While billions of people around the world have recently focused on the war between Russia and Ukraine , we have seen that this tension, which initially started with verbal exchanges, evolved into military intervention over time.
But what was the starting point of these events that led to the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians in Ukraine?
From the Soviet Union to Independent Ukraine
The Soviet Union, which faced increasing political problems day by day, mainly due to economic and political reasons, collapsed in the early 1990s after increasing tensions within the country.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, Ukraine, one of the affiliated countries, became one of the countries that gained its independence.
Ukraine, on the other hand, was home to nuclear weapons from the Soviet Union, making it the third country with the world’s largest arsenal of nuclear weapons.
Throughout the process, the United States and Russia worked with Ukraine to denuclearize the country, and Ukraine returned hundreds of nuclear warheads to Russia with assurances against possible security threats.
These assurances would be tested many times over the years, but in 2014, when Russia invaded Ukraine, the validity of the promises was questioned.
By openly annexing the Crimean Peninsula, Russia also supported an insurgency led by pro-Russian separatists in the eastern Donbas region. The conflicts in eastern Ukraine have so far killed more than ten thousand people.
Although the Minsk Protocol, signed on September 5, 2014, seemed like a step towards avoiding war, it was not successful in this regard, and a similar situation would apply to Minsk II, which was signed in the following few months.
Russia Is Disturbed by Ukraine’s Relations with the West
Russia, which did not want Ukraine to establish close relations with the West since its establishment, did not refrain from intervening sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly.
As a matter of fact , the pro-Russian Ukrainian state leader Viktor Yanukovych, who was dismissed during the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution , was the last move for Russia.
Viktor Yanukovych avoided cooperation that would improve relations with the West, such as the Ukraine-Europe Association Agreement, and in a sense wanted to limit the country’s relations almost exclusively to Russia.
Here you can realize that Russia is clearly at fault and guilty.
Nevertheless, it would be right to consider the attitudes of western states while describing how this process, which started with the annexation of Crimea, will turn into a general war over the years.
American diplomats, who made symbolic gestures after Yanukovych’s dismissal, made indirect displays of power in a sense, causing even more anger on the Russian side.
While Obama was hesitant in taking steps towards Russia, he was also slow to mobilize a diplomatic reaction in Europe.
Putin, on the other hand, portrayed an image ready to make decisions that seem dangerous, accompanied by the dream of resurrecting a kind of empire that was lost after the Soviet Union.Â
History Is Repeatingly: A New Deal That Russia Didn’t Follow
We understood that the foundations of the Russia-Ukraine crisis, which is currently on our agenda, were laid in 2014. But why did these relations, which had been relatively stable for a while, suddenly led to all-out war?
Having declared its independence from the Soviet Union, Ukraine has since experienced various concerns about the pressure exerted by Russia, and after its annexation in 2014, there were several question marks about its independence.
President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky, who took office in 2019, stated that during his election campaign, peace talks to end the conflicts in eastern Ukraine will ” start again “.
When it comes to Russia, the most attractive option for a country whose independence is threatened would be NATO. In this respect, Zelenski also turned his face clearly towards the NATO line shortly after taking office.
If Ukraine had managed to become a NATO country, it would have acted as a roadblock for Russia’s expansionist policy. As a matter of fact, declaring war on one of the NATO member states meant declaring war on all member states.
You may have noticed that one of Russia’s main wishes since the beginning of the tension, which came back to the agenda towards the end of 2021, is that Ukraine and a few other countries do not join NATO.
In fact, it is not difficult to see that this desire is in a sense aimed at expansionist policy goals.
Throughout the process, Russia felt that it needed to act quickly, because as time progressed, the relationship between Ukraine and NATO would become more complex and more complicated.
Finally, towards the end of 2021, Russia, which started to pile up soldiers and units on the border, announced that it started a military operation in 2022.
You know well and badly what has happened since then, but it seems that Russia could not get what they wanted in this operation, despite Ukraine’s stable and courageous stance.
Moreover, severe sanctions against Russia could cause the country to suffer a serious economic collapse in the next few months.
In any case, all this will not bring back thousands of deaths. As Tamindir, we stand by Ukraine and the vision of a lasting world peace.
We want to say that we are the defenders of bright futures, not wars and deaths, in the science and idea-based periods of the 21st century. We hope that Ukraine and all other countries whose independence is threatened will leave these periods even stronger.
