By Mohammed Asif
Published On: December 26, 2021 at 13:20 IST
Introduction
Today due to the conflict between Ukraine and Russia their relations are not only at the edge of breaking down but very close to invading each other. And in the present day on the territory of Poland and Belarus, many displaced people originating from the Middle East are gathering. They have been enticed by Lukashenka’s false promises of new hopes in the West. On the other bounds of the Ukrainian border, it is soldiers that are assembling, in abundant numbers to raise their problems in America. And inside Russia, dictatorship is growing.
The latest victim is “Memorial”, which is Russia’s most esteemed human-rights organization, set up in 1987 to certify the crimes of the Soviet government. It is now being terrorized and threatened with closure.
What happened between Ukraine and Russia?
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukraine has got its independence in 1991. And in 2014 Ukrainian peninsula which is known as Crimea has annexed by Russia. The main importance of Crimea is that Crimea acts as an important part of the extraction of oil and gas which is one of its major assets of it. By Ukraine’s Energy Minister afterward of Crimea’s annexation, Ukraine has perished 80% of oil and gas remains in the black sea and also a remarkable part of the Sevastopol port which makes Russia powerful in terms of strategic and economic areas[i].
This port Sevastopol is also the single war motor part and in global level, this port will help to project Russia’s power, because in 2008 during the war with Georgia the Russian fleet staged blockades in the Black Sea and during which Sevastopol has served as the main source in supplying the Assad Regime during Syria’s civil war and showed effective with Russia’s role in taking apart in Syria’s chemical weapons.
The history of the Ukrainian people as a former soviet territory most of the people who live in the center and west of the country speak Ukrainian but in the south and closer to the Russian border most speak Russian and they tend to have stronger ties to their former soviet identity. During the cold war, the former USSR created a massive nuclear arsenal and a lot of it was part of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic those arsenals remained in the country after its independence in 1991. But Ukraine gave Russia its arsenals in 1995 in return for a promise to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty.
Then in 2000 Russia signed a deal with the European Union to once again reaffirm Ukraine’s independence saying it would allow Ukraine and other former Soviet states to make time with whatever nation they wanted to. This deal fell apart in 2014 when the democratically elected government of pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych announced that it was not signing along negotiated association agreement with the European Union and Yanukovych was going forward with a Russia- focused Eurasian Economic Union.
Then protesters flooded over the streets of the Ukraine capital Kyiv and this crisis come to known as the Euromaidan Revolution which ultimately led to Yanukovych fleeing the country and later a Russian military intervention in the South-east because of the midst of the unrest Russia sent special forces into the Crimean Peninsula which is strategically located in dividing the sea of Azor and the Black Sea.
After a referendum at gunpoint, the people overwhelmingly voted to leave Ukraine and join Russia. But the UN general assembly, Ukraine along with many other country leaders rejected the vote citing many international agreements where Russia had pledged to uphold the geographic integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine. But Putin had defended the move as complying with the will of the people. And since the annexation of Crimea, Russia has claimed control of both sides of Kerch Strait which is the only waterway connecting the sea of Azor to the Black Sea and they build a bridge connecting both sides.
Ukraine and Russia had an agreement in 2003 that allows both countries to use the waterway. But on November 24 Ukraine has sent two gunboats and a tug from the Black Sea port of Odesa to its port in the sea of Azor and during passing Russia said that Ukraine illegally breached its territorial waters and when Ukrainian ships turned away and heading back to the Black Sea a Russian ship remarked the tug, jets were scrambled and the Ukrainian vessels were fired upon and then those ships were also seized by Russia.
NATO leaders restated the decision which took place at the 2008 Bucharest Summit that Ukraine would become a member of the league with the Membership Action Plan as an important part of the procedure and Ukraine’s entitlement to decide its future and foreign policy system in the Brussels summit which held in June 2021.
Crimea acts as a connection both Russia and Ukraine tragically and economically that’s why this stands as one of the important reasons for its annexation.
Peace Agreements
In 2014 the Russian, Ukraine relations has a lot of tensions. The dispute with separatists in Donesthe and Luhansk has leftover more than 13,000 dead and over 1.5 million people displaced. After this MINSK-II was engaged on 12th February 2015. It was signed after extensive takes in Minsk and Belarus under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE). And its purpose was to bring peace in the eastern region of Ukraine, but even after the peace agreements, the tensions between them have not stopped.
And again in 2020, Ukrainian, Russian, OSCE has come to negotiations in which Negotiators reached an agreement for a full cease-fire between government forces and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. But after the negotiations, Ukraine commander in chief Ruslan Khomachak accused Moscow of pursuing an aggressive policy towards Kyiv (capital of Ukraine), and in remarks to the parliament, on July 2020 Khomachak blamed pro-Moscow separatists of undeviatingly breaching a ceasefire in a tussle in eastern Ukraine.
Why did the Peace Agreement failed?
The foremost reason for the breaking of the peace agreements. In among which is WATER. For the last few years, the Crimean Peninsula is falling short in turns of water. According to Russian officials, Crimea has seen its reverses of portable water declined by 60% under Russian occupation. And it also said that it will entirely run out of supplies of this critical nature recourse sometime in the summer.
But till 2013 this was not the situation of Crimea, because at that time Crimea was under Ukraine which had 86.65% of water intake from the Dnieper River which flows through the North Crimean Canal, but as in 2014, the Crimea was annexed Ukrainian government has lessened it out and has cut off of water supplies from Dnieper River, forcing the occupiers to relay on the local wells, groundwater and Reservoirs and now the situation has become worse due to shortage of rainfall and frequent winters.
During a meeting on the socio-economic development of Crimea and Sevastopol in January 2019, Russian President Vladimir Putin condemned local officials for their incompetent attention to solving the water supply problem and the Crimean authorities reportedly tried to buy Ukraine water but the government of Ukrainian has refused to sell.
Joe Biden’s role in the conflict
In 2021 after becoming the president of the United States Biden has taken an aggressive stand on Russia and Putin’s administration and he ordered to review four most important areas of controversies of Russia with the United States, namely-
- Interference in the US election
- The solar winds assault
- Records of Russian bounties on US soldiers in Afghanistan
- Assault and the poisoning of Russian opposition leader cum politician Alexey Navalny.
On 9th April 2021, the CNN politics news channel has reported saying that the US is considering sending warships to the Black Sea amid Russia-Ukraine tensions.[ii] And for this US should compulsorily need to give a 14 days’ notice of its purpose to Turkey to go into the Black Sea under a treaty giving Turkey control of the straits to go into the Black Sea, but it is not clear on the side of the US govt whether the notice has been sent or not.
The US is also watching continuously Russia’s naval activities and monitoring the presence of Russian troops in Crimea and Reconnaissance aircraft A USA FSR-71 high altitude is also being used for the monitoring by the United States. Since 2014, the United States has backed Ukraine financially and militarily, giving over $4.5 billion in need, which includes two shipments of Javelin antitank missiles out of the Trump administration to Ukraine.
The present situation in Ukraine – Russia
Besides 90,000 Russian armed forces are suspected to be massed near Ukraine’s territory. The movement has tensed already tense difficult relations in the middle of Russia and the US.
A huge part of the recent Russian military build-up is in Crimea, a Black Sea peninsula that Russia seized from Ukraine and then annexed in 2014. armed forces are also deploying near Ukraine’s eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, parts of which are under the control of Russian-sponsored separatists.
More than 14,000 people have lost their lives in seven years of conflict because Russian-sponsored armed forces captured large areas of Ukraine’s east. Joe Biden was speaking in a virtual summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The virtual summit was focused on abridging tensions in the region after a major Russian armed forces set-up along with Ukraine’s eastern territory.
US President Joe Biden declared that putting American armed forces on the ground in Ukraine in the event of a Russian seizure is off the table. and Biden informed of severe consequences in the event when Russia did invade.
Russia has laid charges on Ukraine of provocation and asked for guarantees against eastward NATO enlargement and arrangement of weapons close to Russia. At the end of January when Ukrainian authorities had declared that Moscow can be planning a military attack the US officials suppose that it is not clear at this time that whether President Putin has concluded about the attack on Ukraine. Putin has not said whether he would order armed forces into Ukraine. But he made it clear that he could not take it easy while the military alliance approached Russia.
“This world in weapons is not spending money only. It is consuming the sweat of its laborers and the hopes of its children,” quoted by Dwight D. Eisenhower.[iii]
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mohammed Asif is a Third year Law student pursuing B. A. LLB(Hons) from ICFAI law school, Hyderabad. He is a future lawyer and Lifelong humanitarian who believes in consistency and hard work rather than talent.
Edited by: Aashima Kakkar, Associate Editor, Law Insider
References
- Russia-Ukraine border: Nato warning over military build-up
- Biden wants to prevent Russia-Ukraine conflict, but experts say time is running out
- As Russia Closes In On Crimea’s Energy Resources, What Is Next For Ukraine?
I As Russia Closes In On Crimea’s Energy Resources, What Is Next For Ukraine? (Last visited on 26th December 2021)
[ii] Russian forces are massing on Ukraine’s border. Bluff or not, Putin is playing with fire (Last visited on 26th December 2021)
[iii] It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. (Last visited on 26th December 2021)