Putin’s current aggression is pushing more and more Ukrainians away from Russia towards the West.
It was exactly three years ago that Ukraine’s President, then Petro Poroshenko, signed a constitutional amendment committing the country to becoming a member of NATO and the European Union. Addressing Parliament on 19 February 2019, Poroshenko said he viewed securing Ukraine’s membership of NATO and the EU as his “strategic mission”, identifying 2023 as the year applications for both should begin. Later that day, while witnessing the signing of the constitutional amendment, European Council President Donald Tusk said that “there can be no Europe without Ukraine”. Tusk was on a three-day visit to Ukraine, which at the time was commemorating the fifth anniversary of the Euromaidan protests, which led to the ousting of Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Yanukovych in 2014.
President Putin’s personal reaction to the defenestration of his friend Yanukovych was one of intense anger. His annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea region a month later and his encouragement and support of separatists in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region, probably says it all. Similarly, his current encirclement of Ukraine reveals what he thought of enshrining NATO and EU ambitions in the Ukrainian Constitution. In Putin’s mind, neither is going to happen—ever.
Vladimir Putin believed all was sorted back in 2015 when, after a year of fighting between Ukrainian troops and Russian-backed separatists, a second attempt to stop the fighting, called Minsk II, was signed by the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany. As the Economist opines, the problem is that Minsk II is not a treaty so much as a sketch scrawled on the back of an envelope. In fewer than 900 words it deals mostly with the ceasefire, dodging hard questions about what comes later. It declares that the renegade regions have “special status”, without defining what that is. It says that there will be elections, but not who can stand or vote. Unspecified “representatives” will help write a new Constitution, but nobody knows which side must do what and when.
Ukraine’s Parliament is clearly unhappy with the vagueness of Minsk II, just as the Kremlin is delighted. Vladimir Putin sees “the deal” as a path to controlling Ukraine’s foreign policy, making any moves towards membership of NATO or the EU impossible. Kiev sees Minsk II as a Russian Trojan horse that would at worst put Ukraine under Russian control, or at best, foment permanent chaos.
Caught between a rock and a hard place, between an invasion and Minsk II, is there a third way for Ukraine: neutrality, like Finland? Some leading strategic thinkers argue that Ukraine’s adoption of a permanent neutral status could defuse the crisis. Others brand the idea as naïve, accusing its proponents as just doing Moscow’s bidding. In March 2014, former US Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, suggested that Ukraine take “a posture comparable with that of Finland”, associating with Europe politically and economically, but avoiding “institutional hostility” towards Russia. Other leading scholars point to Belgium, whose neutral status under the Treaty of London ensured its survival as an independent state. Most recently, Anatol Lieven of the Quincy Institute wrote that Ukraine’s neutrality, modelled on the Austrian State Treaty of 1955, would “remove the greatest motive by far for Russian interference in and intimidation of Ukraine”. Neutrality would also align with Kiev’s intention to become “a permanently neutral state”, as articulated in its 1990 “Declaration of State Sovereignty”.
The problem with neutrality, or Finlandisation of Ukraine, is that the goal of joining NATO and the EU is not only now enmeshed in the Constitution, it has been deeply ingrained in Ukraine’s foreign policy narrative over the past 20 years. When he became President in 2010, Victor Yanukovych removed a clause in the country’s foreign policy document and introduced a guiding principle of “non-alignment” (pozablokovist). Critics of this move note that it failed to prevent Putin’s aggression in 2014, proving convincingly that he ignores “non-alignment”, when it suits him. In any case, in international law, “non-alignment” is simply a unilateral declaration which may be unilaterally revoked. By contrast, “permanent neutrality” is based on multilateral treaties that extend recognition or guarantees by other states and could only be overturned with their acceptance. Experts argue that Ukraine would never enter a treaty of “permanent neutrality” with Russia, which would mean surrender to the Kremlin and abandoning all Euro-Atlantic aspirations.
But would it?
Finland is officially neutral, not a member of NATO, and like Ukraine shares a long border with Russia. It is a member of the EU and has even set sanctions against Russia after the invasion of Crimea and expelled a Russian diplomat following the Kremlin’s attempt to poison Sergei Skripal in Salisbury UK. From this, it’s clear that Finland is having its cake and eating it, by tightly committing itself to Western norms and politics while maintaining a good relationship with the ruling Russian regime throughout and after the Cold War. Finnish politicians are well practised and skilled in political tight-rope walking, being careful not to antagonise Russia and simultaneously developing a prosperous western-style democracy whose people have an unquestioned right to live in a sovereign state of their own.
Could Ukrainian politicians do the same by “Finlandising” their country? In theory, “yes”, but in practice even if they wished to do so, this would be almost impossible as, unlike Finland, the Kremlin casts doubt over Ukraine’s legitimate right to independent statehood. Putin continually insists that Ukrainians lack a national identity distinct from that of Russians—“we are the same people” he repeats time and time again. More of a problem for Ukraine is that their democratic vibrancy is a threat to the autocracy of Putin’s Russia. That Russians might one day demand the same freedoms keeps Vladimir awake at night.
Perhaps the strongest reason for Kiev resisting any move towards neutrality is that it simply doesn’t trust Moscow. The experience of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum remains indelibly inked into the country’s memory. Then, in exchange for giving up the huge stockpile of nuclear weapons remaining in the country, the legacy of the Soviet period, Ukraine received signed security guarantees from Russia that it would “refrain from the threat or the use of force” against Ukraine. Under the terms of the Memorandum, Russia also took on an obligation to respect Ukraine’s territorial integrity and the inviolability of its borders. Look what happened just twenty-years later—Russia invaded and annexed Crimea and has virtually taken control of the Donbas region. Proof beyond doubt that any agreement with Putin’s Russia isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.
Since the debacle of 2014, when President Yanukovych fled to Russia with the help of his friend in the Kremlin, leaving behind damning evidence of the corruption and kleptocracy of his regime (not unlike Putin’s), public support for NATO membership in Ukraine has increased substantially. A poll carried out by the International Republican Institute revealed that in November 2021, 54% of Ukrainians favoured NATO membership, up from 34% in 2014. Repeated today, it would in all probability be considerably higher. Unfortunately for Kiev, however, more than 13 years after the 2008 NATO summit that declared Ukraine would become a member, there is still no timetable for Kiev even obtaining an action plane for membership.
Unintended consequences are a regular feature in international relations. The most transparently obvious one for President Putin is that his current aggression is pushing more and more Ukrainians away from Russia towards the West, eliminating any possibility of neutrality. Their former tolerance and friendship have turned into visceral hatred towards Russia. Not surprising as “winning hearts and minds” doesn’t feature in the KGB training manual, so the concept is foreign to ex-Colonel Putin. Worse still for the Kremlin, neutral Finland and Sweden are carefully watching Putin’s belligerence towards Ukraine with great concern, as one day it could be directed towards them. Without a shadow of doubt, this would result in both countries instantly applying for NATO membership, encircling Russia even more.
Shooting oneself in the foot doesn’t even begin to describe Putin’s crass error in harassing and threatening Ukraine. A disastrous decision to invade would inevitably turn him into an international pariah, signalling the beginning of the end of the turbulent Putin 22-year reign. Few would shed any tears.
John Dobson is a former British diplomat, who also worked in UK Prime Minister John Major’s office between 1995 and 1998. He is currently Visiting Fellow at the University of Plymouth.