Russia–Ukraine relations
There are currently no diplomatic or bilateral relations between Russia and Ukraine. The two states have been at war since Russia invaded the Crimean peninsula in February 2014, and Russian-controlled armed groups seized Donbas government buildings in May 2014. Following the Ukrainian Euromaidan in 2014, Ukraine's Crimean peninsula was occupied by unmarked Russian forces, and later illegally annexed by Russia, while pro-Russia separatists simultaneously engaged the Ukrainian military in an armed conflict for control over eastern Ukraine; these events marked the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War. In a major escalation of the conflict on 24 February 2022, Russia launched a large-scale military invasion, causing Ukraine to sever all formal diplomatic ties with Russia.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the successor states' bilateral relations have undergone periods of ties, tensions, and outright hostility. In the early 1990s, Ukraine's policy was dominated by aspirations to ensure its sovereignty and independence, followed by a foreign policy that balanced cooperation with the European Union, Russia, and other powerful polities.
Relations between the two countries became hostile after the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, which was followed by Russia's annexation of Crimea from Ukraine, and the war in Donbas, in which Russia backed the separatist fighters of the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic. The conflicts had killed over 13,000 people by early 2020, and brought international sanctions on Russia. Numerous bilateral agreements have been terminated and economic ties severed.
Throughout 2021 and 2022, a Russian military build-up on the border of Ukraine escalated tensions between the two countries and strained their bilateral relations, eventually leading to Russia initiating a full-scale invasion of the country. Ukraine broke off diplomatic relations with Russia in response to the invasion. Streets bearing the names of Russian figures and monuments symbolising Russian and Ukrainian friendship were removed from various locations across Ukraine. In March 2023, the Verkhovna Rada banned toponymy with names associated with Russia.
History of relations
Kievan Rus'
Both Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus claim their heritage from Kievan Rus', a polity that united most of the East Slavic and some Finnic tribes and adopted Byzantine Orthodoxy in the ninth to eleventh centuries. According to old Rus chronicles, Kyiv, the capital of modern Ukraine, was proclaimed the Mother of Rus Cities, as it was the capital of the powerful late medieval state of Rus.Muscovy and the Russian Empire
After the Mongol invasion of Kievan Rus', the histories of the people inhabiting territories of Russia and Ukraine diverged. The Grand Duchy of Moscow united all remnants of Rus's northern provinces and evolved into the Russian state. The Kingdom of Galicia–Volhynia came under the domination of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, followed by the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. Within the Commonwealth, the militant Zaporozhian Cossacks refused polonization, and often clashed with a Commonwealth government controlled by the Polish nobility.Unrest among the Cossacks caused them to rebel against the Commonwealth and seek union with Russia, with which they had similarities in culture, language, and religion. This was formalized through the Treaty of Pereiaslav in 1654. Starting in the mid-17th century, much of Ukraine's territory was gradually annexed by the Russian Empire and its autonomy taken away by the time of the late 18th-century partition of Poland. Soon after, the Cossack host was forcibly disbanded by the Russian Empire and most Cossacks were relocated to the Kuban region on the southern edge of the Russian Empire.
The Russian Empire considered Ukrainians ethnically Russian, and referred to them as "Little Russians" and saw the Russian nation as comprising a "trinity" of sub-nations: Great Russia, Little Russia, and White Russia. Until the end of World War I this view was only opposed by a small group of Ukrainian nationalists. Nevertheless, a perceived threat of "Ukrainian separatism" set in motion a set of measures aimed at the russification of the "Little Russians". In 1804, the Ukrainian language was banned from schools as a subject and language of instruction. In 1876 Alexander II's secretary Ems Ukaz prohibited the publication and importation of most Ukrainian language books, public performances and lectures in the Ukrainian language, and even the printing of Ukrainian texts accompanying musical scores.
Ukrainian People's Republic and Ukrainian State
was forced to recognize Ukrainian independence in March 1918 by signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk as a consequence of Armistice between Russia and the Central Powers. This only paused the Ukrainian–Soviet War which started again in the end of 1918. With defeat of Ukrainian People's Republic in 1921 most of its territory was incorporated into Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic.Soviet Union
Ukrainian People's Republic
The February Revolution saw establishment of official relations between the Russian Provisional Government and the Ukrainian Central Rada that was represented at the Russian government by its commissar Petro Stebnytsky. At the same time Dmitry Odinets was appointed the representative of Russian Affairs in the Ukrainian government. After the Soviet military aggression by the Soviet government at the beginning of 1918, Ukraine declared its full independence from the Russian Republic on 22 January 1918, as the Ukrainian People's Republic which existed from 1917 to 1922. The two treaties of Brest-Litovsk that Ukraine and Russia signed separately with the Central Powers calmed the military conflict between them, and peace negotiations were initiated the same year.After the end of World War I, Ukraine became a battleground in the Ukrainian War of Independence, linked to the Russian Civil War. Both Russians and Ukrainians fought in nearly all armies based on personal political beliefs.
In 1922, Ukraine and Russia were two of the founding members of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, and were the signatories of the treaty that terminated the union in December 1991.
The end of the Russian Empire also ended the ban on the Ukrainian language. This was followed by a period of Korenizatsiya that promoted the cultures of the different Soviet Republics.
Holodomor
In 1932–1933 Ukraine experienced the Holodomor which was a man-made famine in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic that killed up to 7.5 million Ukrainians. During the famine, which is also known as the "Terror-Famine in Ukraine" and "Famine-Genocide in Ukraine", millions of citizens of the Ukrainian SSR, mostly ethnic Ukrainians, died of starvation in an unprecedented peacetime catastrophe. Scholars disagree on the relative importance of natural factors and bad economic policies as causes of the famine, and the degree to which the destruction of the Ukrainian peasantry was premeditated by Soviet leaders.The Holodomor famine extended to many Soviet republics, including Russia and Kazakhstan. In the absence of documentary proof of intent, scholars have also argued that the Holodomor was caused by the economic problems associated with the radical changes implemented during the period of liquidation of private property and Soviet industrialization, combined with the widespread drought of the early 1930s. However, on 13 January 2010, the Kyiv Appellate Court found Stalin, Kaganovich, Molotov, and the Ukrainian Soviet leaders Kosior and Chubar, amongst other functionaries, posthumously guilty of genocide against Ukrainians during the Holodomor famine.
Ukrainian independence
Nationalism spread following Mikhail Gorbachev's political liberalisation of the Soviet Union in the 1980s. The pro-independence People's Movement of Ukraine was founded in 1989. After the Congress of People's Deputies of Russia made the Declaration of State Sovereignty of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, the Verkhovna Rada of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic made a similar declaration on 16 July 1991.Following the 1991 Soviet coup d'état attempt, the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine was passed on 24 August 1991 with one vote against. The subsequent 1991 Ukrainian independence referendum approved this by a nationwide majority of 92.3% and majorities in every region of Ukraine.As stated on the website of the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2002, the Russian Federation recognized Ukraine's independence on 5 December 1991 and formally established diplomatic relations on 14 February 1992.
The basis for post-Soviet relations were set by the Belovezh Accords between the new Ukrainian leader Leonid Kravchuk and Russia's president Boris Yeltsin, alongside the Belarusian leader Stanislav Shushkevich.Stanislav Shushkevich| While the leaders agreed to formally dissolve the Soviet Union, the Russians wanted to create new suparanational structures to replace it, to the opposition of the Ukrainians.Stanislav Shushkevich| While this led to the establishment of the Commonwealth of Independent States, it did not result in any legally binding commitments.Stanislav Shushkevich| An Armed Forces of independent Ukraine were soon established: Leningrad Mayor Anatoly Sobchak said that this was "a time bomb under the future of all mankind",Stanislav Shushkevich| while political scientist John Mearsheimer advocated a nuclear-armed Ukraine to maintain peace and prevent Russia from moving to reconquer it.
1990s
Nuclear disarmament
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Ukraine gained its independence and inherited the third largest nuclear stockpile in the world, along with significant means of its design and production. The country had 130 UR-100N intercontinental ballistic missiles with six warheads each, 46 RT-23 Molodets ICBMs with ten warheads apiece, as well as 33 heavy bombers, totaling approximately 1,700 warheads remaining on Ukrainian territory. While Ukraine had physical control of the weapons, it did not have operational control, as they were dependent on Russian-controlled electronic Permissive Action Links and the Russian command and control system. In 1992, Ukraine agreed to voluntarily remove over 3,000 tactical nuclear weapons.Following the signing of the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances among the U.S., the U.K., and Russia, as well as similar agreements with France and China, Ukraine agreed to destroy the rest of its nuclear weapons, and to join the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. The memoranda, signed in Patria Hall at the Budapest Convention Center with US ambassador Donald M. Blinken amongst others in attendance, prohibited the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States from threatening or using military force or economic coercion against Ukraine, "except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations." By 1996, Ukraine transferred all Soviet-era strategic warheads to Russia.