Q&A with Graeme Robertson, UNC political science professor, on Ukraine

At the end of February, armed Russian militants seized strategic locations in Crimea. Since that time, the United States has imposed sanctions on Russia and President Obama has warned that further action may be taken.

Daily Tar Heel staff writer Kristen Chung spoke with Graeme Robertson, an associate professor of political science who specializes in Russian and Soviet Politics, about the current situation. The interview was edited for brevity.

DTH: What has been the nature of the relationship between Russia and Ukraine?

GR: Russia and Ukraine have relations that go back a thousand years. Russian history has traditionally treated the foundation of the first Slavic state as being Kiev, the capital of Ukraine…In other words there are very, very deep roots, cultural, and political ties for hundreds and thousands of years.

DTH: Why are we seeing a coup (in Ukraine) now?

GR: What happened in Ukraine goes back a long way. It goes back to the Second World War really. There is a long split between the Eastern part of Ukraine, which is predominately Russian speaking, and the western part of Ukraine that is predominately Cyrillic speaking.

Parts of Ukraine, the far west, was only incorporated to the Soviet Union after the Second World War and the implications of being with the West so long…is that in the early years of the 1990’s there was a consensus for the east and west that Ukraine should become independent, that it should leave the USSR…

Around the beginning of November last year, the question arose of Ukranian EU associate membership status and (Viktor) Yanukovych decided not to do so, inciting demonstrations in Kiev.

DTH: How open of a society has Ukraine historically been, compared to Russia which has been more closed?

GR: Politics in Ukraine have been more competitive, much more competitive, really in the last 15 years or so, the late 1990’s. Ukraine has also had a much more rigorous media environment.

There’s opposition television stations. So in that sense, politics has been more open and competitive in Ukraine than in Russia. On the other hand, Ukraine has at least if not more corruption than Russia. There’s a lot of things that are very weak in Ukraine. So it’s a mixed bag.

DTH: The U.S. has said it does not support Russian intervention. What does this mean for U.S.-Russia relations which are already shaky?

GR: The Obama administration has begun trying to establish what we call “The Reset” with Russia, trying to establish working relations with Russia. The problem is that they need Russia. They need Russia for almost all basic foreign policy and major items on the foreign policy agenda from nuclear proliferations to Afghanistan to Pakistan to Syrian crisis.

But they really disagree dramatically on the issues and probably the most on the role Russia should have in the former Soviet States, Georgia for example. The U.S. would like to see Ukraine go into the western orb, see Ukraine join the European Union and NATO. Of course, Russia doesn’t want to see that.

DTH: What do you think the biggest misconception about this conflict is?

GR: Well, this conflict is like most other conflicts in the world. We tend to, when we watch the news, we tend to see them presented as good guys and bad guys, you know.

In this case, the western Ukrainians are the good guys and the eastern Ukrainians who have close affiliations with Russia are kind of seen as the bad guys. No one in Crimea asked to become part of Ukraine.

DTH: Why should we care about what is happening? How does it affect us as students?

GR: There are a number of reasons for which you might care… The U.S. has allies, NATO that are also on the border of Russia and Estonia. We are committed to entering nuclear weapon defense. If a war with Ukraine would spill out of Ukraine then that would be an extremely dangerous situation. I think people should care about the world outside of their borders. I think people should care about human life and representation.

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