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3. Russian military strategy and European security after the annexation of Crimea
The lecture aims to achieve the following objectives:
- analyse Russia’s military strategy during the annexation of Crimea.
- examine how the annexation of Crimea impacted the security environment in Eastern and Central Europe.
- look at NATO’s response to the annexation of Crimea.
To successfully complete the third self-test, students have to watch the video lecture and read the compulsory material for the section.
In this section, we are going to look at the impact and consequences of the annexation of Crimea from a security perspective. The examination of this case from a security dimension is important for several reasons: the annexation of Crimea not only changed the security environment in the region and shifted EU-Russia relations in a more negative direction, but also revealed Russia’s military might. However, most of the scholars debate whether Russian military strategy was novel or was simply a combination of military tactics applied in a new way.
Back in 2008, Thomas de Waal, an expert on the South Caucasus, argued that Putin’s greatest legacy could be defined as “soft annexation,” which, at the time, was undertaken in Georgia’s breakaway provinces of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. The strategy of ‘soft annexation’ is based on the ideas that Russia is pulling political, economic, and military levers to exploit ethnic conflicts in countries that are in its sphere of interest with the aim to increase the tensions, gain influence in these states, while preventing them from moving closer to the West.
In this respect, most of the scholars tend to agree that Russian military novelties in Crimea were a mix of old Soviet ideas, combined with observations of Western warfare, and adopted and redesigned for use by the modernized armed forces. In other words, the real novelty in Russian military strategy in the Crimean case was the integration of military tools with more unconventional tools. For instance, Russia combined covert military action with using civilian self-defense force to create conditions and environment necessary to legitimize further military action (Ven Bruusgaard, 2014).
As mentioned earlier in the lecture, the annexation of Crimea not only demonstrated Russian military capacities, but also forced European political elite to rethink the security situation in Central and Eastern European countries as well as to debate about the established principles of territorial integrity and self-determination. More specifically, the annexation of Crimea led many European policy makers to question NATO’s commitment and capacity to defend its member states as well as challenge the nature of the alliance’s relationship with Russia. Despite the debates, NATO reinforced its commitment to defending central and eastern European allies by applying air defence and surveillance measures, maritime deployments, and military exercises.
The video lecture, examines the NATO’s response to the annexation of Crimea in more detail and looks further at Russian military strategy.
References:
- Interview with Thomas de Waal. Expert on Russia and Caucasus. “Soft annexation of Abkhazia is the greatest legacy of Putin to his successor”. Caucasian Review of International Affairs, Vol.2 (3), Summer 2008.
- Kristin Ven Bruusgaard. Crimea and Russia’s strategic overhaul. Challenges in Russia and Afghanistan. 2014.
Reading material:
- Paul Belkin, Derek E. Mix, Steven Woehrel. NATO: response to the crisis in Ukraine and security in Central and Eastern Europe. Congressional research service. July 2014.
- Marius Laurinavicius, et.al. EU and Russia relations after Crimea: red lines for “Business as usual”. Eastern Europe studies centre.
- Kristin Ven Bruusgaard. Crimea and Russia’s strategic overhaul. Challenges in Russia and Afghanistan. 2014.
- Katri Pynnöniemi. Russian thinking in the Ukrainian crisis. From drawing a line of defence of seeing a threat to national security. Finnish institute of international affairs. September 2014.