Strident, Ambiguous and Duplicitous: Ukraine and the 2008 Russia-Georgia War

Abstract

Russia's August 2008 invasion of Georgia and de facto annexation of South Ossetia and Abkhazia will undoubtedly have repercussions for Ukaine's security. Although Ukraine had high hopes--following the Orange Revolution and election of the pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko--of quickly integrating into Euro-Atlantic structures, only NATO opened its door in 2005-06 but closed it in 2007-08 due to low public support within Ukraine and the growing appeasement of Russia by key Western European NATO members. The EU continues not to view Ukraine as a future member. Ukraine's security vacuum is coupled with instability, preventing the adoption of a unified position on Russia's aggression in Georgia, which has plagued the entire Yushchenko administration and Russian assertiveness in the region. Russian-Ukrainian relations have deteriorated to their lowest point since the disintegration of the USSR. This poor state of affairs, combined with Russia's willingness and legal justification for defending "Russian citizens" abroad, opens up the possibility that localized conflict in the Crimea and Sevastopol can no longer be ruled out. (1) This article is divided into five sections. In the first section, I analyze Ukrainian security policies and security dilemmas in the aftermath of the August 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia, (2) taking into consideration that NATO and EU membership are not likely for Ukraine in the foreseeable future. In the second section, I analyze Ukrainian-Georgian relations and the close ideological, personal, and security bonds between Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko and Georgian president Mikhail Saakashvili. Although these particular connections emerged after the 2003 Rose Revolution and 2004 Orange Revolution, Ukraine and Georgia had a well-established security relationship under President Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine and President Edward Shevardnadze of Georgia until 2003-04. In the third and fourth sections of the article, I discuss the likelihood of the Crimea becoming the next target for Russian territorial assertiveness in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Ukraine's security responses to what Kyiv sees as growing Russian nationalism. Russian opinion polls also show that the United States, Georgia, and Ukraine are the three most disliked countries in Russia. In these sections, I discuss Russia's inability to come to terms with Ukrainian sovereignty, independence, and territorial control over the Crimea, as well as Ukraine's fight to have different national interests from Russia. In the final section, I discuss how the Russia-Georgia war affected Ukrainian domestic politics (for a breakdown by leader and party, see the appendix). This section argues that existing divisions within the Orange Coalition prevented a unified response to the war, although both Our Ukraine (3) and the Bloc Yulia Tymoshenko (BYuT), as the coalition's two key political forces, feuded, leading to the collapse of the coalition on September 3. (4) Both wings of the democratic (i.e. Orange) coalition supported Georgia's territorial integrity. The oppositional Party of Regions' official stance, in support of the recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, split the party in the Ukrainian parliament. The party's resolution in support of independence for South Ossetia and Abkhazia was supported by the Communist Party, but failed to win sufficient votes to be adopted. A similar resolution passed in the Crimean parliament. Ukraine's Security Dilemmas Russia's invasion of Georgia has reshaped the geopolitical region and its domestic politics. Ukraine and other states in Eurasia believe that Russia has effectively annexed two Georgian territories without any major repercussions. From Ukraine's vantage point, this usurpation was compounded by the perception that the EU gave its seal of approval to a flawed peace plan beneficial to Russia. By the winter of 2008-09, the EU and NATO had rushed to repair their relations with Russia in the wake of their previous support for Georgia. …