Ukrainian timeline

Compilation of various Wikipediia articles and maps

It began before Vladimir Putin.

The Ukraine was a founding country of the USSR, along with Russia.

The former Soviet Union

1954 Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev transferred Crimea, which has been home to the Russian/Soviet Black Sea Fleet, from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR in 1954. This event was viewed as an insignificant “symbolic gesture”, as both republics were a part of the Soviet Union and answerable to the government in Moscow

1988-1991 The dissolution of the Soviet Union was the process of internal political, economic and ethnic disintegration within the USSR which resulted in the end of its existence as a sovereign state. It was an unintended result of General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev’s effort to reform the Soviet political and economic system, in an attempt to end the “Era of Stagnation”. In late 1991, the leaders of three of the Union’s founding and largest republics (the Russian SFSR, the Ukrainian SSR and the Byelorussian SSR) declared that the Soviet Union no longer existed, and eight more republics joined them shortly thereafter. Gorbachev had to resign his office as president and what was left of the parliament to formally acknowledge the Union’s collapse as a fait accompli.

1990 Belarus has a long and tortured history. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Belarus declared independence August 1991. Following the adoption of a new constitution in 1994, Alexander Lukashenko was elected Belarus’s first president in the country’s first and only free election post-independence, serving as president ever since. Lukashenko’s government is authoritarian with a poor human rights record. Lukashenko has continued a number of Soviet-era policies, such as state ownership of large sections of the economy.

1949 to 2018 Countries join NATO leaving the “Warsaw pact”

1990 – 1992 The Transnistria War was an armed conflict that broke out 1990 in Dubăsari between pro-Transnistria (PMR) forces, including the Transnistrian Republican Guard, militia and neo-Cossack units (which were supported by elements of the Russian 14th Army), and pro-Moldovan forces, including Moldovan troops and police. A ceasefire was declared in 1992, which has held. The conflict is sometimes known as the Moldo-Russian war in Moldova and Romania.

1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurance; an agreement that provided political assurances with no legal obligation to Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine upon surrender of their nuclear weapons. The memo was signed by Russian, United Kingdom, the United States, China and France. The memorandum provided assurances against threats, the use of force and ensured territorial integrity.

1999 – 2008 Putin President of Russia

2000, Belarus and Russia signed a treaty for greater cooperation, forming the Union State.

2002 The Russia–NATO Council was established in 2002 for handling security issues and joint projects

2004 to 2005 The Orange Revolution was a series of protests in the immediate aftermath of the run-off vote of the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election, which was claimed to be marred by massive corruption, voter intimidation and electoral fraud. Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, was the focal point of the movement’s campaign of civil resistance, with thousands of protesters demonstrating Nationwide, the revolution was highlighted by a series of acts of civil disobedience, sit-ins, and general strikes organized by the opposition movement.

August 2008 The Russo-Georgian War was a war between Georgia, Russia and the Russian-backed self-proclaimed republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. The war took place in August 2008 following a period of worsening relations between Russia and Georgia, both formerly constituent republics of the Soviet Union. The fighting took place in the strategically important Transcaucasia region. It is regarded as the first European war of the 21st century.

2009: Hillary Clinton met Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov during their meeting in Geneva 2009. This meeting was after the invasion of Georgia which resulted in 20% of its territory being occupied by Russia, the country’s sovereignty was dangerously crippled. The Georgian government, America’s closest non-NATO ally in the region, was warning about a new, hybrid war.

2010 Presidential elections. No candidate received a majority of the vote, a run-off election was held between Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko and opposition leader Viktor Yanukovych. Yanukovych was declared President-elect and winner with 48.95% of the popular vote. The Supreme Administrative Court of Ukraine suspended the results following an appeal by Tymoshenko. The court suspended the Central Election Commission’s ruling that announced that Yanukovych won the election, but did not postpone or cancel his inauguration.mTymoshenko withdrew her appeal.

2012 – 2020. Putin President of Russia.

2013 Euromaidan, literally ‘Euro Square was a wave of demonstrations and civil unrest in Ukraine, which began November 2013 sparked by the Ukrainian government’s decision to suspend the signing of the European Union–Ukraine Association Agreement, instead choosing closer ties to Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union. The scope of the protests widened, with calls for the resignation of the President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, and the Second Azarov Government.

2014 The Russo-Ukrainian War is an ongoing war primarily involving Russia, pro-Russian forces, and Belarus on one side, and Ukraine on the other. Conflict began in 2014 in the wake of the Revolution of Dignity, and focused on the status of Crimea and parts of the Donbas, which are internationally recognised as part of Ukraine.

2014 Annexation of Crimea In February and March 2014, Russia invaded and subsequently annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine. This event took place in the aftermath of the Revolution of Dignity and is part of the wider Russo-Ukrainian War.

2014, NATO unanimously decided to suspend all practical co-operation with the Russian Federation, in response to the Annexation of Crimea, but the NATO-Russia Council (NRC) was not suspended.

2014 The Donbas War, is an armed conflict in the Donbas region of Ukraine, part of the broader Russo-Ukrainian War. From the beginning of March 2014, in the aftermath of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution and the Euromaidan movement, protests by pro-Russian, anti-government separatist groups took place in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts of Ukraine, collectively called the Donbas region. These demonstrations, which followed the February–March 2014 annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, and which were part of a wider group of concurrent protests across southern and eastern Ukraine, escalated into an armed conflict between the separatist forces of the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR, respectively), and the Ukrainian government.

2015, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was a scheduled passenger flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur shot down while flying over eastern Ukraine. All 283 passengers and 15 crew were killed. Contact with the aircraft, a Boeing 777-200ER, was lost when it was about 50 km (31 mi) from the Ukraine–Russia border, and wreckage of the aircraft fell near Hrabove in Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine, 40 km (25 mi) from the border. The shoot-down occurred in the War in Donbas in an area controlled by pro-Russian rebels.

2015, Russia military intervention in the Syrian Civil War in support of Bashar al-Assad’s government, consisting of air strikes against Syrians that oppose the government. In addition, ISIS and Assad’s forces fight against opposition groups (FSA). With Vladimir Putin’s support, Assad’s troops are fighting Free Syrian Army all throughout the country.

2016 Russian interference in the 2016 Brexit referendum remains unproven but there are multiple sources saying that evidence exists to show that Russia attempted to persuade the British public to leave the European Union

2016 The Russian government interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election with the goals of harming the campaign of Hillary Clinton, boosting the candidacy of Donald Trump, and increasing political and social discord in the United States. According to the U.S. intelligence community, the operation—code named Project Lakhta[1][2]—was ordered directly by Russian President Vladimir Putin.[3][4] The Special Counsel’s report, made public in April 2019, examined numerous contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian officials but concluded that there was insufficient evidence to bring any conspiracy or coordination charges against Trump or his associates.

2017- Cyberwarfare by Russia includes denial of service attacks, hacker attacks, dissemination of disinformation and propaganda, participation of state-sponsored teams in political blogs, internet surveillance using SORM technology, persecution of cyber-dissidents and other active measures. According to investigative journalist Andrei Soldatov, some of these activities were coordinated by the Russian signals intelligence, which was part of the FSB and formerly a part of the 16th KGB department. An analysis by the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2017 outlines Russia’s view of “Information Countermeasures” or IPb (informatsionnoye protivoborstvo) as “strategically decisive and critically important to control its domestic populace and influence adversary states”, dividing ‘Information Countermeasures’ into two categories of “Informational-Technical” and “Informational-Psychological” groups. The former encompasses network operations relating to defense, attack, and exploitation and the latter to “attempts to change people’s behavior or beliefs in favor of Russian governmental objectives.”

2018 The poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military officer and double agent for the British intelligence agencies, and his daughter, Yulia Skripal in the city of Salisbury, England. According to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons they were poisoned by means of a Novichok nerve agent. Both Sergei and Yulia Skripal spent several weeks in hospital in critical condition, before being discharged. A police officer, Nick Bailey, was also taken into intensive care after attending the incident, and was later discharged.

The 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war was an armed conflict in the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh and the surrounding territories. The main combatants were Azerbaijan, with support from Turkey and foreign mercenary groups on one side; and the self-proclaimed Republic of Artsakh and Armenia, on the other. Russia was a peacekeeper in this hostility. Russia was an arms supplier to this hostility

2020 Russian interference in United States elections was a matter of concern at the highest level of national security within the United States government, in addition to the computer and social media industries. In February and August 2020, United States Intelligence Community (USIC) experts warned members of Congress that Russia was interfering in the 2020 presidential election in then-President Donald Trump’s favor

2020, Russian anti-corruption activist Alexei Navalny was poisoned with a Novichok nerve agent during a flight from Tomsk to Moscow. He was evacuated to the Charité hospital in Berlin, Germany. The use of the nerve agent was confirmed by five Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. He was discharged from the hospital. The OPCW said that a cholinesterase inhibitor from the Novichok group was found in Navalny’s blood, urine, skin samples and his water bottle. Other prominent Russians, especially those critical of the Kremlin, have suffered poisoning attacks in the last two decades.

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