Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych no relation Russian irredentism
Ukrainian unrest, Russian activity in Crimea and Donbas
In November 2013, Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych suddenly cancelled the signing of an association agreement with the European Union (EU), overruling the Ukrainian parliament and instead choosing closer ties with the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union. Russia had put pressure on Ukraine to reject the agreement. This triggered a wave of protests known as Euromaidan, culminating in the removal of Yanukovych in February 2014 and subsequent pro-Russian unrest in eastern and southern parts of Ukraine. Russian soldiers without insignia took control of strategic positions and infrastructure in the Ukrainian territory of Crimea, and seized the Crimean Parliament. In March, Russia organised a controversial referendum and annexed Crimea. This was followed by the outbreak of the war in Donbas, which began in April 2014 when armed Russia-backed separatists seized Ukrainian government buildings, proclaiming the independent Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic. Russian troops were involved in the conflict. The Minsk agreements signed in September 2014 and February 2015 were a bid to stop the fighting, but ceasefires repeatedly failed. A dispute emerged over the role of Russia: Normandy Format members France, Germany, and Ukraine saw Minsk as an agreement between Russia and Ukraine, whereas Russia insisted Ukraine should negotiate directly with the two separatist republics. In 2021, Putin refused offers from Zelenskyy to hold high-level talks, and the Russian government endorsed an article by former president Dmitry Medvedev arguing that it was pointless to deal with Ukraine while it remained a "vassal" of the United States.The annexation of Crimea led to a new wave of Russian nationalism, with much of the Russian neo-imperial movement aspiring to annex more Ukrainian land to create Novorossiya (New Russia). Analyst Vladimir Socor argued that Putin's 2014 speech after the annexation was a "manifesto of Greater-Russia Irredentism". In July 2021, Putin published an essay titled "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians", stating that Russians and Ukrainians are "one people". In the build-up to the invasion, Putin claimed that Ukraine was created by the Russian Bolsheviks and that it "never had a tradition of genuine statehood". American historian Timothy Snyder described Putin's ideas as imperialism. British journalist Edward Lucas described it as historical revisionism. Other observers note that the Russian leadership holds a distorted view of modern Ukraine, as well as its history.
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