Timeline: Ukraine’s turbulent history since independence

Reuters:

Aug 23 – Ukraine marks six months on Wednesday since Russia invaded the country in what Russian President Vladimir Putin calls a “special military operation”.

Ukraine and its Western backers accuse Moscow of waging an unprovoked war of aggression with the aim of grabbing land and erasing Ukrainian national identity.

Putin said his aim was to disarm the country in order to preemptively ensure Russia’s own security against NATO expansion and to rid it of far-right nationalists who he said threatened Russia.

Here is a timeline of the main events in Ukraine’s political history since it won independence from Moscow in 1991.

1991: Leonid Kravchuk, leader of the Soviet republic of Ukraine, declares independence from Moscow. In a referendum and presidential election, Ukrainians overwhemingly back independence and elect Kravchuk president. He is replaced by Leonid Kuchma in 1994, when Ukraine also agrees to relinquish its nuclear arsenal – the world’s third largest, inherited from Soviet times – in return for security assurances based on respect for its independence and sovereignty under the Budapest Memorandum signed also by Russia, the United States and Britain.