Theses on the present Russia-Ukraine crisis – Bill Bowring
Theses on the present Russia-Ukraine crisis
1) NATO became irrelevant in 1991, when the Warsaw Pact, its opposite number, was dissolved. In 1999 NATO acted illegally and violated its own Charter (which specified that it was a purely defensive organisation) when it bombed Serbia. Now, like a zombie, it has returned.
2) Ukraine became a founding member of the UN in 1945 (as did Belarus) and had its own seat in the General Assembly as a Union Republic of the USSR. In 1991 it became an independent sovereign state, with the collapse of the USSR. In 1996 in its Constitution it created the Autonomous Republic of Crimea with its own Supreme Soviet and privileges for the Russian speaking inhabitants. From that date there was no movement to rejoin Russia.
3) By the 1997 Partition Treaty between Russia and Ukraine, Ukraine agreed to lease Sevastopol to Russia for 20 years until 2017. The treaty also allowed Russia to maintain up to 25,000 troops, 24 artillery systems, 132 armoured vehicles, and 22 military planes on the Crimean Peninsula. Russia never disputed that Crimea was an integral part of Ukraine, until the Russian Annexation in 2014, when Russia abrogated the Treaty. Those forces carried out the annexation. Yanukovich intended to enter into the Association Agreement with the EU, was prevented by Russian pressure, and then fled the country, having stolen enormous sums from Ukraine.
4) The annexation was illegal and in international law Crimea remains part of Ukraine. Since 2014 Russia has insisted that Donetsk and Luhansk remain part of Ukraine, and wants special status for them. For myself, I can’t see why they should not have the status which Crimea had before 2014.
5) There is no prospect of NATO accepting Ukraine as a member in the near future, although as a sovereign state Ukraine is entitled to invite the forces of any state of organisation. That is the basis on which the presence of Russian forces in Syria is lawful in international law.
6) None of this explains why Russia has moved more than 150,000 soldiers and equipment, ships, etc, up to the Ukrainian border.
7) Ukraine is a highly corrupt state, dominated by warring oligarchs – Poroshenko, Kolomoisky, Firtash. Zelensky, a former TV comedian, is the cat’s paw of Kolomoisky. But it does have democratic elections and a free media. Russia is a kleptocracy, a regime of thieving under secret service rule. There are no free elections, and very limited free media. The Kremlin regime is increasingly repressive, and Russia suffers from a rapidly diminishing population, rabid Covid, and high inflation. It cannot possibly afford to keep such enormous mobilisation on the border of Ukraine. Neither corrupt regime can continue the present situation.
8) The working class of both countries is getting it in the neck from both regimes, Ukrainian and Russian, and will be the losers in both countries if the war since 2014 is intensified. We in IADL and ELDH should stand with the workers and with the free trade unions of both countries.
the real movement which abolishes the present state of things 
It is very valuable that you write that Ukraine was represented at the UN. Ukraine also had its own legal education in Ukrainian, and the current training of lawyers continues the traditions of Soviet Ukraine. I would add to your story by mentioning that Ukraine was a founding country of the Commonwealth of Independent States, which was conceived as analogues of the European Union and the Trans-Atlantic Commonwealth in order to preserve the cooperation of the peoples of the former USSR. When the people of Ukraine on December 1 , 1991 on the referendum approved the independence of Ukraine, most of them saw this independence at the same time as membership in the Commonwealth of Independent States, i.e. that Ukraine would maintain cooperation ties with Russia similar to those established between France and Germany after World War II and up to the present. No one could have imagined that the government’s policy would be to destroy the cultural and economic ties that had been built up, which objectively increased the welfare of the population. However, the government (relying on the Ukrainian diaspora of the USA and Canada, as is typical of other Eastern European nationalisms) pursued a policy of ignoring the interests of the local population, which was “locked” inside the borders in a country with a broken economy and democracy, with radical dreams of opening them, with a rigid division of sympathies, where to open – to the West or to the East. The Commonwealth of Independent States, unstable from the very beginning due to the lack of a democratic tradition of governance in the Soviet republics, has become a non-functioning international organization. The majority of the population of the east of Ukraine has lost hope to convey their opinion to the government in a democratic legal way.
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It is very valuable that you remind us that Ukraine has had membership in the UN since the Second World War. In Ukraine during the Soviet period there was a system of legal national education, the traditions of which continue to this day. I would add to your historical background that Ukraine was a founding country of the Commonwealth of Independent States. And when the people of Ukraine at the referendum on 1.12.1991 He approved the independence of the country, most of them saw this independence simultaneously with participation in the Commonwealth, while maintaining cooperation ties between Ukraine and Russia, similar to those that exist between France and Germany after World War II and still. It was hard to imagine that the government’s policy would be to destroy the cultural and economic ties that had been built up, which objectively increased the welfare of the population. However, the government (relying on the Ukrainian diaspora of the USA and Canada, as is typical of other Eastern European nationalisms) pursued a policy of ignoring the interests of the local population, which was “locked” inside the borders in a country with a broken economy and democracy, with radical dreams of opening them, with a rigid division of sympathies, where to open – to the West or to the East. The Commonwealth of Independent States, unstable from the very beginning due to the lack of a democratic tradition of Soviet governance, has become a non-functioning international organization.
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