Should we have acted sooner?

Well, it’s a peculiar occasion: we return to the 24th of February every year commemorating – well, an escalation in a war that had been ongoing for 8 years by then. Indeed, Ukrainians had been pleading for Europe to take Russia’s aggression seriously since 2014, when the Kremlin reacted to Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity by occupying Crimea and starting warfare in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

In light of this, the full-scale invasion starting in February 2022 was merely an escalation in a long-ongoing and very serious conflict – which many in Europe failed to take seriously.

Yet, however arbitrary, this anniversary also signals something extraordinary, as today’s guest, Maksym Kyiak put it: Russia had thought they would conquer Ukraine in 3 days, but they haven’t managed to bring Ukraine to its knees in 3 years!

This surprised the international community as much as the Kremlin. But when it comes to international relations, Maksym Kyiak looks even further back, specifically to 2008, when Russia started its conflict with Georgia. Ah, 2008, you seem so sweet, so tender, I miss you! You brought us a world economic crisis the likes of which we had never seen before! And our fair dose of Russian aggression!

What happened in Georgia?

Georgia had a long and troublesome relationship with two regions, South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russian influence has been a major factor in this trouble. In 2008, Georgia tried to regain control over South Ossetia, to which Russia responded with a brutal invasion on Georgia. The war lasted 5 days and saw terrible human rights violations from the Russian side, but it got a fairly muted reaction from the international community. “EU leaders led calls for a ceasefire that appeared to favor Russian interests, while the US under the new Obama administration was soon calling for a reset in relations with the Kremlin.”

Some historians view this incident as a sort of green light for Putin’s regime, proving that they can get away with aggression without significant repercussions. 6 years later, in 2014, the invasion of Crimea prompted somewhat more substantial yet still caution and divided international reactions. Let me quote some world leaders here:

“Chancellor Angela Merkel called Russia’s actions “unacceptable” and their doings would break international law.” China started off very supportive of Ukraine’s sovereignty on the 2nd of March but changed positions by the 21st of November. President Barack Obama resorted to warning Russia not to intervene in Crimea.

Over time, public attention dissipated and many seemed to entirely forget about this war – despite the fact that active violence persisted. Then, in 2022, as Russian troops started to amass on the Ukrainian border, many watched in shock and surprise as the heir to the former Soviet Union attacked its former territory, justifying its actions with false claims and historical lies.

You know who wasn’t surprised? Ukrainians. What Putin had hoped would be a victorious Blitzkrieg had turned out to be a blood-soaked, horrible fiasco that keeps claiming thousands of lives and has brought war crimes galore, as the Russian aggression deliberately tries to destroy and erase Ukrainian political and cultural independence.

The present and the future

Today we take stock of the past three years and the preceding 13, and we also look into the future. Today, Ukraine faces a world of uncertainty as its major allies, the US and the EU succumb to isolationism, with the far right on the rise and Russian political interference at its peak. How will they mitigate the losses, and who can come to their aid? Who is responsible for keeping Ukrainian culture and identity alive?

Our guests talk about all this and more. This time we talk with them online, so to avoid the limitations of geographic proximity – forgive the occasional technical glitches. This conversation is worth the online hassle.

Kateryna Botanova is a Ukrainian curator, writer and cultural critic based in Basel, Switzerland. She is a co-curator of multidisciplinary biennial Culture scapes in Basel. Until 2015, she was a director of the Centre for Contemporary Art in Kyiv, as well as a founder and editor-in-chief of the online magazine Korydor. You can find her articles in Eurozine, one of which even nominated her for a European Press Prize – find links in the show notes.

Maksym Kyiak is a chief scientist at the Kuras Institute of Political and Ethnic Studies (Kyiv, Ukraine), Doctor of Philosophy, the Deputy Director of the Central European Institute. He worked at various academic and governmental institutions in Ukraine and abroad. He has represented Ukraine at the CAHROM Committee in the Council of Europe and was one of the co-authors of the research of the NATO StratCom. Research interests: global security, European integration, countering disinformation, foreign policy, sociology of religion.

Adam Reichardt is the editor of the Kraków-based specialist publication New Eastern Europe, who has been surveying and publishing on the politics of the wider region for a great many years. For us, he also brings in an American perspective.

Standard Time talk show S2E12: Russian assets in the White House

Reading List

Ukraine and the future of post-heroic Europe

A nation in waiting

Economic frontlines: Ukraine bracing for Trump

Creative team

Réka Kinga Papp, editor-in-chief

Daniela Univazo Marquina, writer-editor

Merve Akyel, art director

Zeynep Feriha Demir, producer

Zsófia Gabriella Papp, digital producer

Management

Priyanka Hutschenreiter, project manager
Judit Csikós, financial manager
Csilla Nagyné Kardos, office administration

Postproduction

Milán Golovics, dialogue editor
Dániel Nagy, dialogue editor
Nóra Ruszkai, video editor
István Nagy, post production

Art

Victor Maria Lima, animation
Music by Crypt-of-Insomnia

Captions and subtitles

Julia Sobota  closed captions, Polish and French subtitles; language versions management
Farah Ayyash  Arabic subtitles
Mia Belén Soriano  Spanish subtitles
Marta Ferdebar  Croatian subtitles
Lídia Nádori  German subtitles
Katalin Szlukovényi  Hungarian subtitles
Olena Yermakova  Ukrainian subtitles
Aida Yermekbayeva  Russian subtitles

Disclosure

This talk show is a Display Europe production: a ground-breaking media platform anchored in public values.

This programme is co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union and the European Cultural Foundation.

Importantly, the views and opinions expressed here are those of the authors and speakers only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the EACEA can be held responsible for them.