Escalation after eight years: how the conflict between Russia and Ukraine turned into war

Created: 03/15/2022, 18:38

By: Momir Takac

The Ukraine war has its roots in the bloody protests on Kiev's Maidan in 2014. © imago stock&people

The Ukraine war is the sad culmination of a conflict between Kyiv and Moscow that began eight years ago on the Maidan and has continued to escalate.

Kyiv - Russian troops have been attacking Ukraine since February 24, 2022.

Russian President Vladimir Putin had previously announced the "special military operation", as the Russian media officially called it, on state television.

The Ukraine war is the sad culmination of a conflict between Ukraine and Russia that has escalated in recent years and began in December 2013.

More than eight years ago, a momentous protest broke out in the central square of Maidan in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv.

Several hundred thousand Ukrainians demonstrated against the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych because his government surprisingly declared that it did not want to sign the partnership agreement with the EU for the time being.

Kiev's current mayor Vitali Klitschko was also involved in the protests.

Escalation occurred in February 2014.

More than 100 people died when the protests were brutally crushed.

At this point, the Ukraine war was still a long way off, but there were already signs of an intensification of the conflict shortly thereafter.

In the same month, Russian troops occupied the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula of Crimea.

Ukraine war: Beginning in Maidan protests and Crimean annexation

Shortly thereafter, Russia annexed Crimea after an internationally unrecognized referendum.

At that time there were already violent separatist movements in the Donbass in south-eastern Ukraine, where the relationship with Russia is traditionally closer than in the west.

After Moscow-backed separatists proclaimed the "People's Republics" of Donetsk and Luhansk, an armed conflict ensued that has continued to this day, killing nearly 14,000 people.

The civil war-like conditions could not end even two agreements.

Basically, there has been a war in eastern Ukraine since 2014.

Parliamentary elections initiated by separatists provided further explosive fuel, and later the ruble was even introduced as official currency and Russian passports were issued.

Russian President Putin later cited an alleged genocide against Russians by Ukraine in the Donbass as a reason for the Ukraine war.

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War in Ukraine: Even newly elected President Volodymyr Zelenskyj cannot relax the conflict

The conflict escalated to the next level at the end of 2014, when the newly elected pro-European President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko, ended the country's previous neutrality and thus made it possible to join NATO.

The alliance then increased the troop contingent on the eastern border to 40,000 soldiers.

While fighting intensified in the period that followed - in the meantime Russian forces fired on Ukrainian ships in the Kerch Strait - and ceasefires were repeatedly broken, Kyiv classified the breakaway areas in eastern Ukraine as occupied by Russia.

The initiative by President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was elected in May 2019, to ease the conflict also fizzled out.

At this point in time, only very few people thought of a possible war in the Ukraine.

The situation became more precarious when the war in Donbass intensified again in early 2021.

In April, Putin massed troops in the border area with eastern Ukraine and threatened military intervention.

A few months later he wrote an essay in which he historically justified Russia's territorial claims in Ukraine.

These letters are important for understanding what makes Putin tick.

War in Ukraine: All diplomatic attempts at de-escalation fail

In November, other unusually large contingents of troops were observed in the Russian border area with Ukraine.

Diplomacy to avert an impending war in the Ukraine now picked up speed.

But even attempts at various levels - such as the NATO-Russia Council, a meeting of the OSCE or talks in the Normandy format - did not bring a solution at the beginning of 2022.

Putin insisted on security guarantees from NATO, but the alliance did not want to go into a halt to eastward expansion.

The Ukraine war was approaching.

On February 21, Putin declared the Minsk Agreement to have failed, recognized the self-proclaimed People's Republics of Luhansk and Donetsk as independent states, and ordered troops to be sent to eastern Ukraine by decree.

Western countries then imposed punitive measures against Russia.

Part of the EU sanctions is, for example, the exclusion of Russian banks from the international Swift system.

Germany put the Baltic gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 on hold for an indefinite period.

On February 24, Putin finally made good on his threat and started the Ukraine war.

In the early morning he announced a military operation in a TV speech, and shortly thereafter the first rockets hit Ukraine.