By Scott Taylor
With the war in Ukraine now into a second year, with no end in sight, it is high time that world leaders begin seeking a clear path to a resolution of this conflict. In the early days of the war Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy proclaimed that negotiations would be necessary to end the war.
However, as the Ukraine Armed Forces proved their mettle on the battlefield, and NATO countries – including Canada – continue to pour weaponry and training into the Ukraine defences, Zelenskyy has declared that total victory is now the ultimate objective.
Zelenskyy’s stated claim is to drive all Russian invaders from Ukraine’s territory. This includes both Donetsk and Luhansk, plus the Crimean Peninsula. While such a simplistic solution may sound plausible and just to a casual observer, the truth is that the situation is far more complex. Such an objective being achieved may in fact preclude any chance of a lasting peace in the region.
History buffs will recognize the fact that the Crimea has been part of Russia for some 250 years.
When the British, French and Turkish alliance fought the Crimean War in 1853, they did so against the Russians, not the Ukrainians.
It was not until February 1954 that an administrative directive of the Soviet Union transferred Crimea from the Russian to the Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic.
Sevastopol on the Crimean Peninsula has long been the home port of the Russian Navy’s Black Sea Fleet.
Even prior to Vladimir Putin’s 2014 annexation of the Crimea, Russia had a long-term lease with the Ukrainian government for the Sevastopol Navy base until at least 2040.
It is not likely that Putin or any potential successor to Russia’s leadership would agree to forfeiting this strategic asset.
Then there is the fact that the population of the Crimea is predominately ethnic Russian – about 70 per cent with the other major ethnicity being Muslim Tartars.
Those in the peninsula who identify as Ukrainian are approximately 10 per cent of the total population, which numbers 2.5 million.
If NATO-equipped Ukrainian forces can eventually drive the last of the Russian military from Crimea, the question then becomes what to do with such a potentially hostile ethnic Russian population.
An “ethnic cleansing” of that scale would not only cause massive human suffering, it would also deplete the region so completely of its workforce that Crimea would become unsustainable.
The alternative is to deploy a permanent Ukrainian security force to keep the ethnic Russian civilians in a state of enforced submission.
From recent experience with the Afghanistan and Iraq military occupations, we should realize that this is unlikely to end in success.
The same equation can be applied to the two self-proclaimed Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, collectively known as the Donbas.
Long forgotten in the popular refrain of “we stand with Ukraine” by Western politicians is the fact that the residents of Donetsk and Luhansk are by our stated definition, Ukrainian citizens as well.
The majority of the residents of these two oblasts (or republics) are either ethnic Russian or Russian speaking Ukrainians.
When the Maidan revolution toppled the pro-Russian regime in Kyiv in 2014, one of the first acts of the new parliament was to repeal Russian language rights within Ukraine.
Unsurprisingly the disenfranchised citizens of Donbas took up weapons and proclaimed their independence from the new pro-Western regime in Kyiv.
Both Donetsk and Luhansk held referendums in those early days, wherein the majority voted to join the Russian Federation.
At that stage, however, Putin was content with the annexation of Crimea, and he wanted Donetsk and Luhansk to remain as a buffer against NATO within a federated Ukraine.
On the eve of his Feb. 24, 2022, invasion, Putin formally recognized Donetsk and Luhansk as independent states. As the war dragged on Sept. 30, 2022, Putin announced Russia’s annexation of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. All four are oblasts in Ukraine.
I have little doubt that with the right combination of NATO sophisticated weapons, training and munitions, the Ukraine Armed Forces will eventually drive the Russian invaders from these four regions.
However, it will also mean driving out those Russian-Ukrainian civilians who have long lived in this region and who have taken up arms to resist the regime in Kyiv.
Again, the choice is either a large-scale ethnic cleansing or a permanent fixed security presence sitting atop a hostile civilian population.
In a perfect world, Canada would be well suited to broker a peace deal that invoked the recognition of regional language rights within a bilingual, unified Ukraine. However, we forfeited that possibility long ago.
