Russia has amassed more than 100,000 soldiers on the border with Ukraine. An invasion is feared. According to the US and Nato, Putin wants to regain control of the area.
For the latest updates on the crisis in Ukraine, read our in-depth coverage here and here.
Among the hottest international dossiers at the start of 2022 is Ukraine. For several weeks now there has been movement on the country's eastern border, with Russia having sent more than 100,000 soldiers to guard it. The West fears that Moscow wants to invade its neighbour in order to assert its influence once and for all, having done something similar in 2014 in the Ukrainian region of Crimea (and before that in other states such as Georgia). Moscow, for its part, accuses the West — or rather Nato (the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the defensive military alliance of 30 states in North America and Europe), of steadily extending its tentacles over Russia's "buffer states," complete with military training of local forces and plans for accession to the Atlantic Alliance.
A very tense situation, with no shortage of reports and analyst studies about what we should expect in the coming weeks. Some speak of an imminent Russian invasion, which would be met with a military response from Nato. But others think it is more likely that things will remain in the realm of a cold war, with strong pressure from both sides to gain as much as possible in diplomatic terms without ever coming to a direct confrontation.
Ukraine has been an independent state since 1991, the year the Soviet Union dissolved. Culturally and socially very close to Russia, it long maintained excellent relations with Moscow, but as the new century arrived the relationship began to deteriorate. In 2004, presidential elections between the pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovych and the pro-Western opposition figure Viktor Yushchenko resulted in victory for the former, but thousands of people filled the streets to denounce electoral fraud. It became known as the Orange Revolution, and the Supreme Court sided with the protesters, invalidating the results and declaring a new vote — which Yushchenko won.
It was a heavy blow for Russian president Vladimir Putin, who from that moment adopted a more aggressive attitude towards his Ukrainian neighbour, which was beginning to look westward. His protégé Viktor Yanukovych nonetheless served as prime minister until 2007, then became president in 2010, and for Moscow the problem seemed to have been resolved. In 2013, Yanukovych's refusal to sign the association agreement with the European Union and his choice to align himself even more firmly with Russia triggered widespread public protests, which became known as Euromaidan. After months of clashes that cost the lives of dozens of protesters and the introduction of new restrictive laws to curb dissent, in February 2014 the president fled the country and parliament removed him from office.
The political transition did not, however, take place peacefully. In the months that followed, the pro-Russian part of the country rose up with more or less direct support from Moscow; armed fighters occupied government buildings in Crimea, which, through a referendum not recognised by several international actors including the OSCE, voted for annexation to Russia. The war continued in other areas of eastern Ukraine, particularly in Donbass, where, amid escalations and periods of relative calm, the proclamation of the republics of Donetsk and Luhansk and an overall toll of more than 14,000 deaths, pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces continue to fight to this day. Also in 2014, Petro Poroshenko was elected president, signing a new integration agreement with the EU.
Today, Ukraine's president is Volodymyr Zelensky, elected in 2019. Pro-European, he has described the deployment of Russian troops to his country's eastern border in recent weeks as "blackmail", stressing that the last thing he wants is war.
Since the end of November 2021, Moscow has been sending its troops towards the Ukrainian border, in the disputed Donbass area. There are no official figures on the numbers, but satellite imagery and projections from the US Pentagon point to at least 100,000 soldiers. This is not the first time something similar has happened: back in April last year, Moscow's army moved menacingly close to the region, before the alarm subsided. This time things appear to be getting worse, as the presence is larger and better equipped.
The reason for this deployment is always the same. Russia continues to harbour designs on the disputed territories of eastern Ukraine, and also has an interest in destabilising the pro-European Ukrainian government. But above all, Moscow wants to send a message to the West. The latter, in the form of the United States, the European Union and Nato more broadly, has for years been supporting Ukraine both diplomatically and economically. As Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen pointed out, the Union and its financial institutions have allocated more than 17 billion in transfers and loans to the country since 2014. Nato and the US do the same, including military training and the presence of their own specialists on the ground, as denounced by Russian Defence Minister Sergei Shoigu at the end of December. And Moscow, unwilling to accept such a more or less direct Western presence in an area it continues to regard as historically within its sphere of influence, has stepped up pressure on the borders.
At the end of 2021, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov presented the United States and Nato with a series of conditions for defusing the tension. In particular, that Ukraine never join Nato (something that has been on the table, albeit in a vague form, since 2008) and that it withdraw its military forces from "buffer countries" such as Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and many others, which have been Nato members since 1999. In short, the demand is that the Atlantic Alliance end its presence in eastern Europe and that the balance of the early post-Cold War years be restored. This is a plan the West cannot accept, as it would amount to total capitulation, and it has indeed come to nothing. In January, there were meetings between the two sides' diplomats — for example in Geneva between US Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov — but these failed to break the deadlock, just as a previous meeting in December had done.
Throughout these weeks, Russia has repeatedly stated that it has no plans to invade Ukraine and that the troop movements along the border have internal reasons. This is a version of events that is hard to sustain, given that similar situations in the past — such as that in Georgia in 2008 — turned into a conflict, and which is also contradicted by the ongoing diplomatic activity. A few days ago, Joe Biden, at a press conference,
