Ukraine crisis: Find out how MH17 became a victim
Malaysian flight MH17, carrying 298 people was shot down by rebels
By : DC Correspondent
Update: 2014-07-21 14:11 GMT
1) What is Ukraine Crisis?
In this photo, anti-government protesters clash with riot police
outside Ukraine's parliament in Kiev, Ukraine on Feb. 18. (Photo: AP)
Ukraine is a country wedged between Russia and Europe. During 1991, it was part of Soviet Union, and since then has been a less-than-perfect democracy with a very weak economy.
Since 2013 the region has been in crisis when anti-government protests went violent. The most recent stage of the crisis came on Thursday, when a rebel-group shot down Malaysian passenger airplane MH17, carrying 298 people. Soon after the incident the Ukrainian government accused pro-Russian separatist rebels of downing the plane. The incident has heightened tensions in the region and could have long-term geopolitical consequences.
The internal Ukrainian crisis began in November 2013, when President Viktor Yanukovych rejected a deal for greater integration of Ukraine with the European Union, sparking countrywide protests.
Since then, three big things happened: Yanukovych was run out of the country in February, Russia invaded and annexed Crimea in March, and pro-Russia separatist rebels in eastern Ukraine have brought the relationship between Russia and the West to its lowest point since the Cold War.
2) What is Crimea?
(Graphics: AP)
Crimea is considered by most of the world to be a region of Ukraine that's under hostile Russian occupation. Russia considers it a rightful and historical region of Russia that it helped to liberate in March. Geographically, it is a peninsula in the Black Sea with a location strategically important.
3) Who are the separatist rebels destabilizing Ukraine?
A pro-Russian rebel fires his weapon during clashes with Ukrainian
troops on the outskirts of Luhansk. (Photo: AP/ File)
The precise origins of the rebels are unknown, although the West has repeatedly blamed Russia for instigating their recent activities.
On Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin admitted for the first time that Russian soldiers were present in Crimea before its annexation by Russia, but denied that forces were currently on the ground in eastern Ukraine.
The rebels do not wear any obvious Russian military insignia, but this could be because any signs of Moscow endorsement could increase the chance of the West instigating more severe sanctions.
4) Who is Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych?
Viktor Yanukovych, left, shaking hands with Russian president
Vladimir Putin, has somehow vanished. (File photo, Feb. 14, 2014). (Photo: AP)
Viktor Yanukovych was elected Ukraine's president in 2010. But he was ousted by popular protests and his own parliament in February 2014. He fled to Russia, where he is living in exile.
The key facts about Yanukovych are this: he is pro-Russian (and, like lots of Ukrainians, actually a native speaker of Russian rather than Ukrainian), he has a well-earned reputation for corruption and heavy-handedness, and he had a base of support in Ukraine's predominantly Russian-speaking east but was never very popular in its predominantly Ukrainian-speaking west.
5) What does Ukraine’s east-west divide have to do with the current crisis?
An opposition supporter holds a Ukrainian flag in the center of
Kiev's Independence Square. (Photo: AP)
Ukrainians never really resolved the national identity crisis between its Russia-facing east and pro-European west that was sparked by its 1991 independence from the Soviet Union. The current crisis is, in many ways, an extension and perhaps culmination of that internal — and external — dispute about their country's identity.
6) Is the Ukraine crisis a new Cold War?
Not really. The Cold War was a global struggle for hegemony between two, roughly co-equal powers. It divided Europe between west and east and then divided much of the world. It included bloody proxy wars on just about every continent, and raised a very serious risk of global thermonuclear war.
None of that is true today. The US is many times more powerful and influential than Russia; neither America nor the Western world nor democracy itself are at any real risk. More to the point, almost the entire world opposes Russia's annexation of Crimea. President Obama has described Russia's actions as the behavior of a weak country. He is broadly correct, although Russia is clearly still strong enough to annex neighboring territory.
7) Why does Putin keep talking about Yugoslavia?
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivers his address on the Crimean
referendum on reunification with Russia in the Grand Kremlin Palace
in Moscow, Russia, 18 March 2014. (Photo: AP)
Putin has repeatedly justified Russia's annexation of Crimea by comparing it to Kosovo's Western-backed 2008 independence from Serbia. (Kosovo and Serbia are in southeast Europe, part of the former Yugoslavia.) His point is two-fold: 1) That Crimea's annexation was a humanitarian mission justified by international norms, so everyone stop complaining, and 2) that Western opposition to the annexation exposes the West's hypocrisy and dishonesty.
In 1999, the now-gone southeastern European nation of Yugoslavia fought a civil war. It was between the Serbian government and ethnic-minority rebels in the autonomous region of Kosovo. The Serbian forces committed major abuses, including violence against civilians, and the Western countries of NATO launched air strikes against the Serbs to make them withdraw. Kosovo and Serbia tried for nine years to reconcile, but in 2008 Kosovo declared independence, which the West supported and Russia opposed as illegitimate.
8) What are the US and Europe doing to try to stop Putin?
The timing of the G-20 meeting is awkward and uncomfortable
for the White House. (Photo: AP)
Both the US and European Union have imposed economic sanctions on Russia to punish it for annexing Crimea and to deter it from invading eastern Ukraine, which is a remote but not out-of-the-question possibility. And the US on April 28 threatened much broader sanctions if Russia does invade. There are two apparent goals of sanctions: personally hurt Putin and his inner circle, so that he'll think twice before escalating further, and accelerate the damage that Putin is already causing his own economy with his adventures in Ukraine. The sanctions are working in that they're hurting the Kremlin, and it's possible that they have kept Putin from invading, but they have definitely so far not gotten him to back down entirely or withdraw from Crimea.
9) Is Russia going to invade eastern Ukraine?
Ukrainian government troops guard an administration building in
Mariupol, eastern Ukraine, on Thursday. (Photo: AP)
It looked for a few weeks like Russia was going to stop at Crimea, but there are growing reasons to worry that Russia may also try to annex some parts of eastern Ukraine as well. Russia has amassed lots of troops on the border with eastern Ukraine, and Western leaders are taking this seriously enough that the chief of NATO publicly warned Russia against "intervening further."
Since early April, increasingly numerous and well-armed pro-Russia separatists (almost certainly backed by the Kremlin at least in part) have seized government buildings in eastern Ukrainian regional capitals. This is unnervingly similar to what happened in Crimea. These regions border Russia and have some of Ukraine's largest Russian-speaking populations, so if Russia were to advance further, this is where they would go.
10) What does the MH17 plane crash have to do with the crisis?
People inspect the crash site of a passenger plane near the village
of Grabovo, Ukraine, Thursday, July 17, 2014. (Photo: AP)
On Thursday, July 17th, Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 crashed in an area of eastern Ukraine where separatist rebels are active. Tensions were already on the rise, as Ukraine had recently retaken several rebel-held downs and Russia had been supplying weapons to Ukrainian rebels.
Speculation immediately circulated that rebels may have shot the plane down, either deliberately or by having mistaken it as a Ukrainian military aircraft. The Ukrainian government claimed to have evidence that the rebels and Russia were responsible. A rebel account, for their part, says a Ukrainian military jet shot down MH17, but has presented no evidence.
As yet, there is no clear and demonstrated connection between the Ukraine crisis and the crash; this may have been an accident of some kind unrelated to the crisis. Still, with tensions already high, the world is watching closely to see what, or who, caused the crash.