Foreign Affairs. January-February 2020

The Shoals of Ukraine

January/February 2020 93

Furious at these demonstrations, Putin gave full vent to his impe-

rial instincts. In violation of the Budapest Memorandum, Russian

regular and paramilitary troops took control of the Crimean Penin-

sula. Putin sought openly to reintegrate the post-Soviet space in a

new Eurasian military, political, and economic alliance to balance

against both the eu and China. Russia also launched hybrid warfare in

the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine. Moscow’s goal was to make the

“federalization” of Ukraine necessary, with each of its provinces de-

ciding foreign policy issues on its own, because that would spell the

end of Ukraine’s pro-Western aspirations.

Ukraine fought back with all the means available to it, including

the help of volunteer battalions and its own existing armed forces,

which were quickly rebuilt after years of neglect. As a result, Russia

turned its hybrid war into a conventional one by sending regular units

into battle. European leaders stepped in to negotiate the Minsk agree-

ments in September 2014 and February 2015, thereby providing at

least a framework for dialogue. But the fighting continues, and it has

claimed close to 13,000 lives, including soldiers, members of para-

military units, and civilians. Millions have become refugees, and

around four million people are now stuck in unrecognized separatist

republics, financed and backed militarily and politically by Russia but

barely surviving economically.

Having succeeded in gaining territory and destabilizing Ukraine,

Putin has felt emboldened to expand elsewhere. His regime has

projected military power beyond the post-Soviet space, into the

Middle East, Africa, and Latin America. It has also stepped up its

cyberwarfare significantly, most notably in the United States in

2016, when, in the year that marked the 25th anniversary of the

event that caused Putin’s bitterness—namely, the collapse of the

Soviet Union—Russia used social media and other online tools to

interfere in the U.S. presidential election. Given that Putin views

the Soviet Union’s collapse as the “greatest geopolitical catastro-

phe” of the twentieth century (despite much competition for that

tragic title), he was hardly going to organize a parade for the anni-

versary. Instead, he decided to avenge himself on former U.S. Sec-

retary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential

nominee—whom he viewed as having masterminded many of the

protests in the post-Soviet space from the State Department—by med-

dling in the U.S. election in favor of her opponent, with fateful conse-

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