Moscow Opens Pandora’s Box with New Talk About Changing Ukraine’s Western Borders

Executive Summary:

• Russia’s illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea in 2014 and, more recently, its equally illegal absorption of Ukraine’s Donbas oblast illustrates the lack of respect Moscow has for Ukraine as a separate state.
• Kremlin officials are openly talking about changing all Ukraine’s current borders, not only those with Russia but others with countries to the west of Ukraine such as Poland and Hungary.
• Such talk suggests Russia’s plans to stir up revanchist sentiments in Eastern Europe against Ukraine, especially if a land for peace initiative some in the West are now urging did succeed.

On November 4, the post-Soviet Russia’s Day of National Accord, Yevgeny Pozdnyakov, a pro-Kremlin commentator for Vzglyad, published a commentary entitled “Russia Will Have to Redraw the Borders of Ukraine” (Vzglyad, November 4). Pozdnyakov dismisses the idea that Ukraine should be allowed to exist in its borders established in 1991 because almost all neighboring countries claimed or even controlled part of its territory at one time or another and to this day do not respect those borders. To support this argument, he uses a tactic much favored by Russian commentators, citing Ukrainian authors rather than Russian ones to make his point that Ukraine’s current borders are meaningless. Pozdnyakov then suggests that in the future, Russia should work with other countries, such as Hungary and Poland, to change the borders. That would reduce a future Ukrainian state to a small landlocked country incapable of defending itself or being defended by others against Russian demands. This logic is likely being shared by some Kremlin officials, meaning that any “land for peace” deal between Kyiv and Moscow will not end the conflict. Instead, after perhaps a brief breathing space, the Putin regime will continue its aggression against Ukraine with the aid of allies. With those successes in hand, Russia could then launch attacks on other neighbors such as the Baltic countries and Kazakhstan. In short, what may appear to some as a peace deal could trigger a broader war rather than prevent one.

Pozdnyakov’s argument builds upon and modifies Moscow’s commentaries on border changes that were especially frequent at the start of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s expanded war in Ukraine in February 2022 (see EDM, March 29, 2022). At that time, Vladimir Vinokurov, a professor at the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Diplomatic Academy, took a very different view about border changes in Ukraine. Vinokurov suggested that Russia should oppose any changes in Ukraine’s Western borders because those could limit Russia’s freedom of action. Although, he conceded, if Kyiv made territorial concessions to Moscow, Hungary and Poland would likely make analogous demands for concessions themselves (NVO.NG.ru, June 2, 2022). After more than two years of fighting, however, Ukrainian resistance has prevented the Russian side from achieving its initial goals and Moscow appears to have concluded that it may ultimately need to involve other countries in the future if it is to achieve the much-diminished Kyiv. Pozdnyakov suggests in his article that not only would Hungary and Poland’s demands for concessions help Russia directly in that effort, but they would also normalize territorial expansion and, thus, reduce criticism of Moscow for engaging in it. In Moscow’s view, if everyone is involved or portrayed as being involved in territorial aggrandizement then Russia should not be singled out with sanctions and other restrictions. If that view prevails, far more wars of aggression will break out, possibly leading to a global conflagration.

The borders of Ukraine, like those of many countries in the region, including Russia, have shifted throughout history. This historical context, however, does not validate Pozdnyakov’s conclusions, even though it is true that the evolution of the Ukraine-Russia borders of continued right up to the end of the Soviet period. (On that process, see my “Can Republican Borders be Changed?” RFE/RL Report on the USSR, September 28, 1990, posted online at Window on Eurasia, May 21, 2021). Moreover, borders of districts within these union republics were also changed frequently, again to serve Moscow’s interests, and especially to prevent any challenges to the Soviet Union’s territorial division (Window on Eurasia, October 5). When the Soviet Union dissolved in December 1991, all 12 countries that had been union republics—the three occupied Baltic countries had left earlier—and the international community committed themselves to accepting the 1991 borders as legitimate. The independence of these countries had only become possible because of a provision in the Soviet constitution allowing union republics to secede. There was a conviction that doing anything else would cause more issues, making the transitions many hoped for impossible and even more dangerous than agreeing to the previously established Soviet borders.

Those decisions, of course, did not prevent border disputes among and within the newly independent countries. The most prominent disputes before Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea include Moscow’s war against Chechnya, the conflict of Armenia and Azerbaijan over Karabakh, and a series of disputes among Central Asian countries. These conflicts have attracted the attention of other countries, which have supported one side or the other, but rarely their direct participation. Moscow, until very recently when it recruited North Koreans to fight alongside the Russian military in Ukraine, has opposed any involvement of countries beyond the former Soviet space and see it as a direct threat (see EDM, October 30). Many of these countries, even when they very much supported one side or the other, fear that their involvement could spark an even more serious conflict between the Russian Federation and themselves (Window on Eurasia, May 26). 

Moscow’s counting on the possibility that East European countries might help it in Ukraine should not come as a surprise. Russian officials have always paid close attention to the ways Moscow can exploit ethnic minorities in adversarial countries. In the case of Ukraine, the Kremlin has long tracked the Hungarian, Polish, and Romanian minorities, of which there are approximately 150,000 each, and these groups’ attitudes in their ethnic homelands—even if those governments have been generally supportive of Kyiv. More recently, Moscow has paid particular attention to Hungary and the Hungarians in Ukraine’s Transcarpathia given the Orban government’s pro-Moscow position and Budapest’s own actions regarding the Hungarian minority in Ukraine (see EDM, June 20). It is entirely possible that the Kremlin may believe that offering Russian assistance to Hungary to regain portions of Ukraine could help Moscow wean Budapest even further away from Europe.

Pozdnyakov’s article suggests that Moscow is increasingly attentive to these complicated ethnic relationships, something Western governments need to be aware of as well. Without proper care, any agreement the West encourages Kyiv to sign with Moscow could spark new and broader conflicts in the region and sow the seeds of a much larger and more destructive war.