Debunking tankies on Ukraine (Part I)
The 'anti-war' left (and populist right) have been grossly distorting history in order to whitewash Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Time to set the record straight.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine has opened the floodgates to propaganda, misinformation, and misinterpretation of history for the purpose of whitewashing Russia’s responsibility in this conflict as the sole aggressor. Unfortunately, many of the same talking points used by Russian propagandists has been shared almost ad verbatim by the ‘anti-war/anti-imperialist’ left as well as much of the populist far right. By and large these talking points are driven by campism, the worldview which sees geopolitics as a struggle between two blocs, the West and the Rest. It follows that Russia’s invasion, as morally reprehensible as many reluctantly admit, is the lesser evil in the struggle against Western hegemony and the establishment of a multipolar order. Unfortunately as the war has revealed, this appears to be the dominant geopolitical worldview of much of the left which makes it all the more important that it be countered by leftists who are committed to truth.
In this piece I will deal with the talking points that involve the leadup to the 2013-14 Euromaidan crisis and subsequent Russian intervention, which left Putin in control of Crimea and supporting a separatist army in the Donbas. A follow up post will deal with issues in the years that followed until the 2022 Russian invasion.
“NATO promised not to expand East”
This is one of the most frequently employed arguments to suggest that the West betrayed Russia after the fall of the USSR. As it goes, Western leaders gave Soviet/Russian leaders assurances that NATO would never expand eastward beyond its Cold War borders. The highlight of this policy was the “not one inch eastward” comment from then US secretary of state Jim Backer in a February 1990 meeting with Soviet premier Mikhail Gorbachev and which is often believed to suggest that this was an assurance that NATO would never expand into Eastern Europe.
Except it wasn’t. It needs to be remembered that in 1990 the USSR still existed as did the Warsaw Pact (the communist bloc’s equivalent to NATO and which included most of Eastern Europe). The negotiations being undertaken by the Gorbachev government and his Western counterparts were therefore related to the reunification of Germany and what the status of East Germany would be with regards to the opposing military alliances. The position agreed by both sides and which the “not one inch eastward” comment referred to was whether NATO could establish bases in the former territory of East Germany once it had been unified (which happened later that year in October). As it happened, NATO indeed did not move one inch eastward. To this day there has never been any permanent NATO base in East Germany nor any permanent deployment by NATO troops aside from the Bundeswehr, which for obvious reasons was exempt from this provision. The details were explained in Article 5 (3) of the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany:
Following the completion of the withdrawal of the Soviet armed forces from the territory of the present German Democratic Republic and of Berlin, units of German armed forces assigned to military alliance structures in the same way as those in the rest of German territory may also be stationed in that part of Germany, but without nuclear weapon carriers. This does not apply to conventional weapon systems which may have other capabilities in addition to conventional ones but which in that part of Germany are equipped for a conventional role and designated only for such. Foreign armed forces and nuclear weapons or their carriers will not be stationed in that part of Germany or deployed there.
Even if Baker’s comments have been widely misinterpreted, there does remain the lingering question of whether other Western leaders gave their Soviet counterparts assurances over the course of 1991, a year which saw the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in February and the independence of the USSR’s constituent republics by year end. Here is where the evidence is not as clear cut and there is reason to believe that Western leaders at certain points did indeed suggest to Gorbachev that NATO expansion into Eastern Europe was off the table. It also doesn’t help that Gorbachev has frequently contradicted himself on this, claiming that indeed NATO made promises it didn’t keep while later claiming otherwise. The best source for what actually happened is an extensive recap of primary documents by George Washington University’s National Security Archive (which is a strongly recommended read for anyone engaged in this debate) which concluded:
Thus, Gorbachev went to the end of the Soviet Union assured that the West was not threatening his security and was not expanding NATO. Instead, the dissolution of the USSR was brought about by Russians (Boris Yeltsin and his leading advisory Gennady Burbulis) in concert with the former party bosses of the Soviet republics, especially Ukraine, in December 1991. The Cold War was long over by then. The Americans had tried to keep the Soviet Union together (see the Bush “Chicken Kiev” speech on August 1, 1991). NATO’s expansion was years in the future, when these disputes would erupt again, and more assurances would come to Russian leader Boris Yeltsin.
If would appear, therefore, that the West duped Gorbachev and later Yeltsin into thinking that NATO was not planning to expand eastward. Except it’s not. Because in May 1997 Russia and NATO signed an agreement known as the NATO-Russia Founding Act which established the framework for cooperation between the two sides in the post-Cold War era. Using very rosy language, both sides pledged that they would “work together to contribute to the establishment in Europe of common and comprehensive security based on the allegiance to shared values, commitments and norms of behavior in the interests of all states”. However, one of the principles outlined in the treaty is worth recalling (emphasis mine):
[R]espect for sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity of all states and their inherent right to choose the means to ensure their own security, the inviolability of borders and peoples' right of self-determination as enshrined in the Helsinki Final Act and other OSCE documents;
It is incredibly difficult to interpret this statement as anything other than the right of every country to establish their own security arrangements, which would include the right to be a part of any military alliance. It should be remembered that talks at this point were well underway for the eventual membership of Poland, Czech Republic, and Hungary so it can’t be argued that Russia was not aware of the possibility that some of its former satellite states were on the verge of joining NATO. So why would Russia sign a treaty with a provision like this knowing that they were about to join a rival alliance? Well, the answer is because NATO enlargement really wasn’t the backstab and betrayal that Putin later claimed it was.
“Russia had the right to intervene in Ukraine in 2014 because of the US-backed Euromaidan coup”
Euromaidan was the name given to a prolonged period of demonstrations and civil unrest, primarily in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv, that began in November 2013. It was prompted by the decision by the pro-Russian government of president Viktor Yanukovych to back out of a planned Association Agreement with the European Union which had previously been approved by Ukrainian’s parliament. The protests resulted in a permanent encampment in downtown Kyiv (notably at the Maidan Nezalezhnosti, or Independence Square, which gave the protests their name) and led to frequent clashes with police and security services, notably the notorious Berkut special police force which is believed to have been responsible for the majority of the “heavenly hundred” deaths that took place during the period.
As would be expected, there was considerable sympathy in the West for the protesters. In mid-December, US senator John McCain visited Kyiv and gave a speech at the encampment where he proclaimed that “the destiny you seek lies in Europe”, a clear rebuff to the pro-Russian sympathies of the Yanukovych government. This in itself is likely all the “proof” needed for many Western leftist to suggest US/Western involvement, but the plot thickened in early February following the leak of a private conversation between US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt. During the call, Nuland and Pyatt discussed their preferences over who among the main opposition leaders was better suited to be a part of a new government. This call, while certainly revealing that the US was much more involved in the crisis than it had admitted, was enough for many leftists to conclude that Euromaidan was in fact a US-backed coup.
Except it wasn’t. For starters, the obvious point is that by the time of the Nuland-Pyatt call (believed to have taken place sometime in late January or early February), the protests had already gone on for the better part of two months and with nothing to suggest that the US had any role in instigating them. To this day there is no evidence whatsoever that the US had a role in these protests beyond words of encouragement from a senator (McCain) who visited Kyiv on his own behalf, and a leaked phone call that revealed no actual involvement in the removal of the president; in fact, the call itself showed Pyatt proposing an “an outreach to Yanukovych” which would be an odd thing to say if the plan was to oust him altogether. Instead, the discussion over the ideal opposition figures was not to find a replacement for Yanukovych in the presidency but rather for the position of prime minister in accordance with the 2004 constitution. Reverting to this earlier constitution was a key demand of the protesters since Yanukovych’s 2010 constitution had the prime minster as being appointed by the president, rather than by parliament.
Further proof that the Nuland-Pyatt call was not a plan to oust Yanukovych was by the fact that just a few days later, on February 21st, the Agreement on Settlement of Political Crisis in Ukraine was signed by Yanukovych and the opposition under the auspices various EU countries (Russia, predictably, refused to sign it). The agreement’s main provisions included the removal of police and security forces from downtown Kyiv, a return to the 2004 constitution, and to hold new elections before the end of year with Yanukovych remaining as president until then. If this was truly a coup, it would have been the first in history whereby the ousted leader would be left to remain in office for nearly another full year and with the possibility of him still winning the next election and remaining in power. Alas, this all proved to be a ruse. Barely a day after the Agreement was signed, Yanukovych fled from Ukraine into exile in Russia with the full assistance of Putin’s government.
In contrast to the flimsy evidence of a US-backed coup, Russian meddling in Euromaidan is overwhelming, to say nothing of its actions after Yanukovych’s self-ousting. As Ukraine scholar Neil Abrams summarizes in a lengthy thread debunking the coup claims, there were no less than twelve phone calls between Yanukovych and Putin at the height of the Euromaidan crisis, in addition to a January 8th meeting in which both leaders decided on a policy of “unrestrained repression” against the protesters. A number of other Putin cronies in Ukraine were also involved in some way in encouraging the repression by state security forces in different parts of the country. Strangely, this is not enough for most Western leftists to admit that if any country has been meddling in Ukrainian affairs, it is Russia, particularly after Yanukovych’s 2010 victory gave Putin a lucrative foothold on Ukrainian politics and, most importantly, on Ukraine’s oligarch-ridden economy.
In fact, this wasn’t the first time Russia likely meddled in Ukrainian affairs. In 2004, then-president Viktor Yushchenko (who was pro-Western and a strong supporter of Ukraine joining NATO) suffered an attempted assassination attempt using Putin’s weapon of choice: poison. The poison was a toxin known as TCDD which visibly disfigured his face. The main suspect of the attempt was Volodymyr Satsyuk, the former deputy chief of the SBU (Ukraine’s equivalent to the KGB) and who had dual Russian-Ukrainian citizenship. After the assassination he fled to Russia where he has remained in exile to this day. Although there is no conclusive evidence of the Kremlin’s involvement in this assassination, the fact that numerous enemies of Putin have been murdered in a similar way makes this a far more credible conclusion than the idea that the US instigated the Euromaidan protests.
Finally, to drive the last nail in this argument’s coffin, what if the US had indeed been responsible for the Euromaidan protests and ousting of Yanukovych? Well, as it turns out, this still would not be a justification for a Russian invasion since there is no principle of international law that legitimizes the use of force to solve diplomatic disputes to say nothing of internal affairs. This is explicitly stated in Article 2 (4) of the UN Charter, of which Russia is a signatory:
All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.
This is, of course, a principle that most leftists should want to see upheld. Otherwise, it would legitimize some of the US’s own acts of aggression such as its (not-so-covertly-supported) Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 after the Cuban Revolution put an unfriendly government next to its shores. It would mean the US could invade Mexico whenever a leftist government took power, as happened in 2018. In summary, the coup argument is a non-starter. Not only is there no evidence that the US’s involvement in Euromaidan was extensive enough to have led to Yanukovych’s self-ousting, but even if it had, cannot legitimize Russia’s intervention and invasion.
“Most people in Crimea and the Donbas wanted to join Russia”
On February 23rd, pro-Russian protests erupted in various cities in the Crimean peninsula following Yanukovych self-ousting. A few days later on February 27th, little green men” began appearing at key strategic sites in the peninsula including the Crimean Parliament building and other administrative sites in the capital, Simferopol. Unlike the rag-tag militias that were supporting the pro-Russian protests, these men were heavily armed, wore unmarked uniforms, but their accents and equipment gave them away as being members of the Russian armed forces. The newly taken-over parliament quickly appointed a new regional leader, Sergey Aksyonov of the minority Russian Unity party (take a guess where its sympathies lay) who immediately called for Russian assistance. Russia responded by sending in numerous military units through its naval base in Sevastopol as well as across the Kerch peninsula, completing the largely bloodless conquest by March 4th. Although Putin initially denied that the “little green men” were in fact Russian regular troops, he later went on record admitting that this was an invasion all along. On March 16th, a sham referendum was held in which 97% of voters agreed to join Russia.
Bolstered by his successful gambit, Putin later attempted a repeat in the Donbas, whose two regions Donetsk and Luhansk had the largest share of Russian-speakers in Ukraine apart from Crimea. Pro-Russian protests erupted on April 7th and spread out across the region, although this time the Ukrainians were not caught off-guard and responded with a so-called Anti-Terrorist Operation on April 15th which scored some initial successes. Unfortunately, by mid-year the separatists of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR for short) had been armed and trained by Russia into a nearly 40,000-strong force which included armored vehicles and tanks, anti-tank missiles, and even anti-aircraft missiles, one of which shot down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17 on July 17th. Russian artillery was also frequently firing into Ukrainian territory and by August there were confirmed incursions into Ukrainian territory by Russian regular units, most notably during the encirclement at Illovaisk where a Ukrainian force sent to liberate the city from separatists was surrounded and nearly destroyed.
This debacle eventually led to the signing of the first Minsk Protocol on September 5th, which collapsed in early 2015 following a renewed offensive by DRP and LPR separatists. Ukraine suffered further battlefield reverses including the loss of Donetsk international airport in January and yet another encirclement by Russian regular forces at Debaltseve. This in turn led to the Minsk II Protocols which were signed on February 15th although there was not much stomach on both sides to fully implement it. On one hand, Ukraine certainly violated the protocol by not providing the two separatist regions with constitutional autonomy as it promised to do. But on the other hand, Russia did not withdraw its armed forces from the Donbas as it should have done. Neither side did much to disband the numerous irregular forces, militias, and mercenaries which were fighting alongside them either.
Determining whether these separatist movements in Crimea and the Donbas are legitimate rests on two questions. The first is whether a majority of inhabitants in these two regions favored separation from Ukraine and integration into Russia. The answer is categorically no. Leftists have frequently pointed out to the support given in these regions to pro-Russian candidates as well as the sham referendums that took place only after Russian occupation or separatist control. This of course, is nonsense and gives these referendums legitimacy in the face of obvious coercion and lack of independent monitoring. As such, the only real way of assessing whether there was majority support for joining Russia was before the Russian invasions. And as it turns out, there wasn’t. A poll undertaken by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) between February 8-18th, 2014 revealed that support for joining Russia stood at 41% in Crimea, 33.2% in Donetsk, and 24.1% in Luhansk. So much for majority support for joining Russia in Ukraine’s most pro-Russia regions.
Furthermore, in the only referendum that actually mattered, no region of Ukraine voted to be a part of Russia. This was the 1991 referendum on independence where the yes vote won in all 27 of Ukraine’s regions including in Crimea, which admittedly was the lowest at 54%. Support for independence was as high as 83.9% in both Donetsk and Luhansk. In short, there has never been evidence that a majority of people in Crimea or the Donbas ever wanted to join Russia.
The second question is whether the separatist movements carried the necessary legitimacy to overrule whatever pre-invasion polls suggested. The answer for Crimea is certainly no given what we know of how Putin hatched his takeover plan on the night of February 22/23rd and how pro-Russian groups across Ukraine had longstanding ties with Russian intelligence and security agencies which is what enabled them to spring into action so quickly. In particular, the transformation of the Donbas separatists from protesters and local militias into a full-fledged mechanized fighting force in the space of just a few months is evidence enough that this was not a movement that emerged organically, and that even if it did, would not have been able to take over and hold such a large swathe of Ukrainian territory (around one-third of the combined area of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions) had it not been for full-scale Russian material support, which in more than one case extended to overt assistance by regular combat units of the Russian armed forces.
Ultimately, these two questions are also moot even if we were to accept the false premise that there was majority support in Crimea and the Donbas for joining Russia or that the separatist movements were legitimate. According to the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine agreed to give up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons in exchange for a guarantee by Russia, the US, and the UK in respecting its 1991 post-independence borders. The treaty reads as follows (emphasis mine):
The Russian Federation, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, and the United States of America reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to respect the independence and sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine. [The parties also] reaffirm their obligation to refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine and that none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defense or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations.
The Memorandum wasn’t the only treaty that bound Russia to respect Ukraine’s borders. The subsequent 1997 Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership between Ukraine and the Russian Federation made a similar affirmation. Article 2 of the treaty stated (emphasis mine again):
The High Contracting Parties, in accordance with the provisions of the UN Charter and obligations under the Final Act of the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe, respect each other's territorial integrity and confirm the inviolability of the existing borders between them.
Not only did both treaties bind Russia into not intervening in Ukraine, it would have made it illegal for it to have accepted any referendums in Crimea and Donbas calling for annexation. Many leftists have argued that the Euromaidan crisis somehow made these agreements null and void, which goes against the basic principles of international law: a change in government does not invalidate a treaty made between two states, regardless of the conditions in which such a change in government occurred (in other words, even in the event of a coup). Other leftists have argued that the US has pulled out of treaties before too, such as its renunciation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty) with Russia in 2019. But this too is a bad analogy: the US openly announced its withdrawal from the INF Treaty rather than violating it and then claiming that the treaty was no longer valid as Russia did with its 1994 and 1997 treaties with Ukraine.
In summary, Russia had no international legal grounds to justify its invasion and annexation of Crimea, or its invasion of the Donbas. Anyone pretending otherwise is widely perverting aspects of international law which at least for this particular conflict leave little ground for misinterpretation.
Thanks for reading! In order to avoid a super-long post, I will continue the debunking in Part II which will include talking points such as “Ukraine killed 14,000 Russian-speakers in the Donbas”, “Ukraine is full of Nazis”, and “NATO bases threatened Russia”.
Debunking Tankies on Ukraine Part II
Did you like this article? Follow me on Twitter at @raguileramx and on YouTube at ProgressumTV. You might also like my book, The Glass-Half Empty: Debunking the Myth of Progress in the Twenty-First Century (Repeater Books, 2020). My security-related work has appeared in The Military Balance, Armed Conflict Survey, and Strategic Survey from the International Institute of Strategic Studies.