Why does Russia want Ukraine?

This story is a summary and translation made on the bbc website.

Nobody imagined that in 2022 there would be a war, but that's what happened and it's happening at the moment. Thousands of people dying and leaving their country, their homes and their lives.

Having to start a new life somewhere else. The damage is enormous both emotionally and physically. A country devastated by war is a very sad thing, it will be marked in the history of the world and the people who survived.

Why did Russia decide to invade Ukraine on February 24, 2022? The answer to this question varies depending on who answers it. This summary made by BBC News Brasil gives us an idea of ​​what happened.

Among the main reasons mentioned are:

1- The expansion of NATO across Eastern Europe;

2- The possibility of Ukraine joining the military alliance;

3- The contestation of Ukraine's right to independent sovereignty from Russia;

4- Vladimir Putin's desire to re-establish the Soviet Union's zone of influence.

On the one hand, Russia says it will prevent what it classifies as a siege of its border with the possible accession of Ukraine to NATO, a military alliance of 30 countries, which has expanded across Eastern Europe, today including 14 countries from the former communist bloc.

Putin also accuses the Ukrainian government, without evidence, of genocide against Ukrainians of Russian ethnic origin who live in the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. He claims that the invasion attempts to "demilitarize and denazify" Ukraine, which could serve as a justification for an eventual overthrow of the current Ukrainian government.

On the other hand, Ukraine and other observers see in the war an attempt by Russia to re-establish the zone of control and influence of the former Soviet Union, something seen as disrespect for the sovereignty of Ukraine, which should have the right to decide its destiny and its alliances.

Ukrainians also reject the thesis that Ukraine is a country artificially created by the Soviet Union. Russian President Vladimir Putin often cites the shared origins of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians, in the medieval state of Kiev Rus, founded in the 9th century, as proof that these peoples are inseparable, but Ukrainians argue that the common origin does not overlap. to the centuries in which the Ukrainian identity developed independently, including the invasion by different peoples and the development of its own language.

Russia's Circle of Allies:

Belarus is one of Russia's most engaged allies in the Ukraine effort, allowing Russian troops into its territory. The Russian invasion of Ukraine provoked strong reactions from other countries – with the interruption of diplomatic negotiations and the announcement of several sanctions.

But not all countries repudiate Vladimir Putin's initiative. Some leaders expressed direct support for Moscow. Russia's main allies belong to a bloc called the Collective Security Treaty Organization (OTSC). In addition to Russia itself, the CTO countries are:

Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, China, Hungary, Serbia, Venezuela, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

The SCTO was formed in the early 1990s, after the end of the Warsaw Pact and the Cold War.

Moscow's recognition of the two "people's republics" in eastern Ukraine caused discomfort, even among leaders closest to the Russian leader. Who should support Putin amid the invasion of Ukraine?

Belarus - Since 1990, Belarus has been one of Russia's most loyal allies. After the presidential elections in August 2020, the country moved even closer to Moscow and further away from neighboring Ukraine, where many Belarusian dissidents fled. In the conflict with Ukraine, Minsk remains on the side of Moscow....

Kazakhstan - For Putin, Kazakhstan is "one of Russia's closest allies and strategic partners", as he stated in October 2015 during a meeting with the Russian youth movement Nashi, which he founded....

China - In early February, Russia and China staged, during a meeting in Beijing, a meeting signaling a binational alliance against the West. The tone has changed a bit now: at the special session of the UN Security Council on February 22, 2022, China did not side with its Russian ally, but urged all involved to exercise restraint.

Armenia - Armenia travels on a dual carriageway. On the one hand, the former Soviet republic in the Caucasus is economically dependent on Russia and maintains close ties with the Kremlin. Like Kazakhstan, it is a member of the Eurasian Economic Union and the CTO.

Hungary - In the European Union, Moscow does not have an ally in the strict sense. However, the Prime Minister of Hungary, Viktor Orbán, is considered a political friend of Vladimir Putin.

Serbia - Serbia's President Aleksandar Vucic is also receiving election help from Moscow. According to the press, Russia is giving the country a big discount on gas prices until May. This could affect the early general election, scheduled for April 3.

Venezuela - In Latin America, Putin enjoys sympathy in several countries, as shown by the recent visit of the President of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, on February 15, amid the conflict between Russia and Ukraine.

Putin demands to end the conflict:

The main demand of this category is that Ukraine accepts that it must be geopolitically neutral and must not join NATO (a US-led military alliance). Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky already signaled during the conflict that he would adopt such a position.

There are other demands in this first category that seem to be elements that mainly save the face of the Russian side. Are they:

Ukraine would have to undergo a disarmament process to ensure that it would not pose a threat to Russia; this would need to be a protection of the Russian language in Ukraine where the country would also have to promote what Russia calls “denazification”.

That last point of "denazification" is considered deeply offensive to Zelensky, who is Jewish and has relatives who died in the Holocaust, but Turkey believes such a demand would be easy for the Ukrainian president to accept. Perhaps because it would suffice for Ukraine to condemn all forms of neo-Nazism and commit to fighting them.

The second category of Russian demands, however, is where the main difficulties appear to be. In the call with the Turkish president, Putin said they would demand face-to-face negotiation between him and Zelensky before reaching an agreement on these points. The Ukrainian president has already said he is prepared to meet his Russian counterpart in order to personally negotiate a peace agreement.

Kalin, an adviser to the Turkish president, gave the BBC far fewer details about Russia's second category of demands. He said only that they involve the status of the Crimea region (illegally annexed by Russia in 2014) and the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine, where separatist groups linked to Russia have created independent republics in Donetsk and Luhansk.

While Kalin did not elaborate, it is clear that Russia will demand that the Ukrainian government relinquish these breakaway territories in the east. And that would be quite problematic.

It is also possible to assume that Russia will demand that Ukraine formally accepts that Crimea, which belonged to Ukraine until the illegal Russian annexation in 2014, will in fact belong to Russian territory. If this is Putin's demand, it would be quite a bitter medicine for Ukraine to swallow.

In any case, the Russian annexation of Crimea is a fait accompli, even though Russia does not have the legal right to own the region and also signed an international treaty, before Vladimir Putin came to power, accepting that Crimea was part of the Ukraine.

In short:

War is nothing more than people who don't know each other killing each other for two people who know and hate each other.

In the end, Putin's demands are not as harsh as some experts and some officials feared, and are hardly likely to stand in the way of all the violence, bloodshed and destruction Russia has inflicted on Ukraine.

Given the Russian government's heavy control over the media, it shouldn't be too difficult for Putin and his subordinates to present all this as a major victory.

For Ukraine, however, there will be serious tensions. If the details of an eventual deal are not analyzed with extreme care, Putin and his successors can always use these terms as an excuse to invade Ukraine again.

A peace agreement can take a long time to resolve, even if a ceasefire stops the bloodshed during negotiations.

Ukraine has suffered terribly in recent weeks, with millions of refugees, thousands dead and dozens of cities and towns destroyed — rebuilding what was destroyed by Russia and damaged will take a lot of time and money. So will the resettlement of the millions of refugees who fled their homes during the conflict.

And what about the future of Vladimir Putin himself? There is unofficial information circulating that he is ill, including mental health issues. Asked if he noticed anything strange in the call, the Turkish president's spokesman replied: by no means, Putin apparently was clear and concise in everything he said. Also, there are rumors of a cash reward for his arrest.

But from a political point of view, even if Putin manages to present a deal with Ukraine as a glorious victory over neo-Nazism, his position at home must be weakened.

More and more people will realize that he has gone too far in his offensive against Ukraine, and reports of soldiers being killed or captured are already spreading rapidly across the country.

In addition, the impact of the harsh economic sanctions imposed by global powers (due to the war) has hit the lives of Russians hard, and it is not known whether an eventual peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine will also represent the end of these measures that have devastated the country's economy.

Until the next story...

Research source:

https://www.bbc.com/

Translation: Georgenes Medeiros