Brothers armed. Military Aspects of the Crisis in Ukraine

Издательство: East View Press

ISBN: 978-1-879944-22-0

Brothers Armed: Military Aspects of the Crisis in Ukraine is the latest book from the Centre for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, a Moscow-based think tank focused on military and security issues. Presenting a collection of essays by leading Russian and Ukrainian military, security and political analysts, Brothers Armed charts the history of military reform and progress in Ukraine and Russia from the collapse of the Soviet Union to the 2014 annexation of Crimea.

Brothers Armed consists of four sections. Section one traces Crimea’s political history from the fifteenth century until its 2014 annexation by Russia. A crucial aspect of that history is Nikita Khrushchev’s seemingly arbitrary yet ultimately fateful decision to transfer Crimea from the jurisdiction of the RSFSR to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Bitter feelings and a deep-seated desire to right a historical wrong in part led to Russia’s sudden decision to annex Crimea some twenty years after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Section two offers a close examination of the military reform efforts of both Russia and Ukraine following the collapse of the USSR. While Russia’s Armed Forces experienced many growing pains in its effort to move from a Soviet-era conscription-based army to a versatile rapid-response army staffed mainly with contract soldiers (an effort still underway), Ukraine let the powerful military potential it inherited from the USSR simply founder and decay amid bureaucratic malaise and a failure to properly assess potential future military threats.

Section three features a set of essays analyzing the political circumstances and events leading to the annexation of the Crimea, including the role of Russia’s troops stationed in Sevastopol with the Black Sea Fleet, as well as the “little green men.”

Section four looks at the challenges in the road ahead for Ukraine and its military, including the specter of a full-blown Russian military invasion.

• Подробнее о книге: предисловие, обзор