Robert Wade: Rethinking the Ukraine Crisis

The prevailing interpretation of the Ukraine crisis in the West says that Russia – specifically president Putin – started it and controls most of the military forces fighting the Ukrainian army. Martin Wolf of The Financial Times, for example, claims that Russia started it because its leaders fear having a stable, prosperous and West-leaning democracy on their doorstep, and saw this as a distinct possibility after their ally, president Yanukovich, was ousted in a coup d’etat in February 2014. They will keep destabilizing Ukraine to prevent such a democracy until stopped by western force or sanctions (“Help Ukraine seize this chance”, Financial Times, Feb 11 2015).