Eoin Anthony McCaul

Over the last few months the world has been feeling increasingly on edge as Russia continues to amass troops on the Ukrainian border. This is a renewal of the crisis of last year when Russia first started to mobilise its troops near the border with its highest mobilisation of force since the annexation of Crimea in 2014. Talks are currently ongoing to resolve the situation - but with Russia’s bottom line, the barring of Ukraine from joining NATO, unacceptable to the US and its allies, it remains to be seen what will happen over the coming weeks.

I talked to Michael Campbell, originally from County Down, who moved to Kyiv to teach English in 2020, “It was a really strict lockdown in Northern Ireland, and I thought ‘I can’t be staying in the house doing nothing - I want to do something, I want to be out.’” Despite the concerns of his friends and family he wants to stay in Kyiv until his contract runs out, at the end of the school year, after having fallen in love with the city. While the mood amongst foreigners there seems to be quite panicked, with some leaving recently, he described a marked difference in their reaction compared to the locals, “A lot of them say this is just part of being Ukrainian. There’s always this threat from Russia and there always has been, they don’t know any other way.”

Despite the concerns of his friends and family he wants to stay in Kyiv until his contract runs out, at the end of the school year, after having fallen in love with the city.

While the US is claiming that a Russian invasion of Ukraine is 70% likely, and is urging all of its citizens to leave immediately, such an idea seems far-fetched to people in Russia where the majority think the possibility of an invasion is unlikely. So is the current hysteria nothing more than fear mongering by the Western press? Well, as Michael explained to me, “Every time I think it's just Putin playing games, he wasn’t playing when it came to Donetsk and Crimea, but they are much more Russian sympathetic parts of the country. In Kyiv, they speak Russian but it’s not a Russian sympathetic area.” So while a full-scale invasion of Ukraine may be unlikely to happen, it’s still always a possibility. Putin’s preferred method of conducting diplomacy, through increasing tensions, may have worked at getting the US to the negotiating table - but these threats will only remain credible so long as he is willing to act on them.

Everyone I’ve spoken to who’s visited Kyiv has waxed lyrical about the beauty of the city and its architecture. The city has incredible significance for the Eastern Slavic people - as the people of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia all trace their cultural lineage back to the Kyivan Rus, the civilization that ruled the region from the late ninth century to the thirteenth century.

Unsurprisingly, people in Russia have a very different view of who is to blame for increasing tensions - the Levada Centre, the last independent polling company in Russia, found that 50% of Russians hold the US and NATO to be responsible for increasing tensions while only 4% hold the Russian government responsible. In focus groups held by the company, statements such as the following were common, “This is just a game played by the US, Western countries and NATO, which are trying to get at Russia via Ukraine.” They blame the incendiary rhetoric of the Western press for continually inflaming tensions and attempting to ‘provoke’ Russia into a war, “We don’t want to obey [the United States — DV]. And they are used to ruling the world … That’s why we get this in return.” Even critics of the government, insofar as polling can show, hold America to be more responsible than the Russian government - but, of course, it’s very important to consider that dissenting opinions are much less likely to be expressed in such surveys and focus groups especially in a country as authoritarian as Russia out of fear of being accused of a lack of patriotism or even facing punishment from the authorities.

When Russia annexed Crimea, *“all the Ukrainian books… were burnt.”*

Ultimately, the people of Ukraine should be able to decide their own future and it’s a tragedy that they are once more being used as a pawn in a game between greater powers. People, more concerned with day-to-day life than with geopolitics, are having their lives put in jeopardy by a power struggle in which they have little say. I spoke to Krystal Possum, from Melbourne, whose family fled to Australia from Ukraine after the Second World War devastated the country, “I have family in Vinnitsa - to the west of Kyiv. We tried calling them but we haven’t got through - which is a little bit of a worry.” On top of the potential loss of life that an invasion would lead to, she fears that under Russian rule the unique culture of Ukraine could be erased entirely. There is a long history of suppression of the Ukrainian language and identity under Russian rule - from the time of Imperial Russia continuing into the Soviet Union.

The land of Ukraine is incredibly valuable due to the fertility of its soil, with the country known as the ‘breadbasket of Europe’. When Russia annexed Crimea, “all the Ukrainian books… were burnt.” As an Irish person, I noticed many similarities between how both the Ukrainian and Irish languages and culture were suppressed in order to subjugate them as a part of their neighbour’s empire. Ireland too, was considered the ‘breadbasket’ which fed the British Empire. The subtelties of language are an incredibly effective means of control which is why until recently most spelt ‘Kyiv’ as ‘Kiev’ - the Russian spelling of the word, rather than the Ukrainian spelling. Similarly, ‘the Ukraine’ is how the country was referred to by Russians when it was a part of the Soviet Union - most Ukrainians would prefer for the ‘the’ to be dropped now that they are independent, a mark of their newfound sovereignty.

After experiencing so much hardship throughout the last century, it’s a travesty that Ukraine is still under threat. Many here in the Western world often overlook the amount of Ukrainian lives that were lost during the Nazi invasion, on the Eastern front which saw the largest amount of casualties in the war. Krystal told me how her grandmother would tell her stories about the invasions, and the history of their family. The 2014 annexation of Crimea happened just a week before she passed away, “I remember coming into her house and she was crying, I asked her what’s going on and she said, ‘It’s happening again, I started my life and Ukraine was in conflict. I went through my whole life and it just got worse and worse… I’ve lived almost a hundred years and my country and my family are still not safe.’”

*“I’ve lived almost a hundred years and my country and my family are still not safe…”*

If the people of Ukraine wanted to be a part of Russia, then they would have joined them. The Euromaidan protests in 2014 proved that they do not want this future, as their pro-Kremlin leader was toppled in favour of seeking greater relations with the European Union. In the period since the annexation of Crimea, the Ukrainian armed forces have been forced to amass a huge stockpile of arms to defend themselves. While ultimately, they would struggle to stand up against a power as large as Russia, for such a comparatively small country they have built up enough to cause them difficulties in the event of an invasion, but, “that money could have been better spent going to mental health, and to the people, rather than arming themselves.”

It’s tragic that in this day and age, countries such as Ukraine still have no guarantee over their own sovereignty. Talks are ongoing to mediate the situation - and I for one am hopeful that some solution will be reached, but it remains to be seen who will be the main beneficiary. While the prospect of a ‘hot’ war between NATO and Russia would be unthinkable as it would surely mean nuclear armageddon, it’s unlikely that further economic sanctions would be able to have much of an effect - Russia has spent the last eight years building up resilience to any future sanctions.

Frankly, the best thing the European Union could do to help Ukraine is reduce its reliance on Russian natural gas - because without this, any posturing they try to aim towards Russia looks nothing short of ridiculous. But neither the EU, the US, or Russia should be able to dictate the future of Ukraine - the country belongs to no one else aside from its people, and they will hopefully see a time when they no longer have to worry about their future being decided for them based on the strategic value it represents to a global superpower.

Eoin Anthony McCaul is Comment editor at The Scoop, and a second year PPE student at Queen’s University Belfast

Ukraine's culture and identity are hanging in the balance