What the West should learn from the Ukrainian Independence day
On August 24, 1991, Ukraine gained independence and it was not good news for the West. Just 23 days before this day, the US President George Bush addressed to the parliament of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialistic Republic his famous Chicken Kyiv speech. In that address George Bush had warned Ukraine against withdrawing from the USSR. He called such intention the "suicidal nationalism".
The pretext of that day was dramatic. By 1991 the Soviet Union had been disintegrating for years. Its planned economy was rather dead than alive, leaving people with the empty shops and paper money of no value. The communist party apparatus, despite the fresh leader at the top of the Politburo, was considered by its own population as corrupted and weak. It has just failed its test for transparency and adequence during the Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine, which eliminated any trust between Soviet citizens and its government. The numerous ethnic conflicts had been rising in the Soviet republics of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. The Baltic states were on their way to independence after unsuccessful attempts by the Kremlin to halt it. Finally, the major soviet Republic – Russia – has just proclaimed its own sovereignty at June 12, 1991 and elected Boris Yeltsin as its first President.
In this reality interpretation of the Ukrainian will to become independent as "suicidal nationalism" seemed rather astrange and inappropriate. But the West had its own reasons for doing that. No one wanted the USSR to fall apart just as it was in Yugoslavia. Everybody had a huge concern about the Soviet nuclear arsenal, deployed largely in Ukraine. Finally, Mikhail Gorbachov – the first and the last Soviet president, seemed to be a trusted partner to the West, despite his domestic unpopularity.
Despite all of that in 1991 Mr.Gorbachov was desperate in trying to reintegrate the empire. He planned to sign a new treaty between Moscow and the Soviet republics and delegate some of the sovereignty to the local authorities, including Ukrainian. But on August 19, 1991 a group of comunist party renegades attempted to overthrow Gorbachov in a coup that failed in the next 3 days. Mr.Yelsin gained actual control over Moscow. The Soviet national security machine – the Army alongside with the almighty KGB – were put on hold and disoriented.
The capital city Kyiv welcomed the failure of the coup in Moscow. Since August 19 more and more people have been flowing on the streets of the Ukrainian capital. They saw an opportunity to proclaim Independence from Moscow. The only one legal way to do it was passing an act through the parliament. But in 199 the Ukrainian parliament, Verkhovna Rada, consisted mostly of Kremlin-controlled communists. The speaker of the parliament was party propaganda instructor Leonid Kravchuk. The communistic majority was balanced with democratic pro Ukrainian opposition, led by Soviet dissident Viacheslav Chornovil.
3 days after the end of the coup in Moscow, Verkhovna Rada proclaimed the independence of the Ukrainian state. The Independence Act was passed with 346 votes from 362 delegates.
What happened next was a very atypical story. Few years earlier the members of the Warsaw Pact – Poland, Czech and Slovak Republics, Bulgaria, Hungary – proclaimed their independence from Moscow. Their independence was very quickly recognized by the world. And that recognition was not just on paper. It was followed by the western mentorship, presence and, finally, investments.
With Ukraine the story was different. No major players recognized it as an independent state. For the following 3 months Ukraine, the country with the largest territory in Europe, had the status of a de facto unrecognized state. The impression might be given that the West got suddenly afraid of the uncontrolled collapse of the Evil Empire. And there definitely were some reasons for that.
After the proclamation of Ukrainian Independence Russian president Boris Yeltsin called for a meeting where he discussed with his generals the possibility of nuclear strikes exchange between Russian and Ukraine, since both of them hosted nuclear arms. That scenario was impossible, since the command center of nuclear forces remained in Moscow, even though the missiles were deployed in Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan and other Soviet republics. But this debate has challenged the West to seek the non disarmament and proliferation guarantees from Ukraine.
3 years later, in 1994, the Budapest memorandum – a fourleteral deal between Russia, Ukraine, United States and Great Britain – was signed. Ukraine refused its nuclear arsenal in exchange for a guarantee of its territorial integrity. 20 years later Russia, a co-signer of the Budapest memorandum, invaded Ukraine and annexed the Crimea peninsula and some districts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. 8 years later, on February, 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine again for a land grab, which turned out to be the major military intervention on the continent since the Second World War. Ironically, the Budapest memorandum, which was designed to secure lasting peace, has achieved its non proliferation objective, but not the peace.
The second reason for the West not to recognize Ukraine immediately was the ongoing war in Yugoslavia, that included ethic cleansing and military actions around the Krsko nuclear power station in Slovenia. Recent Soviet history has already witnessed violent clashes between independence seekers and soviet troops. On December 19, 1986 the riot against the newly appointed party leader from Moscow emerged in Almaty, the capital of Kazakh Soviet republic. Two people were killed and thousands were wounded.
In 1987 the first clashes over the Karabakh region between Armenia and Azerbaijan emerged, giving a path to the full scale war that broke out between these two then Soviet republics in 1990 and remains as an unsolved issue by this day.
On April 9, 1989 the Soviet troops suppressed a peaceful demonstration of the supporters of Georgian independence in Tbilisi, leaving 19 people killed. The Soviet army was operating with the long wooden sapper’s shovels leaving thousands of demonstrators wounded.
In 1990 the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia proclaimed independence from the Soviet Union. Moscow responded with the failed attempt to retake the national television station in the Lithuanian capital Vilnius on January 13, 1991. 15 people were killed, almost 900 wounded.
As a result, by 1991 the USSR by no means was an ensemble of the nations, but rather a prison camp. But for an unknown reason the West was still supporting Mr.Gorbachev and chased the independence seekers to stay within the union that had been collapsing rapidly and with the bloodshed.
Perhaps, all these facts together can explain the reason why no major world power recognised Ukrainian independence in August, 1991. The leaders of the free world made it clear to the Ukrainian government that independence should be put to a referendum. Consequently, on December 1, 1991, 92.3% of all Ukrainians, including residents of Donbass and Crimea, voted for Ukrainian independence in a national referendum. The next day the independence was acknowledged by the Russian Federation and Canada. The United States recognized Ukraine on December 25, 1991.
This 3 months delay in independence recognition determined the West's attitude to Ukraine for a long time ahead. For the following years the West was neither present nor confident in Ukraine. The West was not there during the privatization in the 1990ies. And that vacuum was very fast filled with the sharks in the muddy waters, who then became known as the oligarchs. The West was not there when Ukraine first declared its intention to join NATO and EU in 2002. And this vacuum was very fast filled with the Russian imperialistic narrative, that can be narrowed down to a confession that Ukraine is an artificial country and should not exist, as Russian president Vladimir Putin put it to the US President George Bush during their meeting in 2008.
No, Ukraine was by no means isolated. But at the same time it was kept at a distance. Some people in the West may argue that Ukraine didn’t receive as much attention as its central European neighbors because it was not successful in nation building and modernization. When in reality it is hard to find any other country that was so much devoted to European values. For the last 31 years of independence Ukrainans had three revolutions – in 1991, 2004 and 2014 – against their corrupted and pro-Russian leaders. That was the price the nation paid for its original choice.
On the contrary with the neighboring dictatorships in Russia and Belarus, Ukraine has also proved to be a working democracy, electing for the last 3 decades 6 presidents and 9 parliaments for the last 31 year.
Finally the response of Ukraine to the unprovoked Russian aggression in 2022 disproved all the arguments that it is a failed state. The failed states don’t have an army capable of tackling the nuclear superpower. The infrastructure of the failed state breaks down during the war, when Ukraine still has an active government, reliable communications, a weakened but still working economy. The society of a failed state disintegrates when Ukarianes are united as never before.
Today the West is faced with an old challenge – to what extent Ukraine should be recognized? It seems now the time has come not only to recognize Ukraine but to accept it finally to the club. In other words – the West should not leave this country with a vacuum of presence. Right now, Ukraine desperately needs arms. And the West should do everything possible in delivering Ukraine the weapons that will provide Ukrainian strategic domination at the battlefield. Another important task is to secure and enlarge the support base for Ukraine among other members of the international community.
But the most urgent task is to recover and rebuild Ukraine after the war. And that is where the West should be present on the ground with its mentorship, investments, technologies, trust and support. It is the success of the post war Ukraine and its strong bond with the West that will ensure Putin’s strategic defeat and bring lasting peace back on the continent.
