Ukraine

The civil war in Ukraine was caused by the overthrow of the technically legitimate government by a technically illegitimate government. The new government was made up of Ukrainian Nationalists. The state was poor, weak, and had just overthrown the government, fired a million government workers and forbid them and anyone else who worked for the old government from holding state employment, and immediately and for no pressing reason outlawed the use of the Russian language in official business.

This alarmed the Russian speaking population of Eastern Ukraine, causing some Ethnic Russian Ukrainians to attempt to seize control of the local government. Their fears were confirmed almost immediately. The new government in Kiev was very weak and poor. The army was a shambles that was unable to function. They sent the police to deal with the insurgents in what was called an "Anti-Terrorism Operation". The police were unable to restore order. The Kiev government, unable to use the army, turned to the Ukrainian Ultra-nationalists and Nazis who had aided them in overthrowing the previous government. They gave these groups, most notoriously the Nazi Azov battalion, free reign to go in to Eastern Ukraine and defeat the "Terrorists". These groups had weapons but almost no meaningful training, oversight or controls. They terrorized and killed civilians and insurgents alike.

Initially many in Eastern Ukraine had been supporting or indifferent to the Kiev government, but when the Nazis arrived and began killing people support for the government fell. Support for the separatist movement was galvanized, and it turned from a small movement in to a serious insurgency.

This was the start of eight years of civil war between the Ukrainian speaking government in Kiev and the Russian speaking Ukrainian population of the Donbas. During the course of that war the government made the Nazis and ultra-nationalists an official part of the government under the National Guard. They shelled Eastern Ukrainian cities indiscriminately. Thousands of people were killed.

At the same time, NATO began training and equipping the Ukrainian army, essentially raising it from the dead in order to fight a proxy war against Russia, with all the blood to be spilled by Ukrainians and Ethnic Russian Ukrainians. Russia also began to intervene at some point, but to what extent is unclear. Kiev claims that the separatists were all Russian Federation troops, but Kiev lies constantly and it's very difficult to substantiate anything they say due to the Kiev Government's crack down on independent media and ruthless suppression of dissent.

Russia and various European nations tried to broker peace between Kiev and the Donbass separatists. The first attempt was called the Minsk Agreement, which if implemented would have lead to a cease-fire and allowed diplomatic negotiations. Hard-line Ukrainian Nationalists and Nazis in the National Guard broke the ceasefire repeatedly and the Kiev Government was either unable, or due to pressure from the nationalists in it's ranks unwilling, to implement Minsk.

Further attempts were made leading to the Minsk II agreement, but Kiev also failed to implement Minsk II and stop the violence.

After eight years the Ukrainian Army, bolstered by foreign training and equipment, was beginning to become functional. Tensions heightened in early 2022 as Kiev began a troop buildup for an invasion of Donbas. Russia, as well, began a troop buildup on the border. I don't know who moved first, but Russia's invasion coincided very closely with the Ukrainian army's mobilization in to Donbas.

The war in Ukraine has been presented as a war between the freedom loving western aligned Kiev government and the despotic Russian East. This is not true. The conflict has thirty year old roots dating to the dissolution of the USSR. Western Ukraine has been dominated by Ukrainian Nationalists who are hostile to the Eastern Ukrainian Ethnic Russian Russian speaking population. This has caused ethnic tensions and disputes for the entire thirty year history of Ukraine. Things were kept relatively under control by successive governments that balanced the interests of Ukrainian speaking Ukrainians and Ethnic Russian Russian speaking Ukrainians.

The Euromaidan coup disrupted that balance, and the new Ukrainian Nationalist government in Kiev spooked the Eastern Ukrainian Russian speaking Ethnic Russian population. Kiev then proved it's bad intentions by unleashing nationalists and Nazis against it's own people.

Russia invaded for a number of complex reasons. Their stated goal is to de-nazify and de-militarize Ukraine. This has been treated as ridiculous by the western press, with absurd statements that Azov is not composed of Nazis and is not numerous. This is false, and can be readily seen by observing Ukrainian state media; Soldiers wearing Nazi insignia, white supremacist insignia, UON (Ukrainian nationalists who fought for the Nazis) insignia, and related signs and symbols. The problem is so bad that Nazis have been proudly shown on Zelensky's presidential posts, only to be hastily taken down when the Nazi insignia was noticed.

Russia's other purpose was to defend Ukraine's Russian Speaking Ethnic Russian population.


The Separation of Ukraine and Russia with the dissolution of the USSR turned a border that was largely a formality in to a hard national border. This separated millions of Russian speaking ethnic Russian Ukrainians from Russia proper. In Crimea, for instance, the overwhelming majority of the population were Russian speaking Ethnic Russians. Due to what was essentially a line on a map they were now Ukrainians instead of Russians. Ukrainian speaking Crimeans were a relatively small minority in Crimea.

Likewise, Ukraine had a large, unwanted minority of Russian speaking Ethnic Russians. Throughout the period between 1991 and 2014 the status and legitimacy of these people within the Ukrainian state was constantly in question, with successive governments granting them the use of Russian with equal legitimacy then taking it back, and with political power going back and forth between different regions.

Also of note is that the legitimacy of the Ukrainian state was never strong. Like Russia, post-Soviet Ukraine was ruled by robbers and gangsters who took advantage of the privatization of state industries to amass vast fortunes and become the oligarchic leaders of the country. The result was a thoroughly corrupt government that had frequent serious turmoil as the oligarchs battled between themselves for control and legitimacy, backed by the external influence of Russia and various western states. This includes, among other figures, Ihor Kolomoisky. Kolomoisky is important