The Russian invasion of Ukraine has captivated an ever-increasing global audience that so auspiciously remains attentive to global developments. Yet it has failed to offer them a clear-cut understanding of the historical complexities and broader implications of the long-drawn Russo-Ukrainian Conflict. Informed by a bulk of journal articles, this study attempts to briefly survey the historical genesis, continuity, and the culmination of the conflict into a full-fledged invasion of Ukraine by Russia. It also focuses on the predictable implications of this war on the current, inchoate polycentric world order.
Located at the axis between east and west, Ukraine has served as a historical theatre of international power politics. It has been a witness to_and simultaneously impacted by_ shifting ideological, political, and geographical maps of much of the European continent over the course of centuries. Sifting through the long history of Ukraine, historian Kataryana Wolczuk once wrote, that different parts of Ukraine possessed different pasts.
A historical survey of Russo-Ukrainian Conflict
The history of Eastern Europe, as well as Ukraine, may well be traced back to the medieval Keivan Rus federation (900-1300 AD). The development of Keivan Rus, or Ukraine, was the result of a conflict between Vikings from modern-day Denmark, Sweden, and Norway and the local inhabitants, as has been the case across most of Europe. The clashes between Eastern and Western Christianity shape the next phase of Ukrainian history. Betrayals, deceptions, and oscillations of power-holding men and tribes to make the most profitable bargains for themselves in times of quick unraveling of historical and political strings characterize the Ukrainian history of this period, just as they do the quintessential European historical canvas.
When the history of Rus concludes, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’s most forgotten stage steps in. It is at this historical crossroads in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania’s history that the Kiyvan legal code and cultural heritage are preserved for all eternity. In the 16th and early 17th centuries, when much of Ukraine falls under the Polish crown, the Renaissance, Reformation, and Counter-Reformation sweep
Ukraine. After the Union of Lublin in 1569 AD, the true line of demarcation between Belarus and Ukraine was defined under the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth. Surprisingly, the course of Polish history during this period deviates from historical tendencies. It recreates all of the things it lacked earlier. It goes through a Renaissance without going through a “renaissance/birth” or a “classical” period. Poland considers itself a Republic despite having no traditional Republican traditions. Ukrainians were important participants in Poland’s historical transformations. However, there was a contrast that ought to be mentioned. Except for a few Ukrainian magnates, the elite (also known as Manhiteria), who prospered under the Polish Republic, the Republicans as a whole were unable to adapt to new ways.
As a result of the unequal distribution of resources, the Cossacks rebelled against the Ukrainian nobility and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Because the Cossacks formed an alliance with the Muscovy, this became a watershed point in Ukraine’s European history. After 1667, the entire right bank(kp1) fell under Muscovy, and it was quickly absorbed by the Russian Empire. Until recently, the majority of Ukraine’s elites continued to migrate north to Moscow.
However, much of Ukraine’s history, both before and after the Cossacks, is similar to that of Europe. Even the most astute historians cannot find enough to distinguish it from the rest of European history. Only in 1914 did things take an unexpected turn. During the First World War, European history lost sight of the link between struggling for and achieving statehood; across most of Eastern Europe, people began to achieve statehood without much effort. Many of the people who were either fighting on the wrong side or who started the First World War got totally new governments and territory as a result of their actions. Despite the fact that the conflict was Serbia’s fault, it bestows Serbia with a larger state, Yugoslavia. Despite fighting on the wrong side, Czechoslovakia, the Czechs, and the Slovaks were granted statehood. Surprisingly, the war effort for Ukraine turned out to be a zero-sum game. The history of Ukraine differs from that of Eastern Europe in that following the conflict, Ukrainians attempted but failed to gain independence and statehood.
There were two big pro-independence movements in Ukraine: one in Kyiv and the other in Galicia. Despite the intense battle, Ukrainians were unable to establish their own state. The Soviet Union’s Red Army eventually won the civil war, but the Ukrainian people suffered hundreds of thousands of losses. After the Civil War ended, Ukraine entered a more dramatic phase under the Soviet Union.
The Ukrainian Republic was established within the Soviet Union from 1922 until 1991. Surprisingly, the Soviet Union regarded Europe as both a model and a competitor. It was a model because the Soviet Union wanted to outflank it, and it was an opponent because it despised capitalism. As a result, Ukraine acted as a buffer zone and a line of contact between Communism and Capitalism, as it was the Soviet Union’s western boundary and bordered Poland and Romania. It’s hardly surprising, therefore, that Ukraine is just as important strategically for Russia today as it was then.
In the 1920s, during the time of affirmative action, or when communists patronized Ukrainian culture, art, and modernism, a new class of pro-western intellectuals appeared in Soviet Ukraine. When collectivization began in Soviet Ukraine in 1930, the local peasants fought back with vigor. Things took a nasty turn from there on out. Europe was no longer seen as a role model, and being pro-European was frowned upon. The responsibility for the ensuing famines in Ukraine caused by Joseph Stalin’s collectivization policies was originally placed on Poland, and afterward on Nazi-Germany
Bereft of external colonies unlike other European powers, Germany and the Soviet Union considered Ukraine as a breadbasket that needed to be colonized in order to feed their vast populations. For Germany, Ukraine was to assist in the realization of its lebensraum, or living space, which was an integral aspect of its doctrine. As a result, it was assumed that if the Soviet Union and Germany were to survive the global capitalist and Jewish conspiracies, they needed to acquire authority over the regional colony of Ukraine. Ukraine was doomed to be caught between two opposing European initiatives in this situation. Between 1933 and 1945, Ukraine became the world’s most deadly place; more people died in Ukraine during this period than anyplace else on the planet.
Although only self-interests are eternal in international affairs, the alliance between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union created by the Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement between 1939 and 1941 remains one of the most embarrassing events of the twentieth century. The alliance with Hitler was a strategy for turning Europe against itself. This uneasy alliance was motivated by the assumption that if Germany and the Soviet Union cooperated, the Second World War if broke out, would be a war between European countries without the Soviet Union.
When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, famous intellectuals such as Francis Fukuyama breathed a sigh of relief by imagining a post-war period or the end of history, but warfare erupted on the outskirts of the former Soviet Union. Russia was flexing its muscles from the USSR’s coffin by assisting separatist movements on its edges. Ukraine became an independent state after the Soviet Union collapsed, which was formalized by a referendum in December 1991. Unlike other former Soviet republics, Ukraine, on the other hand, had a lively literary canon, a strong nationalist movement, and a strong sense of its place in history, all of which bodes well for its resilience in the face of fresh adversity.
Four out of thirteen Ukrainian cities were honored as “Hero Cities” for their valiant resistance against the German invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. Ukraine was closely tied to Russia’s economy. Russia’s massive gas export pipelines ran through Ukraine, and the country supplied most of Russia’s military manufacturing capability. Historian Dominic Lieven’s prediction that Russia would have ceased to be a major power if Ukraine had not existed in the early twentieth century even equally held true in 1991. Nonetheless, in 1991, so-called futurologists predicted that Ukraine would fall owing to internal schisms.
Ukraine, like most post-Soviet republics, struggled with corrupt elites, restive ethnic minorities, and sharing a border with Russia. Russia’s use of Ukraine’s ports and seaways was a major source of concern. Much of the previous Ukrainian army’s weapons were smuggled out of the country by Russian forces through the Black Sea port of Odesa in 2014. Ukraine’s history has been marked by ups and downs since its breakup with Soviet Russia. However, in a post-bipolar international setting, Ukraine has been heavily impacted by western concepts of liberal democracy, much to the Russian Federation’s disgust. Rising from its post-Cold War sleep, Russia has recently asserted itself as a significant force not only in Eastern Europe but also in other parts of the world.
However, Russia’s violent opposition to Ukraine’s EU membership ignited the Revolution in late 2013, leading to Russia’s annexation of Crimea and interference in eastern Ukraine. However, following the end of the Cold War, Nato expansion remained the most bothersome irritant in Russia-West ties, a relationship that saw Ukraine caught in the crossfire. Given the reluctance of US policymakers to expand Nato following the rapid fall of the Soviet Union on the justification that it had fulfilled its purpose in disbanding the Soviet Union, it was not a foregone conclusion that Nato would grow. The abrupt growth of Nato and the European Union, on the other hand, was not likely to be well received by a resurgent Russia.
Implications of the conflict in world order
The present Russian invasion of Ukraine is far from a spontaneous development in the two nations’ tumultuous ties; rather, it is set against the background of a long history that must be placed into context in order to be critically analyzed. Swift explanations and superficial examinations serve no purpose other than to deprive us of profound insights and contextual understandings in a world encased in nuclear arsenals and packed with human bestiality, where all it takes is a single misplaced spark to convert the planet into a living hell.
Notwithstanding the contemporaneous similarities to multi-polarity prior to World War I, today’s axes of power are not “poles” in the literal sense of the word: States confront threats from a number of sources, including regional and global organizations, militias, and a wide range of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and corporations.
Furthermore, when the post-Cold War unipolar system evolved into a polycentric system, it took less effort to derail the new system than to keep it on course. Hybrid threats posed a threat to the evolving polycentric international order. It was tough to
spot and anticipate them. Russia was the first to take the initiative in exploiting the polycentric world order’s flaws in order to gain unilateral benefits. Russia’s hybrid war against Ukraine was viewed as the start of a bigger campaign to destabilize the global order. So far, responsible global powers have failed spectacularly in either correcting or stopping hostile attempts to exploit the polycentric world’s faults. The United States, for its part, cannot be excused for its role in driving the globe into instability. After emerging as the sole victor, in the true sense of the term, from two global wars in the twentieth century, the United States has learned quite the wrong lessons.
Meanwhile, the technological revolution, with all of its ominous consequences, has not yet completely materialized as predicted by futurologists. However, its overall threat to the present world order cannot be ruled out. As we advance in biotechnology and information technology, human issues in general, and state challenges in particular, grow more serious, and in some circumstances, insurmountable. These inventions are expected to have a significant impact on state relations. An example in point is the suspected Russian cyberattacks on the United States and Ukraine.
The difference between today’s challenges and those that preceded the multipolar world that existed before WWI and the bipolar world that emerged after WWII is that the former was absolute in the sense that the antagonistic spaces surrounding each center were conveniently close, with limited neutral zones and predictable/traditional threats which could be rationally gauged. But today neither potential threats come from bordering states nor are they objectively calculable. Following the Cold War, the world shifted, albeit briefly, into a monopolar system. The strength of the American pole, on the other hand, soon deteriorated. New and increasingly powerful centers arose out of nowhere, each aspiring to be the next pole. As a result, new dangers evolved throughout this transformational period. The list is long, and globalization’s various aspects just add to it. Some of these are represented in governments and international organizations, as well as security-related institutions and policies. Terrorism, the proliferation of weapons for mass destruction(WMDs), cyberattacks, and natural catastrophes were all named significant areas of NATO’s action during the Lisbon Summit in 2010.
Conclusion
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has not only placed the lives of millions of Ukrainians in jeopardy, but it has also jeopardized humanity’s destiny on this planet. Nonetheless, Russians do not bear exclusive responsibility for the current state of affairs. By insisting on painting the entire world in the colors of liberal democracy and securing collective security through organizations like Nato and the European Union, the United States and world powers under its influence have made the current international environment so hostile that no emerging power can hope to assert itself and go unchallenged.
As we march into the future, human beings are increasingly confronted with dilemmas that require global collaboration to address. Only a concerted worldwide effort will suffice to overcome environmental, health, and technological upheavals. A single country, no matter how powerful, will not be able to tackle these global issues. Given this situation, it is imperative that world powers forego their narrow vested interests in the service of human existence. If the worldwide environment in the twenty-first century is driven by power politics and ideological warfare, then history will have no qualms to chronicle our Frankenstein moment very soon.
