What is Ukraine? By political structure it is a republic governed by a ‘soviet’ or council. Its centre, dating back to the ninth century, is based in Kiev. Since the 16th century, Ukraine has been controlled by and, at times, partitioned between Poland and Russia, with a short stint in the 1600s when it was part of the Ottoman Empire based in Turkey. Indeed, the name Ukraine originates from the 1300s when the borders of a Polish-Lithuanian union opened a huge, sparsely populated ‘ukraina’ (u – “at”, kraj -“border”) and the Ukrainian territory became incorporated into the Polish Empire. Thus, the concept of a western and eastern Ukraine goes back centuries.
The battle for political control of Ukraine in the modern era centred itself in the fallout of First World War and the Russian Revolution. In a series of political and armed clashes involving Austria, Poland, Germany and both tsarist and Red Army Russia between 1914 and 1919, declarations of an autonomous Ukrainian republic were made in western Ukraine based in Kiev, and a Ukrainian Soviet government loyal to Russia based in Kharkov. Nicolai Lenin settled the matter eventually with an alliance between Russia and Ukraine in which both were recognized as equals. In December 1922 a federation was formed between the four original Soviet Socialist republics, the Russian, Byelorussian, Ukrainian and Transcaucasian entities. The U.S.S.R. existed until 1991.
The borders of Ukraine have also shifted with time. The present ones were arranged during and after the Second World War, with the signing of a Soviet-Polish treaty in 1945 when territory was taken from Poland, Romania and Czechoslovakia. Then, in 1954, President Nikita Khrushchev, who had headed up the Ukrainian Communist Party in 1947, transferred Crimea to Ukraine to mark the 300th anniversary of the Russo-Ukrainian union. It was a surprise move and tolerated only until Ukraine shifted its primary political allegiance from Russia to Western Europe as part of a decade-long fallout from the Orange Revolution of 2004.
So what happens now? The fighting over the ownership of Ukraine and its people dates back centuries. President Putin’s political motivations are deeply supported in Russian history. His methods are barbaric. He will happily sacrifice both western and eastern Ukrainians to achieve his ultimate goal of rebuilding the Russian Empire to the full extent of the former U.S.S.R. and beyond.
He will have his own steel curtain.
If we are to stop him, I think we will have to be willing to send troops to Kiev.
Otherwise Europe had best be prepared to freeze in the dark.
Alan Murdock is a local pediatrician.
