Uncertain Borders in the Post-Soviet Space
▻http://journals.openedition.org/pipss/4405
numéro époustouflant sur les frontières et leur évolution dans l’espace post-soviétique. Juste le problème, ça manque de cartes.
Ukraine’s border is sacred and untouchable," reads a sign in a border garrison in the Chernivtsy region of western Ukraine. Sacred and untouchable? The news coming out of Ukraine seems to indicate the opposite. Though protected by a specific international agreement1, the Ukrainian border was brutally redrawn with the annexation of Crimea by Russia in March 2014. Immediately after, the armed conflict that erupted in Donbass deprived Kyiv of its control on almost four hundred kilometres of borders in eastern Ukraine.
The Ukrainian situation is not unique in the region. Post-Soviet borders offer a particularly rich and complex picture, rooted in Russian and Austro-Hungarian imperial history, as well as in the consequences of the two world Wars and of Soviet Union’s foreign policy. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, local wars on the periphery led to the formation of unrecognized states and disputed borders. More recently, with the EU’s eastward enlargement, these problematic boundaries have become the external borders of the European Union.