To put things into perspective I have done some research into Ukraine’s recent history to try and make some sense of what could be the start of WW3.
After the Great War the Ukrainian Bolsheviks defeated the government to establish the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) becoming one of the founding republics of the Soviet Union in 1922.
During the Second World War the Ukrainian Insurgent Army fought for independence from the Soviet Union and expanded its territories westwards into Poland at the same time.
In 1945 Ukraine became one of the founding members of the United Nations and in 1953 after the death of Stalin, the Ukrainian born Khrushchev became the head of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union transferring Crimea to Ukraine a year later. Political repression of poets, artists, historians and intellectuals began across all of Russia.
With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine became it’s own country again, transitioning into a market economy. It joined a military bloc, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) which included Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan while also establishing a partnership with NATO in 1994.
Because of a worldwide economic crisis that began in 2008, Ukraine’s president Yanukovych suspended joining the European Union in 2013 in favour of closer economic ties with Russia resulting in mass protests by pro European Ukrainians leading him to be overthrown a year later and the establishment of a new pro European government leading to Russia annexing Crimea in the south and a protracted conflict with the Russians backed separatists in the Donbas region in the east. The Donbas region is 80% Russian and despite both countries signing the Minsk treaty in 2014 agreeing to stop fighting, Ukraine continued to bomb the region for the next 8 years. The people of the Donbas asked Russia for help many times and Russia have demanded Ukraine to stick to the treaty, but have refused to do so.
In 2018 Ukraine left the CIS because of its conflict with Russia and pushed to join NATO.
Zelensky became the 6th president of Ukraine a year later in 2019.
Scott Irvine
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