Author: Oleksandra Diakonova is a Master’s student in International Relations at CEU, specialising in Conflict and Security Studies. She holds Bachelor’s degrees from NaUKMA (Psychology, focusing on student-centred educational approaches) and the University of Amsterdam (Politics, Psychology, Law and Economics, with research on the abduction of Ukrainian children by Russian authorities). Her current research examines the role of educational systems in colonial structures of power in Eastern Europe. She is also an active participant in Ukrainian civil society, engaging with advocacy, educational reform, youth politics, and charity work.
My reflection on the readings is primarily grounded in my personal experiences and focuses on the neo-colonial expansion of Russia into Ukraine and the Western strategy of non-intervention. The paper traces the Western strategy of non-intervention through the stages of development of the current war in Ukraine, which has been ongoing for eleven years, unfolding in stages, each escalating the level of suffering, destruction, and force employed by the Russian military and state. Each stage presents a renewed opportunity to interrogate the global (or more precisely, Western) doctrine of (non)intervention. The central international law principle brought into focus is the right to self-determination, the same principle examined by Orford (2003) in her analysis of humanitarian interventions conducted under the authority of the UN. The paper concludes with two points. First, the (non)intervention strategies reflect underlying imperial power structures that persist to this day. Second, the Western decisions to (not)intervene are procedurally flawed and are guided by the same imperial logic of regional power distribution and expansion of Western ideological empire.
The preconditions for the war in Ukraine were set long ago by historical context and culminated in the Ukrainian Revolution of Dignity, which erupted as a public response to the Ukrainian government at the time, led by Viktor Yanukovych, turning away from European integration and toward closer alignment with Russia. Ukrainians were collectively asserting their right to self-determination, with civil society exercising its watchdog function over state power. The armed phase of the conflict began with the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, a covert operation carried out by the so-called “green men.” This annexation was enabled by the increased presence of Russian special forces and the violent elimination of local civil society actors. Russia justified the annexation by claiming to protect the right to self-determination — an argument strikingly similar to those used by Western powers in Kosovo and East Timor (Orford, 2003). On 16 March 2014, Russia conducted an illegal and fabricated referendum and declared that the population of Crimea had wished to join the Russian Federation. This act constituted a violation of internationally recognised borders, Ukrainian sovereignty, and fundamental human rights. It represents an illegal territorial expansion carried out through political rather than conventional warfare, and it bears unmistakable colonial characteristics.
The neo-colonial expansion into Crimea invites reflection on how international legal norms, particularly the right to self-determination, are selectively interpreted and mobilised. Orford (2003) demonstrates how international law often functions less as a constraint on power than as a language through which power legitimises itself. Russia’s actions in Crimea relied precisely on this logic, constructing a facade of legality that Western states largely chose not to confront, responding with symbolic sanctions and monitoring missions. This limited response points toward a deeper familiarity with such justificatory practices. Westad’s (2012) analysis of the “empire of liberty demonstrates that Western support for self-determination has historically been conditional, extended primarily when newly formed political entities align with dominant ideological and economic orders. Where movements for self-determination threaten existing hierarchies or escape external control, they are reframed as destabilising rather than emancipatory.
This dynamic becomes particularly visible in Russia’s appropriation of Western interventionist rhetoric. The Crimean narrative appears almost as a grotesque reconstruction of the liberal interventionist script: an allegedly oppressed community, claims of historical injustice, and a great power assuming the moral duty to intervene, complete with a staged referendum to simulate popular consent. This mimicry fits the concern of Kofi Annan regarding intervention in Kosovo, as cited by Orford (2003, p. 21): “[the episode sets] dangerous precedents for future interventions without a clear criterion to decide who might invoke these precedents, and in what circumstances”. Orford’s focus on legality and Westad’s focus on ideology together reveal a two-step mechanism through which political violence is rendered acceptable: ideology frames intervention as a moral necessity, while international law provides the technical vocabulary of legitimacy.
Also in 2014, Russian forces expanded into Eastern Ukraine, marking a shift from covert political warfare to overt military violence. This stage was characterised by kinetic confrontation, systematic attacks on civilian infrastructure, persecution of civilians, and the establishment of quasi-states governed by Russian-backed militias. Once again invoking the right to self-determination and moral duty to prevent an imminent genocide, Russia supported local proxies’ claims for independence. Ukraine was pressured into signing the Minsk ceasefire agreement on 5 September 2014, effectively freezing the conflict and rewarding territorial seizure. Russia repeatedly violated the ceasefire. The occupation of Eastern Ukraine calls for deeper reflection on what truly determines Western (non)intervention. The images of protesters dying on Maidan with EU flags in their hands failed to generate meaningful action to defend democracy, freedom of speech, or human rights. Instead, trade with Russia continued, as did political and economic dependencies. This suggests that the protection of “Western values” functions more as rhetorical framing than as the guiding principle in decision-making.
Orford (2003, pp. 8-9) explicitly questions whether the apparent readiness to intervene in the 1990s and early 2000s was shaped by the economic self-interest of intervening states. Her analysis of East Timor and Bosnia and Herzegovina shows how post-intervention governance resembled nineteenth-century mandate systems, with international institutions exercising extensive control over domestic policy and economic restructuring. Ukraine offers no comparable opportunity — its telecommunications, banking, construction, and service sectors are already developed, limiting the economic incentives for intervention. Investment is perceived as risky, and guidance from international institutions Ukraine accepts willingly, striving to join the EU. Ukraine’s strong civil society and democratically elected government complicate any deeper paternalistic intervention. Westad (2012, pp. 6-9) further explains the reluctance by demonstrating that Western interventions have historically targeted societies portrayed as politically immature, economically dependent, or structurally incapable of self-governance. Ukraine possesses a consolidated national identity, a resilient civil society, and economic sectors that are competitive with those of EU member states.
On 24 February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion aimed at dismantling Ukrainian statehood altogether. This invasion relied on the systematic destruction of cities, infrastructure, and civilian life. Mass atrocity crimes — including killings and sexual violence in Bucha, the levelling of Bakhmut, and attacks on energy infrastructure during winters — can be understood as deliberate tactics targeting civilians. Despite this, Western states refrained from direct military intervention, even as Russian missiles and drones repeatedly violated EU airspace. This stage invites engagement with Orford’s (2003) analysis of collective demand for intervention. While the invasion initially generated a surge of solidarity with displaced Ukrainians and conditional military assistance, there was no pronounced collective demand for intervention. This suggests three conclusions. First, collective demand is not spontaneous but politically constructed and aligned with national cost-benefit calculations. Second, the figure of the “ideal victim” — non-agent, helpless, and incapable of resistance — is central to interventionist narratives (Orford, 2003, pp. 10-11), a condition Ukraine does not fully meet due to its visible agency and organised resistance. Third, the identity of the oppressor is decisive, as confronting a global power is more costly than intervening against a weaker state.
In conclusion, Western (non)intervention appears guided less by ideological commitments than by capitalist logic, strategic calculation, and risk management. Read through Orford and Westad together, it emerges as a reconfigured continuation of neo-imperial competition, in which international law and humanitarian rhetoric serve to mask power struggles between dominant actors, while the agency and suffering of smaller states are rendered secondary. Russia seems to have inherited an asymmetry that was a characteristic of Soviet stances on self-determination — the collapse of formal Western empires was followed by the Soviet call for universal self-determination, but the imperial nature of the Union itself was denied, and national moves within what was perceived as the ‘Soviet world’ were suppressed. For a long time, the collective West appeared to share the perception of Ukraine as part of the now ‘Russian world’, treating the conflict as internal and located within Russia’s natural sphere of influence. Only recently has the Ukrainian agency and its right to self-determination been more widely acknowledged.
References
Orford, A. (2003). Reading humanitarian intervention: Human rights and the use of force in international law. Cambridge University Press.
Westad, O. A. (2012). The global Cold War: Third World interventions and the making of our times. Cambridge University Press.
Note: OpenAI ChatGPT model was used to enhance grammar and provide stylistic suggestions.