The War in Ukraine as an International Issue

What sanctions did the West introduce against Russia, and did they work? The United States, the European Union, and allied countries like Canada, Australia, and Japan introduced several rounds of sanctions against Russia in connection with its violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty. The first round...

The Land and the People

What is Ukraine’s geographical location, and what natural resources and industry does it possess? Ukraine is located in southeastern Europe. Its longest land border, in the east and north, is with Russia; another northern neighbor is Belarus, a post-Soviet state and Russia’s close ally....

Russia’s Annexation of the Crimea and the War in the Donbas

What shared characteristics led the Crimean Peninsula and the Donbas region to become conflict zones? These two regions are not in immediate geographic proximity to one another. The Donbas, comprising Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, is Ukraine’s easternmost region, bordering on Russia in the north...

The Orange Revolution and the Euromaidan

What did the two recent revolutions in Ukraine (2004 and 2013–2014) have in common? Both the Orange Revolution and the EuroMaidan were massive popular revolts that used Kyiv’s main square, the Maidan, as their central political stage. Both involved long standoffs with the authorities...

Ukraine After Communism

Did the Ukrainians have to fight the Russians in order to secede from the Soviet Union? In the last years of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev’s inconsistent attempts to democratize political life resulted in the devolution of power from the centralized party apparatus to...

The Making of Modern Ukraine

Was Ukraine always part of Russia? This popular misconception is based on a recent and relatively brief period in Ukrainian history—1945 to 1991—when the entire territory of the present-day Ukrainian state (then constituted as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic) was part of the Soviet...

Why Ukraine?

Why did Ukraine become a key reference point of American political struggles? In recent years, Ukraine has emerged as the most prominent test case of American support for democracy and liberal economic reforms worldwide. A combination of several factors has made Ukraine and the...