PREVIEW： Realpolitik #15 ｜ Maidan and Its Aftermath
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Summary
In the final episode of our series on the Ukraine series, we continue with a summary of the history of the country and its relationship with Russia. This time, we focus on Ukraine itself, and the reasons why it is the most important country in the world for Russia.
Transcript
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Hello, welcome to another episode of RealPolitik. I am your host Firas Moadad and I think this is
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the last episode that we will do on the Ukraine series. As you know, this is live, so please
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leave any comments, any suggestions, as you will during the show, and I will try to address them
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as soon as I can. In the previous episode, we started with a bit of a summary of the 1990s
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in Russia, explaining the rise of Putin. We saw how the Russians were incredibly cooperative with
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the United States when it came to the invasion of Afghanistan, allowing the U.S. to go through
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their territory to resupply their forces in Afghanistan. We went through the invasion of
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Iraq and how that sort of showed a big humiliation for Soviet-made military equipment. And then we
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explained the expansion of NATO. First, they expanded into Central Europe and then they expanded on the
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Baltic Sea and on the Black Sea, basically trapping Russia's navy and taking away Russia's ability to
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reach safe waters that would be operational throughout the winter. We mentioned the missile
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defense issue, how that really scared the daylight out of the Russians, the idea of placing missile
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defense systems in the Czech Republic and Poland that would basically alter the strategic balance of
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power and remove Russia's nuclear deterrence or weaken Russia's nuclear deterrence. We mentioned
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Putin's speech in 2007, where he said that continuing expansionism of NATO is going to have consequences.
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This was followed by the Georgia War of 2008, where essentially Tbilisi became in a militarily
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untenable position. We mentioned the 2011 betrayal in Libya, where the Russians supported intervention in
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Libya to protect civilians. But then that was used as a pretext for full regime change and the murder of
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Gaddafi. So now it's time to talk about Ukraine itself. It's the most important state for Russia
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for a couple of reasons. One of them, as I had mentioned before, is because of Crimea, the peninsula that
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you see here, which is where the Russian Black Sea fleet is based. Without Crimea, the Russians can't
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project power into the Black Sea. And they are in an enormously weakened geopolitical position. And this is
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a map of the languages of Ukraine. And in red, you see Russian speakers. In orange, you see a hybrid of
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Russian and Ukrainian. And in yellow, you see just Ukrainian. And these are the regions that are closest
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to Poland. Remember that the Ukrainian language, if you're a Ukrainian speaker and you spend two or three
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months in Poland, you have become a fluent speaker of Polish. So in reality, most of Ukraine spoke Russian.
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The native language of the current president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, is in fact Russian, not
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Ukrainian, because he comes from this area right about here. And that area is very much Russian speaking.
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But then there's a little bit more context that is necessary to explain the importance of Ukraine to Russia.
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And I'm going to go a little bit into a map showing the Ukrainian economy. This is in Russian. I don't understand
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all of it, frankly. But you see that this area here, Donetsk, the Donbass region. So that's Donetsk and Luhansk, the
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provinces that sided with Russia after 2014. You see that there's a massive concentration of industry and resources there.
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And that's not because of Ukraine itself. That's because of the Soviet Union. So when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union,
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this territory was seen as very safe in the rear of the Russian frontline, which you have to remember,
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extended all the way to beyond Berlin and included Poland and included all of the countries behind the Iron Curtain.
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So Czechoslovakia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the Balkans united under Yugoslavia,
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Bulgaria, Romania, these were all part of the Russian sphere of influence. So this seemed to the Russians
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as an extremely safe bit of real estate with enormous natural resources that they could develop
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industry in. And that industry would have immediate access to the sea, through the Sea of Azov that you
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see here, and be defended by Crimea. And so the economic heartland of Ukraine and the real source of
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heavy industries in Ukraine, steel, other kinds of metals, coal, energy, etc.,
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was very much this area. And it's fully a Russian speaking area. And we go into Ukraine becoming a
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democracy and having this series of elections. And in 2004, the Ukrainian government was overthrown
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because of protests trying to drag it closer to Russia. In 2010, a pro-Russian candidate wins the
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election, wins the parliamentary elections in 2012. And that's the lead up to Maidan,
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or Euro Maidan, which is where we stopped our previous episode on Ukraine. You can find it on the
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Lotus Eaters website. So this is the context. You have a country that is deeply divided.
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The most valuable part of it is here, Luhansk and Donetsk. This is where industry is really
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concentrated. You have this big area in the middle, especially to the west of Kyiv, which is not
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particularly well developed. You have an incredibly strategic port in Odessa, which is a majority Russian
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speaking city. And then you have industry close to the Polish border, which again, quite heavily developed
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by the Soviets because Ukraine was fully a part of the Soviet Union. And it's in this division where
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we sort of carry on. Over the years from the first Orange Revolution in 2004 until the 2014 Euromaidan
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Revolution, political life in Ukraine was divided along the question of who should Ukraine side with?
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And with a population that is 30-40% native Russian speaking, majority fluent in Russian,
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the answer wasn't obvious because of orthodoxy. The church in Ukraine was part of the Russian Orthodox
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Church. They obviously wanted to side with Russia for religious reasons. But there was this siren call
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of the EU promising success and prosperity. And you end up in this situation where
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all of political life is divided over who should we side with. These are people with deep ties to Poland
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in the west of the country, because that part of the country is also Catholic. They saw Poland becoming more
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prosperous as it joined the European Union. They wanted a piece of that. But then the other side of the country was
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very Russian, Orthodox, wanted to stick with the Russians, and this middle was divided.
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And in fair and square elections, the Russian favoring side won, but they only won by very slim majorities of
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2%, 1%, 3%. So it was never decisive. And that was always a huge part of the issue for them that, okay,
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who do we want to side with? And you could see that Ukraine was really falling behind everybody else
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because it didn't have access to the EU. And because this was one of the most corrupt countries in Europe,
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even more so than Russia, you have to remember. So if you look at GDP per capita,
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for Poland, Russia and Ukraine, you see that there was the Russian decline that we spoke about in the
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first episode covering this. You see Poland overshooting as it liberalized and joined the European Union.
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And you see Russia improving with the rise of Putin especially, whereas you see Ukraine stagnating.
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And for the Ukrainians, the reason for the stagnation was blamed on two factors.
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The corruption and the Ukrainian oligarchs who were really legendary in how much they looted the
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country. I think Ukraine competes only with Moldova in terms of how corrupt the country was,
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and still is, and still is, I would argue. And that really put a damp on their growth prospects.
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And this was used consistently to push for closer relations with the EU as the only answer
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that could be given that could be given to solve the problem. And then you have the Maidan uprising.
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The Maidan uprising was a big wave of protests against the sitting pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych.
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And the cause for that was from 2010 until the uprising began in 2013,
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there were constant discussions on whether or not Ukraine should have a much deeper economic
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relationship with the European Union. From the Russian perspective, there were a couple of problems
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with that. The Russians were in some kind of customs union with Ukraine where trade was not really
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interrupted. And if you looked at a map of the two countries today on Google Maps, you could see that
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the roads between Russia and Ukraine are all there. It's fully integrated, much in the same way that
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the Netherlands and Belgium are fully integrated into each other. If you enjoyed this piece of premium
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