Ukraine, Russia and Europe’s bloody borders - FT.com
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Somebody born in Lviv in 1914, who died in 1992 and never moved out of the city, would have lived in five different countries during the course of a lifetime. In 1914, Lviv, then called Lemberg, was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire; by 1919 it was part of Poland and became Lwow; in 1941 it was occupied by the Germans; after 1945, the city was incorporated into the Soviet Union; and then in 1991 it became part of newly independent Ukraine.
Most of these changes were accompanied by warfare and bloodshed. So when it was suggested last week that, a few years ago, Russian president Vladimir Putin had proposed to Donald Tusk, then Polish prime minister, that Ukraine should be partitioned once again – with Russia claiming the eastern territories, and Poland Lviv and other parts of western Ukraine – there was an uproar.
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But there are other influential voices who think that even tacitly accepting that Europe’s borders can once again be redrawn by military force would be a disastrous mistake. Carl Bildt, who has just stepped down as Sweden’s foreign minister, puts it bluntly: “The borders of Europe are more or less all drawn in blood through centuries of brutal conflict.” Allowing these borders to be redrawn, he thinks, would be an invitation “for the blood to start flowing again”.
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If the dismemberment of Ukraine began in earnest, others might be tempted to join in. Viktor Orban, the prime minister of Hungary, referred to in some other EU capitals as a “mini-Balkan Putin”, has made clear he regards the loss of two-thirds of Hungarian land after the first world war as a tragedy. Parts of historic Hungary now lie across the border in Ukraine – as well as in Slovakia, Serbia and Romania. If Ukraine really began to fall apart, even some Poles might be tempted by the idea of the return of Lviv.
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The Russians argue that it is actually the west that started this dangerous process with Nato’s intervention in the Kosovo war of 1999, and the subsequent recognition in 2008 of Kosovo as an independent state. That process remains controversial, even within the EU. But Kosovo, unlike Crimea, was not incorporated into a neighbouring country. It was a province of the former Yugoslavia that sought independence. Within that process, the border between Serbia and Kosovo remained unaltered. The Kosovo war also took place in the context of the many years of fighting that followed the break-up of Yugoslavia.
However, the Balkan wars of the 1990s are relevant to Ukraine in one sense. They revealed how much blood can flow once Europe’s borders begin to crumble.
Éditorial de Gideon Rachman
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