Pasmun Jr: Security Council (SC)

Ukrainian Crisis

COMMITTEE: Security Council (SC)

TOPIC: Ukrainian Crisis

ROOM: Library (Reading room)

CHAIR: Haddad Chedraui Michelle, Hornedo Torres Carolina Marian y Miguel Ángel Goytia Morúa

Ukraine has a very long history of being subjugated by outside powers, and a very short history of national independence.
The country has been under partial or total Russian rule for most of those intervening centuries, which is a big part of why one in six Ukrainians is actually an ethnic Russian, one in three speaks Russian as their native language (the other two-thirds speak Ukrainian natively), and much of the country's media is in Russian. It's also why the subject of Russia is such a divisive one in Ukraine: a lot of the country sees Moscow as the source of Ukraine's historical subjugation and something to be resisted, while others tend to look on Russia more fondly, with a sense of shared heritage and history.

n late February, a few days after Ukraine's pro-Moscow president was ousted from power, strange bands of armed gunmen began seizing government buildings in Crimea. Some Crimeans held rallies to show support for the ousted president and, in some cases, to call to secede from Ukraine and re-join Russia. The bands of gunmen grew until it became obvious they were Russian military forces, who forcefully but bloodlessly brought the entire peninsula under military occupation. On March 16, Crimeans voted overwhelmingly for their region to become a part of Russia.

Most of the world sees Crimea's secession vote as illegitimate for a few reasons: it was held under hostile Russian military occupation with no international monitoring and many reports of intimidation, it was pushed through with only a couple of weeks' warning, and it was illegal under Ukrainian law. Still, legitimate or not, Crimea has effectively become part of Russia. The US and European Union have imposed economic sanctions on Russia to punish Moscow for this, but there is no sign that Crimea will return to Ukraine.

The conflict in eastern Ukraine began in April 2014 with low-level fighting between the Ukrainian military and Russian-backed separatist rebels who seized some towns in predominantly Russian-speaking eastern Ukraine. It has since escalated to outright-if-undeclared war between Russia and Ukraine.

Separatist rebels began popping up in eastern Ukraine shortly after Russia had invaded and annexed Crimea, where supposed Crimean separatists actually turned out to be unmarked Russian special forces. They seized towns like Sloviansk and Donetsk, in the eastern region known as Donbas, ostensibly in outrage against the protests that had toppled Ukraine's pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych, himself from that same eastern region.

Though President Vladimir Putin insists that Russia is not invading eastern Ukraine, Russian soldiers, tanks, and self-propelled artillery have been crossing the border since mid-August in what can only be described as a hostile invasion. There are two ways to think about why Putin is doing this: as a rational, strategic effort to take something from Ukraine, or as a less-rational action driven by domestic Russian politics.