Post-Soviet Nations and NATO

From The Russo-Ukraine War: The Return of History, by Serhii Plokhy (W. W. Norton, 2023), Kindle pp. 82-84:

As far as Russia was concerned, the victory of the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine was a major blow to the Kremlin’s interests at home and abroad. “It was our 9/11,” declared the Russian political adviser Gleb Pavlovsky, who was close to the Kremlin. A native of Ukraine, he went to Kyiv to advise Prime Minister Yanukovych and his campaign. The Orange Revolution was also a personal defeat for Putin because it was supported by Boris Berezovsky, his onetime sponsor, later nemesis, and ultimately refugee from his regime. The Kremlin was concerned that under the Western-leaning President Yushchenko, Ukraine might leave the Russian orbit forever and join the Western camp.

With the fall of communism, democratic rule became a prerequisite for post-communist and post-Soviet states aspiring to join Western institutions, both political, like the European Union, and military, NATO in particular. Ukraine, with its chaotic but viable democracy, could be a candidate for both, while Russia, failing one democracy test after another and eventually setting on the path of authoritarian rule, could not. The success and durability of Ukrainian democracy was a threat to the Putin regime, since it encouraged whatever remained of the pro-democratic forces in Russia and, in geopolitical terms, brought democratic institutions closer to Russia’s borders. In Putin’s eyes, this was not just undesirable but unacceptable.

By 2004, Putin was well on the way to laying the foundations for a future autocratic regime. He took control of the Russian Duma in the December 2003 elections, which saw his party, United Russia, obtain three times as many votes as the communists to become the largest party in parliament. He then exploited a hostage crisis produced by Chechen radicals who attacked a school in Beslan in September 2004. It was mishandled by the Russian security services, whose personnel stormed the school, contributing to the death of 314 hostages, including 186 schoolchildren. This gave Putin an opportunity to intervene and curtail whatever remained of Russian democracy: elections of regional governors were abolished, and new laws were introduced curtailing the activities of political parties and NGOs.

Putin was eager to see a similar political system installed in Ukraine, openly campaigning for Yanukovych and secretly pushing Kuchma toward the use of force. He failed on both counts. In early 2005, mass protests also shook a number of other post-Soviet countries, including Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan, where the “Tulip Revolution” unseated the local ruler, Askar Akayev, who had been in power since the late Soviet period. A year before the Orange Revolution, the “Revolution of Roses” in Georgia had brought to power a young, charismatic, pro-Western reformer named Mikheil Saakashvili. In Russia, all these protest movements were labeled “Orange.” Finding itself on the defensive, Moscow began to mimic the tactics used by the opposition during the Orange Revolution, creating and funding numerous pro-government youth organizations, the most notorious of which was “Nashi,” or “Ours.” “Ours” were there to defend the president against revolutionary upheaval, allegedly promoted by foreign powers. Ukraine was singled out in that regard, but behind Ukraine Moscow ideologues saw the threatening shadow of the West.

Indeed, as expected in Moscow, the Orange Revolution produced a major geopolitical shift in Kyiv. President Yushchenko returned to the pro-European policies launched by Kuchma before the Melnychenko tapes scandal of 2001. Those included gradual integration into European structures, from the European Union to NATO. Yushchenko wanted an invitation to join the alliance in the form of a Membership Action Plan, or MAP. His requests did not fall on deaf ears in Brussels, as NATO officials invited Ukraine to begin an Intensified Dialogue on possible membership. The Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, and Poland, Ukraine’s western neighbors who had not wanted their efforts to join NATO to be compromised by association with Ukraine in the 1990s, now all supported Ukraine’s aspirations to membership. They were only too happy to yield their position on NATO’s eastern flank, vulnerable to possible Russian attack, to Ukraine.

In February 2022, a few weeks after his inauguration, Yushchenko attended a meeting of heads of state of NATO member nations in Brussels, where he publicly declared that he wanted his colleagues to regard Ukraine as a future member of the alliance. He did so in the name of the Orange Revolution that he had led and the people who had elected him to the presidency. “I’m pretty much sure, dear friends,” began Yushchenko, “that the people who went onto Kyiv’s squares and streets were motivated because they wanted to see Ukraine in Europe, not as a neighbor of Europe, because we are a country located in the center of Europe. And we would like to see Ukraine integrated into the European Union and into the North Atlantic Alliance.” Before leaving the podium, Yushchenko went out of his way to reassure Russia that his NATO aspirations and those of his country were not directed against Russia. “Russia is our strategic partner,” declared Yushchenko, “and Ukraine’s policy toward NATO will by no means be against the interests of other countries, including Russia.”

Ukraine was trying to solve its security dilemma as best it could. Since NATO had established a strategic partnership with Russia, the idea of Ukraine’s acceding to NATO without antagonizing Russia was theoretically feasible in the 1990s. But in the wake of the Orange Revolution, Kyiv faced a difficult choice: either to accommodate Moscow, which had long-standing territorial claims on Ukraine and had intervened directly in that country’s presidential elections, or to seek protection in a military alliance that could guarantee its territorial integrity and sovereignty. The threat from Russia was real and immediate, while membership in NATO was hypothetical and removed in time. After long vacillation, Kyiv opted decisively for NATO.