Ukraine conflict now in 3rd year

A BLOODIED Ukraine marks three years yesterday since it launched a campaign against Russian-backed eastern separatists that now looks like an interminable conflict whose terms are dictated by the Kremlin.

More than 10 000 people have died in Europe’s only war zone in that time – a figure unimaginable when Kiev was riding the jubilant high of its February 2014 pro-EU revolution in which a selfenriching pro-Kremlin regime was sent fleeing into Russian exile.

But warning signs of Moscow refusing to let Ukraine slip out of its orbit and into the West’s arms without a fight emerged almost immediately as Russia swarmed Crimea with troops and then annexed Ukraine’s Black Sea peninsula in March 2014.

Armed men wearing no insignia on their uniforms but proclaiming pro-Russian slogans began taking over government buildings across Ukraine’s industrial east the following month.

Russia initially denied sending crack soldiers to Crimea and still calls the separatist conflict a “civil war” in which it has played no part.

But Kiev and the West say there is overwhelming evidence showing Moscow has sent troops and weapons across the border throughout the unrest and effectively turned the conflict into an undeclared war between the two ex-Soviet neighbours.

One of Europe’s bloodiest crises since the 1990s Balkans wars illustrates how difficult it is for countries once part of the Soviet Union to chart their own course.

More than two years of European efforts to bring peace to the EU’s backyard through talks have produced little beyond periodic truces that have always been followed by more violence and death.

Ukraine was already among Europe’s poorest states in 2014 due to decades of mismanagement and graft.

The war pushed its blighted economy into a two-year recession that now sees Ukrainians’ per capita gross domestic product stand at just a fifth of the European average. — AFP