North Atlantic Treaty Organization: Russian Aggression—the Situation in Ukraine

Dear Delegates:

Welcome to YMGE 2017! My name is Oleksa Alex Martiniouk and it is my distinct pleasure to welcome you to the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. I am looking forward to the exciting discussion, learning, and debate that will take place in our committee and cannot wait to hear the innovative ideas and solutions that you will bring to the table as our sessions progress.

In my experiences with Model Government, I have served as both a chair and a Secretariat member on various occasions, but I have also participated plenty as a delegate. I have felt the feelings of excitement, wonder, and uncertainty that face you as you prepare to take part in fast-paced debate, address nuanced crises, and develop ideas through constant collaboration with your peers. I am prepared to help you along the way with any concerns or difficulties you may have and am incredibly excited to see the way in which you will address important contemporary issues with care, consideration, and collaboration as both you and your perspectives develop and grow throughout the process. Model Government is an unparalleled platform to grow as an individual, be it in the skills of public speaking, researching, debating, or cooperation with your peers, and I hope that you all take advantage of the great opportunities that YMGE will present you with in this regard. We, the committee directors, have put in a lot of work preparing these topics, and we hope to see that mirrored in the work you put into your preparation for and participation in the committees.

Of course, I’d also like to share a little bit about myself. I am a rising junior in Berkeley College at Yale University (Berkeley is objectively the best residential college at Yale). I am studying Global Affairs and Computer Science and have particularly strong interests in both the arts and the sciences. I was born and raised in New York City, but my family hails from Ukraine—I visit the country every year and even lived there sporadically in my youth. On campus, I am especially involved with the Yale International Relations Association (YIRA), of which YMGE in a constituent program, and have served on the Secretariats of Yale Model United Nations (I’m currently the Secretary-General), the Security Council Simulation at Yale, the International Relations Symposium at Yale, and Yale Model United Nations Taiwan. I also had the chance to travel to the Russian Federation on a YIRA foreign affairs research trip, a remarkably rewarding experience given my interest in Eastern European politics and the opportunity it provided to meet with opposition leaders and intellectuals. Outside of YIRA, I am the Editor-in-Chief of the Yale Banner Publications, the 175 year-old organisation that produces Yale’s yearbook, and the President of the Ukrainian Student Organization at Yale.

I am extremely excited to meet all of you this upcoming November and encourage you to take advantage of this topic guide and contact me with any questions you may have about this committee, Yale, or anything else you might be wondering about, really. Feel free to write to me at oleksa.martiniouk@yale.edu—see you soon!

Best,

Oleksa Alex Martiniouk

The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, abbreviated NATO and OTAN in the two official languages of the Organisation, English and French, is a collective security alliance which consists of twenty-nine North American and European states. The Organisation was formed on April 4, 1949 with the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty, deriving it authority from the United Nations Charter, Article 51—twelve countries were part of the alliances founding: Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In essence, the Organisation is simply a vehicle for the obligations encoded into the Articles of the Treaty to be realised. Since its inception, the alliance has offered membership to many other European states and, most notably, and possibly even controversially, the alliance expanded into Eastern Europe, extending the promise of collective security rather quickly to various states formerly part of the Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union after the Socialist Republics abandoned the Moscow government. This expansion drew the ire of Russian officials, many of whom claim that, in the discussions surrounding the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany, an agreement was reached specifying that NATO would not expand further east, even though the topic of eastward expansion was never brought up and, even if such an agreement were to have existed, one of the parties to such an agreement, the USSR, no longer exists. The twenty-ninth member to find its place under NATO’s nuclear umbrella was Montenegro, a small, formerly Yugoslavian State on the Adriatic and sparked the latest wave of anti-NATO sentiment from the Russian Federation.

It was during the Korean War in 1950 when NATO formally created a military command structure. Since then, the Organisation has taken an active role in Afghanistan, Kosovo, the Mediterranean, and other international crises and has formed partnerships with non-member states, such as those in Eastern Europe, and international organisations, such as the African Union. The Organisation regularly engages in military drills with these partners and collaborates on military and technological development.

One of the most important Article of the North Atlantic Treaty, and likely the only the general public is familiar with, is Article 5—the Article states that “an armed attack against one or more of them...shall be considered an armed attack against them all.” The Article reflects one of the initial missions of the Organisation well: to deter Soviet expansion and respond to the threat that the USSR represented during the Cold War. But the Organisation was created with two other core missions—preventing a revival of destructive European nationalism and promoting European integration. Though many questioned NATO’s purpose after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, the Organisation persisted and, in many respects, adapted its original missions as the geopolitical scene transformed. Not only were NATO members drawn into Afghanistan following the 2001 terrorist attacks, but the Organisation has also served as both a military and political reassurance to Eastern European states—to paraphrase Timothy Snyder, Yale’s preeminent historian of Eastern Europe, where NATO goes, the European Union soon follows.

Collapse of the Soviet Union and NATO-Russian Relations

The Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 following the August Putsch, a failed coup d’etat staged by hardline members of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and the subsequent secession of key Republics, such as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Following the dissolution of the USSR, the Russian Federation initiated relations with NATO when it joined the North Atlantic Cooperation Council in 1991. Later, in 1994, Russia joined the Partnership for Peace, a partnership set up to facilitate cooperation on military training, drills, and technological developments. The main areas in which this cooperation functioned, prior to its suspension in 2014, were fighting terrorism, military cooperation, cooperation in Afghanistan one logistics and anti-drug production efforts, industrial development, and weapons non-proliferation.

At the 1997 NATO Summit in Paris, France, NATO and Russia signed the Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security, which essentially presented a plan for further NATO-Russian relations and cooperation. Most notably, both parties to the agreement stated that they did not view each other to be adversaries and would aim to “build together a lasting and inclusive peace in the Euro-Atlantic area on the principles of democracy and cooperative security.” A NATO-Russia Council was set up in 2002 to serve as a forum for consultation on security issues and cooperation. In addition to providing support in Afghanistan in 2009, Russia participated in two joint exercises with NATO in 2011, one with fighter jets and the other with submarines—to date, those have been the only joint military ventures conducted by both the Russian Federation and NATO.

NATO, Ukraine, and the Post-Soviet Space

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO pursued significant expansion into Eastern Europe through an Open Door policy. NATO first expanded into Eastern Europe when Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic joined the alliance in 1999, much to Russia’s opposition. At the 2002 Prague Summit, talks of accession were initiated with Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia—in the less than two years between that Summit and the 2004 Istanbul Summit, all of these states became members of the Organisation. The rapid extension of membership into the Post-Soviet space brought hope to the emerging democracies in these states and anger to Moscow. Though the alliance claims not to pose a threat to the Russian Federation, it does significantly limit the Russian Federation’s ability to interfere in the political situations of neighbouring countries through military actions and makes it marginally more difficult for the state to defend itself in the event that an offensive were to be initiated between the countries.

Ukraine’s relationship with NATO has been at all points of the spectrum in recent history and the debate of whether membership is rational and/or possible is ongoing on both sides in the relationship. Ties to the alliance were established with the signing of the NATO-Ukraine Action Plan in 2002, with Ukraine entering the Intensified Dialogue programme on membership in NATO in 2005. In 2008, Ukraine, under the leadership of pro-Western Viktor Yushchenko, sent an official letter of application to the Membership Action Plan, drawing significant opposition and lobbying from Russian leaders and officials.

Ukraine Pivots to the West

The Orange Revolution represents one of the defining moments in modern Ukrainian history and, though its results were far from permanent, it represented a popular desire to establish rule of law and Western norms and political culture in Ukraine. Following reports of voter fraud in an election that appeared to have been won by the more pro-Russian candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, the country erupted in protest and city squares were filled with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators taking part in the non-violent, colour revolution. Not only did the revolution result in the opposing candidate’s, Viktor Yushchenko’s, victory (after a few sophisticated attempts to assassinate him), the amount of orange clothes in the honourable Chair’s wardrobe also skyrocketed by about 500 percent. Though the efficiency and efficacy of the victory was marred by controversy and infighting between pro-Western parties in the country in the following years, Yushchenko’s presidency was characteristic for Ukraine’s willingness to pursue issues and policies that were formerly considered taboo because they would have angered the country’s eastern neighbour—pursuing NATO membership was an obvious one, but policies such as recognising the Holodomor, the brutal, manmade famine engineered by Stalin which resulted in the death of millions of ethnic Ukrainians, as genocide were also part of this new trend in Ukrainian politics.

Ukraine’s Failed Bid for NATO Membership

In 2008, during the presidency of Yushchenko, Ukraine formally sought membership in NATO. United States President George W. Bush called it a “bold decision” and declared that the United States “strongly supports [Ukraine’s] request”—both Barack Obama and John McCain, presidential candidates at the time, also threw their support behind the decision. But one world leader had the exact opposite opinion of Ukraine’s potential membership in NATO; Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened that NATO membership for Ukraine would render Ukraine an enemy state and could force Russia to “target its missile systems at Ukraine.” This proved to be enough for significant European member states of NATO to question extending NATO membership to Ukraine and Georgia, another pro-Western, post-Soviet state which was seeking NATO membership at the time.

Though it’s important to note that underwhelming public support for NATO membership in Ukraine may have been a factor in Germany’s and France’s decision to block the possibility of initiating the Membership Action Plan for Ukraine and Georgia, the vetoing states were rather unambiguous in justifying their decision—French Prime Minister François Fillon said, in a radio interview, ”We are opposed to the entry of Georgia and Ukraine because we think that it is not a good answer to the balance of power within Europe and between Europe and Russia.” Though the Cold War had ended, large European states such as Germany and France appeared less eager to further challenge the geopolitical balance established in the times of the Soviet Union—the seeming excitement that brought many of the Warsaw Pact, Baltic, and Yugoslav states into the alliance had faded and Ukraine and Georgia were late to the party. Relations between NATO and Ukraine and further steps following the rejection were left ambiguous, until President Viktor Yanukovych, the pro-Russian president that was removed from office due to voter fraud as a result of the Orange Revolution back in 2005, was elected in 2010 and abandoned pursuing NATO membership for Ukraine entirely.

Russian Aggression in Georgia

Russia’s military action in Georgia represented a particularly sore spot for European politics and NATO. During the Beijing Olympics in 2008, Russian forces staged an invasion of two northern regions of Georgia with significant percentages of Russian-speakers, Abkhazia and South Ossetia. Formal meetings of the NRC were suspended—NATO, as well as individual member states, have since changed the way they interact with the Russian Federation and NATO has called on the Russian state to revoke their recognition of the so-called republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Yanukovych’s Pivot to Russia

In 2010, NATO-Ukraine relations took a sharp turn when the 2010 election was won by Viktor Yanukovych, who quickly stated that there was “no question of Ukraine joining NATO.” The issue of NATO membership was quickly shelved and the Party of Regions, the president's party in the parliament or Verkhovna Rada, pushed through a bill that prohibited Ukraine from joining any military blocs.

Revolution of Dignity

Though the Revolution of Dignity is not necessarily directly related to the Russian invasion and partial occupation of Ukraine, the event is important in how its legacy affects the views of Ukrainians and the actions of the government and also because it is often invokes by the Russian Federation in defense of the existence of the Russian-supported separatist enclaves in Ukraine and the illegal annexation of Crimea.

The Revolution of Dignity, originally called Euromaidan because it was sparked by Yanukovych’s rejection of the EU Association Agreement in favour of closer ties with the Russian Federation, began in November of 2013 and came to a conclusion in February of 2014 with the ousting of Yanukovych and an early Presidential election as Yanukovych went into hiding in southern Russia. The Revolution began as a protest organized by students but quickly turned into a national movement supported by a wide range of generational, socio-economic, and ethnic groups as peaceful protests were met with draconian, and often deadly, responses from the Yanukovych government. Specifically, it is believed that, as a result of government actions, over one hundred, and potentially up to seven hundred eighty, protesters died (referred to as the Heavenly Hundred in Ukraine), nearly 2000 protestors were injured, and a couple hundred went missing, were abducted, arrested, and/or imprisoned.

Though the protests were initially organized in opposition to Yanukovych’s rejection of the EU Association Agreement, the hugely imbalanced response of the government quickly mobilized the general public to come out and support the protest-turned-revolution. Millions of Ukrainians in Kyiv and all around Ukraine came out to support the protests, many of them defending the protester camps over night, and, in many ways, societies were formed around these camps as volunteers took on specialised tasks necessary for the sustainment of the continuous protests. Near the end of the Revolution, the streets became a battlefield between the protestors and the Berkut, a now-defunct portion of the Ukrainian police force used for the attacks on the protestors, as well as snipers from the police force and unknown sources. It soon became clear that the Revolution was not to be contained as, even when Euromaidan leaders communicated that they had come to a compromise with the government, the protestors did not back down and continued to push forward. In anticipation of a government collapse and the storming of his presidential residence, Yanukovych escaped the country and took refuge in the Russian Federation. It seemed as though the country could now begin to heal, with important government turnovers and restructuring happening soon after.

Case Study: Pro-Russian Counter Protests

Though Pro-Russian counter protests appeared fairly minimal during the Revolution of Dignity, with numbers pretty insignificant in comparison with the Revolution of Dignity gatherings and counter protestors appearing to be funded by Yanukovych’s government and Pro-Russian entities, they quickly escalated and unexpectedly became disastrous for Ukraine. In the wake of the government turnover, Pro-Russian entities took advantage of the moment of relative weakness and began to occupy state buildings, such as police departments and city halls, in regions of Ukraine with higher percentages of ethnic Russian populations. While most of these provocations died down with time, others became the starting points for what would later become the Russian-backed separatists of Donetsk and Luhansk.

Russian Invasion of Ukraine

One of the first major military incursions made by the Russian Federation into Ukrainian territory was the invasion of Crimea with “little green men.” The “little green men,” “little” being a translation of the diminutive form used for “men in this case,” were so called because they wore no Russian insignia but were by many believed to be Russian special forces (a claim which is no longer disputed following Putin’s admission of this fact). With no physical resistance from Ukrainian forces due the terrible state of the military following the Yanukovych years, these forces quickly occupied important government and military buildings and complexes and, following their occupation of the Crimean parliament and illegal annexation of the region approved in the Russian government, supervised the holding of a referendum on the status of Crimea. Given the absurd circumstances, wording of the referendum, and significant military presence during the process, most of the international community refused to recognize both the annexation and the referendum. The Russian Federation continues to occupy the Ukrainian peninsula and the region remains a “temporarily occupied region of Ukraine.”

The second theatre of what could be describes as a Russian military incursion into Ukraine is located in the Donbas region of Ukraine, which comprises the southern halves of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine. These conflicts began as pro-Russian demonstrations and occupations of government buildings and escalated into a full-blown conflict between Ukraine and the self-declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. The Ukrainian government, in particular, has referred to its military operations against these Russian-backed groups as an Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO)—sparking a political debate on whether the Ukrainian government should acknowledge that this is a proxy war with the Russian Federation. Much of the leadership positions in these so-called republics have been held by Russian citizens, Russian soldiers have been captured within the territory of Ukraine, Russian equipment has been found to be used within the territory of Ukraine, particularly in the shooting down of the MH17, Russian artillery has been fired across the border of Ukraine, and it is believed by some that anywhere between fifteen and eighty percent of combatants in the forces of these so-called republics come from Russia and are often pooled from Russian military personnel.

NATO’s Response to the Invasion

In response to the invasion of Ukraine and continued military incursions within the country, NATO has repeatedly condemned the Russian Federation for its actions. NATO intensified its presence within member countries that were formally within the Soviet sphere of influence, such as the Baltic states, Romania, and Poland, and has devoted more funding and resources to expeditionary missions. NATO has also held joint military exercises with the Ukrainian army. In recent months, NATO, along with the Cuiavian University in Poland, have been working to enhance Ukraine’s defense education.

The NATO website is a good starting point for more overview information on the alliance and the alliance's relationships with various states around the world, such as Ukraine and Russia.

Radio Free Europe is a great source with a large body of coverage on issues relating to NATO, Russia, and Ukraine.

It's important to be weary of Russian sources linked to the government, such as RT, because they will almost always tout the government line and will act as producers of state propaganda on an issue like this, given that it's a hot topic in Russia. When consuming Ukrainian media output, it can be helpful to find out which oligarch owns the media company, because their coverage might sometimes reflect their particular views on other political forces in the system.

As with any hot topic in contemporary politics, it's important to recognize and understand biases that exist in coverage and scholarly work on the issues. With many different groups and states relevant to the question of Russian aggression and the invasion of Ukraine, one should try to actively identify which position the piece takes, what affiliations it may have to groups and/or governments, and where it fits into the web of international and domestic politics in the Europe, particularly Eastern Europe.