Ukraine-Russia crisis is ongoing. How did we get here, and what’s happening?
Global News
The ongoing crisis is being watched around the world, and while Ukrainian leaders are urging for calm in the nation, they’re preparing for the worst.
As the threat of war looms, western nations for weeks have been occupied trying to ease growing tensions between Russia and Ukraine.
Canada, the United States and European allies have been scrambling to support Ukraine in the event of an armed conflict, while threatening Russia with sanctions if it moves into the former Soviet state.
The ongoing crisis is being watched around the world. While Ukrainian leaders are urging for calm in their nation, they’re preparing for the worst.
Here’s how we got here, and what’s happening right now.
Since it won independence after the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, Ukraine has shed its Russian imperial legacy and forged close ties with the West.
In 2014, protests broke out in Ukraine when then-Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who favoured Russia, rejected an association agreement with the European Union in favour of closer ties with Moscow.
Russia responded by annexing Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and throwing its weight behind a separatist insurgency that broke out in Ukraine’s east. More than 14,000 people have died since the conflict began.
Last year, a spike in cease-fire violations in eastern Ukraine and Russian troops concentrated near Ukraine fuelled fears of war, but tensions eased when Moscow pulled back the bulk of its forces after maneuvers in April.