Editor's note: This article was originally published on Feb. 3, 2022, prior to Russia launching a wide-ranging military attack against Ukraine.
Banner image: President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Joe Biden of the United States. (Credits:听Russian Presidential Press and Information Office; U.S. Secretary of Defense)
This week, the Pentagon announced that it would deploy nearly 3,000 U.S. troops to Eastern Europe, bolstering forces in Poland, Germany and Romania.
The move is the latest escalation surrounding Ukraine, an Eastern Europe nation home to about 44 million people. Late last year, Russian President Vladimir Putin sent 100,000 troops to the Ukrainian border, sparking fears that the strongman was setting the stage for an invasion.
John O'Loughlin overlooks the听Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kyiv where much of the Maidan protests took place in 2014. (Credit: John O'Loughlin)
Click to enlarge: In 2020, O'Loughlin and colleagues asked Ukrainians to rate where they thought their country should be on a scale from 0, the West, to 10, Russia. (Credit: John O'Loughlin)
Click to enlarge: In 2020, O'Loughlin and colleagues asked more than 2,000 Ukrainians "should NATO conduct military exercises near Russia." (Credit: John O'Loughlin)
John O鈥橪oughlin, a professor of geography at SM调教所 Boulder who studies Ukrainian geopolitics, sees an international conflict quickly spiraling out of control.听
鈥淚t could very easily generate a massive conflict, and once a war starts, it鈥檚 hard to know where it will end,鈥� O鈥橪oughlin said.
He鈥檚 traveled to Ukraine since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 to survey people across the country about a wide range of topics鈥攆rom their hopes for the future to their anxieties over military buildups along their border. O鈥橪oughlin said that one thing that often gets lost in the discussions over Cold War-style brinksmanship in Eastern Europe is听the feelings of these real people.听
鈥淲hat about the people who will have to carry the burden of a war?鈥� said O鈥橪oughlin, fellow of the . 鈥淭he geopolitical strategists don鈥檛 seem to be too worried about the human suffering that would occur.鈥�
O鈥橪oughlin sat down with SM调教所 Boulder Today to talk about the political divides that exist in Ukraine, possible 鈥渙ff-ramps鈥� for avoiding an all-out war in Eastern Europe and more.听
How did we get here?
First off, O鈥橪oughlin said that it鈥檚 important to realize that Ukrainians, just like Americans, disagree about the future of their nation.
鈥淭here are huge regional differences in political and geopolitical preferences across the country,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e talk about polarized elections in the U.S., but they鈥檙e nothing compared to how polarized the elections are in Ukraine.
Much of that polarization surfaced in late 2013. In November, sitting Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, a staunch ally of Putin, abruptly pulled the plug on a planned accord to tighten political and economic ties between the European Union and Ukraine. In a movement known as听Maidan, Ukrainians friendly to their neighbors to the West revolted against Yanukovych, who fled the country in February 2014. Putin reacted swiftly, sending special operations forces into the heavily Russian region of Crimea, then annexed听it soon after.
鈥淲ith Maidan, the divides in Ukraine came front and center,鈥� O鈥橪oughlin said. 鈥淩ight away Russia intervened."
In independent Ukraine, you can find three main ethnic-linguistic groups: The first are ethnic Ukrainians who speak Ukrainian and live mostly in the western portions of the country. They tend to consider themselves European and have pressed for Ukraine to join the NATO military alliance and the European Union. The second bloc are ethnic Russians who predominantly live to the south and east near Crimea and in the Donbas, a region that has experienced severe conflict in recent years. Last, the middle of the nation is home to ethnic Ukrainians who speak Russian but also lean to the West.
In 2020, O鈥橪oughlin and his colleagues surveyed citizens from across those regions, asking them what they鈥檇 want their country to look like鈥攆rom Russia on one side to Europe on the other.
鈥淵ou see this incredible range of opinions,鈥� he said.
Silent majority
Many people in the country, especially those who live in its geographic and political middle, don鈥檛 fall cleanly into either camp.
鈥淵ou have a large number of people in the middle who want Ukraine to be a functional country with a decent economy and a good future,鈥� O鈥橪oughlin said. 鈥淚 think that鈥檚 probably a silent majority, but they鈥檙e being forced into taking a polarized stance on Russia or the West.鈥�
He added that few Ukrainians on either side seem to be eager for war.
In another survey, O鈥橪oughlin and his colleagues : 鈥淪hould NATO conduct military exercises close to Russia鈥檚 territory?鈥� NATO and Russia, O鈥橪oughlin explained, have famously strained ties. Ukraine isn鈥檛 currently a member of that alliance, but it has asked to join and has been promised membership since 2008. Putin, in turn, has demanded that NATO preemptively ban the country from ever joining in the future. The researchers were essentially probing how comfortable Ukrainians were with Europe potentially provoking Russia into an armed conflict.
The majority of respondents told O鈥橪oughlin鈥檚 team 鈥渘o.鈥� Even in the pro-Europe stretches of Ukraine, only 40% of people supported the idea of nearby NATO exercises.
The researcher noted that there doesn't听seem to be many 鈥渙ff-ramps鈥� at present for spiraling tensions in the region. One option, he said, would be for Ukraine to evolve into something like Finland鈥攁 nation that sits on the Russian border and is part of the European Union but that doesn鈥檛 belong to NATO. Still, he said, there doesn鈥檛 seem to be much appetite for that kind of compromise on either side.
鈥淭here鈥檚 no separate thinking around how we can take a step back and maybe tamp down the hostility,鈥� O鈥橪oughlin said.听
For now, O鈥橪oughlin is worried about what might happen to all the people he鈥檚 met in his trips to Ukraine, from L鈥檝iv in the west to Kyiv in the center and Donetsk in the east.
鈥淚t鈥檚 obviously a very tense and, for me anyway, a pessimistic time,鈥� he said.
