What is the Ukraine crisis?

Ukraine is a Texas-sized country wedged between Russia and Europe. It was part of the
Soviet Union until 1991, and since then has been a less-than-perfect democracy with a very
weak economy and foreign policy that wavers between pro-Russian and pro-European.

This all began as an internal Ukrainian crisis in November 2013, when President
Viktor Yanukovych rejected a deal for greater integration with the European Union
sparking mass protests, which Yanukovych attempted to put down violently. Russia
backed Yanukovych in the crisis, while the US and Europe supported the protesters.

Since then, several big things have happened. In February, anti-government protests
toppled the government and ran Yanukovych out of the country. Russia, trying to
salvage its lost influence in Ukraine, invaded and annexed Crimea the next month. In
April, pro-Russia separatist rebels began seizing territory in eastern Ukraine. The
rebels shot down Malaysian Airlines flight 17 on July 17, killing 298 people, probably
accidentally. Fighting between the rebels and the Ukrainian military intensified, the
rebels started losing, and, in August, the Russian army overtly invaded eastern
Ukraine to support the rebels. This has all brought the relationship between Russia
and the West to its lowest point since the Cold War. Sanctions are pushing the
Russian economy to the brink of recession, and more than 2,500 Ukrainians have
been killed.

A lot of this comes down to Ukraine's centuries-long history of Russian domination.

The country has been divided more or less evenly between Ukrainians who see
Ukraine as part of Europe and those who see it as intrinsically linked to Russia.

An internal political crisis over that disagreement may have been inevitable.
Meanwhile, in Russia, Putin is pushing an imperial-revival, nationalist worldview that
sees Ukraine as part of greater Russia and as the victim of ever-encroaching
Western hostility.

It appears unlikely that Ukraine will get Crimea back. It remains unclear whether
Russian forces will try to annex parts of eastern Ukraine as well, how the fighting
there will end, and what this means for the future of Ukraine and for Putin's
increasingly hostile but isolated Russia.

Is it Ukraine or the Ukraine?

It used to be "the Ukraine," but after breaking away from the Soviet Union in 1991
the name changed to just "Ukraine." That distinction actually turns out to be pretty
important for understanding the current crisis.

Ukraine has a very long history of being subjugated by outside powers, and a very
short history of national independence. That may actually be why the country
became known as "the Ukraine," which many historians think meant "the borderland"
in the language of ancient Slavs

The country has been under partial or total Russian rule for most of those
intervening centuries, which is a big part of why one in six Ukrainians is actually an
ethnic Russian, one in three speaks Russian as their native language (the other twothirds speak Ukrainian natively), and much of the country's media is in Russian. It's
also why the subject of Russia is such a divisive one in Ukraine: a lot of the country
sees Moscow as the source of Ukraine's historical subjugation and something to be
resisted, while others tend to look on Russia more fondly, with a sense of shared
heritage and history.

What is Crimea?

Crimea is considered by most of the world to be a region of Ukraine that's under

hostile Russian occupation. Russia considers it a rightful and historical region of
Russia that it helped to liberate in March.

Geographically, it is a peninsula in the Black Sea with a location so strategically

important that it has been fought over for centuries.

In late February, a few days after Ukraine's pro-Moscow president was ousted from
power, strange bands of armed gunmen began seizing government buildings in
Crimea. Some Crimeans held rallies to show support for the ousted president and, in
some cases, to call to secede from Ukraine and re-join Russia. The bands of
gunmen grew until it became obvious they were Russian military forces, who
forcefully but bloodlessly brought the entire peninsula under military occupation. On
March 16, Crimeans voted overwhelmingly for their region to become a part of
Russia.
The US and European Union have imposed economic sanctions on Russia to punish
Moscow for this, but there is no sign that Crimea will return to Ukraine.

Why is Russia invading eastern Ukraine?

Though President Vladimir Putin insists that Russia is not invading eastern Ukraine,
Russian soldiers, tanks, and self-propelled artillery have been crossing the border
since mid-August in what can only be described as a hostile invasion. There are
two ways to think about why Putin is doing this: as a rational, strategic effort to take
something from Ukraine, or as a less-rational action driven by domestic Russian
politics.

So should Crimea be part of Russia or Ukraine?

This is actually a legitimately difficult question. Yes, the way that Russia seized
Crimea by force from Ukraine this March was hostile and extremely illegal there is
no doubt about this. But the more abstract question of whether Crimea is deep down
Russian or Ukrainian is much less clear. There are three ways to think about this
question, and they all contradict.

Legally, is Crimea part of Russia or Ukraine? Probably Ukraine

Historically, is Crimea part of Russia or Ukraine? Probably Russia

Most Crimeans are ethnically Russian, not Ukrainian. While Crimea has been
changing hands between regional powers for centuries, for most of the last 200-plus
years it has been part of Russia. The fact that everyone expected Russia to take it
back when the Soviet Union broke up in 1991 tells you a lot: the world often sees it
as historically Russian as well. It was not shocking when, in February, some
Crimeans held pro-Russia rallies.

Do Crimeans want to be part of Russia or Ukraine? It's not clear

Since the crisis began, some Crimeans have been holding pro-Moscow rallies calling
to rejoin Russia. In mid-February, a poll found that 41 percent of Crimeans wanted
the region to become part of Russia. That's an awful lot but it's still not a majority.
Crimea's March referendum on leaving Ukraine for Russia ostensibly garnered 97
percent support, but it occurred in a rush, without international monitors, and under
Russian military occupation.

This all started with the Euromaidan protests? Whats

that?

"Euromaidan" is the name of the anti-government protests, beginning on November

21, 2013, in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev that kicked off the entire crisis. They're

called the "Euromaidan" protests because they were about Europe and they
happened in Kiev's Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square).

The first, surface reason for the protests was that President Yanukovych had
rejected a deal for greater integration with the European Union, taking a $15 billion
bailout from Russia instead. Lots of Ukrainians had wanted the EU deal, partly
because they thought it would help Ukraine's deeply troubled economy, and partly
because they saw closer ties with Europe as culturally and politically desirable.

The second, deeper reason for the protests was that many Ukrainians saw
Yanukovych as corrupt and autocratic and as a stooge of Russia. So his decision
to reject the EU deal felt, to many Ukrainians, like he had sold out their country to
Moscow. This is why the protesters so quickly expanded their demands from "sign
the EU deal" to "Yanukovych must step down."

Who is Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych?

Viktor Yanukovych was elected Ukraine's president in 2010.

But he was ousted by popular protests and his own parliament
in February 2014. He fled to Russia, where he is living in exile.

The key facts about Yanukovych are this: he is pro-Russian

(and, like lots of Ukrainians, actually a native speaker of Russian rather than
Ukrainian), he has a well-earned reputation for corruption and heavy-handedness,
and he had a base of support in Ukraine's predominantly Russian-speaking east but
was never very popular in its predominantly Ukrainian-speaking west.

"Orange Revolution": this refers to the mass protests in 2004, after Yanukovych
won a presidential election under widespread suspicion of fraud. The protests
succeeded in blocking him from taking office, but he ran again in 2010 and appeared
to win legitimately.

What does the MH17 plane crash have to do with the

crisis?

On Thursday, July 17, Malaysia Airlines flight 17 was shot down while flying over an
area of eastern Ukraine where Russian-backed separatist rebels are active, killing all
298 people on board.

Russia had recently supplied the rebels with a sophisticated, long-range surface-toair missile system known as Buk or SA-11. The rebels had shot down two other
high-flying airplanes both Ukrainian military planes in the previous week. It
appears most likely that the rebels misidentified flight 17 as a military craft and shot it
down.

The rebels further infuriated the world by blocking inspector access to the crash site
(often, the militants appeared to be drunk), initially preventing the bodies from being
removed, allowing looters to steal from the luggage and bodies that had fallen out of
the sky, and hanging on to the black box for several days before finally surrendering
it in a bizarre and self-aggrandizing ceremony.