wanted to apply the same system to help russia create a capitalist system. BUt there were two problems:
the us was in a recession in 1991 so they diddnt have enough money and there wer ethe upcoming eelections next year, and bush was scared that he wouldnt get re elected as americans wouldnt agree with his actions. Bush lost the election and was replaced with Clinton. ASio now we have two competing workviews and two competing values, the expansion of democratization should be free to decide the counbtry's fate,. ON the other had we have the sphere of influence and that bigger nation should decided for the smaller nation.
The only difference between neoclassical and offensive is that offensive only looks at the geopolitical context whilst neoclassical takes into account the domestic policy of the country.
Defensive realism is whern a country goes rogue and does look ath the facts . war is very costly and nations dont want to goto war and theyd ecide to act dipomatically so a rogue states decided not to respect teh laws anymore and thhey dont analytze the geopolitical context.