After Ukrainians discovered the ostentatious cutrelux mansion of President Viktor Yanukovych, who had just fled, they learned that he and his family had amassed $70 billion in foreign accounts. But Yanukovych, a man who came from the mining and industrial region of Donbass, in addition to getting rich, had tried something very difficult: to keep Ukraine in a balance between Russia and the West. It didn’t go well.
That winter a decade ago, Yanukovych had to choose between an association agreement with the EU – which had been brewing for years – or a customs union with Russia, which he knew would be unprofitable. Having chosen the first, Moscow unleashed a trade war against Ukraine, tariffs, product vetoes… And when the truth came, Yanukovych had to argue that the European path would be very expensive for the country.
Backtracking would cost him dearly personally. Just like in the Orange Revolution, people took to the streets. The first revolt of 2004, the Maidan (by the square, or maidan, of Independence) was reproduced this time as Euromaidan, and Yanukovych only knew how to respond with violence. Between 18 and 20 February 2014, after weeks of protest and occupation of official buildings, armed men, snipers, killed a hundred people (a dozen policemen also fell). The situation in the center of Kyiv became uncontrollable.
Yanukovych gave in to the political opposition, with strong support from Germany, Poland, France and the United States: he renounced the presidency to reinstate the 2004 Constitution, accepted a coalition government, elections, withdrawal of the police. .. The latter is the only one that was fulfilled, because the president did not go to Parliament to sign the pact and fled to Moscow to suffer Putin’s contempt.
Russia will barely play a role in a negotiation that the Russian president will repeatedly describe as a coup d’état, an argument to which he will add others: in Ukraine the Russian language is marginalized and the Nazis are in power. In reality, these were uncertain accusations: the law against the Russian was not signed, and as for the ultras, their struggle in Kyiv was rewarded with ministerial positions, and they soon lost political presence.
But Moscow’s plans to prevent Ukraine from moving towards Europe – and, more seriously, towards NATO – were already drawn up. In less than a week, Russian commandos without identification marks (they will be known as “little green men”) occupied the Parliament of the autonomous republic of Crimea. The Ukrainian garrisons, which did not receive orders from Kyiv, surrendered to the Government’s passivity. The annexation of the Russian-speaking peninsula was uncontested. Putin will say he made the decision to return Crimea to Russia on the night of February 22, after Yanukovych fled. On March 16, a referendum decided the return of Crimea to Russia.
A year later, the Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta revealed a document, prior to the events of February, in which it talks about the annexation of eastern Ukraine in the face of “EU intrigues”, and which provided for several actions of agitation
There were Russian agents adept at moving in the gray zone that galvanized the unrest in the Donbass, an alluvium population in origin that was barely recognized in the Ukraine of the Euromaidan, a reciprocal feeling between nationalists of the west to this post-Soviet region, a strange body. The Donbass rebels appointed “people’s mayors”, armed militias, occupied town halls and police stations… Finally, a diffuse plebiscite on the republics of Donetsk and Lugansk brought out a pro-Russian consciousness – encouraged by television and propaganda of Moscow – which, however, was not rewarded with explicit support from the Kremlin.
Kyiv’s response stoked the fire: an “anti-terrorist operation” that included tanks, aerial bombardments… But the Ukrainian army was as precarious as the State itself, and it was volunteers mobilized by oligarchs who constituted the attacking forces.
Kyiv talked about a Russian invasion, which nevertheless did not become explicit until the fall of 2014 with the appearance of troops and the Wagner Group. The Ukrainians, as a result of the progressive occupation of the Donbass, were exposed to negotiations. But the Minsk agreements, sponsored by Germany and France, sought to force Kyiv to politically accept rebels loyal to Moscow without guarantees of regaining control of its border with Russia, and that would turn the country into something like Bosnia.
Minsk only served to reduce Donbass to a low-intensity war, which leaves Ukraine semi-incapacitated. For Putin, an ideal situation… until he decides it isn’t anymore.