Russia–Ukraine relations

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Russia-Ukraine relations span centuries of intertwined history, but on the 24th of February 2022 they collapsed into something far darker: a full-scale military invasion that severed every formal diplomatic tie between the two countries. That day, Russian ground and air assaults struck targets across Ukraine, including the capital, Kyiv. Ukraine broke off diplomatic relations with Russia in response. Streets named after Russian figures were stripped of their signs. Monuments symbolizing Russian-Ukrainian friendship were pulled down. In March 2023, the Verkhovna Rada went further and banned toponymy carrying any name associated with Russia.

  The questions a listener might carry into this story are not simple ones. How did two countries that share a founding myth, centuries of border, and deep economic ties arrive at outright war? What were the turning points, the missed chances, the deliberate provocations? And what do the people on each side actually believe about one another?

• 2. A Shared and Contested Origin

  ›

  Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus all claim descent from Kievan Rus', a polity that united most East Slavic and some Finnic tribes and adopted Byzantine Orthodoxy in the ninth to eleventh centuries. Kyiv, the capital of modern Ukraine, was proclaimed the Mother of Rus Cities in old Rus chronicles, as the seat of that powerful medieval state.

  After the Mongol invasion shattered Kievan Rus', the two peoples' histories diverged sharply. The Grand Duchy of Moscow gathered the northern remnants and evolved into the Russian state. Much of what would become Ukraine fell under the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and then the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Within the Commonwealth, the militant Zaporozhian Cossacks refused polonization and clashed repeatedly with the Polish nobility, eventually seeking union with Russia through the Treaty of Pereiaslav in 1654.

  From the mid-seventeenth century onward, Russia gradually absorbed most of Ukraine's territory, stripping away its autonomy by the late eighteenth-century partition of Poland. The Cossack host was forcibly disbanded, and most Cossacks were relocated to the Kuban region at the southern edge of the Russian Empire. The empire classified Ukrainians as ethnically Russian, calling them Little Russians and framing the Russian nation as a trinity of Great Russia, Little Russia, and White Russia.

  Russification was not merely a classification. In 1804, the Ukrainian language was banned from schools as both a subject and a medium of instruction. In 1876, Tsar Alexander II's Ems Ukaz prohibited the publication and importation of most Ukrainian-language books, banned public performances and lectures in Ukrainian, and even forbade Ukrainian text on printed musical scores.

• 3. Soviet Years and the Holodomor

  ›

  Soviet Russia was compelled to recognize Ukrainian independence in March 1918 by signing the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, but the recognition was temporary. After the defeat of the Ukrainian People's Republic in 1921, most of its territory was folded into the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. In 1922, Ukraine and Russia became two of the four founding members of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

  The end of tsarist rule lifted the ban on the Ukrainian language, and a policy of Korenizatsiya promoted the cultures of the different Soviet republics. That opening was brief. In 1932 and 1933 Ukraine experienced the Holodomor, a man-made famine in the Ukrainian SSR that killed up to 7.5 million Ukrainians. The famine is also known as the Terror-Famine in Ukraine and the Famine-Genocide in Ukraine. Millions of citizens of the Ukrainian SSR, mostly ethnic Ukrainians, died of starvation in what scholars have called an unprecedented peacetime catastrophe.

  Scholars disagree about how much of the destruction was premeditated. Some point to the economic upheaval of Soviet industrialization and the widespread drought of the early 1930s. Others see deliberate targeting. On the 13th of January 2010, the Kyiv Appellate Court posthumously found Stalin, Kaganovich, Molotov, and the Ukrainian Soviet leaders Kosior and Chubar guilty of genocide against Ukrainians during the famine.

  Decades later, Ukrainian attempts to have the Holodomor recognized internationally as genocide against the Ukrainian nation would become one of the specific issues that opinion polls showed hurt Russians' view of Ukraine.

• 4. Independence and Nuclear Inheritance

  ›

  Nationalism spread following Mikhail Gorbachev's political liberalization in the 1980s. The pro-independence People's Movement of Ukraine was founded in 1989. After the failed Soviet coup d'état attempt of 1991, the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine passed on the 24th of August 1991 with only one vote against. A nationwide referendum then approved it by a majority of 92.3%, with majorities in every region, including the Russian-speaking east and south.

  The Russian Federation recognized Ukraine's independence on the 5th of December 1991 and formally established diplomatic relations on the 14th of February 1992. The basis for post-Soviet relations was set by the Belovezh Accords between Ukrainian leader Leonid Kravchuk, Russia's Boris Yeltsin, and Belarusian leader Stanislav Shushkevich. While all three agreed to dissolve the Soviet Union, Russia wanted new supranational structures to replace it; Ukraine opposed this, and the resulting Commonwealth of Independent States created no legally binding commitments.

  Among the most consequential inheritances Ukraine received was the third-largest nuclear stockpile in the world. Ukraine held 130 UR-100N intercontinental ballistic missiles with six warheads each, 46 RT-23 Molodets ICBMs with ten warheads apiece, and 33 heavy bombers, totaling roughly 1,700 warheads on Ukrainian territory. Ukraine had physical control of the weapons but not operational control; the missiles depended on Russian-controlled electronic Permissive Action Links.

  In 1992, Ukraine voluntarily agreed to remove over 3,000 tactical nuclear weapons. In 1994, the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances was signed at Patria Hall in the Budapest Convention Center, with US ambassador Donald M. Blinken among those present. Under the memorandum, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States pledged not to threaten or use military force or economic coercion against Ukraine, except in self-defense or in accordance with the UN Charter. By 1996, Ukraine had transferred all Soviet-era strategic warheads to Russia. Political scientist John Mearsheimer had advocated at the time for a nuclear-armed Ukraine as the surest means of preventing Russia from reconquering it.

• 5. Energy, Trade, and Economic Leverage

  ›

  The 1990s exposed just how deeply intertwined the two economies had become under the Soviet system. Up to 75% of Ukraine's annually consumed natural gas and close to 80% of its oil came from Russia. Russia remained Ukraine's primary market for ferrous metals, steel plate and pipes, electric machinery, machine tools, food, and chemical products. More than nine-tenths of Ukraine's high-value goods were historically tied to Russian consumers.

  When Soviet-era buyers vanished by 1997, Ukraine experienced a 97-99% drop in production of industrial machines with digital control systems, television sets, tape recorders, excavators, and cars and trucks. Russia was also the fourth-largest investor in Ukraine by 1998, having contributed $150.6 million of the $2.047 billion in total foreign direct investment Ukraine had received.

  Energy became the sharpest instrument of pressure. In September 1993, Russia began threatening to cut gas supplies in order to extract better terms on the division of the Black Sea Fleet. That dispute was eventually resolved in 1997 through the Partition Treaty, which divided the fleet and allowed Russia to lease naval bases in Sevastopol until 2017, later extended to 2042 under the Kharkiv Pact.

  The pattern hardened in 2009. During a dispute over natural gas prices in January of that year, Russian gas exports through Ukraine were shut down entirely, disrupting supplies to Europe. In a leaked US diplomatic cable, the US ambassador to Ukraine relayed the view of Ukraine's ambassador to Russia that Kremlin leaders wanted a totally subservient government in Kyiv, and that Putin both hated then-president Yushchenko and had a low personal regard for Yanukovych, but saw then-prime minister Tymoshenko as someone with whom he could deal.

• 6. Crimea, Donbas, and the Road to Full War

  ›

  After the Revolution of Dignity ousted Viktor Yanukovych in early 2014, Russian military men wearing masks and no insignia seized the parliament building and two airports in Crimea on the 27th of February. Under siege, the Supreme Council of Crimea replaced its government with Sergey Aksyonov. On the 1st of March, without a declaration of war, the Russian parliament granted President Putin authority to use military force in Ukraine.

  In mid-March, following a disputed local referendum, Russia recognized Crimea as a sovereign state and formally annexed the peninsula. The Verkhovna Rada condemned the move as a gross violation of international law. On the 19th of March 2014, all Ukrainian armed forces were withdrawn from Crimea, at that point besieged in their bases by unmarked soldiers.

  Pro-Russian unrest spread through the Donbas in spring 2014, with armed groups seizing government buildings in Donetsk and Luhansk in May. On the 17th of July 2014, Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by a Buk surface-to-air missile launched from separatist-controlled territory. All 283 passengers and 15 crew were killed. Russia denied direct involvement, but in December 2015, Putin admitted that Russian military intelligence officers were operating in Ukraine, insisting they were not regular troops.

  A ceasefire signed on the 5th of September 2014 collapsed amid heavy fighting in January 2015. A second agreement reached in mid-February 2015 also failed to stop the fighting. The conflicts had killed over 13,000 people by early 2020.

  Throughout 2021, Russian military buildups near the Ukrainian border escalated. Russian official Dmitry Kozak warned that any escalation would lead to the beginning of the end of Ukraine. On the 7th of December 2021, US president Joe Biden spoke with Putin via secure video link about the buildup. Biden warned of economic sanctions more severe than those imposed after the Crimea annexation, including the possibility of removing Russia from the SWIFT financial messaging network. Russia invaded on the 24th of February 2022, with ground and air assaults across Ukraine. On the 30th of September 2022, Putin signed decrees annexing Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson oblasts, moves not recognized by the international community and held to be illegal under international law.

• 7. What Each Side Believes

  ›

  Public opinion polls reveal a relationship in which perceptions shifted dramatically and often tracked the actions of political leaders. In Russia, polls taken before 2014 showed that harsh official statements or actions against Ukraine reliably worsened Russians' attitude toward Ukrainians every time.

  In July 2021, Putin published an essay titled On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians, arguing that Belarusians, Ukrainians, and Russians are one people and describing the division between them as a tragedy. The essay denied the existence of Ukraine as an independent nation. Philosopher Alexander Dugin, referred to by some as Putin's brain, had for years advocated for Ukraine becoming what he called a purely administrative sector of the Russian centralized state, which he named Novorossiya.

  Polls in Ukraine told a different story. Ukrainian attitudes toward Russia, which ran as high as 88% favorable in October 2008, fell to 21% by June 2015. A poll conducted in April 2022 by the Rating group found that 91% of Ukrainians, excluding those in Russian-occupied territories, rejected the thesis that Russians and Ukrainians are one people. According to a January 2026 poll by the Levada Center, 64% of Russians had an unfavorable opinion of Ukraine, while only 16% had a favorable one.

  In former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma's 2003 book, whose title stated simply that Ukraine Is Not Russia, the argument for a distinct Ukrainian identity was laid out in full. In November 2023, Kuchma presented a follow-up volume titled Ukraine Is Not Russia: Twenty Years Later. At a festival in Sochi in March 2024, Dmitry Medvedev declared that the concept expressed in Kuchma's original title needed to disappear forever, and that Ukraine is definitively Russia. That declaration came as hundreds of thousands of people had already been killed in the war that began in February 2022.