Perspectives on Putin and Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine

Guests featured in this episode:

Stephen Holmes, the Walter E. Mayer Professor of Law and co-director of the Center on Law and Security at New York University. Stephen has been the recipient of prestigious fellowships from, among others, the Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, the Wissenschaftkolleg in Berlin, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the IWM in Vienna. 

Between 1994 and 1996, he served as Director of the Soros Foundation program for promoting legal reform in Russia and Eastern Europe, and was also named Carnegie Scholar in 2003-2005 for his work on Russian legal reform. 

He is also the co-author of The Light that Failed: A Reckoning  with Ivan Krastev, a book that details the ride of authoritarian antiliberalism in Russia. 

GLOSSARY

What is the Kievan Rus ?
(00:8:11 or p.2 in the transcript)

 Kievan Rus (862-1242) was a medieval political federation located in modern-day Belarus, Ukraine, and part of Russia (the latter named for the Rus, a Scandinavian people). The name Kievan Rus is a modern-day (19th century) designation but has the same meaning as 'land of the Rus,' which is how the region was known in the Middle Ages.

The Rus ruled from the city of Kiev (also given as Kyiv) and so 'Kievan Rus' simply meant "the lands of the Rus of Kiev". The Rus are first mentioned in the Annals of Saint-Bertin which records their presence in a diplomatic mission from Constantinople to the court of Louis the Pious (r. 814-840) in 839. The annals claim they were Swedes, and this is possible, but their ethnicity has never been firmly established. Source: 

What was the crisis and annexation of Crimea ? 
(00:08:38 or p.2 in the transcript) 

As pro-Russian protesters became increasingly assertive in Crimea, groups of armed men whose uniforms lacked any clear identifying marks surrounded the airports in Simferopol and Sevastopol.. Masked gunmen occupied the Crimean parliament building and raised a Russian flag, as pro-Russian lawmakers dismissed the sitting government and installed Sergey Aksyonov, the leader of the Russian Unity Party, as Crimea’s prime minister. 

On March 6 the Crimean parliament voted to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation, with a public referendum on the matter scheduled for March 16, 2014. On the day of the referendum, observers noted numerous irregularities in the voting process, including the presence of armed men at polling stations, and the result was an overwhelming 97 percent in favour of joining Russia On March 18 Putin met with Aksyonov and other regional representatives and signed a treaty incorporating Crimea into the Russian Federation. Western governments protested the move. Within hours of the treaty’s signing, a Ukrainian soldier was killed when masked gunmen stormed a Ukrainian military base outside Simferopol. Russian troops moved to occupy bases throughout the peninsula, including Ukrainian naval headquarters in Sevastopol, as Ukraine initiated the evacuation of some 25,000 military personnel and their families from Crimea. On March 21 after the ratification of the annexation treaty by the Russian parliament, Putin signed a law formally integrating Crimea into Russia. Source:

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