Cover photo: Daniel Kraft (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)
Ukraine: The History Behind the War
A thousand years of broken promises, language bans, and famine behind today's war.
About
Kyiv existed centuries before Moscow did. So how did Ukraine come to be seen by so many as just "part of Russia" — and why, every time someone believed that, did they run into a people who insisted on existing?
From Kievan Rus' and the free Cossacks of the Dnipro, through the Treaty of Pereyaslav, the nineteenth-century bans on the Ukrainian language, the Holodomor and the Bloodlands of World War Two, to the 1991 independence referendum, the Budapest Memorandum, the annexation of Crimea, and the full-scale invasion of 2022 — this narrative follows a pattern that repeats itself in every generation: a promise of autonomy that erodes, and a people who, every time, insist on existing.
This isn't a list of atrocities or a propagandistic account — it's the documented history behind today's headlines, for anyone who finally wants to understand how we got here.
Sources
- Encyclopaedia Britannica — "Ukraine", "Kievan Rus", "Cossack", "Holodomor" — https://www.britannica.com/place/Ukraine
- National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide (Kyiv) — https://holodomormuseum.org.ua/en/
- US Holocaust Memorial Museum — "Kyiv and Babyn Yar" — https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/kiev-and-babi-yar
- IAEA — Chernobyl Accident, Frequently Asked Questions — https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/focus/chernobyl/faqs
- 1991 Ukrainian independence referendum results — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Ukrainian_independence_referendum
- The Washington Post — fact-check on the Zelensky "ammunition, not a ride" quote — https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/03/06/zelenskys-famous-quote-need-ammo-not-ride-not-easily-confirmed/
- Encyclopedia of Ukraine — "Ems Ukase" — https://www.encyclopediaofukraine.com/display.asp?linkpath=pages%5CE%5CM%5CEmsUkase.htm
- United Nations — Donbas conflict casualty figures (2014-2022) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Donbas_(2014%E2%80%932022)
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