Europe has an important place in the history of Ukraine, and Ukraine is no different in European history. Ukraine is located on the western edge of the Eurasian steppe, and its geographical environment is a gateway to Europe. Therefore, it is also known as the "Gate of Europe". Historically, Ukraine has been ruled by several great powers that have left their mark on the land and people, while also helping to shape Ukraine's unique border identity and national temperament.
Ukraine: Origins
The first to document Ukraine was the father of history, Herodotus, a region of steppes, mountains and forests north of the Black Sea, known to the ancient Greeks as Pontos euxeinos (meaning "Sea of Hospitality", which the Romans wrote in Latin as Pontuseuxinus), which was an important part of the Mediterranean world at that time, but its importance was different. This was the first frontier of the political and cultural circle that came to be known as the "Western world," the starting line by which the West defined itself and the other.
Ukraine and Russia belong to the East Slavs, Slavs are one of the oldest peoples in Europe, Slavs, Celts, Germans in the Roman Empire era, Slavs, Celts, Germans collectively known as the "three barbaric peoples of Europe".
The Slavs are divided into Three, east Slavs, mainly Russia, Belarus and Ukraine, West Slavs dominated by Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and Yugoslavia dominated by the Balkans. The East Slavs, the dominant ethnic group in Ukraine, entered Europe from the East between 7000 and 3000 BC and settled in Eastern Europe, regarded the forested areas north of the Black Sea steppes as their homeland, unknown to Mediterranean scholars for most of their early history.
By about the 6th century, the Slavs must have moved from the forest where they were hiding to the steppes and caused great trouble to justinian the Great's Eastern Roman Empire.
The first regime of the East Slavs was called the Rurik Dynasty, the first Rus' kingdom, the Rurik Dynasty, which the Vikings came to Kiev in the mid-9th century and established. It was an Eastern European monarchy dominated by the Vikings and the East Slavs, and Kievan Rus' also became the birthplace of East Slavic culture.
In the 13th century, Kievan Rus' was destroyed by the mongol Empire invading the west, and Ukraine has been under the rotating rule of the major powers, and the road to independent development has been interrupted.
The awakening of national consciousness and the establishment of independent statehood
In modern times, the ukrainian region has been ruled by Poland. Poland is a West Slavic and Catholic, so the "Catholicization" movement against the Orthodox Rus' naturally provoked a revolt among the Rus' people. Therefore, the Rus' people in the Ukrainian region turned to Russia, which was similar in language, culture and religion. From 1772 to 1795, Russia united prussia and Austria three times to divide the territory of Poland, so that the western part of Ukraine was finally divided into Russia, so that the whole of Ukraine was incorporated into the territory of Russia, but the western part of Ukraine because of the influence of Poland, accepted Western culture, Catholicism, and Russian Orthodoxy. In the process of rebelling against Polish rule, an independent Ukrainian language and national identity were gradually formed.
Meeting of the Bolshevik Committee of Ukraine in 1919
In 1917, the October Revolution broke out in Russia, which completely ended the rule of the Tsarist feudal dynasty. Ukraine established the People's Republic of Ukraine, the first nation-state established in the history of Ukraine. After World War I, Ukraine established Soviet power and became a republic of the Soviet Union. In 1954, in order to commemorate the 300th anniversary of the merger of Russia and Ukraine, Soviet leader Khrushchev allocated the Crimean Peninsula, which originally belonged to Russia, to Ukraine. But the main inhabitants of the region were ethnic Russians, which set the stage for the subsequent Russian-Ukrainian dispute.
On August 24, 1991, a day after Yeltsin took over the coalition government, the Ukrainian parliament voted on independence. The result of the vote surprised everyone: 346 delegates were in favour of independence, 5 abstained and only 2 opposed. When the voting results appeared on the screen, the venue erupted into warm applause. The crowd gathered outside the Parliament building was also in ecstasy: Ukraine is finally independent! Immediately after 1 December 1991, a referendum was held. Even the most optimistic independents were incredulous in the face of the results of the vote — a turnout of 84 percent, with more than 90 percent of the voters supporting independence.
Ukraine's independence vote declared the end of the Soviet Union. The participants in the referendum changed not only their own destiny, but also the history of the world. The Soviet republics that were still dependent on Moscow were also liberated by Ukraine. The three Slavic-dominated republics of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus created a new international political body in Bellavicha, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). The Central Asian republics joined the CIS on 21 December. The Soviet Union never existed again.
Like many post-Soviet countries, Ukraine suffered a huge political crisis caused by economic recession and social chaos in the first five years after its independence, and has been busy resolving the relationship between the presidential palace and the parliament, two institutions born in the political turmoil of the soviet union's last years.
The price of freedom
In the six years from 1991 to 1997, Ukraine's industrial output fell by 48 percent, while gross domestic product (GDP) shrank by an astonishing 60 percent. The worst recession occurred in 1994 ( a year that reduced GDP by 23 % from the previous year ) , the year Ukraine held presidential elections and signed its first agreement with the European Union. This figure is comparable to the recession suffered by the United States during the Great Depression (during which industrial production in the United States fell by 45% and GDP fell by 30%), and it is even more serious.
Orange Revolution
Post-independence Ukraine remains under Russia's strong influence, with deep domestic corruption and oligarchy in its lifeline, and the Orange Revolution in 2004, over bribery, failed to put an end to this corruption. At this time, a new revolution was already brewing in Ukraine. In late November 2013, hundreds of thousands of people once again poured into the streets of Kiev to demand reforms, an end to government corruption and closer ties with the European Union.
The movement began as a call to join Europe, but later evolved into a "revolution of dignity." In mid-January 2014, bloody clashes began to erupt after weeks of peaceful protests. On one side of the conflict are rioters hired by the police and the government, and on the other side are protesters. The violence peaked on February 18, killing 77 people in three days, including 9 police officers and 68 protesters. The events caused a huge shock in Ukraine and throughout the international community. This forced the pro-Russian Yanukovych to flee revolutionary Kiev on the night of February 21. Ukraine's parliament voted to remove Yanukovych, appoint an acting president, and form a new interim government led by opposition leaders.
By 2014, Russia launched a referendum in Crimea, and with the support of the armed forces, more than 90 percent of the population approved of joining the Russian Federation. After Putin signed and agreed, Crimea officially became an autonomous republic of Russia.
Popular demonstrations broke out in the eastern regions of Ukraine demanding accession to the Russian Federation, and the divisions in the eastern region intensified, and the Ukrainian authorities immediately launched a military crackdown.
Between May and August 2014, Ukrainian government forces were victorious. On August 18, Russia actually entered the war in the name of humanitarian material assistance. In less than two weeks, the Ukrainian government army collapsed. On September 5, with the signing of the first Minsk Agreement under Russian mediation, the regime in Eastern Ukraine gained some de facto legitimacy.
Unwilling to be defeated, the Ukrainian government army recruited young men to expand the number of soldiers to 200,000, and then in January 2015, launched a full-scale attack on eastern Ukraine, which finally ended in failure, and on February 12, the Russian Ufad signed the second Minsk agreement in Minsk.
In 2022, the crisis in Ukraine has finally turned into a war, and as of now, the war has entered its second week, causing at least 636 Ukrainian civilian deaths, including 46 children, and 4 million refugees, which has to make people wonder if such a price is too high for the prospects of european integration. In the current conflict, not only the status of possible EU membership is threatened, but also the values that are shared with the EU – democracy, human rights and the rule of law. We can only pray that the war will end as soon as possible, after all, there is no winner in modern war.