NEWS
CROCODILE TEARS
TEXT HANNA ABOUEID
DESIGN SAM STEWART
ILLUSTRATION HANNAH PARK
The Western imperialism at the heart of Russia’s war on Ukraine
05
On February 24 of this year, Vladmir Putin announced that he is executing a “special military operation” in what he claims to be an attempt to protect the recently Russian-controlled territories of Donetsk and Lugansk in Ukraine. What is globally acknowledged as a full-fledged invasion of Ukraine has since gained immense international media coverage. Ever since Putin’s international address rang out, news outlets have been tracking the atrocities that Russian military forces and officials are inflicting on Ukrainians. The same outlets have been showcasing the steadfast and violently hypocritical cries of western leaders against Putin’s actions, as well as panicked speculations about what the outbreak of such a war means for the rest of the world. In most of the western media coverage that the crisis has received, through all the government officials’ crocodile tears and performative outcries, there has not been enough reflection on the full extent to which these very governments helped create the conditions leading up to Putin’s declaration of war. The crisis in Ukraine did not develop spontaneously nor was it inevitable, it has been decades of US and European intervention in the making. The blatant hypocrisy exhibited in this international outcry becomes more understandable when we recognize what these nations have to gain from this humanitarian facade and what they have to gain from the war itself. +++ When attempting to contextualize the hostility and urgency behind Russia’s war on Ukraine, it’s important to understand two key points. One, Ukraine’s ethnic and political independence has been constantly and violently threatened ever since the area started developing its own nationalist sentiments. This is in large part due to Polish and Lithuanian imperialism in the 16th century and Stalin’s genocidal campaign against Ukrainians in the 1930s, both of which caused significant restructurings of population demographics. These changes have led to current tensions between eastern regions
THE COLLEGE HILL INDEPENDENT
of the state (which have more Russian influence and are against strict independence from Russia) and western regions (which have more European influence and want recognition as an independent nation). Nationalists fighting for Ukrainian independence have been calling for Ukraine to be recognized as a European state; as is historically well-proven, one of the best ways to have Europe/the west respect your claim to independence is to be a European/western state. Being a western state tends to provide you with the protection of the European Union (EU) and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), alliances in which western nations vow to protect each other’s rights to maintain their capitalist, imperialist systems by exploiting and destabilizing the Global South. The second point is that Russia’s main stake in the war
“The crisis in Ukraine did not develop spontaneously nor was it inevitable, it has been decades of US and European intervention in the making.” against Ukraine is to keep Europe from reaching its borders, according to historian Matt Lewis. Given the hostile relationship between the west and Russia, having the EU and NATO close in on its borders even more than they already have could be the end for Russian national security. So very roughly, the root of the conflict boils down to Ukraine’s recognition that its acceptance as a western nation is the only way to ensure its independence and Russia’s understanding that NATO’s expansion is a direct threat to its national security, both of which are a result of western imperialist interventions in the region that have created this precedent. Of course, this is not to excuse or justify in any way the absolutely inhumane and irreversibly destructive decision that Putin made in declaring war on Ukrainians. As Jacobin writer Doug Henwood stated,“Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine is a horrific, unconscionable act. NATO’s expansionist policy made such an invasion more likely. Both of these things are true.” The western imperialist agenda of expanding its economic,
political, and militaristic control further east has created consequences to both not being seen as a western state and to being in close geographic proximity to western states. These consequences, implemented and maintained by the US and Europe, have been laying the groundwork for this war to erupt for decades. By declaring war, Putin chose to respond to this fear of western militarism by inflicting terrible violence on both Ukrainian citizens and Russians alike. Given this context, it is especially appalling to then see the very imperial nations that played a direct hand in destabilizing both nations politically turn around and try to act as saviors and peacekeepers on a global scale. The US has been proven to have intervened multiple times over the past few decades to ensure that the dominant political ideology in Ukraine would be intensely anti-Russian, to the point of near genocide of Russians and Russian sympathizers in Ukraine. In order to set the stage for the success of a US-backed coup to get rid of the democratically-elected, neutral/pro-Russion government heading Ukraine in 2014, the Obama administration funded and supported a neo-nazi fascist group (who sought the complete eradication of anything and anyone Russian in Ukraine), the Azov Battalion. This group then enacted a genocidal reign of terror, during which they killed a significant number of southeast Ukrainians, who were the most sympathetic to Russian influence, and forced many others to flee. Any who remained were terrorized into not expressing their political leanings. In February 2014, this armed militia stormed the Ukrainian parliament, forcing the elected President Viktor Yanukovich and members of his party to flee for their lives. The US-backed coup succeeded and an intensely anti-Russian regime was put in place in Ukraine, heavily abetted by these US-funded fascists. The memory of the 2014 genocide and coup, and all of the countless other ways the west has continued to try to destabalize Russia through destabalizing Ukraine, exists at the forefront of Russian political consciousness. This memory has fueled anti-western sentiment that is playing a key role in the war on Ukraine. +++ The west’s interest in the conflict, specifically the explosion of news coverage of the war and the politicized sympathy for the Ukrainian cause
