Beginning On February 24, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered Russian troops to march into Ukraine. The Russians were on a strong front, advancing all the way to Ukraine's main cities. While the military operation was proceeding smoothly, Putin also sent a signal of peace talks in an effort to force Ukraine to sign an alliance under the city.
Russia's military operations have been strongly condemned by many countries and have been subjected to multiple rounds of severe sanctions. After the initial chaos and collapse, Ukraine also launched a tenacious urban defense war with the support of Western countries.
The main reason for this Russo-Ukrainian war is that the current Ukrainian government has fully oriented itself to the West and intends to join NATO, which has triggered strong security anxieties in Russia. The direct trigger is the long-term conflict between pro-Russian forces in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine and Ukrainian government forces. In fact, Putin's original statement was "launching a special military operation in the Donbass region." However, the Russian army hit Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, from Donbass in two or three days.
First: The same text and the same kind of fate
Let's start with a concept, Slavs. The Slavs are known as one of the three barbarian tribes of Europe, with three main branches, namely East Slavs, West Slavs, and Yugoslavs.
East Slavs are the common ancestor of modern Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians. East Slavs were born on both sides of the Dnieper River in present-day Ukraine, and there is a tributary of the Dnieper River called the Ross River, where a branch of the East Slavs is inhabited: the Russians.
So, Putin said that Russians and Ukrainians were one and the same, and historically there is really no problem. Even now, Russia and Ukraine are close in language and culture, customs, religious beliefs, geographical proximity, and proper kinship.
In the 9th century AD, the East Slavs created a state on the plains of Eastern Europe: Kievan Rus' . Its core area includes Kiev, the capital of present-day Ukraine.
The East Slavs founded Kievan Rus'
From the ninth to the thirteenth century, Kievan Rus' was the hegemon of this land, not only establishing political power, but also creating a splendid culture, through continuous conquest, and establishing great merit. After that, they continued to expand to the east and north, and gradually came to Russia and Belarus.
In 988 AD, the ruler of Kievan Rus', Archduke Vladimir, formally established the Orthodox Church as the state religion, and since then the East Slavs have regarded Orthodoxy as an orthodox belief, and to this day Russia still believes in Orthodoxy.
This glorious history became the memory of Russia and Ukraine, both of which claimed to be the historical successors of Kievan Rus'.
In the 13th century, Kievan Rus began to decline due to infighting. The western expedition of the Mongol army hastened the demise of Kievan Rus' . In this way, a country is cut in half to meet different destinies.
The northeast became a vassal state of the Mongol Empire, but soon fell into a pattern of vassalage. From the 14th century onwards, the Grand Duchy of Moscow rose, and at the end of Mongol rule, the Grand Duchy of Moscow defeated the Mongol Iron Horse and established an independent state with its fierce fighting power. This is the prototype of Today's Russia.
In 1547, Ivan IV, the ruler of the Grand Duchy of Moscow, proclaimed himself Tsar, and the Russian Empire was officially born and began active territorial expansion.
However, the southwestern region of Kievan Rus was forced to accept a different fate. The southwest region was remote and beyond the reach of the Mongol army. However, it was invaded by its neighbors to the west for a long time. The Lithuanian army came, the Polish army came, and later Lithuania formed the Polish-Lithuanian Republic with Poland, an allied state that occupied almost all of present-day Ukraine.
In this way, the eastern and western parts of the same nation will move towards a completely different destiny of development.
Second: Divide for a long time and must be combined for a long time
From the 14th century onwards, Ukraine was divided between Poland and Lithuania. Since then, it has been ruled by the Polish-Lithuanian Republic for a long time, but the locals have not given up resistance.
In Ukraine, the armed groups seeking independence are the Cossacks. The Cossacks themselves had limited strength, so they found their brother Russia in history to help. In 1654, cossack leaders signed the Pereya Slavic Agreement with Tsarist Russia. The core of the agreement is that Ukraine accepts the protection of Tsarist Russia and the two countries are allied.
In 1654 the Cossacks and Tsarist Russia reached the Pereyaslav Agreement
After the agreement was signed, Tsarist Russia launched a war with the Poles. By the 18th century, Tsarist Russia had gradually incorporated Ukraine into its territory. For Ukrainians, however, the incorporation into Tsarist Russia did not mean a good life.
During the reign of Tsarist Russia, the autonomy of Ukraine was abolished, the Ukrainian language and culture were severely restricted, and the privileges of the nobility in particular were restricted. So, soon after the merger into Tsarist Russia, the western Ukrainians soon regretted it, and they found the former suzerainty of Poland, and signed an agreement to return to the Polish-Lithuanian Kingdom.
The eastern and southern parts of Ukraine, which had been closely linked to Tsarist Russia and had fought Turkey together, were willing to become part of the Tsarist Empire.
Later, Ukraine was divided up many times by Russia, Poland, Austria-Hungary, and Germany. Up to now, the contradictions between the east and the west of Ukraine have become quite serious. The official language of Ukraine is Ukrainian, but the east and southeast are more Russian-speaking, while the west is almost entirely Ukrainian, even ashamed to speak Russian. Eastern Ukraine is generally Orthodox, and various cultural practices are close to Russia's. Due to the long period of Polish rule in the west, a large part of the population believed in Catholicism, and the culture and customs were more inclined to Europe.
In this way, the contradictions between the east and the west within Ukraine began to really arise and continue to this day.
In this complex historical environment, with the outbreak of revolutionary and independence movements in European countries in the 19th century, Ukraine's national independence consciousness began to gradually emerge, but it was brutally suppressed by Tsarist Russia.
After the October Revolution of 1917, Tsarist Russia fell apart. A Ukrainian force wanted to achieve independence with the help of external forces, but its goal was frustrated.
By the time of the Soviet Union, Ukraine had become a republic of the Soviet Union.
In 1939, after germany blitzed Poland, the Soviet Union also sent troops to Poland, and soon occupied today's Belarus and Western Ukraine, and Ukraine regained its unity, albeit under Soviet control.
Due to the Soviet Union's repeated policy mistakes on the Ukraine issue, Ukrainians have long been extremely dissatisfied with the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe changed drastically and the Soviet Union disintegrated, the ukrainians had a chance, and in 1991, Ukraine finally broke away from the Soviet Union and became an independent country. This is the first time that Ukraine has truly achieved statehood.
In 1991, the Belovezh Agreement was signed, and Belarus, Russia and Ukraine were established independently
Third, contradictions are constantly turning against each other
Throughout the history of Russian-Ukrainian relations, although Russia and Ukraine have been united for about three hundred years, the two countries have been in constant contradictions for a long time and even turned against each other.
For a long time after the merger, Tsarist Russia ruled Ukraine through violent means. Soon after the merger, the Tsar reorganized the Ukrainian army and reduced Ukraine's autonomy, causing dissatisfaction among Ukrainians. A leader of Ukraine allied himself with Sweden, a sworn enemy of Tsarist Russia, against Tsarist Russia.
After defeating Sweden, Tsarist Russia began to "liquidate" Ukrainians, basically abolishing Ukraine's autonomy. It is even forbidden to publish books in Ukrainian and to sing Ukrainian songs. In addition, the Russian nobility took away the land of Ukrainian self-employed peasants and forced them to become serfs. Peter the Great's arrangement of troops stationed in Ukraine to extinguish the rebellion at any time sowed the seeds of national hatred.
In this sense, Russia believes that Russia and Ukraine have merged voluntarily, while many Ukrainians believe that they are ruled by Tsarist oppression.
If Tsarist Russia deprived Ukrainians of their freedom and culture, the Soviet Union committed horrific mass murder against Ukrainians.
In the early 1930s, in order to quickly complete the industrialization of the Soviet Union, Stalin formulated a general policy for the country to exchange grain for machines, and this grain came mainly from Ukraine.
At a time when the Soviet government was frantically requisitioning and even snatching grain from Ukraine, from 1932 to 1933, there was a great famine in 44 districts of Ukraine.
Between 1932 and 1933, severe famine broke out in Ukraine
According to Western scholars, about 5 million people starved to death during the Great Famine in Ukraine, and the figure that Ukrainian researchers more agree with is more than 7 million. Former Ukrainian President Yushchenko has publicly stated that during the Great Famine Ukraine "starved at least a quarter of its population and was a planned genocide."
Because the Soviet Union committed numerous crimes in Ukraine, during World War II, many Ukrainian soldiers did not want to serve the Soviet army at all, but turned around and joined the German army. During World War II, more than a million Ukrainians served the Axis powers. This, in turn, created distrust of the Ukrainians at the top of the Soviet hierarchy.
The Chernobyl nuclear accident in 1986 made the Ukrainian people extremely disgusted and even hostile to the Soviet government. The Chernobyl nuclear power plant is located in Ukraine, just 130 km from Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. After the worst nuclear accident in history, the Soviet government was slow to react and deliberately withheld information, resulting in a serious and artificial expansion of the destructive power of the nuclear accident.
Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant
According to statistics, 7,000 clean-up workers died in the 7 years after the Chernobyl nuclear power plant accident. More than 300,000 of the workers involved in the rescue have died of radiation injuries. Nuclear radiation that year caused at least 1 million deaths worldwide.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the independence of Ukraine, Ukraine did not take the anti-Russian line for a long time. Although the two countries have been conflicted over the ownership of the Crimean Peninsula, the use of the Black Sea Fleet base, and the energy transportation channel, the relationship has not yet broken down.
However, 2014 was a sudden change. Pro-Russian Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted from parliament and pro-European forces came to power, and the contradictions between Russia and Ukraine quickly intensified.
In this context, Crimea in southern Ukraine joined Russia through a referendum, after which the Donbass War began, and Russian-backed civilian forces in eastern Ukraine fought fiercely with Ukrainian government forces. Although the two sides signed a peace agreement in 2015, sporadic clashes continue to last until the current Russo-Ukrainian War.
Epilogue: Russia-Ukraine relations Where is the road?
Looking back at the history of Relations between Russia and Ukraine, although the two countries have historically belonged to the same country and one ethnic group. However, the complex history has also laid a large number of conflict points in the relationship between the two countries.
When there are only two countries in this land, Russia and Ukraine, the two countries can sit down and negotiate when faced with contradictions and disputes, and they will not lift the table. However, when the Americans came, NATO came, and even came to Ukraine with offensive weapons, the nature of the relationship between the two countries changed completely. In the face of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States was able to pose at the expense of a war, and now Russia has the same attitude in the face of the Ukrainian crisis.
For Ukraine, when it has a bad relationship with Russia, it blindly hopes to join NATO to counter Russia, without the slightest concern for Russia's security concerns, unaware of the huge risks of doing so. This shows that most of those elected politicians are short-sighted and superficial, and lack the ability to steer the country in crisis situations.
For Russia, knowing that the Ukraine crisis is a trap set by the United States, it has no hesitation in jumping into it. For a long time, when faced with national security problems, Russia has always tended to use violent means to solve them, which is not only difficult to solve, but also easy to bring more problems. In this Russian-Ukrainian war, even if Putin achieves his goal as he wishes, what about ten years later? What about a hundred years from now?