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February 22, 2014 is a key day in the recent history of Ukraine. After months of protests in the streets of kyiv, in what would be known as the Euromaidan, former pro-Russian Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych left the country to flee to Russia. An event that would distance Ukraine from the Kremlin, but that would bring consequences such as the loss of Crimea, the Donbass war and eight years later the full-scale invasion of Russia.
This February 22 marks the tenth anniversary of one of the most important events in the recent history of Ukraine, a seed without which the current war with Russia could not be understood: the flight of former president Viktor Yanukovych and the end of the Maidan. This event brought weeks of protests against the then pro-Russian Ukrainian government and they ended after experiencing violent episodes. An event that distanced kyiv from the Kremlin, but that would later have consequences that are experienced to this day.
At the end of 2013, almost 22 years had passed since Ukrainian independence after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, but its ties with Moscow were still very strong, because Viktor Yanukovych, a Donbass politician, had been in power since 2010. with strong influence from the Russian sphere and Vladimir Putin.
The reverse of a cooperation agreement with the European Union: the origin of the Maidan
However, discontent towards him, especially among the more nationalist Ukrainian and European population, was very strong due to corruption. A discontent that grew and finally broke out when Yanukovych – after having announced a cooperation agreement with the European Union – decided to retract it after a visit to Russia.
The protests in kyiv and in western Ukrainian cities – those most against Yanukovych and Moscow – increased and gained strength for weeks starting in December 2013. Especially in the face of the Government's refusal to give in and the police repression that was used against the protesters, who demanded a rapprochement with Brussels, the fight against corruption and independence from the Kremlin's decisions.
The main concentration took place in kyiv's Independence Square, known in Ukrainians as Maidan. The clashes began to have global resonance starting in 2014 and hundreds of people were arrested during those weeks, but the escalation of the clashes was in February. It is estimated that a total of 82 protesters and seven police officers died. The majority on February 20, known as 'Black Thursday', where 60 people lost their lives.
This bloody day brought great international condemnation and forced Yanukovych to sit down and negotiate with the opposition. However, no agreement was ever reached.
Yanukovych decided to flee the country on February 22, 2014 and parliament dismissed him for evasion in the performance of his duties, establishing a provisional government. The former president would not appear again until February 28 and would do so from Russia, denouncing an alleged coup against him with the connivance of the West. This is what he expressed in a press conference that same day:
I intend to continue fighting for the future of Ukraine against those who use fear and terror to take over the country. I have decided to declare it publicly. Nobody dismissed me. I was forced to leave Ukraine under a direct threat to my life and that of my family.
After the fall of Yanukovych, secessionist problems multiplied
The end of the Euromaidan brought elections again in Ukraine that same year, in which the pro-Russian parties were marginalized. However, the new pro-European Government could not face the challenges that came.
Faced with the political shift in kyiv, the Crimean peninsula, which has a majority of ethnic Russians, experienced a series of protests that led to the region's declaration of independence and the subsequent holding of a referendum to annex it to Russia. Something called illegal by the international community, but accepted in Moscow. During those days, Russian troops began to take the peninsula and from that moment on it was out of Ukrainian control.
But the problems in kyiv would not end there. In April of that same year, a series of eastern regions, with a Russian-speaking majority, began to proclaim themselves as independent republics due to their disagreements with the new Government. Some cases are Donetsk, Lugansk or Kharkiv, something that made the Ukrainian military react and begin to fight the pro-Russian separatist forces, regaining a good part of control over the territory. However, they were never able to regain control of part of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, where their capitals are located.
For several years, the Donbass war became a low-intensity regional conflict, in which neither the Ukrainian military forces – backed by the West – nor the separatists – supported by Russia, but not recognized by the Kremlin – confronted each other, leaving thousands of deaths and with little progress. At that time there were several attempts at ceasefire and peace, but they all failed.
The total invasion came eight years after the Maidan
Until the situation began to change at the beginning of 2022, when Russian troops began to gather around the Ukrainian border. Vladimir Putin began to warn of the danger that it would pose for Russia if Ukraine – as other countries that were previously under Moscow's orbit – entered NATO and the European Union.
As of February 22, 2022, it recognized the self-proclaimed Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, something that allowed the leaders of these territories to launch a request for help and that allowed Putin to execute what he called a “special operation” after denying Ukraine's historical right to exist. Thus began the large-scale invasion on February 24.
This is the situation we are in now, two years after the start of the full-scale war, both sides are suffering great stagnation and especially kyiv is beginning to feel the symptoms of wear and tear. Moscow controls much of the Donbass and southern Ukraine and any effort to end the war appears far from being achieved due to the refusal of both sides to give in to its claims. In the case of Ukraine the lost regions, in the case of Russia let kyiv continue to have a government close to the West.
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