Russia vs Ukraine: The Road to War

In August 1991, hardliners in Moscow attempted a coup against the Soviet leadership. It failed. On 24 August, Ukraine's parliament declared independence. Ukrainian law, it said, would now apply across Ukraine's territory, and the people would be asked to confirm the decision in a referendum.⁵⁸

On 1 December, they did. According to the Ukrainian parliament's account, 90.32 per cent voted for independence, and a majority voted for it in every region, including Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk.⁹

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That matters. Ukraine's independence was not an administrative decision handed down without a vote. It was put to the public as the Soviet state dissolved, and it won everywhere. The size of the majority differed from region to region; the result did not.⁹

The collapse of the Soviet Union turned relations between Soviet republics into relations between independent states. For Ukraine and Russia, questions of borders, military assets and security that had once been settled inside one union now had to be settled between two countries. Shared history and culture did not disappear. But shared history was not sovereignty over a neighbour.⁸¹⁰

Then there were the nuclear weapons. When the Soviet Union broke up, some were left on Ukrainian soil. In the Budapest Memorandum of 5 December 1994, Ukraine joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear-weapon state and committed to removing the weapons. In return, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States reaffirmed their commitments to respect Ukraine's independence, its sovereignty and its existing borders.¹⁰

The memorandum also covered the threat or use of force, economic coercion, nuclear threats and consultation. It was not a mutual-defence treaty: it did not commit anyone's armies to fight for Ukraine. But its signatories did make explicit commitments to Ukraine's borders, in writing.¹⁰

Ukraine emerged independent, and outside any military alliance. Every later argument about its security would turn on two questions: how much the assurances it already had were worth, and whether it could join institutions that offered more. Those were choices for an independent country, and for the organisations it hoped to join.¹⁰¹¹

After the Cold War, NATO began admitting countries that had once belonged to the Soviet-led Warsaw Pact. Czechia, Hungary and Poland joined in March 1999. A larger round in 2004 included the three Baltic states, which had themselves been Soviet republics. Each government chose to apply and negotiated its own way in; they were not territory being moved between great powers.¹²

At the same time, NATO and Russia built arrangements for cooperation. The NATO–Russia Founding Act of 1997 set out shared principles, including respect for sovereignty and each state's right to choose how to provide for its own security. It created a framework for consultation. The post-Cold War order held two things at once: enlargement, and an effort to bring Russia inside a cooperative structure.¹¹

In April 2008, at its summit in Bucharest, NATO declared that Ukraine and Georgia would become members.⁶

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It set no date. It made neither country a member, and gave neither the protection that membership brings. It supported their hopes and left every further step unresolved.⁶

That gap matters when reading accounts of the invasion. In February 2022, Ukraine was not a member of NATO. The 2008 declaration is part of the background; it does not show that membership was imminent when Russia attacked. The difference between hoping to join, being invited, and joining, with the guarantees that come after, is the whole point.⁶¹²

Russia objected to the shape of Europe's security order, and those objections were part of the confrontation. They did not, by themselves, give Russia a right to decide Ukraine's alliances, or to use force against it. The principles of sovereignty Russia had itself signed up to were part of the record too.¹¹¹

In 2004, a presidential election was disputed. Vast crowds filled the streets, and a legal challenge followed. On 26 December, the second round was run again. International observers said the repeat vote brought the election substantially closer to democratic standards, after serious problems in the earlier rounds. It became known as the Orange Revolution.¹³

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It was a fight over who governed Ukraine, and whether an election result could be trusted. It had consequences for foreign policy. But to describe it as a foreign-sponsored choice between blocs leaves out what brought people onto the streets in the first place: the conduct of the election itself.¹³

Ukrainian politics stayed competitive, and unsettled. In 2010, observers described the first round of the presidential election as competitive and meeting most international commitments. The winner was Viktor Yanukovych, the candidate the 2004 protests had opposed. The Orange Revolution had not settled who would lead Ukraine.¹³¹⁴¹⁵

In November 2013, Yanukovych's government decided not to sign an association agreement with the European Union. Demonstrators gathered on Kyiv's Maidan, the Independence Square. After police used force against them, the protests grew. A UN human-rights report of April 2014 traced deeper grievances beneath the dispute over the EU agreement: corruption, accountability, the courts and abuses of power.¹⁵

The violence escalated. In February 2014, Yanukovych left Kyiv, and an interim government took office.¹⁵

The change of government became a central point of dispute between Russia and Ukraine's new authorities. The UN report recorded troubling nationalist rhetoric and concerns about the rights of minorities. Recording those concerns does not mean every Russian claim about the new government was true.¹⁵

Language became one of the sharpest disputes. Parliament voted to repeal an earlier language law. The acting president did not sign the repeal, and it never took effect. The UN report recorded both the political damage the attempt caused and the fact that it failed. To say the new authorities simply banned Russian gets that sequence wrong.¹⁵

In March 2014, Russia took control of Crimea and, after a disputed referendum, signed a treaty incorporating it.²

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On 27 March, the UN General Assembly affirmed Ukraine's territorial integrity. It declared that the referendum had no validity as a basis for changing Crimea's status, and called on all states not to recognise any such change.²

Controlling territory and holding lawful sovereignty over it are different things. Russia could administer Crimea, but the annexation did not win general international recognition. That difference matters on every map: a line showing who controls an area is not necessarily an internationally recognised border.²

That spring, fighting broke out in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, known together as the Donbas. Armed groups declared their own self-proclaimed entities and fought Ukrainian forces. UN human-rights reporting later described a conflict fuelled by an inflow of foreign fighters and weapons from Russia.³

The fighting involved local people, but that does not make the outside support incidental. Equally, describing Russia's role should not erase the particular people, institutions and armed groups on the ground. An honest account names both.³

The cost was counted in lives, not only territory. UN investigators documented unlawful killings and serious failures to hold anyone to account. A later report covering 2014 to 2021 examined arbitrary detention, torture and ill-treatment, both by government actors and by armed groups and others in territory outside government control.¹⁶

Those findings belong to particular perpetrators and particular incidents. Abuses by one side do not cancel the responsibility of another, and not every allegation is equally well supported by evidence. The UN's aim was to identify patterns, and the gaps in accountability, from the information it could gather.¹⁶

Ending the fighting meant solving several problems at once: stopping the shooting, pulling forces apart, restoring the government's authority, and agreeing on how the region would be governed. They were connected, but they were not the same task.⁴¹⁷

The first Minsk agreement was signed in September 2014.¹⁸ The fighting went on. On 12 February 2015, a second package of measures followed. It combined a ceasefire and the withdrawal of heavy weapons with local elections, constitutional reform, special arrangements for parts of the Donbas, and the return of Ukrainian control over the state border.⁴

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The UN Security Council endorsed the package in Resolution 2202. That gave it international backing. It did not carry out its terms. The order of the steps stayed at the heart of the dispute: who would withdraw first, under what conditions elections could be held, and when Ukraine would get its border back.¹⁹

Someone had to watch whether it was being kept. The OSCE said its monitors needed safe and unrestricted access, including to the border areas. Observers could record what they saw and report violations. They could not compel anyone to comply, or go wherever they chose.¹⁷

The fighting, and the abuses, continued after the agreements were signed. The UN's report on detention across 2014 to 2021 is one record of what those years cost. A diplomatic process was under way; the war had not ended, and people were not safe.¹⁶

On 24 February 2022, Russia launched its full-scale invasion.¹

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On 2 March, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution deploring Russian aggression and demanding an end to the unlawful use of force and the withdrawal of Russian troops. To put the vote into context: 141 countries voted in favour, five against, and 35 abstained.¹

Russia offered several justifications, among them an allegation of genocide in the Donbas. On 16 March, the International Court of Justice said it had no evidence before it substantiating the allegation that genocide had been committed on Ukrainian territory. It ordered Russia to suspend the military operations it had begun on 24 February.⁷

The order was provisional, made in a case brought under the Genocide Convention; it was not a final judgment on the whole war. But it removes an unsubstantiated genocide claim from any list of established facts about why Russia invaded.⁷

Even in full-scale war, narrow agreements remained possible. In July 2022, the UN and Türkiye helped broker the Black Sea Grain Initiative, allowing grain and other food to be shipped from specified Ukrainian ports. A joint coordination centre brought together Ukraine, Russia, Türkiye and the UN. It was not renewed after its third term expired on 17 July 2023.²⁰

It solved one defined problem inside an ongoing war. It did not settle who held sovereignty over occupied land, or bring peace. It showed the difference between an agreement on shipping and an agreement to end a war.²⁰