To understand the current tension between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Western powers, we have to refer right back to the events of 2012. In 2014, Barack Obama commented on the situation and said that ‘Russia has deliberately and repeatedly violated the sovereignty and integrity of Ukraine’ therefore the importance of this crisis should not be understated.

In 2012 Putin was re-elected for president of Russia; this was a fixed election and many protested. Among other things, Putin was known for feeding people with false information regarding Western governments. Consequently, Putin became increasingly unsettled due to the amount of civil unrest in Russia causing his political priorities to turn from economic growth to modern imperialism and many have accused Putin of ‘living on the wrong side of history’ this in short alludes to Putin wanting to revert back to Russia’s previous control, up until the late 80s and early 90s, of many Eastern European countries such as Poland.

In November 2013 there was major discontent in the Ukraine against the Putin-aligned Ukraine government. Protests were most apparent in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, this was because the city is in West Ukraine which speaks the Ukraine language and is pro-democracy as oppose to East Ukraine which is Russian speaking and borders the country too. The protesters preferred a pro-European government to a pro-Russian government and so eventually this government fell.

Thus, in March 2014 Putin invaded Crimea which is in East Ukraine. Unexpectedly, this acquires Putin with huge political popularity and so he decided to proceed with these annexations. In April Putin began to support pro-separatist rebels in seizing further Ukraine territory and later, Putin supplied them with advanced Surface to Air Missiles (SAM). These are designed for shooting down aircrafts and caused the July drama where Russian rebels shot down the Malaysian Airlines flight 17, killing all 298 people on board. This finally sparked a reaction from the Ukraine government and they sent their military to retake the Eastern cities occupied by Russian rebels. A number of rebels were pushed out of Ukraine leaving Putin in an administratively awkward position as now Russia is left with huge economic sanctions. Although, when the military did remove armaments from one town, the rebels would move to another. In September, in order to reduce the number of casualties, the Ukraine government planned a ceasefire which the rebels also agreed to and there was hope of a truce; but of course this plan did not go to plan and the ceasefire failed, this is because the rebels wanted a truce that would acknowledge the advancements that they had made.

The Ukraine Crisis has caused unease for Europe and America. Despite the evidence, Russia denies supplying pro-Russian rebels with weaponry. In October 2014 Putin made a strong speech in which he accused America of using its influence as a political ‘Big Brother’ to legalise intervals where they enforce their own agenda onto other countries. He described the time where during Soviet Russia’s military campaign in Afghanistan in the 1980s, America provided the Mujahideen rebels who were fighting against Russia with arms. However, this is universally considered menial in comparison to the annexation of Crimea. In February this year, the Ukraine Summit took place; the leaders of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France gathered to discuss the restoration of Ukraine’s border and a new truce was agreed. Over 5000 people have been killed by the violence in Ukraine and the question of how many more will die remains unanswerable.

Young Reporter

Shani Thomas

St Philomena's Catholic High School for Girls