Over the last decade, once neighborly relations between Russia and Ukraine grew into animosity. Russia had the conflict roll into a full-scale war, which quashed the security system in the Europe. The ever-changing and often way too dangerous geopolitical advancements have direct implications for our region likewise. To this end, Media.am has put together all the crucial happenings we need to know about this war along three imagery timelines. <\/p>\n
In 1990-ies, following the collapse of the USSR, Russia and Ukraine started forging friendly relations. And in December 1991, the leaders of Russia, Ukraine and Belarus founded the CIS later joined by Armenia likewise. It was in 1994 that Ukraine gave up <\/a>significant reserves of the nuclear weaponry inherited from the former USSR, in exchange for security warrants, one of the warrantors being Russia itself.<\/p>\n However, back then palpable differences between the politics of the two countries were already apparent. Like many other post-Soviet countries, Ukraine too was putting efforts to run multi-vector politics in an attempt to balance the Russian and Western influences. Despite the deep-rooted economic, political and cultural ties with Russia, Ukraine did not adhere to the idea of the Union State instigated by Russia and Belarus. At the same time, public support for the idea of integrating with the West was increasingly gaining traction. The Ukrainian Orange Revolution<\/a> of 2004 did not give a chance to the pro-Russian candidate Viktor Yanukovych to become the President of the country. Eventually, Yanukovych got elected as a President only six years after the revolution. <\/p>\n At a Bucharest NATO summit of April 2008, the US President George Bush urged to welcome Ukraine and Georgia into the Western defense alliance. Russia was strongly opposed to it; Ukraine played too vital a role for the Kremlin, hence Moscow viewed Ukraine\u2019s potential membership to NATO as a direct security threat of its own. The process ended up with Germany and France thwarting the US recommendation. Ukraine and Georgia were promised a membership<\/a> with no clear dates. Years later, Russia will explain its aggression with its very wish to suspend NATO\u2019s expansion. <\/p>\n Back in 2013, the administration of Yanukovych was about to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union. Armenia, too, had taken the path of signing a similar agreement with the EU. And just as Armenia snappily declared about not signing that document, similarly the Ukrainians put a hold on the process<\/a> shortly after publishing the Agreement in the Government website. In both cases, the underlying reason was the same \u2013 the pressure from Kremlin. This decision unforeseen at that time didn\u2019t embark on profound changes; the administration of Serzh Sarkissian carried on the multi-vector politics and ended up signing<\/a> the EU Association Agreement in 2017. In the meanwhile, the breaking news on revoking the Agreement and the upcoming rapprochement with Russia instantaneously fomented far-ranging protests in Ukraine setting Euromaidan in motion. <\/p>\n The demonstrations lasting from November 2013 all the way through February 2014 lead to the resignation of Yanukovych once again reshuffling Moscow-Kyiv relations.<\/p>\nTimeline 1. Euromaidan<\/h2>\n