 Good morning, everyone. I'm Dr. Michael Blodgett, Wing Historian for the 349th Air Mobility Wing. Prior to becoming the Wing Historian for the 349th, I taught history, yet Western European and American history at the university level. So because of that, I have some insight on the situation in Ukraine that we're dealing with now, that I feel I can share with y'all to give you some background, some historical background to the problem. Now, one comment I will make. I'm primarily interested in Ukraine, not Russia. I was a Ukrainian specialist, not a Russian specialist, so we'll talk primarily about Ukraine, and I'll bring the history up to 2014. Why 2014? Well, because after 2014, this becomes very much an open conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and I'm more interested in the background of why that conflict took place. So, let's begin with talking a little bit about Ukraine, and recognizing that it's one of the most fertile regions of Europe. It is, in fact, a major green producing region, much like the American Midwest is for the United States. And because of that, Greeks had been in contact with Ukraine from the 600s BC. In fact, in the 450s BC, when Athens was building the Parthenon in these marvelous temples, those workers were being fed by grain from modern Ukraine. By about 1000 BC, 700 to 800 BC AD, perhaps, the modern Ukrainians migrated into the region of Ukraine, and a city emerged at Kiev. And the reason was that the city of Kiev controlled the trade between the Mediterranean world, the late Roman world, and the Muslim world, and Northern Europe. And this trade was incredibly valuable. Ferds were coming south, Amber was coming south, and slaves were coming south. The region for Viking raids in the 900s and 100s, for instance, was to take captives in northern France and Britain and ship them to the Roman world, to the Muslim world, to be sold as slaves. And all kinds of things were going north. Silk was going north, for instance, and golden coins. We have thousands of coins from the Roman Empire and Muslim countries in Scandinavia between, say, about 700 and 1300, 1400. So by 900, Ukrainians had started to develop a corporate identity around the city of Kiev. Now, in the pre-modern world, it was very difficult to develop that corporate identity. It took a very long time because you didn't have very good communications. It was very difficult for common language to develop. But in the early modern world, in the 17 and 1800s, this modern Ukrainian identity really develops. And by 1860, it develops around a man named Tara Shevchenko. He was an artist and a poet who lived in the area around Kiev. And he's really recognized as the man who creates the Ukrainian language and creates a unique Ukrainian culture. And when he died, the Ukrainian people set up a large cross on his burial site in recognition of the importance that he had to the Ukrainian people. Now, the other thing that was happening starting in the 1850s, but going on into the early 1900s, was industrialization. It was happening in America, it was happening in Western Europe, it was happening in Russia. So as these new factories were being created, they tended to have to be created near locations where, first of all, they had raw materials like iron ore and coal. And then the second thing they had to have was food. So the end result of that was that modern factory cities started to develop in eastern Ukraine and in Kiev because they had access to that grain net food and because they had access to raw materials and a river network to ship their goods out in. Now the government of Russia, which ruled Ukraine at the time, was primarily interested in seeing to it that those factories were populated by Russians. So they encouraged Russians to migrate into Ukraine and they primarily migrated into cities, not into the countryside. Russians were the ones who were taking those industrial jobs in the factories. It was Ukrainians who were growing wealthy supplying the food that those cities needed. Well, this is fine up until the Russian Revolution because remember that in 1917, Russia collapses. The Russian government collapses and the Russian Empire collapses. And with the collapse of the Russian government, Poland declares its independence. Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia declare their independence, as does Ukraine. So the Russians, the Ukrainians, I'm sorry, weren't willing to remain in the Russian Empire anymore. And they certainly weren't willing to accept Bolshevism. Bolshevism being the earliest manifestation of communism because, again, Bolshevism is arguing that we need to get rid of private property. And you have Ukrainian farmers, some of the small farmers, but some of them very wealthy farmers who are saying that's absurd. They're certainly not going to give up their property. So in 1918, Ukraine declares its independence, but in 1919, Bolshevik armies enter Ukraine and conquer it. And this was a very important move on the part of Vladimir Lenin and the Bolsheviks. They needed the Ukrainian resources. They needed those steel manufacturing. They needed that grain to fight their civil war against the non-Bolsheviks. Now, as long as Ukraine was providing resources to Russia and Russia was threatened by these other non-communist movements, Russians were willing to treat the Ukrainians fairly well. It's true that in 1920, they tore down the monument to Taroshevchenko. But otherwise, under Lenin and his new economic plan, he allowed Ukrainians to keep their land. He allowed Ukrainians to sell their goods on an open market and simply tax them. But Vladimir Lenin dies and Joseph Stalin becomes the premier of the Soviet Union. And Joseph Stalin has very different ideas about where the Soviet Union should go. One thing that he believes is that the Soviet Union must industrialize and must industrialize now. The problem is that they don't have the modern machinery to do that. And they have to buy that modern machinery off of the open market from the West, from the United States and Western Europe. But that means he needs money to buy that modern machinery to set up the modern plants. The other thing that he wants to do is he wants to get rid of Ukrainian nationalism. He wants to exterminate the concept of Ukrainians as a separate people, especially as a separate country. So the first thing that happens in the late 1920s and early 1930s is the Communist Party cracks down on Ukrainian nationalists. Ukrainian poets, Ukrainian teachers, all these people were arrested and sent to labor camps in Siberia. Then in the winter of 1932-1933, the Bolshevik Army was ordered into Ukraine and they surrounded the cities and they blocked off the countryside so Ukrainians couldn't get into their own cities or out of Ukraine. And then Russian Communist Party members were sent to Ukraine and they literally took every bit of food out of Ukraine. The Communist Party demanded that Ukrainians give up their independent farms and join the Kholkos, the collective farms, where they would work for the state. Well, again, Ukrainians were terribly upset about this. They certainly didn't want to give up their land. But on the other hand, only by joining the Kholkos could you get fed. And that means there was massive starvation in Ukraine. Over the winter of 1932-1933, at least 3.5 million Ukrainians died of starvation. Now, again, what happened to all that grain? The Communist government sent it overseas for hard currency that they used to bring in modern industrial tools to set up modern factories. Now, the Ukrainians, this is called the Holodomor in Ukrainian, the Great Famine, have never forgiven Russia for this. And then World War II broke out. So in the summer of 1941, German armies are entering Ukraine and Ukrainians are welcoming them with open arms. Again, after the Holodomor, after the Russian attempt to stamp out Ukrainian language and culture, Ukrainians thought that the Germans were going to allow them to create an independent state with their own culture. Well, that wasn't the case. German rule was as bad as Soviet Russian rule had been in the 30s. So Ukrainians took to the countryside with whatever arms they could in an insurgent movement that eventually became centered around an organization called the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army fought the Germans until the Germans withdrew, and then the Soviet army tried to absorb the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, but the UPA refused to be absorbed. It turned its guns on the Soviet army, and they fought well after World War II. They fought until 1954. There were Western attempts to contact to help the Ukrainian Insurgent Army to arm the Ukrainian Insurgent Army after World War II. The problem is this, that there were other insurgent armies in the Baltics and in the Balkan countries that were also looking for arms. They were looking to fight the Soviet occupation forces with Western arms. And the United States and Great Britain were willing to help them, but the person who was put in charge of this program was Kim Philby. And for those of you who have never heard Kim Philby, he was actually, not only was he a senior officer in the British Intelligence Service, the MI-6, he was also a Russian spy. So he was given command of this operation, and he would identify the locations of weapons drops to his Soviet handlers who would then inform the Soviet army who would be waiting there when Western arms and Western advisors were sent in. So the Ukrainian Insurgency ultimately collapsed in 1954. It just can't support itself anymore. But through this 60s and 70s, through the 50s and 60s, I guess I should say, Ukraine managed to continue to adapt its language and its culture to Soviet rule. Now again, Russian was the official language of the Soviet Union. Russian was what was being taught in schools. Russian was what newspapers were published in, for instance. But Ukrainians kept the language alive. They kept their culture alive. And there were Ukrainian poets and Ukrainian politicians who begged the Soviet Communist Party to allow them to practice their religion, practice their culture under Soviet rule. And as long as they kept their pleas for this official, they were tolerated by the Soviet Communist Party. If they overstepped their boundaries, they found themselves in the gulag, in the prison camps. Now all of this starts to change in 1975 and in 1976, because the Soviet Union had redrawn the borders of Eastern Europe in after World War II. And they wanted the Western European states and the United States to recognize those borders. Well, Western Europe and the United States was willing to do that, but they wanted something in return. And in a series of negotiations that ultimately were held in Helsinki in 1976, the Soviet Union got what it wanted, got what it wanted, recognition of its borders. In return, the United States and Western Europe got the Soviet Union to recognize the right of Soviet citizens to enjoy their own culture and their own language and their own religion. Now, the Soviets thought that this was unenforceable. They had gotten something from nothing in this diplomacy as far as they were concerned. What they didn't realize was under the Carter administration and under the Reagan administration, the United States would hold the Soviets to this agreement. American diplomats regularly went out and demanded access to Ukrainian, Lithuanian, Russian nationalists. And this really gave hope to Ukrainian nationalists, as well as other nationalists in the Soviet Union. They now began to form what were called Helsinki committees. These were just people who came together, nationalists who came together to demand that they be allowed to participate as Ukrainians, to live as Ukrainians, with the Ukrainian language, with the Ukrainian culture. Now, again, the Soviet government was willing to tolerate these people as long as they didn't start talking politics. Then they went into the Gulag until 1985. In 1985, Mikhail Gorbachev becomes head of the Soviet Communist Party, and he inherits an economy that is, in fact, in freefall. The Soviet economy was in failure, and he advocated for a new direction in the Soviet culture, if you will. Glass Nost and Perestroika. Glass Nost being openness about what our problems are, being able to talk about our problems, and Perestroika being economic restructuring, to take advantage of the arguments we were having as a result of Glass Nost. Well, look, with Glass Nost, that opened the gates for an extended discussion by Ukrainians of Ukrainian culture and how they had been affected by Soviet leadership. All of a sudden now, Ukrainian nationalists were saying, why did the Holodomor happen? Why aren't we allowed to practice our culture? And other nationalists in Russia, in the Baltic states, and also in Eastern Europe were having exactly these same questions, and the Soviet leadership couldn't put an end to it. And finally, in 1991, December, I guess it was ninth, 1991, Russia withdrew from the Soviet Union, and with Russia withdrawing from the Soviet Union, so did Ukraine and several other states, and for all intents and purposes, the Soviet Empire was dead. Now, Ukraine had an independent state, but remember that the Soviet Union had a massive military complex, including tactical and strategic nuclear weapons. What happens to all that military equipment? The decision was, when the Soviet Union collapsed, that everything was frozen in place. All those tanks, all those artillery pieces, all those ships, all those ballistic missiles, and tactical nuclear weapons were frozen in place. And that meant Ukraine suddenly had become the third largest nuclear power in the world. Well, the United States didn't want all those nuclear weapons floating around, so they encouraged Ukraine to give up their nuclear weapons. They included both strategic nuclear weapons and about 3,000 tactical nuclear weapons. Ukraine didn't want to. They were afraid of Russia. They believed that they needed those weapons as defense against the Soviet Union, against Russia, I guess I should say. But again, under American pressure, Ukraine ultimately agreed in an agreement that was signed in Budapest in 1994 that they would surrender their nuclear weapons. All the strategic missiles, all the warheads, all the tactical nuclear warheads were sent to Russia for destruction. Well, again, this is fine as long as Russia is willing to recognize Ukrainian sovereignty. But the question then becomes, what should we as Ukrainians be? And remember, one of the reasons why I brought this back to the 6th century BC was the fact that Ukrainians have always seen themselves as part of the larger global economy. They're not part of the Russian economy. They want to be part of the Western economy. But in the 2013, the man who was president of Ukraine was Viktor Yanukovych. And Yanukovych was a very close ally of the Soviet leadership. And in 2013, the Ukrainian parliament had approved a treaty that would have created a political association with the European Union and a free trade agreement with the European Union. Essentially, it would have made Ukraine part of the European Union and the European economy, the larger European economy. Now again, Russia was deeply opposed to this. The Russian leadership under Putin wanted Ukraine to bind itself to Russia economically. And again, Viktor Yanukovych as a Putin ally refused to sign that treaty. So in November, in late 2013, early 2014, there were riots demanding that Yanukovych signed this treaty. And by February of 2014, the rioting got bad enough that Yanukovych fled the country. A new president was elected and he pressed forward with this agreement that would have brought Ukraine into the European Union and European trade. But again, Vladimir Putin was deeply infuriated by losing his ally in Ukraine and thinking that Ukraine would ally itself with Western Europe and with the United States. So this is when he authorizes the seizure of Crimea and he authorizes the breakaway of the states of Donetsk and Luhansk. These are allegedly Russian states in Ukraine and they identify as Russian and they want to be part of, or at least their leadership claims they want to be part of the Russian state. So this is where I want to end because this is where the Ukraine war that we're seeing now, the invasion of Ukraine really begins in 2014. So it's with this that Ukraine finds itself in conflict with Russia and it's a gradual process. Ultimately this conflict leads directly to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. So I hope I've given you some historical background on this situation and I hope that you will be able to take some of this and it will help you understand the situation that we're facing now. For those of you who are interested, I'll also be giving this presentation with slides at a lunch and learn held on the 1st of April. That is the Friday, that is UTA Friday at the Travis Air Force Base Heritage Center at noon. So if you'd like that, if you'd like any further, I'd like to watch that, feel free to come. If you'd like any further discussion on this, feel free to see me, email me, call me, what have you. But other than that, I'd like to thank you and I will talk with you later.