This is the position of the West.
Russia has violated international law by trying to redraw the map of Eastern Europe. She has not respected the post Soviet borders of a now independent democratic state and is stoking a war by arming and supplying militant separatists in the eastern provinces of Ukraine, which prevent the Ukrainian army restoring Kiev’s authority. Russia is supplying heavy weapons as well as military trainers and possibly several thousand volunteers from regular Russian forces massed on the border. Putin has grabbed Crimea, another breech of international law and now wants a large slice of Ukraine. If he is not stopped all the Baltic states are potentially at risk from uprisings by ethnic Russians within their population followed by Russian intervention to support them. Nato must stand firm in the face of naked aggression and the EU and the US have imposed economic sanctions on Moscow in the hope of weakening Putin to the point where he will agree a peace deal. The US is threatening to arm the Kiev forces with modern technology and hardware, but most of Europe is against such a move.
This is the position of Russia
The West has broken promises not to expand Nato east and instead of working in partnership with Russia it has followed an agenda of forcing newly independent states to choose between Russia and the West, using membership of the EU as a reward. Following the collapse of the Soviet empire Russian minorities were marginalised and discriminated against in Ukraine and when a properly elected democratic government decided to favour Russian economic ties over those with the EU, the West stoked street protests which eventually led to paralysing unrest and the overthrow of the government. This was a completely illegal process.
The Russian minority in the East and in Crimea felt threatened by the emerging pro EU replacement government, which had far right components which were sympathetic to Nazi ideals. Crimea voted overwhelmingly to join the Russian federation, having been part of Russia since the time of Catherine the Great and the eastern provinces of Ukraine demanded autonomy from Kiev. Kiev then sent its army to crush what it called terrorists involved in an armed insurrection, when in truth ethnic Russians were defending themselves against what was supposed to be their own government. This has shattered any prospect of reconciliation and the only solution lies in a substantial degree of autonomy in the ethnic Russian provinces, a withdrawal of Kiev forces and no further advance east for Nato.
The Situation in Ukraine
Like so many countries which have spent generations as part of another state’s empire, Ukraine begins independent life inhabited by a divided people; those who want to be part of Europe and those who feel themselves bound by blood, culture and sacrifice to Russia. For a while they cohabit, scoring off each other as one bad government supersedes another. Eventually the patience of those leaning west snaps and they overthrow the government which has started to lean east. Riot and civil commotion are the means, egged on by well meaning but mischief making politicians from western democracies who come and march and make speeches in solidarity with an ambition, the undertows of which they neither see nor understand.
The new caretaker government installed by the mob says some very stupid things which terrifies the ethnic Russians in the east, who start holding demonstrations and making declarations of their own. Kiev sends its army to restore territorial integrity and quell the insurgency now in effect, branding it terrorism. The ethnic Russian appeal to Putin. There is now a state of civil war. Everybody blames everybody else. An election is held but only those loyal to Kiev vote to instal a President and government not accepted by the eastern provinces which boycott the ballot. In the east elections are held setting up an independent authority recognised by nobody but accepted by Russia as in situ. This new rebel government adopts a flag which is a startling echo of the Confederate battle flag when the United States of America burst apart and into civil war in 1861. But that is quite another story. Or is it?
Peace?
We all hope so, but as Merkel says, it will not be easy. But peace never is. That is why there are so many wars.
