They were, in practice, comprised of ad hoc groups opposed to both the Bolsheviks, and sometimes each other, and were outnumbered and overstretched thanks to controlling a smaller population over a huge area. A day after his intervention in mainland Ukraine, the Security Service of Ukraine published intercepted telephone calls between Girkin (2014) and his handlers in Moscow, including to and from his Russian telephone number. Impartial scholars would apportion blame on both the EU and Russia, both of which pressured Yanukovych to make a decision in their favour. Scholars who use the term ‘civil war’ ignore 10 important factors that took place in the decade prior to and during spring 2014: Denial, obfuscation, minimising, or ignoring evidence of Russia’s ‘full spectrum conflict’ is used to give credence to the claim that a ‘civil war’ is taking place in Ukraine. A loose confederation of a… Russia supplies training, leadership, fuel, ammunition, military technology, and intelligence, and there is a presence of Russian military, intelligence, mercenaries who fought in frozen conflicts in Eurasia, members of organised crime, and nationalist extremists. Russian Civil War (1918–20), conflict in which the Red Army successfully defended the newly formed Bolshevik government led by Vladimir Lenin against various Russian and interventionist anti-Bolshevik armies. The Inter-Ministerial Commission for the Provision of Humanitarian Aid for the Affected Areas in the Southeast of the Regions of Donetsk and Luhansk acts as Russia’s shadow government. War Communism, in the history of the Soviet Union, economic policy applied by the Bolsheviks during the period of the Russian Civil War (1918–20). Putin’s policies towards Ukraine undermined a pro-Russian ‘east’ and the Soviet concept of Russian-Ukrainian ‘brotherly’ peoples, thereby increasing Ukrainian civic national integration and severely curtailing Russian soft power in Ukraine. Security Service of Ukraine and military officers undertook espionage for Russia in the critical early stages of the conflict in 2014. Claiming the status of first among equals for itself and seeking a nationalist (imperialist) primacy of its own interests, Russia is in ‘pursuit of suzerainty,’ whereby a great power exercises control over its neighbours’ external relations while giving internal autonomy to a satrap, such as Lukashenka. In this segment, the intent is to provide background reading on the Civil War, as well as explore the origins of the conflict. The Bolshevik Party emerged victorious and took control of the government. It cannot be a coincidence that a Russian flag was also raised by Russian citizen Mikhail Chuprikov on Donetsk city hall on the same day as in Kharkiv (Roth 2014). Taras Kuzio is a Professor in the Department of Political Science, National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy and a Non-Resident Fellow in the Foreign Policy Institute, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Washington DC. An argument against defining the Donbas conflict as a ‘civil war’ is therefore the long-term work of Russian and Donbas ‘ethnic entrepreneurs’ during the decade prior to the 2014 crisis (Na terrritorii Donetskoy oblasty deystvovaly voyennye lagerya DNR s polnym vooruzheniyem s 2009 goda 2014). How an educator uses Prezi Video to approach adult learning theory; Nov. 11, 2020. Soviet demographer Boris Urlanis estimated total number of men killed in action in Civil War and Polish-Soviet war as 300,000 (125,000 in the Red Army, 175,500 White armies and Poles) and total number of military personnel died from disease (on both sides) as … Which of the following was a result of the Russian Civil War? Soviet and Russian nationalist (imperialist) nostalgia ‘was already present in the ‘red brown’ (communist-fascist) coalition of 1993’ (D’Anieri 2019, 256), which came to the fore in the ‘Russian spring’ (see Melnyk 2020, 22). Regional versus national identities provide a weak explanation for why protestors transformed into armed insurgents in the Donbas, but not in the other six oblasts of southeastern Ukraine. High levels of participation of eastern Ukrainians in volunteer battalions in 2014 (Aliyev 2019, 2020) grew out of the Euromaidan. Although a previous coup attempt (the July Days) had failed, the time now seemed ripe. Russia’s strategy was to have the fig leaf of ‘Ukrainians’ supporting these goals, and then ‘Moscow would support them’ (Zygar 2016, 284) in ‘a convincing picture of genuine local and even internal support for Russian ideas in Ukraine’ (Shandra and Seely 2019, 22). There is a mass of evidence, collected by the Security Service of Ukraine, that Russian intelligence officers undertook training and coordination with, and providing leadership to separatist forces throughout 2014. Respectively, 76% and 47% of residents of Ukrainian-controlled Donetsk and Luhansk believe that Russia is a party to the conflict, with 12% and 31% respectively disagreeing (Public Opinion in Donbas a Year After Presidential Elections 2020). The policy’s chief features were the expropriation of private business, the nationalization of industry, and the forced requisition of grain and other food products. In three years of war Russia had mobilized roughly 10 percent of its entire population…, One of the turning points in the struggle for power was the attempt by Gen. Lavr Kornilov, who had been appointed commander in chief, to take control of Petrograd in August 1917 and wipe out the soviet. Russia and its representatives in Ukraine promoted Eurasian integration for its alleged benefits of Ukrainian access to markets and cheaper gas deals (Molchanov 2016). Toal (2017, 252) writes that many Donbas and Crimean Russian proxies were ‘genuine neo-Nazis.’ The Donetsk Republic Party (Na terrritorii Donetskoy oblasty deystvovaly voyennye lagerya DNR s polnym vooruzheniyem s 2009 goda 2014) is one of two ruling parties in the DNR after winning 68.3% of the vote in its fake 2014 ‘election.’, Russian Penetration of Ukraine’s Security Forces. From the beginning of the crisis, ‘Russian troops, intelligence officers, and political advisers were alleged to be either supporting or directly controlling the separatists’ (Bowen 2019, 331). The Medvedchuk-Glazyev strategy was fully implemented. Neo-liberal theories, Sambanis (2002, 225) believes, are better equipped to explain the outbreak of civil wars and the role of non-state actors in fomenting them. Kudelia (2017, 228) blames only Ukraine for launching ‘the military stage,’ a view he shares with Sakwa (2015), Matveeva (2016, 2018), and Cohen (2019). Editor of Russia in Global Affairs, Fyodr Lukyanov, does not deny that Russia intervened in spring 2014, saying, ‘It would be strange if it weren’t there’ (Ioffe 2014). The war made revolution inevitable in two ways: it showed Russia was no longer a military match for the nations of central and western Europe, and it hopelessly disrupted the economy. Kudelia (2017, 214) incredulously writes, ‘Without question Russia exploited these events, but it did not define them.’ This is not true; different aspects of Russian ‘full spectrum conflict’ (Jonsson and Seely 2015) had the goal of ‘converting a marginal movement into a mass phenomenon’ (Wilson 2015, 645). As a result, by the end of the civil war, the Reds were almost entirely Bolshevik. Location. The Berkut forces that undertook human rights abuses and killed protestors were brought to Kyiv from Crimea, the Donbas, and elsewhere in eastern Ukraine in the belief that Kyiv-based Berkut would be unreliable. support open access publishing. Learn more about the Russian … Exaggerating the influence of ‘Ukrainian nationalism’ is closely correlated with exaggerating regional divisions in Ukraine, repeating claims and stereotypes that are usually the exclusive prerogative of those who believe in an ‘artificial Ukraine’ and ‘two Ukraines’ (Sakwa 2015; Hahn 2018, Petro 2015). Beyond western political scientists working on Russia, there are few government policymakers, think tank experts, or journalists who would believe that Russian foreign policy is not nationalist. Ukrainians in the Donbas who thought of themselves as ‘Russians’ were most likely the same as those who claimed to hold a Soviet identity. In the USSR, Medvedchuk had been a Soviet-appointed attorney for Ukrainian dissidents Yuriy Litvin and Vasyl Stus between 1979–1980. ‘They delivered hardcore Kremlin activists, he said, some dressed in military-style fatigues. Putin, Suslov, Medvedchuk, and Glazyev aimed to transform these protests into pro-Russian uprisings, which would take control of oblast and city councils and state administrations. A clash outside the Kharkiv headquarters of the Ukrainian nationalist organisation Patriots of Ukraine led to two attackers from the pro-Russian Oplot (Bulwark)[1] being shot and killed (Harding 2014). Sambanis (2002) analyses how grievances have transformed into mass violence. It cannot be true, as Sakwa (2017a) writes, that Russia sought to extricate itself from the Donbas at the same time as it built up a huge army and military arsenal controlled by GRU (Russian military intelligence) officers and 5,000 Russian occupation troops based in the DNR and LNR. W. Wayne Merry (2016) views Putin’s war against Ukraine as a clash of sovereignties because Russia is at odds with the UN and international law in not viewing Ukraine and most former Soviet states as ‘sovereign’ entities. Russia’s information warfare was that of the ‘language of hate’ from its inception (Bonch-Osmolovskaya 2015, 182), creating a climate favourable to local support for military and political operations in Crimea and Donbas (Hajduk and Stepniewski 2016, 46–47). A civil war challenges the sovereignty of an internationally recognised state, takes place within the boundaries of a recognised state, and involves rebels that are able to mount organised, armed opposition. The impact of the full range of Russian ‘full spectrum conflict’ was the opposite to that which Putin sought, and three areas of which are analysed in the concluding chapter. E-IR is an independent non-profit publisher run by an all volunteer team. Russian artillery fired a huge number of shells into Ukraine over July and August 2014. Russia penetrated Ukrainian security forces during Yanukovych’s presidency extensively (see Kuzio 2012). In spring 2012, at the same time as Putin was re-elected, Medvedchuk launched the Ukrainian Choice political party, which resembled more a ‘front for the Kremlin than independent organization’ (Hosaka 2018, 341). Erin K. Jenne (2007) believes that external lobbying and external patrons are key factors in determining the mobilisation of minorities because they signal an intention to intervene, which radicalises demands towards the central government. Russia’s invasion of Crimea ‘radically transformed expectations of intervention in other Ukrainian regions, notably Donbas’ (Sambanis, Skaperdas and Wohlforth 2017, 27). Russian spetsnaz soldiers intervened in mainland Ukraine from occupied Crimea and, with the assistance of Russian nationalists (imperialists) and political tourists trained in Russia and bussed into Ukraine, transformed protestors into armed insurgents. Between March and October the Provisional Government was reorganized four times. The fourth factor is Russia’s long-standing territorial claims against Crimea going back to the early 1990s. Sakwa (2017a) and Matveeva (2018) seek to downplay Yanukovych as a friend of Russia and, in doing so, minimise Russia’s intervention in Ukrainian affairs prior to 2014. A civil war is defined by Patrick M. Reagan (2000) and Nicholas Sambanis (2002, 218) as a war between organised groups within the same state leading to high intensity conflict and casualties of over 1,000 people, a definition which applies to the Donbas. Russian Revolution, also called Russian Revolution of 1917, two revolutions in 1917, the first of which, in February (March, New Style), overthrew the imperial government and the second of which, in October (November), placed the Bolsheviks in power. The low number of participants in pro-Russian rallies in ‘New Russia’ and weak support for pro-Russian goals found in opinion polls point to the artificiality of these pro-Russian ‘uprisings’ and why they failed (Kuzio 2019a). Europe’s Next Flashpoint? (2010) and Ukraine-Crimea-Russia: Triangle of Conflict (2007). David Bullock, the author of The Russian Civil War (2008) has argued that no one has been able to calculate accurately the cost in human life attributable to the Civil War. Tor Bukkvoll (2019, 299) attempts to have it both ways, confusingly describing the conflict as an ‘insurgency’ until August 2014 ‘even though Russian political agents and special forces most probably played an important role in its instigation.’ A regional versus national identities framework of the ‘civil war’ is at odds with the claim of an ‘absence of an ideology’ among pro-Russian forces in the Donbas (Kudelia and Zyl (2019, 815). September 1921 – 16 June 1923. 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