Frontline Ukraine

Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands is a 2015 book by British political scientist Richard Sakwa. The book analyzes the origins and development of the 2013–2014 Ukraine crisis and the subsequent war in eastern Ukraine, arguing that the conflict resulted from a combination of Ukraine's internal divisions, competing geopolitical projects, and failures in the post-Cold War European security order. The book attracted attention in academic and media circles for its argument, that the crisis should not be understood solely as a case of Russian aggression, but also as a struggle shaped by Western-Russian rivalry, Ukrainian political fragmentation, and the collapse of diplomatic compromise.

Background

Richard Sakwa is a professor of Russian and European politics whose work has long focused on post-Soviet politics, Russian state development, and East–West relations. Frontline Ukraine was published during the early years of the war in Donbas, after Russia's annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of armed conflict in eastern Ukraine. The book appeared amid intense debate over how to interpret the crisis, particularly in Western policy and academic circles. Sakwa's account was notable for challenging interpretations that placed primary blame exclusively on Russia and Vladimir Putin.

Synopsis

Sakwa presents the Ukraine crisis as a multifaceted conflict involving domestic political divisions in Ukraine, competing external interests, and the failure of the post-Cold War settlement to accommodate Russia and Ukraine in a stable security framework. The book argues that Ukraine occupied a geopolitical "borderland" between Russia and the West, making it vulnerable to pressure from both sides. Sakwa describes the Maidan protests, the change of government in 2014, the annexation of Crimea, and the war in Donbas as interconnected parts of a larger crisis rather than isolated events. A central theme of the book is that the conflict developed through a "crisis of statehood" in Ukraine and a broader "crisis of order" in Europe. Sakwa emphasizes that the country's regional, linguistic, and political divisions were exploited in a setting where neither Russia nor Western actors were willing or able to support a durable settlement.

Arguments

Internal divisions within Ukraine

Sakwa argues that Ukraine’s political development after independence was marked by regional cleavages, weak institutions, and unresolved questions about national identity, language, and foreign alignment. He presents these internal tensions as a key part of the crisis, especially in relation to competing visions of Ukraine’s future.

Western and Russian rivalry

The book places the Ukraine conflict within a wider confrontation between Russia and the West. Sakwa argues that NATO expansion, EU integration efforts, and Western support for political change in Ukraine contributed to Russian insecurity and helped intensify the crisis.

Critique of simplified blame narratives

One of the book's main claims is that the crisis cannot be reduced to a one-sided account. Sakwa rejects interpretations that treat the conflict as solely the result of Russian expansionism, arguing instead that the crisis emerged from the interaction of domestic Ukrainian politics and international power struggles.

Major themes

Ukraine as a borderland

The title reflects Sakwa’s view of Ukraine as a frontier zone between larger geopolitical blocs. The book argues that this position made Ukraine both strategically important and politically vulnerable.

Crisis of the European order

Sakwa also frames the war as evidence of a broader crisis in European security architecture after the Cold War. In this reading, the failure to build an inclusive system that could accommodate both Russian and Western interests helped pave the way for conflict.

Information war

The book discusses the informational dimension of the Ukraine crisis, including competing narratives in Russian and Western media. Sakwa contends that the public debate was shaped by mutually reinforcing propaganda and simplification on all sides.

Critical reception

Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands received mixed but substantial scholarly attention. Reviewers generally agreed that the book was ambitious and well-informed, but they differed sharply on its interpretation of responsibility for the conflict. In International Affairs, the reviewer described the book as a serious and provocative contribution to the debate over Ukraine, noting its breadth and analytical ambition while also treating it as a challenge to mainstream interpretations of the war. A review in The Journal of International Relations and Development was similarly positive about the book’s scope and significance, presenting it as a strong account of the crisis and its international dimensions. The review emphasized that Sakwa’s work was valuable precisely because it pushed readers to reconsider common assumptions about the conflict’s origins. By contrast, more critical academic reviews argued that the book gave too much weight to structural explanations and too little to Russian military responsibility. A review in Slavic Review criticized the book for appearing to soften or disperse blame, especially by focusing heavily on Western policy, Ukraine’s internal fragmentation, and the failures of the post-Cold War order rather than on Russian coercion. The book has therefore often been described as a revisionist or structural interpretation of the war. Even critics, however, usually acknowledged that it was an important and influential contribution to the debate over how the crisis should be understood.

Interpretation and blame

Because the book is often discussed in terms of responsibility for the war, it is commonly classified as a **revisionist** or **structural** interpretation of the conflict. Sakwa does not deny Russia’s decisive role in events such as the annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in Donbas, but he argues that blame also lies with:

* the breakdown of the post-Cold War European order;

* Western policy toward Russia and Ukraine;

* internal instability and division within Ukraine itself.

In this sense, the book distributes causation more broadly than accounts that attribute the war mainly or entirely to the Kremlin. It is frequently cited in discussions of alternative interpretations of the conflict.

Influence

Frontline Ukraine became one of Sakwa’s best-known books on the post-Soviet space and has been cited in debates about the origins of the war in Ukraine, especially among scholars interested in international relations, post-Soviet politics, and security studies. The book also appeared in public discussions of the war through lectures, summaries, and online commentary. A number of video summaries on YouTube describe its central thesis as an argument that the crisis reflected a clash of internal Ukrainian divisions and broader East–West rivalry.

Comparison with similar works

Sakwa is often grouped with a broader set of authors who argue that the Ukraine war arose from long-term structural tensions rather than from Russian policy alone.

John Mearsheimer is perhaps the best-known example. In his realist account, the decisive cause of the crisis was the West’s attempt to pull Ukraine into its orbit, especially through NATO expansion. Mearsheimer frames the conflict primarily as a geopolitical struggle between great powers, and he treats Russian intervention as a predictable response to Western pressure.

Stephen F. Cohen offered a similar but more historically oriented critique of U.S.-Russia relations. He argued that the crisis was worsened by American policy, the enlargement of NATO, and the breakdown of post-Cold War cooperation. Cohen and Sakwa both emphasize the danger of simplistic anti-Russian narratives, though Sakwa gives more sustained attention to Ukrainian domestic politics.

Rajan Menon and Eugene B. Rumer have also argued that the war cannot be understood without considering the failures of the broader international order and the weakness of diplomacy. Their work is generally less polemical than Mearsheimer's and less structural than Sakwa's, but it also resists placing exclusive blame on Moscow.

Some commentators associated with anti-interventionist or realist traditions have similarly argued that the West played an enabling or provocative role. These authors differ in emphasis, but common themes include NATO expansion, regime change, and the absence of a durable European security settlement.

At the same time, most of these writers have been criticized by other scholars for minimizing Russian agency, especially in relation to the annexation of Crimea and the armed conflict in Donbas. Sakwa is often seen as occupying a middle position in this debate: critical of Western policy, but also attentive to Ukraine's internal fractures and the Kremlin's choices.

Editions

• Sakwa, Richard. Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands. London: I.B. Tauris, 2015. ISBN 9781784530642. https://books.google.com/books?id=8LkxBgAAQBAJ&newbks=0&hl=en&source=newbks_fb. https://www.amazon.com/Frontline-Ukraine-Borderlands-Richard-Sakwa/dp/1350340812/ref=sr_1_1?sr=8-1

See also

• Russo-Ukrainian War
• 2014 pro-Russian unrest in Ukraine
• Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation
• Political history of Ukraine
• Richard Sakwa

Further reading

• "Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands". International Affairs. 91 (3): 652–653. 2015. doi:10.1093/ia/ivv131.
• "Frontline Ukraine: Crisis in the Borderlands". The Journal of International Relations and Development. 2017. doi:10.1057/s41268-016-0001-z.
• "Frontline Ukraine. Crisis in the Borderlands". Slavic Review. 74 (4): 1011–1013. 2015. doi:10.5612/slavicreview.74.4.1011.
• "Book review: Frontline Ukraine: crisis in the borderlands by Richard Sakwa". London School of Economics.
• "Emeritus Professor Richard Sakwa". University of Kent.

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