@prashanthamine
Mumbai: Although the current war in Ukraine began with the Russian invasion on February 24, it was preceded by the Russian invasion and subsequent annexation of the Crimean Peninsula (Tauric Peninsula). War has been nothing new to the Crimean Peninsula, the Balkans and Eastern Europe.
In fact, both the World War I and World War II began in the Balkans and Eastern Europe respectively.
World War I began in the Balkans with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria and his wife Sophie who were shot dead by a Bosnian Serb nationalist during an official visit to the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo on June 28, 1914. The killings sparked off a chain of events that led to the outbreak of World War I on July 28, 1914.
World War II began on September 1, 1939 with Germany invading Poland in Eastern Europe. Both the world wars had their eerie roots to Eastern Europe, with some sceptics still keeping their fingers crossed for a third world war!
The Crimean war of 1853-1856 gave birth to the legend of Florence Nightingale. It was she through her pioneering work in nursing and sanitation, that laid the foundation of the modern-day nursing profession.
Over the centuries, be it the Greeks, Persians, Romans, Byzantine, the Ottoman empire, the Germans all have been craving for the control of the southern coast of Crimean Peninsula, and the northern coast of Black Sea and Sea of Azov. The headquarters of the Ukrainian and the Russian navies is located in the port city of Sevastopol.
The Black Sea ports give access to Eastern Mediterranean, Balkans and the Middle East. The Dnieper River that crosses the European continent from north to south links the Black Sea with the Baltic Sea. The Black Sea links to Caucasus region to the Caspian Sea.
Besides its strategic location, between the Crimean Peninsula and the Kerch Peninsula are the Steppe Grasslands. Given the wide climatic diversity of Central Asia to Eastern Europe, the Dnieper River and large water bodies make the region a fertile ground for Agriculture.
Some of the finest Winter Wheat is grown in this region of the world. It is not without any rhyme or reason that Ukraine boasts of being the worlds largest producer of Sunflower oil, with Sunflower being its national flower.
Ukraine has diversified its heavy industry which now supplies the unique equipment (for example, large diameter pipes) and raw materials to industrial and mining sites (vertical drilling apparatus) in other regions of the former USSR.
Ukraine is dependent on Russia for its energy supplies and the lack of significant structural reform have made the Ukrainian economy vulnerable to external shocks. Ukraine depends on imports to meet about three-fourths of its annual oil and natural gas requirements and 100% of its nuclear fuel needs.
In April 2010, Ukraine negotiated a price discount on Russian gas imports in exchange for extending Russia’s lease on its naval base in Crimea, which is still in effect during the political crisis of 2013-14.
Besides the cereals, the region is also known for some of its finest Wineries in the world. Most importantly the region boasts of rich and largest onshore and offshore natural gas and oil reserves in the world.
The region is also home to some indigenous people, tribes who for centuries together have wandered together along its vast stretches without ever being stopped in their tracks. Hence, even today many countries in the region have treaties and laws in place that guarantee these people their right to migrate from one place to another.
The region is home to indigenous tribes and people like Crimean Tatars, Crimean Karaites, Krymchaks and Romani Gypsies, most of them due to their centuries of nomadic lifestyles do not recognise national boundaries. Most of the Central Asian republics have laws that allow migration of these indigenous tribes and Romani Gypsies across their borders.
Prominent ethnic groups in the region include – Ukrainians, Russians, Belarusians, Poles (Polish), Hungarians, Romanians, Moldavian’s, Bulgarians, Jewish, Armenians, Greeks, Tatars, Romani Gypsies, Azerbaijani’s, Georgians, Goths, Huns, Bulgars, Kipchaks, Germans, Gaguz and Karaites. For most of them the main spoken language even from the Ukrainians is Russian.
Recorded history of the region dates back to the 5th and 6th century BC with Greek colonies dotting the southern coast of Crimean Peninsula. Then came the Romans (47 BC – 330 AD), Byzantine Empire (330 AD – 1204 AD) and the Ottoman Empire (1844 to 1922). The Ottoman Empire ruled south-eastern Europe and the Balkans and was the longest reigning empire.
Due to the frequent conquests and regime changes, the regions have changed hands between its rulers. Be it the Crimean Peninsula or Ukraine and to that the diverse and often nomadic tribal culture makes it a region that is prone to instability.
A region which has been the melting pot for such diverse ethnic cultures, agriculture, mineral and other natural resources, it has also been a region that has seen bloody wars, world wars and Nazi concentration camps!
It is not without any rhyme or reason that Russian President Vladimir Putin on March 5 earlier this month called for deNazification of Ukraine. The region is the hotbed of White Supremacist groups that mostly comprise of Ukrainian veterans of the Azov regiment and hired mercenaries from across Europe.
Germans began migrating from Europe and Russia to escape the mandatory military service. Most of them settled in Ukraine, Russia and former Soviet Union republics. Most of them arrived in the Crimea and Ukraine in the second half of the 19th Century.
Earliest migration of Germans into Kievan Russia or Kievan Rus between 1762 to 1796. Germans living in Kazakhstan too preferred moving to Russia rather than going back to native Germany. During the Stalin era, Germans were deported to Gutag concentration camps in Serbia and Central Asia. That is how the Germans reached Serbia and Central Asia.
Another reason for the rise in White Supremacy groups in the region could be the large number of early Detention camps, main Concentration camps, Extermination camps, Euthanasia and Extermination camps, Labour camps, Transit camps and Ghettos that Nazi Germany built in this region between 1933 to 1945, when the region was under their control.
There were about 48 such main camps and several other smaller camps dotted mostly in Germany, Austria, Poland, France, Ukraine, Czech Republic, Latvia, Netherlands and most of the Eastern Europe.
Some of the most notorious of the Concentration, Euthanasia and Extermination camps were – Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Buchenwald, Dachau, Gross-Rosen, Majdanek, Sachsenhausen, Stutthof, Treblinka, Sobibor and Chelmno. Most of them which were built between 1941 to 1944 now have been preserved as Holocaust Monuments or memorials. The main Concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor, Majdanek and Chelmno are now well-preserved monuments.
In the past Ukraine was the centre of the first eastern Slavic state, Kyivan Rus, which during the 10th and 11th centuries was the largest and most powerful state in Europe. Weakened by internecine quarrels and Mongol invasions, Kyivan Rus was later incorporated into the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and eventually into the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
A new Ukrainian state, the Cossack Hetmanate, was established during the mid-17th century after an uprising against the Poles (Poland). Despite continuous Muscovite (Moscow) pressure, the Hetmanate managed to remain autonomous for well over 100 years. During the latter part of the 18th century, most Ukrainian ethnographic territory was absorbed by the Russian Empire
Following the collapse of Czarist Russia in 1917, Ukraine was able to achieve a short-lived period of independence (1917-20), but was reconquered and forced to endure a brutal Soviet rule that engineered two forced famines (1921-22 and 1932-33) in which over 8 million died.
Final independence for Ukraine was achieved in 1991 with the dissolution of the USSR, democracy and prosperity remained elusive as the legacy of state control and endemic corruption stalled efforts at economic reform, privatization, and civil liberties. Ukraine has also not been able to shake-off its turbulent historical past, that of being a state that never remained independent for too long.
It is not just the endemic corruption and the need for reforms, Ukraine needs the rest of the world to live up to its assurances given as it relinquished the Soviet nuclear arsenal on its soil. It also needs guarantees on its energy security. Ukraine today is a living testimony of how a state becomes a pawn in the game of international diplomacy if it over relies on unkept promises by its benefactors who fail to live up to them and then pays for it dearly.
