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UKRAINE
THE LACK OF A WESTERN RESPONSE TO THE UKRAINIAN CONFLICT
From accusations that the Kremlin ordered the hacks of the Democratic National Convention servers to condemnations of ruthless Russian airstrikes on rebel-held Aleppo, there is certainly no shortage of foreign affairs conversations revolving around Russia. However, there is one such conversation that Western media has neglected in recent years: the Ukrainian Civil War. Although Russia's interference in Ukraine was a hot topic in 2014, especially in the aftermath of the annexation of Crimea, the issue has now faded from the West's public consciousness despite the problem being far from resolved.
The conflict in Ukraine's Donbass region began near the end of February 2014, shortly after the deposition of pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych during the Ukrainian revolution. Since the citizens of eastern Ukraine largely supported Yanukovych's close ties to Russia, many of them decried the newly instituted pro-Western provisional government and wanted to separate from Ukraine rather than submit to the new regime. Russia's annexation of Crimea in mid-March of that year fueled civil unrest in the Donbass region, and with covert Russian military support, separatist rebels began a full-out war with the Ukrainian government. Throughout the remainder of the year, the entire affair was highly publicized: several Western leaders publicly denounced Russian interference in Ukraine, popular news outlets broadcasted daily coverage of the civil war, and many people even speculated that the events in...