To help us understand the current situation in Ukraine, lets look back at its modern history.
As the dust settled after World War I, Ukraine was defeated and divided and the Soviets controlled
much of the country.
In 1922 Ukraine, along with Russia, became the founding members of the Soviet Union.
Then in 1932 the great famine began and up to 10 million Ukrainians starved to death.
It was made worse by the policies of the new head of the communist party, Joseph Stalin.
Then came the Great Terror: Two waves of Stalinist political repression and persecution in the
Soviet Union resulted in the killing of some 681,000 people; including 80 percent of the
Ukrainian cultural elite and three-quarters of all the Ukrainian Red Army's higher-ranking
officers.
Then came the outbreak of WWII.
German armies invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, beginning four straight years of
non-stop total war.
In the battle of Kiev, Axis troops encircled and laid siege to the capital city.
More than 600,000 Soviet soldiers were killed or taken captive there.
The total losses inflicted upon the Ukrainian population during the war are estimated between
five and eight million, including over half a million Jews killed by Nazi death squads,
sometimes with the help of local collaborators.
The republic was heavily damaged by the war.
More than 700 cities and towns and 28,000 villages were destroyed.
Material losses comprised an estimated 40 percent of Ukraine's national wealth.
Ukraine boomed following the second world war, industrial output grew 2.2 times from
1940 to 1955.
Soviet Ukraine soon became a European leader in industrial production, and an important
center of the Soviet arms and high-tech research industries.
Ukraine produced many prominent Soviet sports players, scientists, and artists over this
period as well as much of the Soviet leadership, including Leonid Brezhnev, who ousted Khrushchev
and became the Soviet leader from 1964 to 1982.
Then, on 26 April 1986, a reactor in the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded, resulting in
the worst nuclear reactor accident in history.
The Soviet Union began to break apart under the weight of the “War of Laws,” which
was the constant conflict between the Soviet Federal Government and its various republics,
who were each seeking greater autonomy.
On 24 August 1991, the Ukrainian parliament officially declared independence.
But then the economy immediately sank into depression and lost 60 percent of its GDP
from ‘91 to ‘99.
A new currency, the hryvnia, was introduced in 1996.
The economy was stabilized by the end of the 1990’s.
Corruption under Ukraine’s second president set the stage for the 2004 ascendence of then
Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych to the Presidency in elections that the Ukrainian Supreme Court
ruled were rigged.
Yanukovych was then thrown out of power in the peaceful Orange Revolution in favor of
opposition leaders Viktor Yushchenko and Yulia Tymoshenko, who became President and Prime
Minister.
Yanukovych then regained the Prime Ministership in 2006, but lost a snap election just a year
later that saw Tymoshenko become Prime Minister again.
This map of those 2007 election results shows just how divided Ukraine is politically.
Then came the January 2009 natural gas crisis in which Russia stopped supplying gas to Ukraine
in the middle of winter.
Since Ukraine is itself the main supply route to much of Europe, this was a pretty big problem.
Tymoshenko eventually signed an agreement to reopen the pipes, but not before Ukraine
incurred major economic losses.
As a result of the political fallout, Yanukovych - who just does not go away - was elected
President again in 2010.
And in October, 2011, Tymoshenko was sentenced to seven years in prison for abuse of office
because she signed the natural gas deal with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
In 2012 the European Union and Ukraine began negotiations for it to join the 28-nation
group.
President Viktor Yanukovych urged the parliament to adopt laws so that Ukraine would meet the
EU's criteria.
But Russia does not want this to happen, and responded by starting a trade war that resulted
in a 10% decline in Ukrainian export revenue from the previous year, or $1.5 billion in
losses.
Bringing us to the 3-month old Euromaidan protests which began at the end of 2013 when
Yanukovych - who was feeling the economic pressure - abruptly suspended efforts to join
the EU.
He then turned around and signed an agreement with Putin, who offered $15 billion in financial
aid and a 33% discount on Russian natural gas.
As a result, the protests have escalated and become more violent, with many now calling
for the ouster of Yanukovych and a rejection of the Russian deal in favor of a complete
embrace of Europe.