The year history came
The year history came back to Europe The latest war in Europe began on Friday 21 February 2014 By Andrew Rettman It began, without a shot being fired, when 16 armoured personnel carriers from Russia’s 801st Marine Corps left their leased base in Crimea, Ukraine, and took up defensive positions in the nearby Ukrainian towns of Kaha, Gvardiiske, and Sevastopol. The same day, in Kiev, Ukraine’s pro-Russia president Viktor Yanukovych was preparing to flee his mansion. His riot police had tried and failed, for months, to clear protesters from the city centre. Dozens were dead. The crowds, at times, had numbered more than 1 million people. They waved EU flags because Yanukovych had rejected EU integration and its promise of prosperity and rule of law. The officials in Brussels who drafted the EU-Ukraine free trade and political association treaty could hardly have imagined the role it would come to play. The events which unfolded over the next 10 months redrew the European map and opened a new chapter in modern history: Vladimir Putin’s Russia vs. the West. CRIMEA’S GREEN MEN As Yanukovych fled, little green men - balaclava-clad Russian soldiers without insignia - fanned out to occupy public places in Crimean cities. Russian agents provocateurs organised small pro-Russia protests in Crimea and in Donetsk and Luhansk in east Ukraine. Russian media began to broadcast “news” that Ukrainianspeaking “fascists” were coming to kill Russian-speakers in the east after a US and EU-orchestrated “coup”. Putin himself took to the airwaves to promote two projects: Novorossiya and Russkiy Mir. Unidentified snipers killed more than 100 protesters in Kiev in February, prompting Yanukovych’s departure. Photo: Christiaan Triebert Novorossiya is a claim that east and south-east Ukraine belong to Russia for ancestral reasons no matter what international treaties say. Russkiy Mir - meaning “Russian world” - is the claim that Russia is a unique civilisation destined for great things and that Russian forces can intervene to “protect” ethnic Russians who live in neighbouring countries. The conflict quickly escalated. HISTORY IS BACK By the end of March, Putin changed the map by “annexing” Crimea - a term not heard in Europe since Nazi Germany annexed Austria in 1938. By August, Russia-controlled and Russia-armed separatists in east Ukraine were fighting pitched battles with the Ukrainian army and Russia had cut off Ukraine’s gas. By December, Russian tanks and infantry were in southeast Ukraine. More than 4,000 Ukrainians were dead and more than 1 million had fled their homes. Almost 300 people, most of them EU citizens, had also lost their lives when a stray rocket shot down a passenger plane. Looking back, Poland’s Donald Tusk said on 1 December, the day he took over as the new president of the EU Council: “Politics has returned to Europe. History is back”. HYBRID WAR Nato has called Russia’s new form of warfare - a mix of covert military action, political subversion, economic coercion, and propaganda - “hybrid war”. It’s a war designed to legitimise Putin’s authoritarianism at home and restore Russia’s influence in former Soviet states. It’s also a war against Nato and the EU more directly. Putin made wild comments that his troops could invade Warsaw, while his jets waged a campaign of harassment against Nato air and naval assets. But Russkiy Mir is a more credible threat of military action. If little green men appear in Nato members Estonia or Latvia, it will test the Nato treaty’s Article V on collective Putin spoke to Merkel more than 40 times by phone. Photo: Council of the European Union 04 ––––– Europe in review 2014 Europe in review 2014 ––––– 05
