The Russo-Ukrainian War - Serhii Plokhy

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Imperial Collapse

On December 25, 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as the president of the Soviet Union, marking the official dissolution of the USSR. This occurred after Ukraine's independence referendum on December 1, 1991, where an overwhelming majority voted for independence. Although this was a significant event, it was not a shock to Gorbachev or Boris Yeltsin, the President of Russia, who had been aware of the growing independence movements. Yeltsin moved quickly to establish ties with Ukraine's soon-to-be-elected president, Leonid Kravchuk. Several other Soviet republics had also held referendums and declared independence earlier in 1991. Ukraine's move was crucial, but it was part of a broader process that led to the acceptance of the Soviet Union's dissolution by the remaining republics.
Russians today believe their state and nationhood started in Kyiv, the centre of a medieval polity known as Kyivan Rus'. Centred on Ukraine's capital, it encompassed most of Ukraine, Belarus, and European Russia. It formed in the 10th century and was crushed my the Mongols in the 13th, giving rise to various semi-independent polities including Galicia-Volhynia, Novgorodian republic, and the principality of Vladimir. Muscovy emerged, and Russia's Kyivan origins was born from the conquest of Novgorod by Ivan the Great, where Ivan claimed the heir of the Kyivan princes, claiming the right to rule Novgorod. Ivan IV the terrible was crowned as the first tsar of Russia, significantly expanding territory by conquering the khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan (who were like Muscovy, successor states of the Mongol Empire). Ivan's attempt at expanding west during the Livonian War in 1558-83 was met with a coalition of Poland-Lithuania, Sweden, and Denmark. With the threat of Muscovy, The Union of Lublin in 1569 established the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, with Poland controlling Ukraine, while the Belarusian lands were in the Duchy of Lithuania.
The Cossacks played a leading role in the formation of modern Ukraine. They were freemen and runaway serfs who emerged as a powerful military force in the late 16th century on the lower Dnieper, between the lands of the Kingdom of Poland and the Crimean Khanate. During the Times of Troubles at the start of the 17th century, the Cossacks and Polish allies captured Moscow, and in the aftermath, Muscovy separated itself politically and religiously from the Ukrainian and Belarusian lands.
A leading figure, Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky led the Cossacks to rebel against Polish rule in 1648, with a Muscovian alliance (Treaty of Pereiaslav) in 1654. Their success revived and legitimised Muscovy's claims on Kyivan heritage and the protection of fellow Orthodox brethren against the Catholic Polish kings. This marked the encroachment of the Cossacks' rights and freedoms, with the Muscovites moving into areas of Belarus and Ukraine and establishing their garrison in Kyiv. In 1708, under their new hetman Ivan Mazepa, the Cossacks led a revolt against Peter the Great, joining the side of the Swedes. Their defeat established the Russian Empire as a great power in the region in 1721, with Peter curtailing the Cossack autonomy and establishing a Russian administrative body called the Little Russian Collegium. It was Catherine the Great integrated the Cossack polity into the Russian Empire, after the Russo-Turkish wars of the late 18th century where Crimea was annexed, as well as Ukrainian lands that came under Russian control. The last of the Cossack institutions were abolished with the Russian assault on the Zaporozhian Host in 1775.
The modern Ukrainian nationalist movement took their inspiration from the Poles, when they confronted the Russian Empire with the Pole Uprising of 1830-31. A new model of a Russian Empire was tripartite, with Great Russians, Little Russians (Ukrainians), and White Russians (Belarusians). In the 1840s, a group of intellectuals led by Mykola Kostomarov envisioned a Slavic federation to replace the Romanov and Hapsburg monarchies and empires. The authorities decided to ban the publication of Ukrainian language in 1863. In the wave of revolutions in 1848, the emergence of Ruthenians in Transcarpathia, threatened both the Hapsburgs and Russians. Despite support for Russophile movements in that region, they welcomed Ukrainian intellectuals, one of them being Mykhailo Hrushevsky, the first head of an independent Ukrainian state.
While cracking down on nationalistic movements in their own territories, empires used promises of nationalism to play against one another. The rise of pan-Slavism in the Balkans was supported by Russia, who defeated the Ottoman Empire. Russia's support for Serbia against the Austro-Hungarian empire was one of the leading causes of WW1. After the Bolshevik revolution of 1917, the ideas of autonomous polities within the Russian Empire emerged. The Bolsheviks lost control of Finland, Poland, and the Baltics. The Central Rada of the revolutionary Ukrainian parliament emerged, headed by Hrushevsky. They declared a Ukrainian People's Republic, and after a war fought with the Bolsheviks, the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic was formed.
In February 2022, Vladimir Putin suggested that it was the Bolsheviks, Vladimir Lenin in particular who created the modern Ukrainian state. It's more the case that Lenin established the formation of modern Russia. Lenin established the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on 30 December 1922. The Bolsheviks stayed in power in the republics through the Communist Party, remaining highly centralised and turning the federal structure of the Soviet Union more into a formality. Cultural Russification of the borderlands emerged when Joseph Stalin took over as leader of the Communist Party. With the goal of integrating non-Russian nationalities, Stalin persecuted the Ukrainian party cadres and peasants, leading to the Holodomor of 1932-33. During WW2, Moscow promoted the Ukrainian language and culture to promote enlisting to the Red Army. They exploited the Ukrainian ethnicity and nationality to expand eastwards, such as the takeover of Poland's territories following the Molotov-Rippentrop Pact, and the capture of Lviv.
After Stalin's death in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev, who was an ex-head of the Ukraine Communist Party, became leader of the USSR. An official "gift" of the transfer of the Crimean Peninsula from the Soviets to Ukraine 1954 marked the tercentennial anniversary of the Treaty of Pereiaslav, presented as proof of the trust Russia has of Ukraine. In reality, the administration of Crimea was already under Ukraine due to Stalin's deportation of Crimean Tartars. This showed the growing influence of Ukraine in the Soviet Union, being the second-most important republic, in terms of providing resources and population. Succeeding Krushchev was Leonid Brezhnev, who clamped down on Ukraine's cultural revival during Khrushchev's de-Stalinisation period in the late 1950s. Mikhail Gorbachev came into power in 1985, at a period where the Ukrainian nationalistic revival was exhausted. Gorbachev was convinced that the "nationality question" in the USSR was resolved, when he replaced a native Kazakh leader of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan with a Russian, he was met with protests and riots.
In 1988, Estonia became the first republic to declare sovereignty. Lithuania in 1990, declared itself completely independent of the Soviet Union. By June 1991, Moscow had two presidents, Boris Yeltsin of Russia, who was a former party boss, and Gorbachev of the USSR. The difference between the elites of the Baltic States and Russia is that they made a clean break with the communist past and leadership passed down to intellectuals and technocrats. The "Popular Fronts" of the Baltic States were opposed by the "International Fronts," organised by Moscow to mobilise Russian and Russian-speaking minorities in the republics. After the dissolution, The Commonwealth of Independent States was established to negotiate the issues related to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. But it was unable to answer the question of how much Russia was willing to concede to its former subjects.
The collapse of the USSR is akin to the Portuguese Empire, with relative peace and revolutions that took place in their capitals, where reformers tried to dismantle a more authoritarian government. Yeltsin sought to implement reforms in Russia and use force against autonomous republics in the Russian Federation should they attempt to secede, like in Chechnya in 1991. However, keeping the other republics under Russian control was unlikely, due to the influence of the US had over the USSR at this time. Washington did not want the republics to fight one another, with a possibility of a "Yugoslavia with nukes." Ukraine helped ensure a peaceful dissolution through a tolerant attitude toward its Russian minority made it easier for Yeltsin to ignore pressures to protect the formerly dominant nationality.

Democracy and Autocracy

In September 1993, Yeltsin signed decree 1400 that dissolved the country's two legislative bodies, the Congress of People's Deputies and the Supreme Soviet, in violation of the existing constitution. He saw it as necessary for his continuation of implementation of "shock therapy," where government cut subsidies to state-run enterprises to transition into a market economy. However, the economic miracle did not happen, prices rose drastically and the GDP of Russia fell significantly in 1992. By signing the decree Yeltsin effectively made himself illegitimate according to the constitution. The Supreme Soviet annulled the decree and the Congress impeached the president. Aleksandr Rutskoy took over as interim president and appointed his own ministers, however the Yeltsin loyalists including the defence minister Pavel Grachev, who after receiving orders from Yeltsin ordered the tanks to assault the House of Soviets (Russian White House) in October 1993. Yeltsin performed a self-coup, dissolving parliament and establishing a rule by decree system. This attack on democracy was supported by the US with publicly expressed approval. In December 1993, Russian citizens voted on the new constitution that increased the powers of the president and the executive branch and drastically reduced the power of the legislative branch.
Russia's authoritarian shift began in the 1980s and 1990s. The loss of Eastern Europe, their superpower status during the Cold War, and the two wars against Chechnya produced a highly militarised state. Although Ukraine experienced significant poverty levels during the late 1990s, democracy flourished. One reason for this was Ukraine's regional diversity and weak nationalism. Pluralism flourished amid weak ruling parties, a weak authoritarian state, and national divisions in eastern and western Ukraine. Historically, Ukraine had been ruled from foreign capitals so there was no tradition of nationalism, rather strong regionalism kept politics more competitive than they had been in Russia. East and south Ukraine was the industrial heartland of the USSR, highly Russified in culture with millions of ethnic Russians among its inhabitants. Central Ukraine was largely rural and Ukrainian speaking, while the west had been long part of central European powers and more nationalistic.
While Yeltsin was a populist and a charismatic leader, Kravchuk, elected as president of Ukraine in 1991, was a cunning consensus builder. His efforts at expanding presidential powers but was hindered by the rebellious Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament). Instead, parliament gave the right to rule by decree to the prime minister, whose survival depended on the parliament vote. The main tension in Ukrainian politics emerged not from president and parliament, but between president and prime minister.
In 1994, elections held between Kravchuk and Leonid Kuchma. Kravchuk was supported mostly by rural and Ukrainian-speaking people in the west, while Kuchma predominantly by the urban Russian-speaking people in the east and south. A peaceful transfer of power occurred, a stark difference from what Russia could never achieve. Kuchma proposed a new constitution, creating a mixed presidential-parliamentary style of government and in 1996 the Rada adopted it. The key issue in Ukrainian politics was the conflict between the national democrats and the communists. Largely based in western Ukraine, the national democrats were pro-Western and insisting on ending dependence on Russia in political, economic, and cultural terms. The former Communist Party and its leaders in the east pushed for closer ties to Russia, where the region depended on energy supplies and economy, as well as sharing the language and culture. The centre emerged as the battleground for the cultural and economic war between east and west, promoting compromise.
During the 1996 presidential elections in Russia, Yeltsin faced the opposition leader of the Communist Party Gennady Zyuganov. Yeltsin lost popular support due to his "shock therapy" but also produced a new class of the upper rich that supported him. Before the elections, a group of Russian bankers made a deal offering their media resources and money that would fuel his election campaign, as well as bribing voters and regional elites. In exchange, they were offered shares in government-owned enterprises. Yeltsin won, the communists were stopped, and the creation of the new oligarch class was born. The financial collapse of 1998 presented new challenges to the government, with the failing health of the president and the constitution preventing him from running again, the succession of the president was decided by the oligarchs. Sergei Stepashin was the first candidate, but eventually failed to prove his loyalty to Yeltsin and popularity with the voters. He was replaced by a former KGB officer Vladimir Putin, who was a key ally even before his appointment to prime minister. Putin became popular with the voters through the help of the friendly oligarchs control of government media, and coming across as a young, energetic, and decisive leader.
Chechnya was a region of Russia in the north Caucasus, and in 1991 led by Dzhokhar Dudaev, proclaimed their independence, renaming itself to Ichkeria. In 1994, Yeltsin sent in the army to capture the capital Grozny, with fighting lasting until 1995 and the Russians succeeding only after destroying a large portion of the city. The rebels retreated into the mountains, and Dudaev's successor Aslan Maskhadov recaptured Grozny in 1996. After signing a ceasefire agreement in 1996 with Russia, Chechnya was isolated, not recognised internationally, and suffered internal conflict. Maskhadov controlled little territory outside Grozny. The Chechen incursions into Dagestan in 1999 prompted the Russian offensive, ordered by Putin. A series of bombings hit Moscow and other cities, with evidence pointing it towards a false flag operation by The Federal Security Service (FSB) instead of Chechen fighters. Grozny fell in February 2000, and Putin officially moved into the presidential office on 7th May 2000.
In 1999, Kuchma's second run for presidency was similar to Yeltsin's in 1996. He ran with the message of stopping the communists from coming back to power, his opponent being the communist party leader Petro Symonenko. This message appealed to the new industrial bosses in eastern Ukraine, who managed to privatise former government enterprises and pro-Western supporters in western Ukraine. Losing only in the centre, where the countryside was still run by collective farm system, Kuchma was re-elected. He appointed Viktor Yushchenko as the head of Ukraine's national bank who was supported by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Using his victory, Kuchma called again for a referendum on presidential powers, creating two chambers of parliament, reducing the number of deputies, allowing criminal prosecution of deputies, and permitting the president to dissolve parliament if it failed to create a majority within one month of beginning a session. Kuchma had too little votes to introduce the constitutional amendments approved by the referendum and a standoff occurred. This culminated with a scandal in November 2000, where Oleksandr Moroz, the Socialist Party leader released secretly recorded conversations where Kuchma and other officials are discussing the kidnapping of an opposition journalist Georgiy Gongadze. He disappeared in September and his headless body was found in November near Kyiv. It was later proved that the former interior minister Yuriy Kravchenko's death squad had murdered Gongadze, and Kravchenko would die of two gunshot wounds to the head in an apparent suicide attempt. The main beneficiary of the "Kuchmagate" was Putin, who exploited the weakened political authority and relations with the US to extract concessions from him, forming closer economic ties to Russia.
Kuchma decided not to run for a third term and consequently supported Viktor Yanukovych, who was the governor of the Donetsk oblast and the leader of the largest regional clan in Ukraine, and had been prime minster since 2002. The elections of 2004 were between Yanukovych and Vikor Yushchenko, who led the largest faction in parliament. Yanukovych used the financial power of Donetsk as well as government media, and administrative pressure. In September 2004, Yushchenko fell ill as a result of dioxin poisoning. The individuals who were suspected of poisoning were given safe haven in Russia. When the poison failed to kill Yushchenko, he returned to the election campaign with increased popularity. The Ukrainian exit polls showed that most voted for Yushchenko, however the Central Electoral Commission, controlled by Yanukovych and Kuchma announced a different outcome. Yushchenko supporters flocked to the main square of Kyiv, the Maidan, refusing to accept the forged results. The Orange Revolution had begun, which took its name from the colours of the Yushchenko campaign. Many factors contributed to the outbreak including the split of the political elite between the oligarchs, regionalism, and support of Ukrainian identity, language, and culture from the residents of the western and central Ukraine. Yanukovych and Yushchenko agreed to a new round of elections, and in 26 December, Yushchenko was elected as president.

Nuclear Implosion

Ukraine's decision to commit itself to a non-nuclear status in 1991 came from the legacy of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, and the importance of gaining international recognition. However, this would empower Russia's strength and influence in the region.
When Ukraine's parliament declared the country's independence on 24 August 1991, Russia made a statement that challenged the specific borders of each Soviet republic that might declare its independence. Specifically targeting Ukraine and Khazakhstan due to the large ethnic Russian minorities. Crimea was the only region in Ukraine with a Russian majority. Yeltsin made visits to the Black Sea Fleet that was stationed in Ukraine, and Rutskoy claimed that the 1954 transfer of Crimea to Ukraine had been reversed and claimed the city of Sevastopol. The myth of the oath of Hetman Khmlenytsky to Moscovy, and the Russian glory of defending Sevastapol during the Crimean War of 1853-56 complimented the Russocentric narrative of Crimea. This was further supported when Crimea declared itself a republic in 1992 and in 1994 Yuriy Meshkov became the president. The Crimean crisis resolved because the change of presidents in Ukraine in 1994 was strongly supported by Crimean voters. Kuchma was a Russian speaker from the industrial southeast and promised to assure the peninsula's ethnic Russians their culture would be protected by the central government.
In 1994, the Budapest Memorandum was signed, elevating Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) on the basis that respect, independence, and the sovereignty of the borders would be provided by the US, Russia, and UK. The Ukrainian government were aware that they were undercut in iron-clad guarantees, but had to accept the deal due to securing internationally recognised independence and a collapse of the Ukrainian economy. The Treaty of Friendship in 1997 highlighted the commitment and the two treaties were considered sufficient to guarantee Ukraine's security, while Poland and the Czech Republic were to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) a few months later.
After the US secretary of state, James Baker assured Gorbachev that NATO would not expand eastward from a unified Germany, they joined in 1990. Other East European countries were concerned, with Lech Wałęsa from Poland making a deal with Yeltsin in 1993 and ensured Poland's membership in NATO. To counter Russia's opposition and Ukraine's possession of nuclear weapons, Clinton offered the Partnership for Peace Program to the Eastern European countries but a different one for Russia and Ukraine, which were given no prospect of joining NATO. In July 1997, NATO invited Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary to join the alliance. At the same time they offered two separate agreements to Russia and Ukraine, to assure Russia that NATO was not conspiring against it and Ukraine that NATO would keep Russia at bay. However in 1999 Russia's relationship with NATO soured when NATO decided to bomb Serbia and the Yugoslav army, to stop the atrocities being commited against the population of Kosovo. The switch from a defensive alliance to an offensive one to a population based on shared Slavic roots, history, and an Orthodox heritage was a shock to Russia.

The New Eastern Europe

On 9 September 2001, Putin warned Bush about a piece of intelligence, that something big was about to happen. The al-Qaeda 9/11 attack happened two days later, forever changing American foreign policy for years to come. Putin offered partnership in fighting a common threat in Afghanistan, while Washington maintained public silence on Russia's pacification of Chechnya. The partnership began to crumble after in June 2002, Bush withdrew from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and the need to develop anti-missile defences in response to rogue states like Iran. In response, Russia withdrew from the 1993 START (Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty) II treaty. Putin's influence in NATO had little success, in November of that year NATO accepted the Baltic states as new members. Bush's decision to invade Iraq in 2003 became another contentious topic.
At the aftermath of the September 2004 hostage crisis in Beslan, Putin removed more democratic measures by ending elections of regional governors and introducing new laws that curtailed the activities of political parties and NGOs. The Orange Revolution spread to other post-Soviet countries and in early 2005, mass protests in Kyrgyzstan unseated the local ruler Askar Akayev, and in Georgia, Mikheil Saakashvili came into power. Yushchenko wanted to return to the pro-Euroopean policies launched by Kuchma, and opted to join NATO, requesting for a Membership Action Plan (MAP). In response, Russia raised gas prices for Ukraine while threatening to cut off European gas supplies which got the EU directly involved in the Russo-Ukrainian gas wars.
At the Bucharest summit in 2008, Ukraine and Georgia were denied a Membership Action Plan. A few months later, Russia invaded Georgia, ostensibly to defend South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Russian troops threatened to occupy Tbilisi and after a ceasefire was negotiated, the Russians left but stayed in South Ossetia and Abkhazia and perpetuating territorial devision which hindered future NATO membership. This sent a clear message to the west that Russia was prepared to use military force to stop any expansion of the alliance. With the new president Yanukovych coming into power in 2010, the foreign policy of NATO membership was dropped and extended the presence of the Russian Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol until 2042.
Putin wanted to create a political, military, and economic bloc called the Eurasian Union and Ukraine, given its size and importance was to be a cornerstone of the new union. But with a huge EU market for Ukrainian exports, and the support of the Donbas oligarchs who feared competition from Russia, Yanukovych and the EU opened up talks to establish closer economic and trade relations. The EU demanded the release of Yulia Tymoshenko and market reforms, while Russia threatened with an economic blockade which causing a 10% drop in Ukrainian exports, later offering $15 billion in loans. In November 2013 Yanukovych refused to sign the association agreement at the EU summit in Vilnius.
The Euromaidan protests were born, when students gathered condemning Yanukovych's broken promises of bringing Ukraine closer to Europe. It was transformed into Revolution of Dignity when citizens joined to protest police brutality and authoritarianism. More violence occurred compared to the peaceful protests in the past, and Yanukovych, after negotiating with the opposition leaders entailing formation of new government, early presidential elections, and reduced presidential powers, left the country in 21 February 2014.

The Crimean Gambit

Putin seemed to have been influenced by many prominent imperial Russian writers in the 1990s, including Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. The concept of Eurasianism, which arose from the intellectual elites that were dissatisfied with liberal-democratic discourse embraced by Yelstin's advisors, suggested that the lands in the former Russian Empire shared Russian culture, heritage, and Orthodox Christianity, and should be integrated into the present Russian Federation. This thought originated from the early 19th century, where there was a split of opinion between Westernisers who believed Russia's destiny lay with the West, and Slavophiles, who emphasised Russian uniqueness. Some of its supporters made their way into the Kremlin's orbit after Putin's rise to power, including Aleksandr Dugin. Putin adopted many elements of Eurasianism, including Russia as a multiethnic civilisation opposed to the West. He shared the belief that Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians were separate nations but essentially one people.
Similar to South Ossetia in 2008, Putin's reasoning in Crimea was based on the fact that when an enclave declared independence and recognised by Russia, annexation could be followed. Putin told his advisors that they had to "return" Crimea to Russia due to the Ukrainian nationalists threatening the population. During the Maidan protests, Yanukovych was stopped from entering Crimea, to prevent him from making it a base before entering back to Kyiv. He was taken to Russia, and his departure removed an important political obstacle in the Russian takeover of the peninsula.
The Russian occupation of Crimea started on 27 February, when armed men wearing no insignias entered the Crimean parliament and occupied it. They were forced to vote on a prepared resolution ousting Anatolii Mogilev, the prime minster of Crimea appointed by Yanukovych, to be replaced by Sergei Aksenov, a key figure in the Crimean criminal world, known as "goblin." He also headed the Russian Unity Party, who received only 4% of the Crimean parliamentary elections. Aksenov was made the new Crimean prime minister and the deputies also voted for a referendum on a constitution establishing federal ties between Kyiv and Simferopol, providing more autonomy to Crimea. On 28 February, Russian forces seized Simferopol and Sevastopol airports. The acting minister of defence Ihor Teniukh declared that Ukraine had no army, destroyed by Yanukovych and his inner circle, on the instructions of Russian security services. Without nuclear weapons, NATO membership, or an army, Ukraine had to appeal to the UN. On 1 March, Aksenov called on Putin to intervene in Crimea with Yanukovych, now in exile in Russia, who also asked Putin to intervene not only in Crimea but also in eastern and southern Ukraine to restore order and protect the Ukrainian population from the threat created by the Maidan Revolution. On 4 March, Putin held a press conference in which he called the Revolution of Dignity a coup, and denied the role of Russian military in the takeover of Crimea. Two days later, the Crimean parliament changed the referendum question, to whether Crimea should be "reunified" with Russia. The official results of the referendum was 96.77% in favour of reunification with a 83% turnout. The annexation was compared to the Austrian Anschluss and HItler's vision of Greater Germany.

The Rise and Fall of the New Russia

The term "New Russia" was historically based on the imperial province established by Catherine II in the northern Black Sea region in the late 18th century. Putin used this term to define Ukrainian regions of Kharkiv, Luhanask, Donetsk, Kherson, Mykolaiv, and Odessa, the entire south and east of Ukraine. This is ahistorical, since the provinces had been limited to the Pontic steppes north of the Black Sea and did not extend to Kharkiv, Luhansk, or Donetsk. Since the Bolshevik Revolution, Russians constituted only 17% of the region and that's why it was allotted to the Ukrainian SSR in the 1920s. "New Russia" became the badge of identity for Russian Eurasianists, Russian nationalists, Orthodox monarchists, and neo-Nazis who flocked to the region. Muscovites who became influential in this region includes Aleksandr Borodai and Igor Girkin.
After the election of the new president Petro Poroshenko in May 2014, volunteer battalions formed and started counteroffensives in Donetsk. On 17 July, separatists shot down MH17 killing civilians and bringing the ongoing war to the attention of the world. Russia responded by recalling Borodai from his post of prime minister and Girkin from the post of minister of defence from the new self-proclaimed republic. Direct invasion of eastern Ukraine began on 24 August 2014, with Poroshenko forced to agree under the conditions of the Minsk Protocol that recognised the existence of new entities on Ukrainian territory. In January 2015, Russia resumed a large scale military campaign. Negotiations between Putin, Poroshenko, Merkel, and Hollande created a new Minsk II deal which referred to Ukraine's reestablishment of control over its border with Russia after Kyiv conducts local elections in the breakaway parts of the Donbas. This deal suggested that elections would be held under Russian appointed authorities and would have enough power under the revised Ukrainian constitution to stall the country's movement towards the EU. The question of whether these elections or Ukrainian control over the border would come first would be an obstacle in the implementation of the Minsk agreements.
From 2014, due to Russia's war, Ukraine became a more united through ethnic, linguistic, religious, and cultural lines. The growth of Ukrainian political identity began with the rejection of symbols of the Soviet past, a wave of demolition of many Vladimir Lenin monuments occurred throughout Ukraine from the beginning of the Maidan protests. Many Ukrainians and Russians who knew Ukrainian but used Russian as their language of preference began to switch to Ukrainian as an act of defiance. In 2019, parliament adopted a new law making Ukrainian language mandatory for government officials and public sector employees. The government also supported the unification of the two branches of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, placing them under the jurisdiction of the Patriarch of Constantinople, a major blow to the Russian Orthodox hegemony.

Putin's War

Putin, being an avid reader of history, published an essay titled "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians" in 2021. In the essay, he argued that Russians and Ukrainians were one people and supporting his idea of the imperial vision of Russia. His view on Russia during the medieval times were that of Russia being ruled by the same princes, same Orthodox church, and speaking the same language. However, Kyvian Rus had been in fact a multiethnic polity that spanned thousands of miles. Putin's notion of Ukraine a barrier between Europe and Russia, a concoction of evil Western forces.
In 2019, Volodymyr Zelensky was elected president, a few years after becoming famous for portraying an honest and decisive president in a TV show. The incumbent President Petro Poroshenko campaigned as a pro-European and anti-Russian candidate hoped that Zelensky would be regarded by the electorate as pro-Russia. However, dividing the electorate into a pro-Russian and pro-European factions were not effective since Ukraine was fairly united. Zelensky ran on an anti-corruption platform and won the majority. As a Russian speaking Jew from eastern Ukraine, Zelensky adopted the Ukrainian language. In his meetings with Putin in December 2019, he hesitated in the constitutional reforms by Putin that would make Donbas into a Russian enclave. This was met with massive protests and ultimately rejected Putin's offer and developed plans towards NATO membership.
In the spring of 2021, American and British intelligence services noticed a possible invasion of Ukraine. In December, Russia presented their Western counterparts a long list of demands, including a formal commitment from NATO that Ukraine never be allowed to join. This was in the context where almost 200,000 Russian troops were within striking distance of Ukrainian borders. Biden both warned the world about Putin's aggressive intentions and plans, while reassuring Putin that there would be no military response. In spite of American warnings, economic losses from panic, and no possible Western involvement in the approaching military conflict, Zelensky defiantly stated in the Munich Security Conference that they would fight back and needed weapons, days before the invasion. He rejected the idea of setting up an exile government and returned back to Kyiv.
Putin made the formal decision to go to war on 21 February 2021, which approved the denunciation of the Minsk Agreements and the proposal to recognise the independence of the two puppet statelets in the Ukrainian Donbas. He supported his ahistorical views on Ukraine as a state and a nation, arguing that Lenin separated what was historically Russian land.

The Gates of Kyiv

When Russia invaded Ukraine, the Ukrainian military units were not yet manned according to wartime standards. The main thrusts of the Russian offensive was directed at Kyiv, with the Ukrainian Armed Forces commander in chief Valerii Zaluzhny representing the new generation of NATO trained Ukrainian officers. Russian troops took control of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and threatened the whole of Europe with damage to the containment structure. Although the Russian troops had a 12 to 1 force ratio, they failed to advance into Kyiv due to Ukrainian counterattacks and their tactical failures.
To the surprise of Putin, the Ukrainian people and army were united and did not welcome the Russian forces to liberate them from Nazism and nationalism. Putin blamed the Federal Security Service and their spies who generally reported what he wanted to hear, that the attitude of the Ukrainian population conformed to his historical fantasies.
Many of the mayors and leaders were kidnapped or killed in the areas occupied by the Russian army. Biden accused of Russia of committing war crimes and genocide in the town of Bucha.
The refugee crisis that resulted in the invasion was unique in that it was mostly women and children, with most wanting to return home after their town or village had been liberated.

Eastern Front

The Russian army would indiscriminately target Ukrainian cities, destroying city infrastructure to deny the Ukrainian army defensive positions. The main victims of terror bombing were the ethnically Russian and Russian speakers in Ukraine's eastern cities.
Kharkiv was a historically and culturally significant city in Ukraine that was bombed by the Russians. Ironically, the Russian and Soviet heritage of the city was being attacked.