New states, new borders

The Yanukovich administration, in November 2013 ¹ decided to renounce the signing and initialling of the association agreement with the European Union, and followed up, one month later, ² by concluding an agreement with the Russian Federation that brought Ukraine into the proximity of the Eurasian Economic Union and moved economic recovery efforts in Ukraine eastward. These decisions represented the starting point of one of the most powerful crises to rock the ex-Soviet space in the more than two decades that separate us from the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The ousting of the pro-Russian presidential administration in Kiev in February 2014 and the turnover favouring the partisans of European integration have become the key factors in the priming of a profound crisis in the foreign and security policies of the Russian Federation regarding the entire ex-Soviet space. Until then, similar demarchés made by states in this area were, one by one, either discouraged or countered with strong retaliatory measures. ³ Russia was now confronted with the prospect of losing a strategic glacis fundamental ⁴ to its plans to reconstruct and rise again as a great power in the contemporary system of international relations: its reaction was surprisingly swift and efficient. The Kremlin decided to save what could be saved from one of the most resounding failures recorded in the ex-Soviet space and started a decisive counter-attack, first in Crimea and later in the east and south of the Ukrainian state. ⁵ The speed and efficiency of its military and political actions even led to debates in elite circles on the possibility that, in Ukraine, the international community is facing a ‘new’ type of armed aggression. ⁶