How the Soviet Union's collapse explains the current Russia-Ukraine tension
SARAH MCCAMMON, HOST:
About 100,000 Russian troops are currently gathered near Ukraine's border. To understand the current tensions, it's important to rewind the clock back to 1991. Thirty years ago this weekend, the Soviet Union was dissolved and broke into 15 separate nations. It was messy then, and it still is now. NPR's Greg Myre looks at how the Soviet collapse frames the current confrontation.
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MIKHAEL GORBACHEV: (Speaking Russian).
GREG MYRE, BYLINE: On Christmas Day 1991, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev sat down at a table deep inside the Kremlin to deliver a monumental speech. Associated Press reporter Alan Cooperman was among the few journalists allowed in.
ALAN COOPERMAN: And we were ushered down into a - some kind of underground chamber where they had a formal television studio with those big, Soviet-era tripods and huge cameras. And we sat there for a while. And then Mikhail Gorbachev came in.
MYRE: Cooperman and an AP photographer were sternly warned not to ask questions or take pictures.
COOPERMAN: It was an extraordinary speech. I remember thinking that he looked very tired. He expressed his trepidation about the future. But I thought he just seemed relieved.
MYRE: Gorbachev announced that after 74 years, as one of the world's most powerful nations, the Soviet Union was no more, splintering into 15 separate countries. As Gorbachev finished speaking, the AP photographer Liu Heung Shing quickly snapped what became an iconic image - Gorbachev closing the folder that held his speech, formally ending the Soviet Union. Seconds later, a Soviet security official approached the photographer and...
COOPERMAN: Slugged him hard right in the stomach.
MYRE: But he had the photo. The journalists were whisked out of the room and down a hallway. They saw Soviet officials walk by with huge, red Soviet flags emblazoned with a gold hammer and sickle. As Cooperman exited the Kremlin, he looked at the Moscow night sky and realized what he'd just seen.
COOPERMAN: They were carrying the flags that had just been removed from the flag posts above the Kremlin. And you could see it at night because those flag posts were always illuminated.
MYRE: The flags were gone, and so was the Soviet Union. If this was just a history story, we could stop right here. But you can draw a straight line from that historic day to the confrontation playing out now. Russia has an estimated hundred thousand troops massed along Ukraine's border amid fears an invasion could be coming soon. Russia and Ukraine have a shared and often turbulent history that goes back a thousand years. And they've never untangled that history and gone their separate ways.
VLADISLAV ZUBOK: People have short memories.
MYRE: Vladislav Zubok is a Russian historian. He teaches at the London School of Economics and just wrote the book called "Collapse: The Fall Of The Soviet Union."
ZUBOK: The story of Ukrainian-Russian tensions go all the way back to the rapid and unexpected collapse of the Soviet Union.
MYRE: This collapse meant thousands of Soviet nuclear weapons were spread across four of the newly formed states, including Russia and Ukraine. Russia kept its nukes. Ukraine gave up its arsenal in 1994 in exchange for a promise from Russia and others that its borders would not be violated. It seemed like a win-win, but Zubok says the reality proved much more complicated.
ZUBOK: When empires or big states collapsed, history produces a lot of flotsam and jetsam, a lot of debris that block not just good relations but block even understanding between the countries.
MYRE: And when there's friction, Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly intervened. He calls the Soviet collapse the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. Russian forces seized the Crimean Peninsula in Ukraine in 2014, and they remain there. At a Kremlin news conference Thursday, Putin blamed the current tensions on NATO's expansion into Eastern Europe and the possibility Ukraine might someday join. Meanwhile, Zubok is pessimistic. He says a lasting solution...
ZUBOK: ...Would require a fundamental change of regime either in Russia or in Ukraine. And I don't see any preconditions for either development.
MYRE: Former U.S. diplomat Donald Jensen says predictions about Russia are always hard. He served at the embassy in Moscow as the Soviet Union was collapsing and again in the years afterward. He believes the U.S. was too focused on trying to build democracy in Russia while the Russians were actually battling over power and money.
DONALD JENSEN: By pursuing the set of policies that were premised on a democratic transformation, we got into big trouble. I say this with great humility. We misunderstood what happened because of missing things like the money issue.
MYRE: Jensen still studies Russia. He's now at the U.S. Institute of Peace. He said Russia had a huge opportunity to integrate into Europe but has only become more isolated.
JENSEN: Russia has blown the chance to be integrated into the global European security architecture and economic structures. We don't expect Russia to be Western, but you expect it to be a positive contributor to global peace and security. And I just don't see that happening.
MYRE: The evidence, he says, is on display along the Russia-Ukraine border. Greg Myre, NPR News.
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