THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION. Reforming Europe in a time of war

Lessons learned from the war in Ukraine 73 sionary policy that it considered detrimental for Russia’s security. However, a little over a year later, in April 2008, the final statements of the NATO summit in Bucharest included the agreement that Ukraine and Georgia - also former members of the Soviet Union and home to sig- nificant Russian or Russian-speaking minorities - would become NATO members, although a deadline for their membership was not approved. Nevertheless, Russia made a further attempt to re- suscitate a pan-European security agreement. In June 2008, Dmitri Medvedev, President of Russia at the time (as the constitution prohibited a third term for Putin, then head of the Government), gave a speech in Berlin pro- posing a new security treaty in Europe, that would cover the whole Euro-Atlantic community including Russia, to prevent confrontation and take a bold step beyond the Cold War and the unipolar world that emerged from the demise of the Soviet Union. Medvedev went so far as to draft the treaty, that he sent to the capitals involved, NATO, the EU, and the OSCE in November 2009, but it was already too late. In August 2008, the President of Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili, launched a military operation to take back control of the pro-Russian Georgian regions of Southern Ossetia and Abkhazia, de facto independent since 1992, immediately countered by Russia, sending troops to in- vade the Caucasian country and restoring the situation in nine days. It was the first time that Russia had inter- vened directly by force in a former Soviet Union country, to defend Russian minorities, and it was the point of no return in Moscow’s strategy concerning its immediate environment as, although troops had previously been sent to Transnistria, in Moldova, they were (and are) there officially as peace-keeping forces and have never actually fought. In Ukraine,Viktor Yanukovich, known for his proximi- ty to Russia, was elected president, in 2010, in democrat- ic elections. At the time, relations with Russia were very good. In late 2013, the signing of the European Union Association agreement was suspended, despite negoti- ations stretching back to the previous year, because this hindered significant economic relations with Russia. This led to the so-called Maidan Revolution, which forced him from power with a coup d’état, given that he was removed without the majority vote in the Supreme Coun- cil of Ukraine, or Rada, as required by the Constitution in force. Part of the pro-Russian or Russian-speaking popu- lation, majority in the East and South of the country, felt attacked by the new government, which even went so far as to prohibit use of the Russian language. They refused to accept this and rebelled. The rebellion failed in some places, such as Járkov or Odessa, but triumphed in part of the Donbas region - with varying degrees of undercover support from Russia, in terms of weapons, supplies and “military volunteers”, where the secessionists proclaimed the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, and in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea - also with Russian military support from the Sebastopol bases acting under no military insignia, that joined the Russian Federation by means of a referendum that has not been recognised by the international community. The Donbas rebellion led to a military confrontation between Ukraine and the secessionist provinces. In Sep- tember 2014, Ukraine, Russia and the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics signed the Minsk Agreements, under the auspices of the OSCE, in order to establish a ceasefire but it was not success- ful. This failure meant that in February 2015, Germany, France, Russia and Ukraine, the so-called Normandy Format, signed the Minsk II Agreements that planned to restore Ukraine’s authority over the secessionist ter- ritories, after a political process that included a reform of the Ukrainian constitution and a specific law to give them autonomy plus an amnesty with a few exceptions. Pressured by the nationalists, the Ukrainian government refused to comply with the political part, alleging that they had signed the agreements under pressure and that these agreements undermined their sovereignty, and it was prepared to recover its entire territory by force. In turn, Russia carried on providing weapons and volunteers to the secessionists. Military clashes have continued in the region ever since, providing Russia’s main excuse for