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Context: Russian President described Ukraine as a bogus country with no history, identity, or “stable traditions of real statehood”.

• According to Putin, modern Ukraine was “entirely and fully created by the Bolshevik, communist Russia.

 

About Ukraine:

Area, demography, economy

• Ukraine is in the east of Europe, and is bound by Russia to its northeast, east, and southeast, and the Black Sea in the south.
• Ukraine shares borders with Moldova, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, and Belarus.
• It is the largest country in Europe after Russia itself, with an area of 603,550 sq km, or about 6% of the continent.
• In 2021, Ukraine’s population was estimated at 43.7 million. Of this, 8% was of Ukrainian ethnicity and 17.3% was Russian.
• Ukrainian and Russian speakers made up 67.5% and 6% of the population respectively. The Russian speakers live mostly in the east, close to the border with Russia.
• Ukraine is the poorest country in Europe in terms of gross domestic product and gross national income per capita.
• It has deposits of iron ore and coal, and exports corn, sunflower oil, iron and iron products, and wheat.
  • India is Ukraine’s largest export destination in the Asia Pacific region. The country’s major export to India is sunflower oil, followed by inorganic chemicals, iron and steel, plastics, and chemicals. Ukraine’s major import from India is pharmaceutical products.

 

Early history of Ukraine

• A millennium ago, today’s Ukraine lay at the heart of the Kyivan Rus, a federation of the East Slavic, Baltic, and Finnic peoples of eastern and northern Europe, with its capital in Kyiv.
• Modern Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus all trace their cultural ancestry to the Kyivan Rus’.
• In the mid-13th century, the Kyivan Rus’, weakened by the decline of trade as the Byzantine Empire collapsed, fell apart under the onslaught of the Mongol Golden Horde, who sacked Kyiv in 1240.
• After the Mongol khanate disintegration in the early 15th century, large parts of the former Kyivan Rus’ were incorporated into the multi-ethnic Grand Duchy of Lithuania.

 

Incorporation into Russia

• In 1648, Cossacks under Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky rose in revolt against the Poles, took control of Kyiv, and founded the Ukrainian state of Cossack Hetmanate.
• Empress Catherine the Great (1762-96) of Russia abolished the hetmante, and absorbed the entire ethnic Ukrainian territory into the Russian Empire.
• The Tsarist policy of Russification led to the suppression of ethnic identities and languages, including that of the Ukrainians.
• Within the Russian Empire many Ukrainians rose to positions of prosperity and importance, and significant numbers migrated to settle in other parts of Russia.
• Ukrainians fought in World War I on the side of the Russian Empire, but a smaller number fought against the Tsar’s army with the Austro-Hungarians.

 

Ukraine as part of USSR

• The war led to the end of both the Tsarist and Ottoman empires.
• After the Bolsheviks took power in the October Revolution of 1917, an independent Ukrainian People’s Republic was proclaimed.
• In 1922, Ukraine became part of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).

 

After the Soviet collapse

• In 1991, the USSR was dissolved.
• Demands for independence had been growing in Ukraine and in 1990, over 300,000 Ukrainians created a human chain in support of freedom, and the so-called Granite Revolution of students sought to prevent the signing of a new agreement with the USSR.
• On August 24, 1991, after the failure of the coup to remove President Mikhail Gorbachev and restore the communists to power, the parliament of Ukraine adopted the country’s Act of Independence.
• In December 1991, the leaders of Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine formally dissolved the Soviet Union and formed the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
• However, Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, never ratified the accession, so Ukraine was legally never a member of the CIS.

 

https://indianexpress.com/article/explained/everyday-explainers/russia-invasion-ukraine-history-creation-explained-7791147/