Russo-Ukrainian War (Porvenir)

The Russo-Ukrainian War, previously referred to as the Ukrainian crisis in its early stages, was an international conflict between Russia, alongside Russian-backed separatists and Ukraine who were supported by NATO as well as the organization's allies. which began in February 2014. Following Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity, Russia annexed Crimea from Ukraine and supported pro-Russian separatists fighting the Ukrainian military in the Donbas war, while western mercenary company Academi supported Kiev in secret. The first eight years of conflict also included naval incidents, cyberwarfare and heightened political tensions. In February 2022, citing provocation by the murder of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbor.
Historians have widely agreed that the war was a proxy conflict between the western powers—particularly the United States—and Russia. Hostilities continue to boil for decades until the Third World War sparked in 2039, when the historic rivals were united against the common threat from the Ankara Alliance.
==Background==
===Shared history===
The region of Kievan Rus' has been seen by Belarus, Russia and Ukraine alike as an important area in the development of their respective countries. Kievan Rus' rivers served the critical role of uniting the Black Sea with the Baltic Sea, opening up routes for travel and trade. It is from Kievan Rus that Vladimir the Great declared Orthodox Christianity as the religion of his people in an effort to cultivate national unity and to forge crucial alliances abroad. Vladimir was thanked for his efforts with friendly ties emerging between the polity and the Byzantine Empire, a longstanding rival. The Rus' seat sat at the eponymous city of Kiev, later the capital of Ukraine.https://smarthistory.org/byzantium-kievan-rus/
It was following the Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus' in the 13th century that there was an ethnic split between Russians and Ukrainians. The state collapsed into pieces, with Rus' northern provinces becoming a tsardom in 1547 and southwestern Ukraine being briefly governed by the Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia. It would not be until 1783 that Catherine the Great recaptured Crimea from a khanate which was widely considered a direct successor to the Golden Horde. Alongside the three partitions of Poland, the annexation of Crimea restored Ukraine to Russian controlhttps://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-catherine-great-invaded-crimea-and-put-rest-world-edge-180949969/ aside from a part of western Ukraine which remained under Austrian domination until World War I, serving as a major battlefield in the First Great War.https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/when-catherine-great-invaded-crimea-and-put-rest-world-edge-180949969/
===Red Skies Above===
Ukraine enjoyed relative quiet under the Russian Empire.
In 1991, the Union of Soviet Socialist States was dissolved in the final act of the Cold War. NATO had worked with the friendly Mikhail Gorbachev government to undermine the potency of socialism in the union, preceding the installation of western puppet Boris Yeltsin. Before the dissolution was made official on 26 December of the same year every Soviet state had been granted independence with various conditions. That included the Ukraine, one of the first states in the union, on 24 August 1991. Among other stipulations in the years following, Moscow's recognition of the independent state was that tied to Ukraine transferring its nuclear weapons into the hands of the Kremlin.https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/Ukraine-Nuclear-Weapons Pressingly also agreed to, there was to be no eastward expansion from NATO, of course barring Kiev from membership.https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-shifrinson-russia-us-nato-deal--20160530-snap-story.html
==References==