Ukraine War Test

Kievan Rus (Russian vs Ukrainian narratives)

Kievan Rus was a loose federation of East Slavic principalities ruled by the Rurikid dynasty, with Kyiv as its centre. Tradition dates its start to about 882, when Prince Oleg took Kyiv, and its peak to the reigns of Volodymyr (r. c. 980–1015) and Yaroslav the Wise (r. 1019–1054). It adopted Orthodox Christianity in 988 and fragmented into rival principalities after Yaroslav's death. The Mongol sack of Kyiv in 1240 ended its role as a political centre.

The dispute is over who the legitimate heir is. The Russian narrative (imperial and later Soviet, revived under Putin) treats Rus as the common cradle of three "brotherly" East Slavic peoples: Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians. It traces continuity from Kyiv to Vladimir-Suzdal to Moscow, the "gathering of the Russian lands." The Ukrainian narrative, shaped by historian Mykhailo Hrushevsky, treats Rus as the first Ukrainian state, with continuity through the Kingdom of Galicia-Volhynia and the Cossack Hetmanate. It argues that Muscovy was a distinct polity that borrowed the name "Rus" (the Tsardom became the "Russian Empire" in 1721) and did not inherit Kyiv's tradition.

Most Western historians treat Rus as a medieval state that predates modern nations, which both modern nations can claim as heritage. The question matters politically because it feeds arguments about whether Ukraine is a separate nation.

Volodymyr/Vladimir the Great

Volodymyr Sviatoslavych (Ukrainian spelling; "Vladimir" in Russian) was Grand Prince of Kyiv from about 980 to 1015. Around 988 he accepted baptism, in Crimea, and married Anna, sister of the Byzantine emperor Basil II. He then made Orthodox Christianity the state religion, and the people of Kyiv were baptised in the Dnipro. The Church later canonised him. Both countries claim him as their founder. Kyiv has a monument to him dating from 1853, and the trident on Ukraine's coat of arms is associated with his coinage. Moscow unveiled its own large statue of Vladimir near the Kremlin in November 2016, presenting him as a Russian founder. Putin has also invoked the Crimean baptism site as a sacred place that ties Crimea to Russia.

Stephen Bandera

Bandera (1909–1959) led the more radical "B" faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN-B) after the movement split in 1940.

He is a polarising figure. Many Ukrainians, especially in the west, see him as a symbol of resistance to Soviet rule. President Yushchenko named him a Hero of Ukraine in 2010, and a court annulled the award in 2011. Poland and Jewish organisations object to honouring him because of the atrocities committed by his movement. Russian state media use "Banderites" as a label for Ukrainian nationalists in general, and the term underpins the "denazification" rhetoric used to justify the 2022 invasion. Ukrainian and Western historians note that Nazi-era collaborators were a small part of Ukrainian society and that large numbers of Ukrainians fought in the Red Army.

Putin’s July 2021 Article (“On the Historical Unity of Russian & Ukrainians”)

Putin published on 12 July 2021 on the Kremlin website, this roughly 5,000-word essay argues that Russians and Ukrainians are "one people" descended from Ancient Rus and linked by language, faith and shared history. It claims that modern Ukraine was created by Soviet policy ("Vladimir Lenin's Ukraine"), that the Bolsheviks gave it Russian lands, and that Poland, Austria-Hungary and later Western states cultivated a separate Ukrainian identity as an "anti-Russia" project. It concludes that Ukraine's true sovereignty is possible only in partnership with Russia.

Analysts read it as the ideological basis for the full-scale invasion that began in February 2022, and Putin's speech of 21 February 2022 repeated the same claims. Ukrainian and Western historians reject its core arguments, pointing to a long record of distinct Ukrainian political and cultural institutions and to Ukraine's 1991 independence referendum, in which over 90% voted yes, including a majority in Crimea and Donbas.

Crimea/Crimean Tatars

Crimea is a peninsula in the Black Sea with a layered history: Greek colonies, the Crimean Khanate (1441–1783, an Ottoman vassal from 1475), then annexation by Catherine II's Russia in 1783. The port of Sevastopol became the main base of Russia's Black Sea Fleet, and the Crimean War (1853–56) was fought partly over it. Crimea became an autonomous republic inside Soviet Russia in 1921. Crimean Tatars, a Turkic Muslim people who are the peninsula's indigenous population, were deported on 18 May 1944 on Stalin's accusation of collaboration. Roughly 190,000 people were sent mainly to Uzbekistan, and death toll estimates range from about 18% to over 40%. They were allowed to return only from the late 1980s.

In 1954 the Soviet government transferred Crimea from the Russian republic to the Ukrainian republic. Russia treats that act as arbitrary and Ukraine treats it as settled internal Soviet administration. After 1991 Crimea remained in Ukraine as an autonomous republic with a Russian-speaking majority (about 58% ethnic Russian, 24% Ukrainian and 12% Tatar by the 2001 census), and Russia kept the Black Sea Fleet at Sevastopol under leases (extended to 2042 by the 2010 Kharkiv Accords). Most Crimean Tatars boycotted the 2014 referendum. Under Russian rule the community's representative body, the Mejlis, was banned in 2016 and its leaders were barred from the peninsula. Ukraine recognises Crimean Tatars as an indigenous people.

Mikhail Gorbachev

Gorbachev was General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party from March 1985 and the only President of the USSR (1990–91). He launched glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring) to revive a stagnating economy, and in 1989 allowed the first partly competitive elections to the Congress of People's Deputies. His "new thinking" in foreign policy produced the 1987 INF Treaty, the 1989 withdrawal from Afghanistan, acceptance of the 1989 revolutions in Eastern Europe and agreement to German reunification in 1990. He won the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize. A hardliners' coup attempt in August 1991 weakened him fatally, and he resigned on 25 December 1991 as the USSR dissolved. He died in August 2022.

His reputation is split. In the West he is credited with ending the Cold War peacefully. Many Russians blame him for the collapse of the USSR, the economic crisis of the 1990s and the loss of great-power status. Putin has called the Soviet collapse a major geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century.

Boris Yeltsin

Yeltsin was the first President of the Russian Federation (1991–1999) and the first Russian leader chosen in a popular vote (June 1991). He rallied resistance to the August 1991 coup, and in December 1991 signed the Belovezha Accords with the leaders of Ukraine (Kravchuk) and Belarus (Shushkevich), which declared the USSR dissolved. His government launched "shock therapy" price liberalisation in January 1992 under Yegor Gaidar, followed by voucher privatisation and the 1995 loans-for-shares deals that created the oligarchs. The period brought hyperinflation, collapse in living standards and the 1998 financial crisis. He fought parliament in 1993, began the First Chechen War in 1994, and won re-election in 1996 against Communist Gennady Zyuganov with oligarch backing and heavy state-media support. He resigned on 31 December 1999 and named Putin acting president.

Historians credit him with preventing civil war and keeping Russia open to the West, and criticise him for the brutality of the economic transition, the weakness of institutions and the super-presidential system he left behind.

Democracy (Procedural definition)

A procedural (or minimalist) definition treats democracy as a method for choosing leaders: competitive, access to alternative information, freedom to form organisations, free and fair elections with universal adult suffrage, in which the winners govern and the losers accept defeat. It builds on Joseph Schumpeter's view of democracy as competition for the people's vote.

It contrasts with substantive definitions, which require outcomes such as social equality, rights protection or rule of law. The procedural definition is useful for comparison because it can be tested (did an incumbent ever lose?), and it explains why scholars label regimes with elections but no real chance of losing "electoral authoritarian" or "hybrid."

The Two-Turnover Test

Proposed by Samuel Huntington in The Third Wave (1991), the test says a new democracy is consolidated when the group that won the founding election loses a later election and hands over power, and the next winners then also hand over power after losing. Two peaceful turnovers show that all major actors treat elections as the only way to power.

Russia has not passed: power has never moved to an opposition party in an election, and Putin's handover to Medvedev in 2008 was managed from above and reversed in 2012. Ukraine is often cited as a closer case: Kravchuk lost to Kuchma in 1994 and Kuchma's camp lost to Yushchenko in 2004–05, though the second step required mass protests after a fraudulent runoff. Critics note the test counts outcomes and not the fairness of the process.

Russian Pres. Elections: 2000, 2008, 2012

2000 (26 March). Putin, acting president since Yeltsin's resignation, won in the first round with about 53%, ahead of Zyuganov (about 29%) and Grigory Yavlinsky (about 6%). The vote was held early because of the resignation. Observers found it free in form but tilted by state-media support for Putin and the war in Chechnya that had boosted his popularity.

2008 (2 March). The constitution limited a president to two consecutive terms, so Putin backed his first deputy prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev, who won about 70% against Zyuganov's 18%. Putin became prime minister, and the arrangement was called the "tandem." In late 2008 a constitutional amendment extended the presidential term from four to six years, effective from the next election. The Russia–Georgia war occurred in August 2008, during Medvedev's first months in office.

2012 (4 March). In September 2011 Putin and Medvedev announced they would swap posts. Putin won about 64%, ahead of Zyuganov (about 17%) and Mikhail Prokhorov (about 8%). OSCE observers said the vote lacked a level playing field, and it followed the Bolotnaya protests. Putin was re-elected in 2018 (about 77%) and again in March 2024 (about 87%), and 2020 constitutional amendments reset his term count, so he can in principle serve until 2036.

Alexei Navalny

Navalny (1976–2024) was a Russian lawyer and the country's most prominent opposition figure. He built a following through anti-corruption investigations published by his Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK, founded in 2011) and popularised the label "party of crooks and thieves" for United Russia. He took about 27% in the 2013 Moscow mayoral race, and authorities barred him from the 2018 presidential election because of a criminal conviction that the European Court of Human Rights found arbitrary. His "Smart Voting" project urged supporters to back whichever candidate was best placed to defeat the ruling party.

In August 2020 he was poisoned with a Novichok-type nerve agent, was treated in Germany, and returned to Russia in January 2021, where he was arrested at the airport. His 2021 film Putin's Palace accumulated tens of millions of views. Courts jailed him, his organisations were declared extremist, and sentences were stretched to 19 years. He died on 16 February 2024 in a penal colony in the Arctic Yamalo-Nenets region. Russian authorities gave natural causes, while his family and Western governments held the Russian state responsible.

Color Revolutions

Nonviolent pass protests, participants and many scholars describe them as domestic movements against electoral fraud. The Russian government treats them as a Western technology of regime change financed through grant-giving agencies and NGOs, and sees them as a threat to Russia itself. That view shaped Russian countermeasures: the Nashi youth movement, tighter rules on NGOs, further acceleration into autocrazition of Russia, the 2012 foreign agents law, and later Russia's reading of Euromaidan in 2014 as an externally run coup.

Bolotnaya Protests (2011)

The protests began after the State Duma elections of 4 December 2011, in which United Russia officially won about 49% amid widespread video evidence and monitor reports of ballot stuffing. Large rallies followed in Moscow, notably at Bolotnaya Square on 10 December and on Sakharov Avenue on 24 December, with crowds estimated from tens of thousands up to over 100,000. The slogan was "For Fair Elections," and the movement united liberals, leftists and nationalists, with figures such as Navalny, Boris Nemtsov and Garry Kasparov among the speakers.

On 6 May 2012, the day before Putin's inauguration, a march ended in clashes with police and led to the "Bolotnaya case," in which dozens of participants were prosecuted. The government answered with higher fines for unauthorised rallies, the foreign agents law and tighter control of the internet. Putin accused the US State Department of encouraging the demonstrations, and the episode strengthened the Kremlin's fear of a Russian color revolution.

Leonid Kravchuk

Kravchuk (1934–2022) was a senior Communist Party ideology official who turned to Ukrainian nationalism in 1990–91. He was elected the first President of independent Ukraine on 1 December 1991 with about 62%, on the same day that roughly 90% of voters backed independence in a referendum. A week later he signed the Belovezha Accords with Yeltsin and Shushkevich. His term (1991–94) saw hyperinflation, a sharp economic fall, a dispute with Russia over the Black Sea Fleet and Crimea, and the negotiation of Ukraine's transfer of Soviet nuclear weapons, including the January 1994 Trilateral Statement with the US and Russia. He lost the 1994 runoff to Kuchma and accepted the result, an early peaceful transfer of power in the post-Soviet region.

Leonid Kuchma

Kuchma was President from 1994 to 2005. A former director of the Yuzhmash missile factory in Dnipro, he won in 1994 with strong support in the east and south by promising closer ties with Russia. His tenure produced the 1996 constitution, the new hryvnia currency, growth after 1999 and the 1997 treaties with Russia and NATO. It also saw the rise of powerful oligarch clans (Donetsk, Dnipro, Kyiv), media pressure, and the "Kuchmagate" scandal after journalist Georgiy Gongadze was murdered in 2000 and a recording linked Kuchma's circle to the order. In 2004 he backed Viktor Yanukovych as his successor, which led to the Orange Revolution. His foreign policy was the classic example of a multi-vector approach.

Multi-vector Foreign Policy

A multi-vector policy balances between rival powers, here Russia and the CIS on one side and the EU and NATO on the other, to gain benefits from both and avoid dependence on either. Under Kuchma, Ukraine joined the Partnership for Peace and signed a 1997 charter with NATO while also joining CIS economic projects and maintaining the strategic partnership with Russia. Under Yanukovych the 2010 "non-bloc status" law formally ruled out NATO membership while the government negotiated an EU agreement.

Critics argue the approach was less a strategy than an inability to choose, because it left Ukraine in a security grey zone where neither Russia nor the West treated it as fully theirs. Supporters say that in the 1990s, with a divided population and an economy tied to Russia, it was the realistic option. The approach ended in practice with the 2013–14 choice between the EU Association Agreement and Russia's Customs Union.

Chicken Kiev speech

On 1 August 1991, in the Ukrainian parliament, US President George H.W. Bush urged Ukrainians to stay in a reformed Soviet Union led by Gorbachev. He warned against "suicidal nationalism" built on ethnic hatred and said Washington would not support those seeking independence to replace a far-off tyranny with local despotism. Columnist William Safire mocked it as the "Chicken Kiev" speech. It came three weeks before the failed August coup, after which Ukraine declared independence on 24 August, and Washington recognised independent Ukraine in December.

It shows the priorities of the US at the end of the Cold War: avoiding chaos in a nuclear superpower, protecting Gorbachev, and keeping control over Soviet nuclear weapons. Critics, especially in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, saw it as a failure to understand the independence movement. Defenders say it called for orderly change and was not opposition to independence.

Budapest Memorandum (1994)

Signed on 5 December 1994 at an OSCE summit, the memorandum provided "security assurances" to Ukraine (and separately to Belarus and Kazakhstan) when it joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear state. After the USSR's collapse Ukraine held about 1,900 strategic warheads and a large arsenal of delivery systems, the third-largest in the world, although Moscow retained operational control. Ukraine transferred the warheads to Russia and finished denuclearisation in 1996. In return, Russia, the US and the UK committed to respect Ukraine's independence, sovereignty and existing borders, to refrain from force or threats, to avoid economic coercion, and to seek UN Security Council action if nuclear weapons were used against it. China and France gave similar separate statements.

The key interpretive point is that these were assurances, not guarantees: the memorandum creates no obligation to defend Ukraine and was never ratified as a treaty by the US Senate. Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea and 2022 invasion are widely seen as violations, and Ukraine requested consultations under the memorandum in 2014. The case is used in debates over nuclear non-proliferation, and John Mearsheimer argued in a 1993 Foreign Affairs article that Ukraine should keep its weapons.

Russian Constitutional Crisis (1993)

The crisis was a struggle between President Yeltsin and the Supreme Soviet, the parliament elected in the Soviet era and led by speaker Ruslan Khasbulatov and Vice President Alexander Rutskoy, over economic reform and over who held ultimate power under the old constitution. An April 1993 referendum gave Yeltsin a narrow win (about 58% confidence). On 21 September he issued a decree dissolving parliament, which the Constitutional Court ruled unlawful, and parliament voted to remove him and swore in Rutskoy as president. On 3 October pro-parliament crowds attacked the Moscow mayor's office and the Ostankino television centre. On 4 October army tanks shelled the parliament building (the "White House"), ending the standoff. Official figures count about 147 dead, and other estimates run higher.

In December 1993 voters approved a new constitution (about 58% yes on a turnout of roughly 55%), which gave the president broad powers: issuing decrees, appointing the prime minister, and dissolving the lower house, the State Duma, under certain conditions. The same election saw Vladimir Zhirinovsky's nationalist LDPR do well. Political scientists often cite this super-presidential design as a structural root of later authoritarian consolidation.

Viktor Yanukovych

Yanukovych (born 1950 in the Donetsk region) led the Party of Regions, which represented the industrial east, and served as governor of Donetsk and as prime minister (2002–05 and 2006–07). He was the candidate whose disputed 2004 victory sparked the Orange Revolution. He won the presidency in 2010 (about 49% against Tymoshenko's 45% in the runoff). He then had a court restore the stronger 1996 constitution, ended the NATO bid through the non-bloc law, and extended the Black Sea Fleet lease at Sevastopol to 2042 in exchange for cheaper gas. His government prosecuted Tymoshenko, who was sentenced to seven years in 2011. In November 2013 he suspended the EU Association Agreement, which triggered Euromaidan.

After dozens of protesters were killed in Kyiv in February 2014, he fled the capital on 21–22 February, and parliament voted to remove him on 22 February. Russia treats that vote as an illegal coup because it did not follow the impeachment procedure in the constitution, while Ukraine and most states treat it as a legitimate response to his flight. He went to Russia, and a Ukrainian court convicted him of treason in absentia in 2019.

Viktor Yushchenko

Yushchenko was governor of Ukraine's central bank and prime minister (1999–2001) before leading the opposition "Our Ukraine" bloc. In September 2004 he was poisoned with dioxin, which left his face permanently scarred, and he became the face of the Orange Revolution. As President (2005–2010) he pursued closer ties with the EU and NATO, requested a NATO Membership Action Plan in January 2008, promoted national memory (the Holodomor as genocide, the UPA and Bandera), and faced two Russian gas cut-offs in 2006 and 2009. His coalition with Tymoshenko broke down amid constant feuds, the economy was hit by the 2008 financial crisis, and he won only about 5% in 2010.

Ukraine Pres. Elections: 1994, 2004, 2010, 2014, 2019

1994. Kuchma beat Kravchuk in the runoff (about 52% to 45%). The map split along regional lines: the west and centre voted for Kravchuk and the east and south for Kuchma. Kravchuk left office peacefully.

2004. The runoff on 21 November was declared a win for Yanukovych (about 49% to 47%) amid widespread fraud. Mass protests (the OrangeRevolution) followed, the Supreme Court annulled the result, and in the 26 December rerun Yushchenko won about 52% to 44%. A constitutional deal shifted power from the president to parliament, effective 2006.

2010. Yanukovych beat Tymoshenko in the runoff (about 49% to 45%). International observers called the vote competitive and largely free, which made it a test of democratic alternation after the Orange period.

2014. After Yanukovych's ouster, an early election on 25 May produced a first-round win for Poroshenko with about 55%, ahead of Tymoshenko (about 13%). No voting took place in Crimea and the vote was largely blocked in the war zones of Donetsk and Luhansk.

2019. Comedian Volodymyr Zelensky won the 21 April runoff with about 73% against incumbent Poroshenko's 24%, after finishing first in the first round with about 30%. It was a landslide against the political establishment and another peaceful transfer of power.

Bucharest Summit (2008)

At NATO's summit in Bucharest on 2–4 April 2008, the Bush administration pushed to give Ukraine and Georgia a Membership Action Plan, the formal step towards membership. France and Germany refused, pointing to Russian opposition, low public support for membership in Ukraine, and Georgia's unresolved territorial conflicts. The compromise in the final declaration said that Ukraine and Georgia "will become members of NATO," but it offered no MAP and no timetable.

Putin attended a NATO–Russia Council meeting and warned that membership would endanger Ukraine's territorial integrity. Russia went to war with Georgia in August 2008. Interpretations differ. Critics (including realists such as Mearsheimer) say the declaration was the worst of both worlds: it provoked Russia without giving Ukraine any protection. Defenders say the refusal of a MAP shows NATO did not move Ukraine toward membership, and that Russia's later aggression was a choice, not a response.

Yulia Tymoshenko

Tymoshenko built a fortune in the 1990s gas trade and was known as the "gas princess" before becoming deputy prime minister for energy (1999–2001). She led the Batkivshchyna party and was the Orange Revolution's co-leader, serving as prime minister in 2005 and again from 2007 to 2010. In January 2009 she signed a ten-year gas supply deal with Putin to end a supply crisis. After losing the 2010 election she was prosecuted for abuse of power over that deal and sentenced to seven years in October 2011. The EU, the US and the European Court of Human Rights viewed it as politically motivated (the court found her detention arbitrary), and her imprisonment became a major obstacle to signing the Association Agreement. She was freed on 22 February 2014 and ran for president in 2014 and 2019 without winning.

Orange Revolution

The Orange Revolution (November 2004–January 2005) was the mass protest against the fraudulent runoff of 21 November 2004. Orange was the campaign colour of Yushchenko. Hundreds of thousands filled Independence Square (the Maidan) in Kyiv and camped in tents for weeks, supported by student movement Pora, independent Channel 5, strikes, and exit polls showing a Yushchenko win. Western governments and election monitors rejected the official count, while Putin congratulated Yanukovych early. On 3 December the Supreme Court ordered a new runoff, and Yushchenko won on 26 December.

It made Ukraine a symbol of democratic change in the former USSR, and Russia read it as a Western-backed operation. Its legacy was disappointing: Yushchenko and Prime Minister Tymoshenko fell out within months, reforms stalled, and Yanukovych returned to power in 2010.

Petro Poroshenko

Poroshenko is a confectionery magnate (the Roshen company) and a former foreign and economy minister, and he backed both the Orange Revolution and Euromaidan. He was elected President in May 2014 and served until 2019. His term saw the war in Donbas, the Minsk agreements, the signing of the EU Association Agreement (June 2014), EU visa-free travel for Ukrainians (2017), the 2019 Tomos recognising an independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine, decommunisation laws, and an amendment to the constitution that stated Ukraine's goal of NATO and EU membership. His 2019 slogan was "Army, Language, Faith." He was criticised over persistent corruption and his business interests, and lost heavily to Zelensky. In late 2021 he was charged with treason, which he rejected as political.

Volodymyr Zelensky

Zelensky (born 1978 in Kryvyi Rih) is a Russian-speaking Jewish Ukrainian, a lawyer by training and a comedian and producer (Kvartal 95). He became famous playing an ordinary teacher who becomes president in the TV series Servant of the People (2015–19). His party of the same name took its name from the show. He won the 2019 presidency with about 73% on a platform of anti-corruption and ending the Donbas war by negotiation, and his party won an outright majority in the July 2019 parliamentary election.

After the full-scale Russian invasion on 24 February 2022, he stayed in Kyiv, became the international face of Ukraine's resistance, and led the country under martial law. Under martial law, elections are suspended, so no presidential vote has been held since 2019. Check current news for the latest status of the war and any negotiations.

Partnership for Peace (PfP)

PfP is a NATO programme launched at the January 1994 Brussels summit that offers practical military cooperation (training, exercises, defence planning and interoperability) to non-members, whether former Warsaw Pact states, ex-Soviet republics or neutral Western states. Each partner signs a Framework Document and agrees an individual programme with NATO. The Clinton administration designed it as a middle path between admitting new members immediately and leaving the East in a security gap, and it did not promise membership, although it made later membership easier by building common standards.

Ukraine was the first ex-Soviet state to join (February 1994), and Russia joined in June 1994. Many of the countries that joined in 1999 and 2004 passed through PfP first. Russia ended its practical participation after the 2014 annexation of Crimea.

“Not one inch”

The phrase comes from a meeting in Moscow on 9 February 1990, when US Secretary of State James Baker told Gorbachev that NATO's jurisdiction would not move "one inch" eastward if the Soviet Union accepted a unified Germany inside NATO. Similar statements were made by West German Chancellor Helmut Kohl and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, and in the same period Western officials discussed special arrangements for East German territory. Documents declassified by the US National Security Archive in 2017 showed that several Western leaders gave assurances of this kind in early 1990.

The dispute is about their meaning. Russia (and some Western scholars) claims the West broke a promise when NATO later enlarged. Western governments reply that the talks concerned the status of East Germany only, that no promise about Eastern Europe was written into the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany (September 1990), and that the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact were still in existence at the time. Gorbachev himself said in 2014 that the enlargement question was not discussed in those negotiations, while adding that the West later acted against the spirit of the discussions. Historian Mary Sarotte describes it as an informal understanding that was never turned into a formal agreement.

Russia-Ukraine Friendship Treaty (1997)

Officially the Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership, it was signed in Kyiv by Yeltsin and Kuchma on 31 May 1997. Its core terms were mutual recognition of existing borders (including Crimea and Sevastopol, which the Russian parliament had claimed in 1996), respect for territorial integrity, and a commitment not to use force or threats of force against each other. It came with agreements on the Black Sea Fleet: the fleet was divided (roughly 82% to Russia and 18% to Ukraine), and Russia leased naval bases in Sevastopol for twenty years.

The treaty was meant to run for ten years and renew automatically. Russia's 2014 annexation of Crimea breached it in the Ukrainian and Western view, and Ukraine formally let it lapse on 1 April 2019. It is cited as evidence that Russia accepted Ukraine's borders in a legally binding form.

NATO Russia Founding Act (1997)

The Founding Act on Mutual Relations, Cooperation and Security was signed in Paris on 27 May 1997, as NATO was preparing to invite its first new members. It created a Permanent Joint Council that gave Russia a forum for consultation, but no veto over NATO decisions. In it NATO stated it had "no intention, no plan, and no reason" to deploy nuclear weapons on the territory of new members, and said that in the current and foreseeable security environment it would defend its members through interoperability and reinforcement without the additional permanent stationing of substantial combat forces.

Russia argues that NATO violated this pledge when it deployed multinational battlegroups in the Baltic states and Poland from 2017. NATO responds that the battlegroups rotate, are not "substantial" permanent forces, and that Russia broke the shared principles first through its actions in Georgia and Ukraine. The Permanent Joint Council was replaced by the NATO–Russia Council in 2002, and NATO suspended practical cooperation in April 2014. In December 2021 Russia demanded a return to NATO's 1997 military posture.

US-Russia ‘Reset (Obama)

The Reset was the Obama administration's 2009 effort to improve relations with Russia after the 2008 war in Georgia, working mainly with President Medvedev. It was symbolised by a gift of a "reset" button from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in March 2009, which carried a mistranslated Russian label meaning "overload." Achievements included the New START arms-control treaty (signed April 2010), UN sanctions on Iran, transit routes to Afghanistan through Russia, Russian abstention on the 2011 Libya resolution, and Russia's WTO accession in 2012. The US also replaced Bush's planned missile-defence sites in Poland and the Czech Republic with a different system in 2009.

It weakened from 2011 over the Libya intervention, Syria, the Magnitsky Act of 2012 and Putin's return to the presidency, which brought a more confrontational line. The asylum Russia granted to Edward Snowden in 2013 led Obama to cancel a Moscow summit, and the crisis in Ukraine in 2014 ended the policy.

EU Association Agreement

The Association Agreement (AA) was a treaty between the EU and Ukraine that combined political cooperation with a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA), under the EU's Eastern Partnership programme begun in 2009. Negotiated from 2007 and initialled in 2012, it was due to be signed at the EU's Vilnius summit on 28–29 November 2013. Moscow opposed it because Ukraine's DCFTA was incompatible with membership of the Russia-led Customs Union that Russia wanted Ukraine to join, and it applied trade pressure in the summer of 2013, including customs delays on Ukrainian goods. On 21 November the Ukrainian government suspended preparations, and Yanukovych did not sign at Vilnius. In December 2013 Russia offered a loan of about $15 billion and cheaper gas.

The political chapters were signed on 21 March 2014 and the trade chapters on 27 June 2014 by Poroshenko, and the whole agreement entered into force on 1 September 2017. The Russian reading treats the choice as zero-sum, an EU move to take Ukraine into the Western sphere. The EU says it was an economic and legal agreement that did not exclude trade with Russia.

Revolution of Dignity (Euromaiden Rev.)

Euromaidan started on 21 November 2013 with a social-media call by journalist Mustafa Nayyem to gather in Kyiv's Independence Square (the Maidan) after the AA suspension. The protest was small until 30 November, when Berkut riot police beat students at night, and it then grew into a mass movement against police violence, corruption and the government, which is why Ukrainians call it the Revolution of Dignity. Protesters occupied the centre of Kyiv through the winter. After the January 2014 laws, clashes escalated, and on 18–20 February roughly a hundred protesters (the "Heavenly Hundred") and about a dozen police were killed, many by sniper fire in central Kyiv. On 21 February Yanukovych signed an agreement with opposition leaders, mediated by Poland, Germany and France, for early elections and a return to the 2004 constitution, and he fled Kyiv the same day. On 22 February parliament voted by 328 votes to remove him, freed Tymoshenko and appointed Oleksandr Turchynov acting president. Ukraine and Western governments describe a popular uprising, although the roles of far-right groups such as Right Sector and Svoboda and of a leaked call by US diplomat Victoria Nuland about the future government are cited in Russian accounts. Russia calls the events a Western-backed, unconstitutional coup, and used that claim to challenge the legitimacy of the new authorities.

Dictatorship Laws

The Ukrainian parliament passed a package of laws on 16 January 2014 by a show of hands, without a proper count and in breach of procedure, and Yanukovych signed them the next day. They restricted protest: criminal penalties for unauthorised tents, stages and sound equipment, fines and loss of driving licences for convoys of five or more vehicles (aimed at the AutoMaidan), a revived crime of defamation, a requirement for NGOs receiving foreign funding to register as "foreign agents" (copying Russia's 2012 law), limits on internet content, and long prison terms for "mass disorder."

Protesters nicknamed them the "dictatorship laws." They radicalised the movement, and clashes on Hrushevskoho Street on 19–22 January led to the first deaths. Prime Minister Mykola Azarov resigned, and parliament repealed most of the package on 28 January 2014.

‘Krym Nash’

This slogan became the signature of Russian public enthusiasm after the March 2014 annexation. It expressed pride in what many Russians saw as the return of a historically Russian territory, and was used on posters, social media and at state events. The annexation was followed by a jump in Putin's approval rating to over 80%, often called the "Crimean consensus" or a rally-round-the-flag effect, which lasted for several years. Putin's speech to parliament on 18 March 2014 explained the annexation by Crimea's historical ties to Russia, the right to self-determination, the protection of Russian speakers and the precedent of Kosovo. The counter-slogan in Ukraine and the West is "Crimea is Ukraine," and Russia's opening of the Kerch Strait bridge in 2018 was meant to cement the claim.

‘Little green men’

This was the nickname for the soldiers in unmarked green uniforms who took control of Crimea from 27 February 2014: they seized the parliament in Simferopol, airports, and communications, and blockaded Ukrainian bases. Russian media called them the "polite people." On 4 March Putin said they were local self-defence units who had bought their uniforms in shops, and on 17 April he admitted that Russian forces had backed them.

The operation is a model of what analysts call hybrid warfare: plausible deniability, speed, disinformation and minimal violence, with almost no fighting. It allowed the takeover of the peninsula before Ukraine or NATO could respond, and the same combination of local fighters, Russian specialists and denial was used in Donbas in spring 2014.

Crimea Referendum (2014)

Held under the control of Russian forces and moved forward several times (from late May to 30 March to 16 March), the referendum offered two options: join Russia as a federal subject, or restore Crimea's 1992 constitution, which gave it wide autonomy and was ambiguous on its status. There was no option to keep the status quo. Official results were about 97% in Crimea and 96% in Sevastopol for joining Russia, with turnout of about 83% and 90%. Independent analysts and a leaked report associated with a Russian presidential advisory council gave much lower figures, although these numbers cannot be verified. Most Crimean Tatars boycotted. Russia signed a treaty of accession on 18 March.

The referendum violated Ukraine's constitution, which requires an all-Ukrainian referendum for territorial change. On 27 March 2014 the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution (100 in favour, 11 against, 58 abstaining) affirming Ukraine's territorial integrity and calling the referendum invalid. Russia argued for self-determination and cited the 2010 ICJ opinion on Kosovo. The West responded with sanctions and suspended Russia from the G8.

Conflict in Donbas

Donbas, made up of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, is Ukraine's coal-and-steel region and was the power base of the Party of Regions. In April 2014, after Crimea, armed groups seized government buildings in Sloviansk, Donetsk and Luhansk, led in part by Russian citizens such as Igor Girkin ("Strelkov"), and declared the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics. Kyiv launched an "anti-terrorist operation" in mid-April. Russia supplied weapons, volunteers and, during the battles of Ilovaisk (August 2014) and Debaltseve (early 2015), regular troops, although it denied this.

The UN human rights office counted about 14,000 conflict-related deaths between 2014 and 2021 (roughly 3,400 of them civilians) and over a million internally displaced. The front line stayed largely static after 2015. Russia describes a Ukrainian civil war and, from 2022, a defence of the people of Donbas. Ukraine and Western governments describe a conflict fuelled and directed by Russia. Russia recognised the two "republics" on 21 February 2022 and claimed to annex them in September 2022, which almost all states rejected.

MH-17

Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, travelling from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur, was shot down on 17 July 2014 over territory held by pro-Russian forces in Donetsk oblast, killing all 298 people on board, including 196 Dutch citizens. The Dutch Safety Board concluded in 2015 that a Buk surface-to-air missile warhead exploded outside the cockpit. A Joint Investigation Team (Netherlands, Australia, Belgium, Malaysia, Ukraine) concluded that the Buk launcher came from Russia's 53rd Anti-Aircraft Missile Brigade, based in Kursk, and was moved into Ukraine and back.

In November 2022 a Dutch court convicted in absentia Igor Girkin, Sergey Dubinsky and Leonid Kharchenko of murder and sentenced them to life, and acquitted a fourth defendant. Russia denies involvement, has offered several alternative explanations, and vetoed a 2015 UN Security Council resolution to set up a tribunal. The shootdown prompted the first major wave of EU and US sectoral sanctions on Russia.

Minsk Agreements

The Minsk agreements were two ceasefire-and-settlement packages for Donbas, negotiated while Ukrainian forces were losing ground to Russian-backed fighters.

Minsk I (5 September 2014). The Minsk Protocol was signed by representatives of Ukraine, Russia and the OSCE (the Trilateral Contact Group) and by the leaders of the two separatist "republics." It set out a twelve-point ceasefire and prisoner exchange, but fighting continued and the ceasefire collapsed within weeks.

Minsk II (12 February 2015). After the Debaltseve battle, the leaders of Germany (Merkel), France (Hollande), Russia (Putin) and Ukraine (Poroshenko), meeting in what is called the Normandy Format, agreed a 13-point package, which the UN Security Council endorsed in Resolution 2202. It required an immediate ceasefire, withdrawal of heavy weapons under OSCE monitoring, an amnesty, local elections in the occupied areas under Ukrainian law, a constitutional reform giving Donbas "special status," and the return of control of the Ukraine–Russia border to Kyiv after those elections, together with the withdrawal of foreign armed formations.

The core dispute was the order of steps. Russia and the separatists wanted the political steps (special status, elections) first, while Ukraine insisted on security first (ceasefire, withdrawal of foreign forces, border control), because it feared that a vote under armed occupation would give Moscow a veto over Ukrainian policy. A compromise called the Steinmeier formula in 2019 provoked protests in Kyiv. The ceasefire was violated constantly by both sides, and the political steps were never carried out. Putin declared the agreements dead on 21 February 2022, days before the invasion. In late 2022 Merkel and Hollande said the process had given Ukraine time to build up its army, which Putin pointed to as evidence of bad faith.

Realism (in IR theory)

Realism is the school of international relations that treats the international system as anarchic, meaning there is no authority above states that can enforce rules. In that setting, states are the main actors, survival is their basic goal, and power (especially military power) decides outcomes. Each state must rely on itself ("self-help"), alliances are tools and not commitments of principle, and peace comes from a balance of power, not from institutions or shared values. There are several versions. Classical realism (Hans Morgenthau) grounds power-seeking in human nature. Defensive neorealism (Kenneth Waltz, 1979) argues the structure of the system pushes states to seek enough security, not maximum power, and to balance against threats. Offensive realism (John Mearsheimer, 2001) argues that uncertainty about others' intentions pushes great powers to maximise power and aim for dominance in their own region. Applied to Ukraine, realists emphasise spheres of influence and buffer states, and read NATO enlargement as a threat to Russian security. Critics respond that realism ignores domestic politics, ideology and identity (Putin's view of Ukraine), underplays the right and agency of smaller states to choose alliances (a principle in the Helsinki Final Act and the 1990 Charter of Paris), and cannot explain why Finland and Sweden joined NATO in response to Russian aggression.

‘Security dilemma’

The security dilemma, formulated by John Herz (1950) and developed by Robert Jervis (1978), describes a situation where actions a state takes to increase its own security (building up arms, forming alliances, deploying forces) make other states feel less secure. They respond with their own measures, and all end up less secure than before, even though no one intended aggression. It is strongest when intentions cannot be known and when offensive and defensive capabilities are hard to tell apart.

In this case, the NATO enlargement can be seen as defensive by members and aspiring members who fear Russia, and as threatening by Moscow. Russian moves such as the 2014 annexation then confirm the fears of neighbours, who seek more Western protection. Ways to reduce the dilemma include arms-control treaties, transparency, neutral buffer arrangements and reassurance. Realists differ on whether the dilemma explains this war or is a cover for Russian expansion: those who see Putin as a revisionist power argue that it is not a dilemma at all, because Russia's aims are not defensive.

‘Root causes’ of the war (seen by Russia)

This phrase is used by Russian officials, including Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov, to argue that the war cannot end without addressing underlying causes. The following are the claims as Russia presents them, not conclusions endorsed by this guide.

1. NATO enlargement and "indivisible security." Russia argues that NATO's eastward expansion and military infrastructure near its border, together with the 2008 promise of future Ukrainian membership, threaten it, and that under the OSCE principle of indivisible security no state may increase its security at another's expense. Its December 2021 draft treaties demanded that NATO stop enlarging andreturn to its 1997 military posture.

1. The 2014 "coup" and the Kyiv government. Russia says the removal of Yanukovych was an illegal, Western-backed coup that produced a nationalist and "neo-Nazi" leadership, citing Bandera's rehabilitation and far-right units.

2. Donbas and Russian speakers. Russia says Kyiv carried out a "genocide" against Russian speakers in Donbas and sabotaged the Minsk agreements. The International Court of Justice found in March 2022 that it had seen no evidence supporting the genocide claim, and ordered Russia to suspend its military operations.

3. Historical unity. Russia says Ukraine is an artificial state and that Russians and Ukrainians are one people (the 2021 Putin article).

4. A Western project against Russia. Russia says the US and NATO are using Ukraine as an instrument to weaken Russia, and demands Ukrainian neutrality and demilitarisation.

Ukraine, most Western governments and most scholars of the region reject these as pretexts, point to the UN Charter's ban on the use of force and to the Budapest Memorandum and the 1997 treaty, and argue that Russian imperial aims and fear of a democratic Ukraine are the real causes.

John Mearsheimer

Mearsheimer (born 1947) is a professor at the University of Chicago and the leading proponent of offensive realism (The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 2001). On Ukraine he made two arguments. In 1993 he wrote in Foreign Affairs that Ukraine should keep its nuclear weapons to deter Russia. After 2014 he argued, in a Foreign Affairs article titled "Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West's Fault" (2014) and a widely watched 2015 lecture, that the West provoked Russia through NATO enlargement, EU expansion and democracy promotion, and that Ukraine should be a neutral buffer, like Austria or Finland in the Cold War. He treats the 2008 Bucharest declaration as the decisive mistake, and he holds that Russia's moves are rational responses to a threat.

Since 2022 he has maintained that the West bears the main responsibility for the war and that Ukraine will not regain its lost territory. His critics, including Michael McFaul, Anne Applebaum and Timothy Snyder, say that he ignores Putin's imperial ideology (including the 2021 article), that NATO was no military threat to Russia, that Ukraine and other neighbours have their own agency, and that he effectively excuses aggression. Mearsheimer replies that explaining causes is not the same as justifying the invasion, and that his critics base policy on liberal hopes more than on power politics.

1999 & 2004 waves of NATO expansion

1999 Expansion 

On 12 March 1999 Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined NATO, the first expansion since the Cold War, raising membership from 16 to 19 states. They were invited at the July 1997 Madrid summit, and the US Senate ratified the decision in April 1998 (80–19). The Clinton administration argued that bringing in Central Europe would lock in democracy and stability and provide security for states with a history of invasion. Critics, including diplomat George Kennan, warned that expansion would provoke Russia and undermine reform there.

Russian opposition was loud but did not stop the process, partly because of the Founding Act compromise and Russia's weakness in the 1990s. The timing was difficult for relations: NATO began bombing Serbia over Kosovo on 24 March 1999 without UN authorisation, just after the new members joined, which Russia treated as proof that NATO acts without limits. At its April 1999 Washington summit NATO also launched the Membership Action Plan (MAP) and reaffirmed its "open door" policy.

2004 Expansion

On 29 March 2004 seven countries joined: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia, raising membership from 19 to 26. Invited at the November 2002 Prague summit, it was the largest single enlargement. It was also the first toinclude former Soviet republics, the Baltic states, two of which (Estonia and Latvia) share land borders with Russia, and it put NATO territory next to Russia's Kaliningrad region. The EU admitted ten new members a month later, in May 2004.

Russia protested, linked it to the stalemate over the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty, which Russia suspended in 2007, and complained about NATO air policing in the Baltic states. Putin's 2007 speech in Munich attacked the "unipolar" order and NATO enlargement. Later additions were Albania and Croatia (2009), Montenegro (2017), North Macedonia (2020), Finland (2023) and Sweden (2024).

Putin’s ‘Trojan Horse’ Strategy

This is an analysts' label, not an official doctrine, for the argument that Russia sought to keep influence over Ukraine from inside, by reintegrating the Russian-controlled parts of Donbas on terms that would let Moscow's proxies paralyse Kyiv. The "horse" is the Donetsk and Luhansk "people's republics." Under a literal reading of Minsk II, they would return to Ukraine with a constitutionally guaranteed special status, their own armed units and local elections held under separatist control, before Ukraine regained control of its border with Russia.

Commentators such as Ukrainian journalist Vitaliy Portnikov (2015) argued that this would give the territories a de facto veto over major national decisions, including EU and NATO integration, and a basis to restart the war with Russian backing at any time. Later versions of the argument said the same about elections in occupied areas and proxy politicians, and about Russian-backed exile groups meant to make Ukraine ungovernable. This reading explains why Ukraine insisted on security and border control before political steps, and why the 2019 Steinmeier formula was so controversial in Kyiv.

The label is contested. Russia and the separatists say the special status was a legitimate guarantee for Russian speakers, and that Kyiv refused to implement the agreement it signed. A confusing second use of the term exists: in 2019 Russian General Valery Gerasimov described a supposed American "Trojan Horse" plan combining air strikes with protest movements, which is the same image turned against the West.