Russia- Ukraine Conflict

Even before the massive new deployment of Russian forces, things were bad between Kyiv and Moscow, a rift that dates back to at least as far as February 2014 (if not further). What happened then?

• Viktor Yushchenko was elected to a second term as Ukraine’s president.

• Russia started handing out passports to ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.

• Ukraine claimed 19th century writer Nikolai Gogol was in fact Ukrainian, not Russian.

• Protests in Kyiv over a plan to integrate more closely with Russia culminated in violent clashes, and the ouster of the pro-Russian president.

Answer explanation

President Viktor Yanukovych’s refusal to sign a European cooperation agreement angered many Ukrainians, who took to the streets for months in what came known as the Maidan, or Euromaidan, demonstrations. The protests exploded in violence on February 23, 2014, and Yanukovych fled the country days later. Russia then seized Crimea, and war soon erupted in the Donbas, in eastern Ukraine.

If Russia sends troops into Ukraine in the coming weeks, the United States has promised to invoke NATO’s Article V clause, obligating the alliance to come to the military aid of Ukraine.

• True

• False

Answer explanation

Ukraine wants to join NATO. But it’s not a member now, and neither the United States nor NATO has any obligation, never mind any desire, to face Russian forces on a Ukrainian battlefield. That said, the United States and many Europeans allies want to leave the door open for Ukraine to potentially join in the future, and Washington said it’s prepared to hit Moscow with more economic sanctions. Some have called for Russia to be kicked out of the international system for financial payments known as SWIFT.

For some experts, the Budapest Memorandum also played a significant role in paving the way for today’s tensions with Russia. What was it?

• It laid out the terms for the breakup of the Soviet Union.

• It was the deal under Russia assumed, and paid off, the accumulated debts of the Soviet Union.

• It was the deal under which Ukraine agreed to give up its remaining stockpile of nuclear weapons.

• It was the agreement under which Soviet forces withdrew from the Hungarian capital after 1956.

Answer explanation

Signed in 1994 with the United States, Russia, and Britain as guarantors, the Budapest Memorandum was the deal under which Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan voluntarily gave up nuclear weapons. In exchange, they got assurances of security, sovereignty, and territorial integrity. Moscow, however, has been widely accused of violating the deal. Some say that if Kyiv had held onto its nukes, it could have deterred Russian aggression.

A referendum was held in Crimea in March 2014, in which Russia says an overwhelming majority of voters on the Ukrainian peninsula voted to unite the region with Russia. True or false?

• True

• False

Answer explanation

True, but this is highly misleading. In 2014, ethnic Russians made up a small majority -- 58 percent -- of the region’s population, and that group overwhelmingly voted in approval. But many members of the region’s other ethnic groups, most notably the Crimean Tatars, boycotted the vote. Moreover, masked, armed men who later turned out to be Russian soldiers swarmed Crimea, and, along with local allies, intimidated referendum opponents. Russian forces had seized important infrastructure, and independent TV and radio stations were shut down days before the vote. International legal scholars have called the vote illegal, and more than 100 UN members declared it invalid.

What event occurred in July 2014 that for many experts provided the first incontrovertible evidence that Russia was equipping fighters in eastern Ukraine?

• The Battle of Debaltseve.

• Evidence of an alleged coup, fomented by the Russian FSB, aiming to depose President Petro Poroshenko and seize power.

• The shoot-down of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over eastern Ukraine by a sophisticated anti-aircraft missile system known as the Buk.

• The seizure of three Ukrainian naval ships by Russian Coast Guard forces near the Kerch Strait.

Answer explanation

On July 17, 2014, 298 people were killed when the Malaysia Airlines passenger jet was destroyed in midair. Shortly before the incident, the Buk, a weapon system that Ukraine does not possess and that requires specialized training, was seen moving in separatist-controlled regions. Dutch-led investigators later said the missile was transported from Russia. Dutch prosecutors, citing phone intercepts and other data, have charged three current and former Russian intelligence agents, as well as one Ukrainian, with murder.

Russia has warned Western countries, first and foremost the United States, against supplying Ukrainian forces with lethal weaponry. Have they?

• Yes. The United States has provided ammunition, anti-tank guided missiles, and other weaponry.

• No. Only flak jackets, night-vision goggles, and first-aid kits have been supplied, mainly from Sweden, Luxembourg, and Portugal.

• Yes. NATO has provided Abrams M1 tanks, Paladin howitzers, and other equipment.

• No. The West has limited its support to Ukraine only in the form of financing for anti-corruption and good governance initiatives.

Answer explanation

In the years after the outbreak of war, the Obama administration supplied Ukraine’s underequipped forces with hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of equipment -- but only “nonlethal” weaponry, due to concerns about angering Russia. That changed with the Trump administration, which began shipping sophisticated Javelin anti-tank missiles in March 2018. Those missiles have largely been kept in storage, away from battlefields, though the chief of Ukraine’s military intelligence said last month that Ukraine’s forces had begun fielding the weapons in the Donbas.

What is the Steinmeier Formula?

• A mathematical calculus that predicts the future of Ukraine-Russia relations.

• A chemical formula that is the basis for the high explosives used in Ukraine’s most powerful missiles.

• A German plan that seeks to implement the Minsk Accords through a specific sequence of events.

• A Russian plan conceived in the early 1990s that laid the groundwork for NATO enlargement.

Answer explanation

Named after the veteran German diplomat Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the formula was conceived as a way to break through the deadlock over the Minsk Accords -- truces signed in September 2014 and February 2015. The second agreement included more concrete steps toward a permanent peace -- things that include pulling back forces by both sides; Kyiv granting amnesty to combatants; Ukraine holding local elections; and Kyiv's regaining control over its border with Russia in the Donbas. But these accords have gone largely unimplemented amid mutual recriminations.The Steinmeier Formula laid out a sequence of steps, some contingent on others, aimed to help cement the Minsk Accords. When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy signed onto the formula, a few months after his election in 2019, it caused a furor -- particularly among some war veterans and nationalists who saw it as “capitulation.” But the Minsk Accords have continued to go largely unimplemented, and Russian President Vladimir Putin now refuses to talk directly with Zelenskiy.

Which of these arguments has been used by Russia to justify its 2014 annexation of Crimea?

• To help spread Orthodox Christianity beyond Russia’s borders.

• To protect the rights of Crimean Tatars.

• To honor the memory of Sevastopol, which suffered through an eight-month siege during World War II that ultimately ended with German forces seizing the port.

• To seize Ukraine’s Black Sea naval fleet.

• To right what it portrays as a historical error committed by Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev.

Answer explanation

Prominent among multiple arguments the Kremlin has made in attempts to justify seizing Crimea is that it was a part Russia for centuries. In 1954, Khrushchev engineered a transfer that made Crimea a legal part of what was then the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The reasons were varied. Some was internal political maneuvering, and some was tied to Khrushchev’s previous job as Ukraine’s Communist Party boss. Some modern-day Kremlin historians have argued the transfer was also illegal, though historical records show that’s unlikely. In any case, Russia accepted Ukraine as a sovereign state that included Crimea after the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991.

Public opinion polls show that large numbers of Ukrainians and Russians oppose outright war. Ukrainians overwhelmingly backed Zelenskiy’s election in 2019 based on his pledge to bring peace to eastern Ukraine. And despite bellicose rhetoric, it’s unclear really if Putin and the Kremlin are willing to stomach images of Russians returning home from the battlefield in body bags. What is the biggest obstacle to implementing the Minsk Accords?

• The way Kyiv sees it, they give Moscow too much power over Ukraine.

• Moscow and Kyiv can’t agree on the sequence of steps for implementing them.

• Russia claims it has no role in the fighting in eastern Ukraine.

• Moscow and Kyiv can’t even agree on who should do the negotiating.

• All of the above.

Answer explanation

The Minsk process lays out specific steps such as pullback of forces and military equipment by both sides and Ukraine holding local elections and granting special status to the areas now held by separatists. It also includes things like restoring Kyiv’s control its easternmost borders and keeping foreign fighters out. But how do you hold elections when 2 million people have been driven from their homes? But the disagreements are formidable. For example, Russia insists representatives of the separatist-controlled regions be at the negotiating table; Kyiv refuses, saying they are criminals, and, moreover, they are merely Russia’s pawns.Russia has repeatedly denied having any role in the fighting, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Russia also sees the United States as the ultimate arbiter of Ukrainian politics; but Washington isn’t formally part of the peace process -- European allies France and Germany are taking the lead.

Which of the following has Putin said or written with regards to Ukraine?

• “I am confident that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia…. Together we have always been and will be many times stronger and more successful. For we are one people.”

• “The current president of this exhausted country is a person of certain ethnic roots.”

• "At any moment, there’s potential in Ukraine for an outburst of tensions so strong that millions of Ukrainians will flee to seek refuge in other places."

• “Ukraine is a sovereign, independent nation. And every sovereign, independent nation has the right to choose its own path, including what kind of security arrangements it wants to be part of.”

Answer explanation

In July, Putin published a 5,000-word article in which he appeared to question Ukraine's right to exist as an independent state. While Putin and other senior officials have made similar comment over the years, the article added to tensions by blaming them on what Putin claimed -- without evidence -- were “Western countries [that] directly interfered in Ukraine's internal affairs.”Putin’s article was followed a few weeks later by a similar treatise from his former prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, who cast similar aspersions on Ukraine’s sovereignty while also making a dog-whistle comment about Zelenskiy, who is Ukraine’s first Jewish president. Nikolai Patrushev, a Putin confidant who is the hawkish secretary of the Russian Security Council, is known for sometimes outlandish, conspiratorial comments about foreign affairs; his suggestion was in the same vein.