Maintaining that backing, however, has meant accepting at least one component of Moscow’s argument: that the war in Ukraine is a standoff between East and West, and that if Western states do not resist Russia in Ukraine, they will eventually face Russia elsewhere. In response, Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and supported a violent separatist movement in Ukraine’s eastern Donbas region, beginning a war that continues to this day.įor Ukraine, Western support has been crucial to withstanding Russian aggression as repeated efforts to negotiate with Moscow to end the war have yielded scant results.
Although the popular uprising that resulted in the 2014 overthrow of then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych surprised Brussels and Washington as much as it did Moscow, the Kremlin saw it as one more Western attack. Russia has been most neuralgic about Ukraine, with which it shares a complex and intertwined history. Since the end of the Cold War, the Kremlin consensus has held that Western countries represent a hostile U.S.-led bloc, intent on limiting Russian power and influence and encroaching on what Moscow considers its natural sphere of influence, defined as most of the countries on its immediate periphery. In the meantime, the EU should also consider adopting a more flexible approach to its sanctions policy, offering incremental relief in exchange for incremental progress by Russia instead of today’s all-or-nothing posture. The EU, NATO and their member states, including the U.S., should begin exploring new approaches to European security with Moscow, including new arms control measures, even as they support Kyiv’s efforts to end the fighting in Ukraine. Although any peace settlement will need to address Ukraine-specific matters, it also needs to address broader European-Russian security concerns in order to be sustainable. Russia’s belief that such alignments would do it tremendous damage is rooted in its overall dissatisfaction with the European security order as it has evolved over the last three decades. Russia’s military intervention on its neighbour’s territory was undertaken in large part to guarantee that Ukraine did not align with Western economic and security institutions. It is also a war about European security. The initial instalment focuses on the conflict’s geostrategic underpinnings and their implications for any settlement.
#The european war series
This report is first in a Crisis Group series that will examine various dimensions of the war in Ukraine and chart possible pathways to its resolution. Moving forward, we will be factoring the impact of the pandemic into our research and recommendations, as well as offering dedicated coverage of how the outbreak is affecting conflicts around the world.
Some dynamics examined in this publication may have changed in the meantime. They should also consider adjusting the current sanctions regime to allow for the lifting of some penalties if Russia contributes to real progress toward peace.Ĭrisis Group conducted the field work for this Report before the COVID-19 pandemic. What should be done? European states should engage Russia in discussions of European security, including regional and sub-regional arms limitations. A truly sustainable peace should address European security as a whole to make Russia, its neighbours and the entire continent safer. Why does it matter? Efforts to make peace in Ukraine by solving problems specific to Ukraine only will fail, because the causes of the conflict are both local and geostrategic. A sustainable peace plan must address both sets of factors. Western responses are similarly driven by both Ukraine-specific and Europe-wide interests. What’s new? Russia’s Ukraine policy, including its military intervention, is driven both by Moscow’s goals in Ukraine itself and its longstanding desire to revise Europe’s security order.
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