PROBUS lecture sheds light on Ukraine-Russia crisis

By Alejandra Pulido-Guzman - Lethbridge Herald on January 22, 2022.

LETHBRIDGE HERALDapulido@lethbridgeherald.com

As tensions rise over the current situation surrounding Russia and Ukraine, the PROBUS Lethbridge club invited University of Lethbridge professor Chris Burton to their Wednesday meeting to talk about current events in Eastern Europe.
Burton worked in the Soviet Union during its last years, then studied with Sheila Fitzpatrick in the 1990s at the University of Chicago for his PhD. He is an associate professor of history at the University of Lethbridge where he has been teaching Russian history and more generally modern European history for the last 20 years.
He started his talk by making his position very clear.
“I should mention that today’s lecture is current events in Russia. I am not a political scientist, I am a historian. So you’re going to get a lot of history again, but I will comment on current events,” said Burton.
Burton said a lecture he gave to PROBUS in 2013 was a quick sketch of some themes of Russian history, talking about politics under Putin as they were in 2013 and the development of Russian society since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
“The situation in Ukraine today, the current crisis has its roots in the invasion of eastern Ukraine in 2014. This in turn was triggered by the Euromaidan protest movement of 2013 in reaction to the Ukrainian government of Victor Yanukovich suddenly backing out of an association agreement with the European Union,” said Burton.
He said by February 2014 Yanukovich himself had been forced out, but Russia responded by annexing the Crimean peninsula an invading eastern Ukraine.
“In the latter case, Putin adopted what was known as a frozen war…low intensity conflict carries on there and this was in order to keep Ukraine unstable long term,” said Burton.
He said that Putin now in 2022 is again threatening this invasion for somewhat different reasons, but partially because his nearly eight year frozen war against Ukraine has failed to achieve its objective as Ukraine continues to move towards the west.
“Russian cross border populations played a crucial role both in justifying Russian intervention and in supporting it. Crimea was the only region in Ukraine with a majority Russian population, the Donbas had a very large Russian minority,” said Burton.
Burton said that what Putin has done in eastern Ukraine is impacting cross border populations, although in a very different register.
“Instead of their cross border location triggering master oppression, it has become a cause or cloak for Russian expansion,” said Burton.
He said an increasingly important component in the ideology of the regime is its alleged right to protect ethnic Russians abroad.
Shifting gears to a more recent event, Burton talked about the situation in Kazakhstan.
“Just a couple of weeks ago widespread protests broke out across the country, these are triggered by steep price increases in oil and this is ironic because Kazakhstan is a major world oil producer,” said Burton.
He said the following week by his count 225 people have been killed and nearly 10,000 people were arrested in addition to the rise in oil prices.
“In addition to the oil reserve, Kazakhstan holds 40 per cent of the world’s uranium. None of the revenues from the oil and the uranium filter down to the general population, so they earn on average less than $100 a month,” said Burton.
Burton said Nursultan Nazarbayev, who was the first president of Kazakhstan from 1990 to 2019, and his family have become notoriously rich from all of that.
“The successor to Nazarbayev is Kassym Jomart Tokayev, he has rolled back the oil price increase over the last few days in response to the protest. He’s cut remaining ties to Nazarbayev and his family, but most relevantly to this lecture he’s also declared a state of emergency,” said Burton.
Burton added that as part of this Tokayev called for foreign intervention and invoked the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which includes six countries. Among them are Armenia and Russia and they were called to intervene. Troops were sent from several of those countries but the one that caught the most attention were the troops from Russia.
“That included an infamous special forces unit that had committed atrocities in Chechnya, so that was sent into Kazakhstan. There was a lot of alarm about Russian intentions, especially given the simultaneous crisis with Ukraine and people are wondering whether this was the beginning of Russian increased domination of Kazakhstan,” said Burton.

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