Galtung's Triangle: Ukraine and Russia Conflict - Protests and Annexation of Crimea

John Mazziotti

Mr. Zhou

GPHC

February 3rd, 2021

Ukraine and Russia: Annexation of Crimea Conflict With Galtung’s Triangle


In 2013 and 2014, Ukraine and Russia had a conflict that was sparked by a dispute over economic reform. The Ukrainian president at the time, Viktor Yanukovych, rejected an economic deal with the European Union. This, in-turn, sparked protests in the Ukranian Capital of Kiev. The state security forces of Ukraine engaged violently with the protesters involved, which sparked even more wide-spread protests in Ukraine. Feeling the effects of the backlash of the - then intrastate - conflict, President Yanukovych fled to Russia in early 2014. Even this first stage of the entire conflict can be analyzed using Galtung’s triangle.

First - before Russian involvement - , the contradiction. The contradiction rests in dispute over Ukraine’s economic reform with the European Union and NATO. Since Ukraine chose Eastern influence over Western influence, this sparked protests. Ukraine’s attitude towards the protesters was that they were essentially too westernized and against Yanukovych’s pro-russian stance on where Ukraine’s economy should be involved. The behavior of the State security forces that the protests were met with was violence. Thus, enacting the attitude of trauma on Ukrainian citizens, and sparking more protests. Up until the violence displayed at the protests, this conflict remained under the latent level, but then progressed to a more intense manifest level.

In March of 2014, Russian military forces invaded and took control of Ukraine-controlled Crimea. This was met with an explanation from Russian President Vladimir Putin, bringing up the need to protect the rights of pro-russian Crimean citizens. The results of this invasion were heightened ethinic divisions, territorial division, and violence. When Russia got involved with Ukraine’s political disarray, every aspect of Galtung's triangle was emphasized in all respects.

In terms of contradiction, the Russian invasion in the first place was the first instance of contradiction. After this concluded, Putin appended the explanation of this invasion with the need to protect rights of pro-russian crimean residents, which in itself is a discriminatory assumption to the pro-Ukrainian citizens that lived in Crimea. Following that, this was continued until an ethnically divided attitude that also was adopted during the crisis. Two months later, this was immediately turned back to a contradiction when Russian-backed seperatists proposed a referendum to divide the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk into independent entities. Throughout all of this chaos and division, the manifest level starts to reveal itself in the form of behavior. The violence between Russian-backed Ukrianian separatists and the Ukrainian military collectively killed ten thousand people, and injured upwards of twenty-four thousand. The most notable instance of violence was a Malaysian airlines flight was shot down over Ukraine with a Russian-made Surface to Air missile system.

Overall, the conflict started under the Latent level. Before the Ukrainian protests became violent, according to Galtung’s triangle, the conflict stayed between Contradiction and Attitude/Assumptions over many instances. However, after the violent protests and the Russian invasion of Crimea, the conflict proceeded to escalate and remain above the Manifest level for a long period of time.

Source: https://www.cfr.org/global-conflict-tracker/conflict/conflict-ukraine


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