The Ukrainian Crisis Seen From A Regional Perspective: Isolated Conflict Or Driving Agent For Regional Security Dynamics?

Ever since last year’s refusal of former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to sign the EU Association Agreement, there has rapidly been unfolded a series of events leading to an ongoing internal crisis and regional security issue. The growing trend of this development has revealed the lack of rapid and effective structured response by the West to deal with the continuing crisis. What are the reasons for which the Trans-Atlantic community’s efforts have not met the expected results? The current paper seeks to show that the Ukrainian crisis is linked to other regional security issues, which, as consequence of their inter-connectivity, attract the Wider Black Sea cluster of states into a process of regionness based on security matters. In order to provide evidence in this regard, the paper will look through the Regional Security Complex Theory’s reference factors’ lenses to analyze the reactions of the regional states based on patterns of amity-enmity, “weak”- “strong” typology of states, and the modalities through which the conflict has reverberated across the region enabling security dynamics. The employed methodology is partly based on content analysis and partly on discourse analysis. The findings of the paper reveal that the Ukrainian crisis influences and is influenced by the overall security dynamics in the region, and the inter-state relations, respecting a pattern of long-lasting relations of amity-enmity, and power relations.