You might be interested in Tatsiana Kulakevich’s backgrounder on the situation in Ukraine at The Conversation (hat tip: The Moderate Voice). Here’s her explanation of the U. S. interest in Ukraine:
With its annexation of Crimea and support for the Donbas conflict, Russia has violated the Budapest Memorandum Security Assurances for Ukraine, a 1994 agreement between the U.S., United Kingdom and Russia that aims to protect Ukraine’s sovereignty in exchange for its commitment to give up its nuclear arsenal.
Putin’s threats against Ukraine occur as he is moving Russian forces into Belarus, which also raises questions about the Kremlin’s plans for invading other neighboring countries.
Military support for Ukraine and political and economic sanctions are ways the U.S. can make clear to Moscow that there will be consequences for its encroachment on an independent country. The risk, otherwise, is that the Kremlin might undertake other military and political actions that would further threaten European security and stability.
Dr. Kulakevich is a native of Belarus. I believe she has ably explained the interest of anti-Russian Belarusians and Ukrainians, I will leave it to the reader whether she has made a good case for a U. S. interest in Ukraine. I will provide some additional perspective and offer a few observations.
Both Ukraine and Belarus have been part of Russia and then the Soviet Union since the 18th century. Prior to that both were part of Poland and prior to that were independent countries only rarely. Ukraine was made a republic of the Soviet Union distinct in the 1950s by Nikita Khrushchev, himself a native of Ukraine.
There is no question in my mind that Russia and Putin are irredentist but Russia is not the Soviet Union and Putin is not Stalin. The Soviet Union was expansionist and millennialist. Over the last several centuries has been attacked by Sweden, Poland, Germany (more than once), France, Japan, China (in 1900), and the United States (in 1918). I’m probably leaving some out. Russia has attacked Ukraine and Georgia (maybe—it’s ambiguous as to who attacked whom). The Soviet Union attacked a lot of countries but, as previously noted, Russia is not the Soviet Union.
Here’s the most recent polling information I have been able to find for Belarus:
A quibble.
China did not “attack” Russia in 1900. That was the year of the Boxer Rebellion. The closest analogy was if the Iran hostage crisis occurred in Beijing and a multinational Operation Eagle Claw was launched and succeeded.
i.e. however one labels the action; it didn’t occur in Russian territory and there wasn’t an invasion of Russian territories.
Indeed, Russia took advantage of the Boxer Rebellion, and invaded Manchuria (or North East China), and made that part of China a protectorate until the Russo-Japanese war.
I also think the history of Ukraine and Belarus are complicated — i.e. that parts of the Ukraine and Belarus were added from Poland/Germany in 1945; and is probably the biggest barrier to Russia pulling both countries into its orbit (i.e. its no coincidence that the part of the Ukraine most antipathic to Russia is around Lviv, added to the USSR from Poland in 1945).
On attack on Russian assets is an attack on Russia.
My point is that Russia has been attacked a lot over the years. Is it any wonder they’re sensitive about buffer areas?
“An Russian assets is an attack on Russia.”
Then on that basis Russian has been doing far more attacking then being attacked (in the past, and even now).
I could accept Putin’s Russia is not the USSR or the Russian Empire. But its undeniable that the Russia state from 1500-1989 (at least) was an expansionist state — as a data point, look at the map of Russia from 1500, 1600, 1800, 1900, 1945.
Certainly, it wasn’t the Chinese who annexed the whole buffer region (Siberia) between Russia and the far east.
I do agree big powers are always sensitive to having a buffer. But having a buffer means not annexing it, or occupying it for decades or centuries.
Just as an example; before 2014, Ukraine’s population was roughly split 50:50 between pro-Russia and anti-Russia sentiments and was indecisive between the West vs Russia. After Russia annexed Crimea and semi-annexed Donbas, the two most pro-Russia parts of Ukraine; Ukraine is now roughly 33:66 pro-Russia, anti-Russia.
Because the pro-Russia population was literally annexed away from Ukraine, the anti-Russia population became the clear majority and decisively orientated the remaining part of the country away from Russia — causing the very thing Putin was trying to stop.
My point is Russia has a fair bit of responsibility on why countries it likes to be a buffer tend to be wary or outright hostile to it.
I still hold the view that NATO expansion wasn’t a good idea.
A statistical artifact. If you include the Crimea and the Donbas, I think we’d find that very little has changed.
Other than that I have little argument with your comment. Russia was expansionist (to the East). The Russian state did not exist from 1918 to 1991. I doubt it’s expansionist now although, as I say, I have no doubt it’s irredentist.