📩 History repeats?

DEAR READER,

After last week's Oval Office showdown, Ukraine stays in our focus, which is why this week's expert opinion goes beyond our usual deep dive. Andreas Umland, an analyst at the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies (SCEEUS) of the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (UI) compares the current state of the US to Ukraine's situation 15 years ago, drawing some interesting parallels.

On another note, we have just published our latest issue! It explores the forgotten history of the region, as the Great Powers are once again deciding the fate of Central and Eastern Europe. That is why in this issue we have decided to dig deeper to uncover the various layers of legacy, many of which point to a strong multicultural past, unlike what many Western Europeans nations experienced. This in fact is what makes this region unique. From the Baltics down to the Western Balkans, various societies have long been shaped by a confluence of cultures, religions and traditions. Find out more here!

Enjoy reading this week’s “brief”!

— Giorgi Beroshvili, Editor

The United States and Ukraine are very different. The US is an older, federal democracy with a large population and economy, while Ukraine is a younger, unitary democracy with a much smaller population and economy. The Ukrainian party system is extremely unstable, meanwhile US politics has been dominated by two major parties. There are many other distinctions too.

However, as the US starts to look similar to 2010s Ukraine, there’s one question: will Trump’s second presidency end like Yanukovych’s first?

From connections with notorious political figures, such as Paul Manafort, to receiving support from Russia during their election campaigns, there are many similarities between Trump’s second presidency and Viktor Yanukovych’s 2010 election. The similarities don’t end here: they both approach politics as transactional, cynical, and patriarchal, and are not burdened by the constraints of values, norms and ideology. Also, when elected, Yanukovych and Trump were both convicted felons.

The biggest similarities between Yanukovych and Trump are, however, their close ties to some of their countries’ plushest tycoons as well as both men’s readiness to disrupt domestic order and foreign relations. Yanukovych in 2010 and Trump in 2024 both had support from the richest men, Rinat Akhmetov and Elon Musk, as well as from a number of other ultra-rich “oligarchs”. During his presidency, Yanukovych tried to recreate the Ukrainian plutocracy that had emerged in the 1990s following the break-up of the Soviet Union. In contrast, Trump is currently engaged in installing a type of isolationist oligarchy that would seem to be entirely novel to the contemporary United States (or, in some ways, take it back to the 19th century).

During his rule, Yanukovych undermined Ukraine’s fledgling democracy, Western integration, and emancipation from Russia’s tutelage with a series of political turnabouts. Among others, Yanukovych initiated a change of the Constitution to his advantage, and removed Ukraine’s goal to join NATO from the “Law on the Fundamentals of National Security”. In late 2013, he refused to sign an already initialed Association Agreement with the European Union.

This last-minute delay in the beginning of Ukraine’s European integration triggered a protest in Kyiv that became known as the Euromaidan. Yanukovych tried to violently suppress this dissent and thereby turned a small-scale protest into a country-wide uprising, with millions of participants. The Euromaidan grew into a bloody stand-off, and eventually the historic Revolution of Dignity, which resulted in the flight of Yanukovych from Kyiv. He was officially removed from his post by the Ukrainian parliament. The consitution was restored, and the Association Agreement with the EU was signed.

What is currently happening (and may soon happen) under Trump’s presidency in the US is distinct from Ukraine’s trajectory of development under Yanukovych. As the societies of the United States and Ukraine are not similar, these differences shouldn’t be surprising. Yet, the 47th US President is attempting to change the direction of American domestic and foreign affairs in a way that is similar to what Ukraine’s fourth President tried to do in his country. The political institutions in the US are currently going through a similar shift as in Ukraine under Yanukovych.

The million-dollar-question, becoming more salient with every passing week, is whether the finale of Trump’s presidency may eventually look like Yanukovych’s. To be sure, a full impeachment of Trump that would be equivalent to the Ukrainian parliament’s removal of Yanukovych from the office of President of Ukraine in late February 2014 will have a politically different result. Trump would be merely replaced by Vice President JD Vance, who is ideologically close to Trump. In contrast, Yanukovych was, for three months, replaced by Parliamentary Speaker Oleksandr Turchinov who had been in opposition to Yanukovych. Turchinov became Ukraine’s Interim President until the after the election President Petro Poroshenko, also a politician who had been opposed to Yanukovych, who took over in June 2014.

In spite of these and many other distinctions, the future trajectory of the political development of the United States could somewhat resemble Ukraine. Increasingly anti-democratic, disrupting, and autocratic as well as ultimately unpopular policies by the Trump administration could lead to mass demonstrations reminiscent of Ukraine’s late 2013 uprising against Yanukovych’s policies and behavior. In a worst-case scenario, the stand-off between the Trump administration and a country-wide protest movement could turn violent, and lead to clashes as bad as or worse than in Ukraine.

The international repercussions of such a domestic escalation in the United States could be more massive than the tragic aftereffects of Ukraine’s internal destabilization eleven years ago. Based on earlier prepared plans, the Kremlin took advantage of Kyiv’s reduced ability to react to Russian military expansion. Russia annexed the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula Crimea, in March 2014, and started a delegated inter-state war in mainland Eastern Ukraine, in April 2014.

Being the world’s most potent military super-power, the United States does not have to fear foreign invasion, occupation or annexation by a foreign country – as long as the US does not break apart. Yet, US mass protests, like those in Ukraine in late 2013, and their escalation, as in early 2014, would have repercussions far beyond the United States. Should the Trump administration's current disruption of political institutions, economic relations, and foreign ties continue, American civil society may sooner or later react, in some ways, similarly to Ukrainian civil society in 2013.

Whether this will also lead to deep changes in the US’s government, constitution and foreign affairs, as happened in Ukraine in 2014, is a question. Domestic turmoil in the US will not make the country vulnerable. What seems certain is that an internal destabilisation in the United State would have far-reaching international repercussions which could eventually be even more tragic than those of Ukraine’s Revolution of Dignity eleven years ago.

— Andreas Umland, Analyst at the Stockholm Centre for Eastern European Studies (SCEEUS)