Ukraine and the West accused Russia of sending its troops and weapons to back the rebels. Russia responded by annexing Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and throwing its weight behind a separatist rebellion that broke out in Ukraine’s east. It moved to shed its Russian imperial legacy and forge increasingly close ties with the West.Ī decision by Kremlin-leaning Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to reject an association agreement with the European Union in favour of closer ties with Moscow led to mass protests that saw him removed as the leader in 2014. Ukraine, which was part of the Russian empire for centuries before becoming a Soviet republic, won independence as the USSR broke up in 1991. Here are five things you should know about what led to the invasion, what is happening now and what could come next. The attacks on Thursday came as weeks of intense diplomacy and the imposition of Western sanctions on Russia failed to deter Putin, who had massed between 150,000 and 200,000 soldiers along the borders of Ukraine. Russia has launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine after President Vladimir Putin authorised, what he called, a “special military operation” in the east.
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