Ukraine: The worst case scenario is a descent into a vicious ethnic war.

Despite ceasefire, Ukraine could be going the way of Yugoslavia

by Erika Harris


A fragile ceasefire deal is just about holding in Ukraine, but hopes for its long-term success are not high. It is clear that the war for eastern Ukraine is far from over. And most ominously of all, it bears many of the hallmarks of one of 20th-century Europe’s darkest moments: the breakup of Yugoslavia.

The post-communist transitions to democracy in the early 1990s saw a massive resurgence of identity politics. As ideological and political frameworks collapsed across the eastern bloc, ethnicity and history once again became tools for mobilising political support, and for justifying political and territorial demands.

This resulted in the disintegration of all three multinational communist federations, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, and the creation of a glut of newly independent states – all equipped with new national narratives and versions of history. Anxious citizens of the new states suddenly found themselves members of minority groups, caught on the wrong side of new borders.

In the former Yugoslavia, these dynamics combined with the echo of earlier struggles resulted in a vicious ethnic war.

Disturbingly, the conflict in Ukraine is taking place in an all too similar context.

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