War in Ukraine: Making Sense of a Senseless Conflict

By Medea Benjamin, Nicolas J.S. Davies and Katrina vanden Heuvel

Russia’s brutal February 2022 invasion of Ukraine has attracted widespread condemnation across the West. Government and media circles present the conflict as a simple dichotomy between an evil empire and an innocent victim. In this concise, accessible and highly informative primer, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies insist the picture is more complicated.

Yes, Russia’s aggression was reckless and, ultimately, indefensible. But the West’s reneging on promises to halt eastward expansion of NATO in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union played a major part in prompting Putin to act. So did the U.S. involvement in the 2014 Ukraine coup and Ukraine's failure to implement the Minsk peace agreements. The result is a conflict that is increasingly difficult to resolve, one that could conceivably escalate into all-out war between the United States and Russia—the world’s two leading nuclear powers.

Skillfully bringing together the historical record and current analysis, War In Ukraine looks at the events leading up to the conflict, surveys the different parties involved, and weighs the risks of escalation and opportunities for peace. For anyone who wants to get beneath the heavily propagandized media coverage to an understanding of a war with consequences that could prove cataclysmic, reading this timely book will be an urgent necessity.

• Language: English
• Publisher: OR Books
• Release date: Dec 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9781682193730

Medea Benjamin

Medea Benjamin is the founding director of Global Exchange and cofounded codepink with Jodie Evans. She also helped bring together the groups forming United for Peace and Justice. Medea has traveled several times to Afghanistan and Iraq, where she organized the Occupation Watch Center. At the start of 2005 she accompanied military families whose loved ones had been killed in the war to bring a shipment of humanitarian aid to the Iraqi people. In 2000, she was the Green Party candidate for the U.S. Senate from California. Her campaign mobilized thousands of Californians around issues such as paying workers a living wage, providing universal health care, and building schools, not prisons. Medea is a key figure in the antisweatshop movement, having spearheaded campaigns against companies such as Nike and Gap. In 1999, Medea helped expose indentured servitude among garment workers in the U.S. territory of Saipan, which led to a billion-dollar lawsuit against seventeen retailers. She is the author or coauthor of eight books, including the award-winning Don’t Be Afraid, Gringo, and helped produce TV documentaries such as Sweating for a T-Shirt.

Book preview

1.

HOW 2014 SET THE STAGE FOR WAR

When the U.S.S.R.—the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—broke up in 1991, administrative borders between its republics became international borders between newly independent nations. This created predictable problems in several of the new countries.

The majority Armenian population of the mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh region found themselves marooned inside Azerbaijan, while the largely Russian population of Ossetia found themselves split in two between North Ossetia, now part of Russia, and South Ossetia, within the new border of Georgia. Another Russian enclave, Abkhazia, ended up entirely within Georgia.

These anomalies led to repeated outbreaks of war, and remain unresolved frozen conflicts to this day. Azerbaijan launched a new assault on Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020 to recover territory in and around the Armenian enclave. Russia, which has good relations with both Armenia and Azerbaijan, brokered a cease-fire and dispatched peacekeepers to the new de facto border.

In Ukraine, the first disagreements were over the status of Crimea, which had been part of Russia since 1783. Crimea was transferred administratively from the Russian Soviet Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in 1954 after Nikita Khrushchev, who was from Ukraine, succeeded the late Josef Stalin as Soviet

Reviews for War in Ukraine

[Daniel Jordan · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Poorly researched and inaccurate information that has been proven wrong repeatedly. Read Timothy Snyder instead.

[Yuriy · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

This book spreads russian propaganda narrative. The authors aren't remotely familiar with the real state and roots of the confrontation.

[r walker · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Simplistic. Using debunked evidence at times. There are more informative and balanced books out there.

[keniza · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I just wish this book were read by everyone. Thanks for making it available in Scribd.