Ukraine is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest country in Europe after Russia, which borders it to the east and northeast. Ukraine also borders Belarus to the north; Poland and Slovakia to the west; Hungary, Romania and Moldova to the southwest; and the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov to the south and southeast. Kyiv is the nation's capital and largest city, followed by Kharkiv, Dnipro, and Odesa. Ukraine's official language is Ukrainian.
Humans have inhabited Ukraine since 32,000 BC. During the Middle Ages, it was the site of early Slavic expansion and later became a key centre of East Slavic culture under the state of Kievan Rus', which emerged in the 9th century. Kievan Rus' became the largest and most powerful realm in Europe in the 10th and 11th centuries, but gradually disintegrated into rival regional powers before being destroyed by the Mongols in the 13th century. For the next 600 years the area was contested, divided, and ruled by a variety of external powers including the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, the Kingdom of Poland, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Austrian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and the Tsardom of Russia.
The Cossack Hetmanate emerged in central Ukraine in the 17th century but was partitioned between Russia and Poland before being absorbed by the Russian Empire in the late 19th century. Ukrainian nationalism developed and, following the Russian Revolution in 1917, the short-lived Ukrainian People's Republic was formed. The Bolsheviks consolidated control over much of the former empire and established the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which became a constituent republic of the Soviet Union in 1922. In the early 1930s, millions of Ukrainians died in the Holodomor, a human-made famine. During World War II, Ukraine was occupied by Germany and endured major battles and atrocities, resulting in 7 million civilians killed, including most Ukrainian Jews.
Ukraine gained independence in 1991 as the Soviet Union dissolved and declared itself neutral. A new constitution was adopted in 1996 as the country transitioned to a free market liberal democracy amid endemic corruption and a legacy of state control. The Orange Revolution of 2004–2005 ushered electoral and constitutional reforms. Resurgent political crises prompted a series of mass demonstrations in 2014 known as the Euromaidan, leading to a revolution, at the end of which Russia unilaterally occupied and annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, and pro-Russian unrest culminated in a war in Donbas with Russian-backed separatists and Russia. Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Causes of the War in Ukraine
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine and Russia maintained close relations. In 1994, Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear arsenal and signed the Budapest Memorandum on Security Guarantees, on the condition that Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States guarantee that they will defend Ukraine against the threat or use of force against its territorial integrity or political independence. Five years later, Russia, as a signatory to the Charter for Security in Europe, reaffirmed "the inherent right of each participating state to freely choose its own security relations, including agreements and commitments."
Despite being recognized as an independent state since 1991, Ukraine, as a constituent republic of the former Soviet Union, was considered by the Russian leadership to be part of its sphere of influence. In 2008, Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke out against Ukraine's possible accession to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In 2009, Romanian analyst Iulian Cifu and his colleagues argued that Russia was pursuing an updated version of the Brezhnev Doctrine in relation to Ukraine, which held that Ukraine's sovereignty could be no greater than that of the Warsaw Pact countries before the collapse of the Soviet sphere of influence in the late 1980s and early 1990s. This view was based on the assumption that Russia's moves to appease the West in the early 1990s should have been met with a Western response, without NATO's expansion along Russia's border.
After weeks of protests during the Euromaidan movement (Ukrainian Orange Revolution) (2013–2014), pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych and Ukrainian parliamentary opposition leaders signed an agreement on 21 February 2014 calling for early elections. The next day, Yanukovych fled Kiev before an impeachment vote that would have stripped him of his powers as president. Leaders in Ukraine's Russian-speaking eastern regions continued to declare their loyalty to Yanukovych, which led to pro-Russian unrest in Ukraine in 2014. This unrest was followed by Russia's annexation of Crimea in March 2014 and the War in Donbass, which began in April 2014 with the creation of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics by Russia.
On September 14, 2020, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky approved the new National Security Strategy of Ukraine, "which provides for the expansion of a distinctive partnership with NATO with the aim of joining NATO." On March 24, 2021, Zelensky signed Decree No. 117/2021, which approved the "Strategy of the Demobilization and Reintegration of the Temporarily Occupied Territories of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the City of Sevastopol." In July 2021, Putin published an article titled "The Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians," in which he reiterated his view that Russians and Ukrainians are "one nation." American historian Timothy Snyder described Putin's views as "imperialism." British journalist Edward Lucas described them as "historical revisionism." Other observers have noted that the Russian president has a distorted view of modern Ukraine and its history.
Russia has said that Ukraine's possible accession to NATO, and NATO expansion in general, threatens its national security.
