{"id":1177,"date":"2019-03-27T03:50:23","date_gmt":"2019-03-27T03:50:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sportsnewsforyou.com\/?p=1177"},"modified":"2019-03-27T03:50:23","modified_gmt":"2019-03-27T03:50:23","slug":"what-is-causing-the-conflict-in-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/?p=1177","title":{"rendered":"What is causing the conflict in Ukraine?"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the June<\/em> Summit, which will take place after the UK
\nReferendum, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and
\nSecurity Policy, Federica Mogherini, will present the results of her global
\nreview of external strategy. As part of the review process, the Human Security
\nStudy Group, at the LSE, which is convened by Mary Kaldor and Javier Solana,
\nhas presented a report entitled <\/em>From Hybrid Peace to Human Security: Rethinking the EU Strategy Towards
\nConflict <\/em><\/strong>together with twelve
\nbackground research papers . <\/em><\/i><\/p>\n


<\/em><\/p>\n

Conflicts are at the sharp end of
\ncontemporary crises. Refugees, extremist ideologies, criminality and predation
\nare all produced in conflict. Contemporary conflicts are sometimes known as
\n\u2018hybrid wars\u2019 or \u2018new wars\u2019 in which classic distinctions between public and
\nprivate, government\/regular and rebel\/irregular, and internal and external
\nbreak down. They are best understood not as legitimate contests of wills (the
\ntwentieth century idea of war) but as a degenerate
\nsocial condition in which armed groups mobilise sectarian and
\nfundamentalist sentiments and construct a predatory economy through which they
\nenrich.<\/em> Identifying ways to
\naddress violent conflict could open up strategies for dealing with broader
\nissues.<\/em><\/p>\n


<\/em><\/p>\n

In this special openDemocracy series,
\nthe Human Security Study Group outlines the main conclusions of our report in
\nour introductory
\nessay together with six essays based on some of the background papers.
\nThese essays include: an analysis of the conceptual premises of the Global
\nReview (Sabine
\nSelchow); three essays on specific conflict zones \u2013 Syria (Rim Turkmani),
\nUkraine (Tymofiy Mylovanov), the Horn of Africa (Alex
\nde Waal); the importance of the EU\u2019s justice instrument (Iavor Rangelov);
\nand how EU cyber security policy is human rights focused rather than state
\nfocussed (Genevieve Schmeder and Emmanuel Darmois).
<\/em><\/p>\n

Workers of Illich Iron & Steel Works steel plant gather for an anti-war protest, supported by the management, in Mariupol, eastern Ukraine, May, 2014. Vadim Ghirda \/ Press Association. All rights reserved.<\/i><\/p>\n

Following the change of the government in
\nUkraine in the winter of 2014, Russia annexed Crimea. Immediately after that,
\nRussia and some Ukrainian political elites orchestrated a pro-Russian
\ninsurgency in the East of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

By the early summer of 2014, there was a full-fledged
\nwar in Donetsk and Luhansk Oblast between the separatists and the Ukrainian
\narmed forces. In the spring of 2015, there was a tentative ceasefire in place.
\nThe ceasefire continues to hold with sporadic violations.\u00a0Figure 1 describes
\nthe time series of the violence in the east of Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Figure 1. Violence in the East of Ukraine. Minsk I and II are ceasefire agreements.<\/i><\/p>\n

The EU has played an active role in mitigating the conflict. It has served as a mediator between the parties of the conflict throughout the entire period since the beginning of the Euromaidan protests which toppled the government in February 2014. Since the violence began in the East, there have been two agreements, Minsk I and Minsk II, aimed to put a stop to the fighting. The current ceasefire follows the Minsk II agreement. The EU has also offered technical, financial, and diplomatic support to the new Ukrainian government.<\/p>\n

Understanding the causes of the conflict in eastern Ukraine<\/h2>\n

During the beginning of the insurgency in the east of Ukraine in April 2014, some observers predicted that the separatist movement would spread to other parts of southeastern Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Contrary to these forecasts, the insurgency remained surprisingly well contained. No region outside of Donetsk or Luhansk experienced such a large-scale armed conflict or fell under separatist control. Not only were separatists unable to realise the project of a greater \u201cNovorossiya\u201d stretching from Kharkiv to Odesa, they also failed to consolidate their grip within the borders of the Donbas. Just 63% of the municipalities in Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts were under separatist control at any one time during the first year of conflict, and less than a quarter of these territories showed resistance to the Ukrainian government forces during Kyiv\u2019s attempt to liberate them in the spring and summer of 2014.<\/p>\n

In order to design the best policy to resolve the conflict it is important to understand the causes behind local variation in the intensity of the conflict.<\/p>\n

As income from less risky legal activities declines relative to the income from insurgency behavior, participation in insurgency is expected to rise.<\/p>\n

The most common answers to this question in the press and policy analysis have fallen into one of two categories: ethnicity and economics. The first view expects insurgency to be more likely and more intense in areas home to large concentrations of ethnolinguistic minorities \u2013\u2013in this case, Russians or Russian-speaking Ukrainians. According to this logic, geographically concentrated minorities can overcome some of the collective action problems associated with insurgency \u2013\u2013\u00a0such as monitoring and punishing defectors \u2013\u2013while attracting an influx of fighters, weapons and economic aid from co-ethnic groups in neighboring states. Vladimir Putin, among others, has cast the Donbas conflict as a primarily ethnic one: \u201cthe essential issue is how to guarantee the legitimate rights and interests of ethnic Russians and Russian speakers in the southeast of Ukraine.\u201d<\/p>\n

An alternative explanation for the variation in the intensity of insurgency is economic opportunity costs. According to this view, as income from less risky, legal activities declines relative to the income from insurgency behavior, participation in insurgency should rise. As Maidan and the Revolution of Dignity proclaimed adherence to European values and set on the path towards Europe and away from the Eurasian Customs Union with Russia, the opportunity costs of insurgency declined in the Donbas. As a heavily industrialised region with deep economic ties to Russia, the Donbas was uniquely exposed to potential negative economic shocks caused by trade openness with the EU, austerity and trade barriers with Russia. A rebel fighter with the Vostok battalion summarised this view: \u201cmany mines started to close. I lost my job. Then, with what happened during the spring, I decided to go out and defend my city\u201d.<\/p>\n

Micro-level data on violence, ethnicity and economic activity in eastern Ukraine allows us to evaluate the relative explanatory power of these two perspectives. The evidence suggests that local economic factors are stronger predictors of violence and territorial control than Russian ethnicity or language. Ethnicity only had an effect where economic incentives for insurgency were already weak. Separatists in eastern Ukraine were \u201cpro-Russian\u201d not because they spoke Russian, but because their economic livelihood had long depended on trade with Russia, and they now saw this livelihood as being under threat.<\/p>\n

The economic roots of the pro-Russian rebellion are evident from new data on violence and control, assembled from incident reports released by Ukrainian and Russian news agencies, government and rebel statements, daily \u2018conflict maps\u2019 released by both sides, and social media news feeds. The data include 10,567 unique violent events in the Donbas, at the municipality level, recorded between the then President Viktor Yanukovych\u2019s flight in February 2014 and the second Minsk ceasefire agreement of February 2015. Figure 2 shows the geographic\u00a0distribution of rebel violence and territorial control during the first year of the conflict.<\/p>\n

Figure 2. The geographic distribution of rebel violence and territorial control during the first year of the conflict.<\/i><\/p>\n

To explain the variation in the timing and intensity of violence and
\ncontrol, one can consider the proportion of Russian speakers residing in each
\nmunicipality, and, the proportion of the local labour force employed in three
\nindustries, each vulnerable in different ways to the post-Euromaidan economic shocks. <\/p>\n

These included machine-building,
\nwhich is heavily dependent on exports to Russia, highly
\nvulnerable to Russian import substitution, and, currently lacks short-term
\nalternative export markets. At the other extreme, there is the metals industry, which is less dependent on Russia,
\nand is a potential beneficiary of increased trade with the EU. Finally,
\nthere is employment in the mining industry, which has grown
\ndependent on Yanukovych-era state-subsidies, and become highly vulnerable
\nto International Monetary Fund-imposed austerity measures. <\/p>\n

Given the relative exposure of these industries to the post-Euromaidan
\neconomic shocks, one should expect the opportunity costs of rebellion to be
\nlowest in machine-building towns and highest in metallurgy towns, with mining
\ntowns falling in the middle. <\/p>\n

Figure 3 below shows the spatial distribution of these variables. The
\nanalysis also accounted for a host of other potential determinants of violence,
\nincluding terrain, logistics, proximity to the Russian border, prewar electoral
\npatterns, and spillover effects from rebel activity in neighboring towns.<\/p>\n

Figure 3. The spatial distribution of native language and local employment.<\/i><\/p>\n

A statistical analysis of this data reveals that a municipality\u2019s prewar employment mix is a stronger and more robust predictor of rebel activity than the local ethnolinguistic composition.<\/p>\n

A statistical analysis of this data reveals that a municipality\u2019s
\nprewar employment mix is a stronger and more robust predictor of rebel activity
\nthan the local ethnolinguistic composition. In municipalities more exposed to
\nnegative trade shocks with Russia (municipalities with high shares of the
\npopulation employed in machinery and mining), violence was more likely to occur
\noverall, and was more intense. In the median Donbas municipality, an increase in
\nthe machine-building labour force from one standard deviation below (4%) to one
\nstandard deviation above the mean (26%) yields a 44% increase (95% credible
\ninterval: a 34%-56% increase) in the frequency of rebel violence from week to
\nweek.<\/p>\n

These municipalities \u2013\u2013where the local population was highly
\nvulnerable to trade disruptions with Russia \u2013\u2013also fell under rebel control
\nearlier and took longer for the government to liberate than municipalities
\nwhere the labor force was less dependent on exports to Russia. On any given
\nday, a municipality with higher-than-average employment in the beleaguered machine-building
\nindustry was about twice as likely to fall under rebel control as a
\nmunicipality with below-average employment in the industry.<\/p>\n

By contrast, there is little evidence of either a \u201cRussian language
\neffect\u201d on violence, or an interaction between language and economics. The
\nimpact of prewar industrial employment on rebellion is the same in
\nmunicipalities with a majority Russian-speaking population as it is where the
\nmajority is Ukrainian-speaking. Russian language fared slightly better as a
\npredictor of rebel control, but only under certain conditions. In particular,
\nwhere economic dependence on Russia was relatively low, municipalities with
\nlarge Russian-speaking populations tended to fall under rebel control earlier
\nin the conflict. The \u201clanguage effect\u201d disappeared in municipalities where any
\none of the three industries had a major presence. In other words, ethnicity and
\nlanguage only had an effect when the economic incentives for rebellion were
\nweak.<\/p>\n

Conclusions: recommendations for the EU<\/h2>\n

If we accept the premise of this paper, that one
\nof the key factors underpinning the crisis in Ukraine is economics, then the resolution of
\nthe crisis ought to address the issue of restoring economic and political
\njustice. This requires rebuilding the economy and providing the general public
\nwith economic opportunities. Creating such opportunities will undermine the
\nability of the networks interested in maintaining the conflict from gathering
\nsupport.<\/p>\n

I argue for the creation of economic opportunities
\nfor the general public (economic resolution) and using a bottom-up approach to
\ninclude all parts of society in the deliberation processes concerning how to resolve
\nthe conflict (political resolution). These policies should be complemented by
\nstrict unconditional support from the EU, requiring anti-corruption policies
\nthat (a) dismantle the state economy, and (b), more importantly, dismantle the rent-seeking
\nnetworks of the oligarchs and restore justice.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the June Summit, which will take place after the UK Referendum, the High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Federica Mogherini, will present the results of her global review of external strategy. As part of the review process, the Human Security Study Group, at the LSE, which is convened by…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1177","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1177"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1177\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1177"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/googmn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}