Russia Annexes Crimea, Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution Overturns Its Government and Venezuela’s Streets Erupt in Protest

Jamaica Homes Global Conflict & Caribbean Impact Review | Published 3 April 2014 | Reporting Period: 3 January – 2 April 2014

Quarterly Briefing

• Ukraine’s Maidan revolution reaches its climax in late February as President Viktor Yanukovych flees to Russia on February 21 following days of deadly violence on Kyiv’s Independence Square; Russia responds by deploying forces to Crimea.
• Russia formally annexes Crimea on March 18 after a disputed referendum; the United States and European Union impose targeted sanctions and suspend Russia from the G8; the crisis represents the first forcible change of a European border since 1945.
• Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 disappears on March 8 with 239 people on board during a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing; searches of the South China Sea and then the southern Indian Ocean find nothing; the mystery remains unsolved.
• Venezuela erupts in opposition protests from February 12, triggered by a student demonstration in San Cristóbal; at least 40 people are killed in months of unrest, and opposition leader Leopoldo López is detained on February 18.
• The Syrian civil war enters its fourth year; Geneva II peace talks convene in January and February but collapse without agreement; the humanitarian toll exceeds 140,000 dead and over 2.5 million refugees.
• South Sudan’s civil war, which erupted in December 2013 from a political dispute within the SPLM, has displaced over one million people and raised warnings of famine; peace talks are stalled.

Prologue: A Quarter That Rewrote the European Map

For the first time since the Second World War ended, a major European power has forcibly annexed territory from a neighbouring sovereign state. Russia’s absorption of Crimea on 18 March 2014 ended a post-1945 European order that had been strained but never formally broken: the principle that borders in Europe were inviolable. The annexation followed the forced departure of Ukraine’s elected president, himself driven out by a revolution whose legitimacy is contested. The sequence of events does not lend itself to simple moral accounting, but its geopolitical implications are unambiguous: Europe is dealing with a Russia willing to use military force to redraw maps, and the institutions — the EU, NATO, the OSCE — built to prevent exactly this are being tested. For the Caribbean, the crisis matters because it destabilises the global order on which small open economies depend, threatens European energy security and accelerates the economic pressures on Russia and its trading partners that affect global commodity markets.

Maidan and the Russian Response

The EuroMaidan protests that had occupied Kyiv’s central square since November 2013 — triggered by President Yanukovych’s last-minute rejection of an EU association agreement in favour of a Russian economic package — turned violent in mid-February when riot police used live ammunition against protesters. Over three days, from 18–20 February, nearly one hundred protesters and several police officers were killed. European mediators brokered a compromise agreement on 21 February; Yanukovych signed it and then fled to Russia before nightfall. The Ukrainian parliament impeached him the following day.

Russia’s response was rapid. Within days, unmarked military personnel in Russian-style equipment — quickly dubbed “little green men” by the media — appeared across Crimea, taking control of airports, government buildings and communication infrastructure. A referendum held on 16 March produced a 97 per cent vote for union with Russia, a result widely described as impossible under any free and fair process. Russia formally annexed Crimea on 18 March. The United States and European Union froze assets and imposed visa bans on named individuals; the G8 suspended Russia from its membership. Western leaders warned that further moves against eastern Ukraine would produce further consequences. Putin characterised the annexation as the restoration of Russian territory historically belonging to Russia and the protection of a Russian-speaking population threatened by a coup-installed government.

Venezuela: Caribbean PETROCARIBE’s Uncertain Anchor

Protests that began on the campus of the Universidad de los Andes in San Cristóbal on 12 February — triggered by a student’s protest about campus security — spread rapidly to Caracas and other major cities as a broader expression of discontent with crime, inflation and shortages. The government of Nicolás Maduro, who won the presidential election in April 2013 by a margin of less than two percentage points following Hugo Chávez’s death, responded with arrests. Opposition leader Leopoldo López, who had called on demonstrators to march on government ministries on 12 February, was detained on charges of murder, terrorism and arson. At least 40 people have been killed in protest-related violence through the end of the quarter.

For Jamaica and other PETROCARIBE member states, Venezuela’s domestic instability is a matter of direct economic concern. The programme, through which Venezuela supplies oil at preferential financing terms, has been a significant source of fiscal relief for Caribbean governments operating under fiscal stress. With Venezuelan inflation running above 50 per cent, foreign exchange reserves declining and oil production falling from its early 2000s peaks, the programme’s long-term sustainability is a question that Caribbean finance ministries must now factor into their planning — even as they continue to benefit from its current terms.

MH370, Syria and South Sudan

The disappearance of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 on 8 March was perhaps the most disorienting media event of a disorienting quarter. An airliner carrying 239 people simply vanished; satellite data eventually suggested it flew south over the Indian Ocean, but as of early April no wreckage has been found. The mystery generated an extraordinary volume of media coverage, partly because of the human tragedy and partly because the idea of a modern aircraft disappearing without trace confounded expectations of contemporary surveillance capability. For Caribbean airlines and tourism authorities, MH370’s disappearance reinforced broader anxieties about aviation safety that can affect travel decisions.

Syria’s civil war entered its fourth year with no sign of a political solution. The Geneva II talks convened in late January and early February but broke down when the Assad government refused to discuss any arrangement involving the president’s departure. South Sudan’s civil war, which began in December 2013 as a political dispute within the ruling SPLM between President Salva Kiir and former vice president Riek Machar, had by early April killed tens of thousands and displaced over one million people. Peace talks in Addis Ababa were deadlocked.

Looking Ahead

Russia’s relations with the West have not been this hostile since the Cold War; what further moves Putin makes in eastern Ukraine — where pro-Russian demonstrations are now occurring in Donetsk, Luhansk and Kharkiv — will determine whether the crisis deepens further. Venezuela’s political trajectory will directly affect PETROCARIBE’s future. The search for MH370 will continue over the coming months in one of the world’s most remote ocean expanses. And Syria’s war will enter another year without a political horizon. The pattern that is emerging — of multiple simultaneous crises that the international community’s existing institutions are inadequate to resolve — suggests that the second quarter of 2014 will not bring relief from the tensions that have defined the first.

Jamaica Homes Global Conflict & Caribbean Impact Review is published quarterly, examining how wars, geopolitical tensions and major international crises have shaped Jamaica, the Caribbean and their economies.

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