With the suspension of preparations for EU trade agreement on 21 November 2013, Ukraine has fallen into a severe sociopolitical crisis and finally resulted in a coup d’etat to overthrow President Yanukovych. At present, the crisis has been complicatedly changing. The root of the crisis originates from a fierce geopolitical rivalry among major powers pivoting Ukraine.

A session of the UN General Council on Ukraine (Photo: VNA)

Ukraine-The Centre of Geopolitical Rivalry Among Major Powers

After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the US and NATO continued their intention to put Russia and post-Soviet states into the Western orbit. In order to accomplish their plot, under the auspice of the US and NATO, a regional organization, named GUAM Group (Georgia, Ukraine, Azerbaijan and Moldova), was formed with the task to implement the Project of democratic and reform process in post-Soviet space. The nature of the project is not aimed at developing democracy, reform and economic development, but it is an actual mask to gradually neutralize political and economic dependence of post-Soviet republics on Russia; first and foremost in the areas, such as energy, infrastructure systems, etc., moving toward to separate these states from Russia and merge them into the European Union (EU) and NATO, and set up a geopolitical strategic belt to “circle” Russia.

At the NATO Summit 1999 in Washington, GUAM was changed into GUUAM with the participation of Uzbekistan. At the Meeting, GUUAM adopted the Washington Statement which confirmed the participation of the states in the project to integrate into EU and NATO. GUUAM’s Charter was signed during a Summit in Yalta in 2001. However, a year later, realizing that the goal and nature of GUUAM tended to be away from initial intention of “developing democracy and reform” , in particular, GUUAM’s intention to form a military alliance in the post-Soviet space, Uzbekistan decided to withdrew from GUUAM. Following this, Moldova and Ukraine did the same in 2009 and 2010 respectively.

Under this context, at the European Union ‘s General Affairs and External Relations Council,  EU made a plan of establishing the Eastern Partnership (EaP) to replace GUAM. This was EU’s new project to publicize the expansion of relation between EU and the six post-Soviet states (Ukraine, Moldova, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia and Belarus). Ostensibly, the Eastern Partnership’s priorities were “fostering democratic reform, economic cooperation and moving toward to build a free market”, but the hidden objective was to gradually bring those states to the deep integration and linkages with Western countries’ geopolitics, including the possible joining of NATO. In order to make the Eastern Partnership become true, at the November 2013 Vilnius Summit meeting, EU  initialed a Free Trade Agreement with Moldova and made preparations for a Trade Agreement with Ukraine. However, the purpose of the meeting was completely changed when President Yanukovych announced Ukraine’s decision to cancel the signing of the agreement with EU. Yanukovych’s decision made Western countries feel “shocked” since Ukraine is of geopolitical significance, and is regarded as a “bridge” to link Asia and Europe continents. More importantly, the cancel of the agreement signing might lead to the collapse of the Project of building the Eastern Partnership which was rekindled by EU. According to international political analysts, this was the major reason of the storm of the protest, aimed at overthrowing President Yanukovych in Ukraine. Notably, most of the protesters went on strike because their “dream of Europe” was broken. Some of Western politicians affirmed that the storm of the protest was just the outside surface, and Ukrainian people who were instigated and provoked by opposition elements, and were used as a tool to accomplish the goal of the West’s geopolitical Eastern Partnership Project.

Therefore, it seems that public opinion in Russia and other countries is reasonable when calling the storm of the protest by the name “2014 Orange Revolution 2.0”. Observations of the situation at Kiev’s Independence Square had proved that opposition forces were just the same as those in 2004 orange revolution; the outsiders who supported opposition forces and familiar political techniques, aimed at overthrowing governments like in “color revolutions” in post-Soviet space and “Arab Spring” in North Africa and Middle East, were still the same.

For Russia, Ukraine is of special geopolitical significance because of the long standing tradition of political, economic and cultural relation in the post-Soviet space. Therefore, Russia always wishes to develop sustainable cooperation with those states for mutual interests. In order to fulfill this goal, and on the basis of the Customs Union that includes Kazakhstan, Russia and Belarus, Russian President V. Putin proposed to build Eurasian Union and form an integrated economic space in Asia-Europe continents. In fact, the Customs Union has been operational since 1 June 2011, and on the border of the three countries, an unified customs system area was completely built, aimed at setting up an immense market of more than 165 million consumers in the framework of a common legal system, simultaneously creating an equal playing ground,  freely transferring capital, goods and services, as well as labor forces. Based on the foundation of the Customs Union, Eurasian Union is likely to become one of the poles of the contemporary world, and play as a practical, effective and mutual beneficial linkage among European and Asia-Pacific countries. In particular, the coordination and mobilization of potentiality, such as: natural resources, capital, human resource, etc., will facilitate Eurasian Union’s ability compete with advanced economies in the world in various areas, such as: industry, technology, investment attraction, etc., making contribution to the stability of the global economic development. Following Russia’s initiative, post-Soviet independent states have made the project of “New Agreement of Free Trade Area”, based on the principles of World Trade Organization (WTO). Currently, Ukraine has not officially joined the Customs Union yet, it has become a critical part to form a market area of this organization.

For China, Ukraine is one of the crucial chains in the construction of Beijing’s “New Silk Road” from Central Asia via Europe to Middle East and Africa. During Ukrainian President Yanukovych’s visit to China on 3 December 2013, the two countries had established the strategic partnership. President Yanukovych affirmed that Ukraine supported China's proposal of establishing a “New Silk Road”. China agreed to provide Ukraine with a 10 billion USD loan, including 8 billion USD for the construction of Sevastopol seaport. At the same time, China signed a deal to rent Ukraine’s 2 million hectares of farmland for a period of 50 years to grow agricultural products. Besides, China also signed a number of other agreements with Ukraine in the field of industry, especially the defense industry.

Therefore, developments of the crisis in Ukraine have shown the nature of Europe’s big geopolitical game of which EU and the US have exerted their effort to completely control Ukraine. This does help explain the reason why  leading politicians of some Western countries, for the first time in the international relation, paid visits to Kiev in person, to directly support opposition forces both materially and spiritually, aimed at putting more pressure on Ukrainian President Yanukovych; since they are aware that if Ukraine does not link with EU, the Eastern Partnership will disappear. This is the major driver for the outsiders to strongly back opposition forces to go on strike and riot, aimed at overthrowing President Yanukovych. Coping with this situation, Minister of Foreign  Affairs of Russian Federation Sergey Lavrov uttered and called the US and EU’s responses “acts of madness”, and compared it with the response to President Yanukovych’s statement to make nuclear bombs or to go to war with a certain country. According to Sergey Lavrov, it is no doubt that Ukrainian opposition forces’ resistance is an excessive political provocation. An ABC News reporter considers what has happened in Kiev as a war among European countries to compete for influence over Eastern European countries as well as post-Soviet republics.

Crimea-Geopolitical Knot in Ukraine

After the overthrowing of President Yanukovych, all parties’ confrontation has concentrated in Crimea where Russia’s Black Sea Fleet based in Sevastopol. While Russia objected and regarded the coup d’etat to overthrow Ukrainian government as a violation of the Constitution, the US and EU supported Kiev new government in all aspects in order to totally eliminate Russia’s influence in Ukraine. Paul Craig Roberts, President Reagan’s economic adviser revealed that the goal of the backers who supported opposition forces to create waves of violence, leading to the overthrowing President Yanukovych, was to expel Russia and its Black Sea naval base from Crimea, to seize important defense industrial contracts from Russia, simultaneously set up military bases in Ukraine and made them spring-boards for controlling over Russia. Therefore, number 1 goal of riot and crisis in Ukraine is to aim at Russia and expel Russia from Crimea.

Having been aware of their ambitious goal, Crimean government declared its independence from Ukraine and decided to hold the referendum for joining Russian Federation. Russia expressed its support to Crimean people and regarded this as their legitimate right to exercise their right to national self-determination, and this was the path to returned to their Fatherland. Originated with their “double standard” thinking, the US and the West accused Russia and Crimea of the violation of international laws, at the same time threatened to impose economic sanctions on Russia. However, the result of the referendum with more than 95 percent of votes (out of 81,3 percent voters) agreed to merge Crimea with Russia on 16 March 2014, has partially untied the geopolitical knot in Ukraine, creating an opportunity for a political solution for the crisis in the country. Although the US denied the result of the referendum in Crimea, in a recent telephone conversation with Russian President V. Putin, the US President B. Obama  affirmed that the US has made effort on diplomatic solutions for Ukrainian crisis, including the consideration of Russia and Ukraine’s interests. The talk seemed to be softer than “noisy” words in the past, the US and EU will certainly have more assertive actions toward Russia in the future. Therefore, geopolitical rivalry in Ukraine is unlikely to halt. International opinion is  concerned that if the crisis continues to escalate and become uncontrollable, the consequence will be worse for Russia, EU, Ukraine and the international community.

By Le The Mau