For the
first time in its history, Ukraine has found itself on the Global Terrorism
Index, joining war-torn nations like Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan and Iraq.
Ukraine is
the only European nation in the 2015 ranking, and the report’s authors note
that this is entirely due to the violence seen in eastern Ukraine in a conflict
that has killed more than 8,000 people.
“The leap
from no deaths in 2013 to 665 in 2014 is a drastic change. The vast majority of
the attacks were by the Donetsk People’s Republic, with most deaths being
attributed to the launching of a surface-to-air missile at a Malaysia Airlines
aircraft, which killed all 298 people on board,” the report noted.
The
official investigation into the MH17 disaster, conducted by the Dutch Safety
Board, stopped short of placing the blame for the catastrophe on any specific
parties, saying only that a missile had been fired at the passenger plane.
While most Western nations have pointed the finger at Russian-backed
separatists in eastern Ukraine, both Russia and the separatists themselves have
denied this and tried to deflect blame on to Ukrainian authorities.
The report,
however, says the “Donetsk People’s Republic claimed responsibility for the
incident.”
A request
for comment on this matter sent to the Institute for Economics and Peace, which
compiled the report, was not immediately answered.
The
report’s publication comes as the conflict in Syria and the recent terrorist
attacks in Paris have threatened to push the Ukraine conflict into the
background.
Fighting in
Ukraine’s east continues on a smaller scale even despite a newly reached
ceasefire in September, but after the Nov. 13 attack in Paris – which claimed
more than 120 lives – Western leaders have spoken of cooperating more closely
with Russia in the fight against terror.
Some
Russian officials, in turn, have called for putting Ukraine on the backburner
while Russia and the West team up to fight the Islamic State.
There are
plenty of signs that the conflict in eastern Ukraine is not yet over, however.
On Nov. 20, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry reported that members of the General
Staff of Russia’s Armed Forces had paid a visit to the occupied territory of Donetsk
to “check the state of affairs.”
Last
weekend, nine Ukrainian soldiers were killed in three days.
Staff writer Allison Quinn can be reached at [email protected]
