КОРОТКА ІСТОРІЯ
Before the story
In the XV century BC, the lands of modern Ukraine were inhabited by Cimmerians. In 612 BC the Sumerians were expelled by the Scythians. The Scythians made beautiful gold ornaments and made mounds. From the territory of modern Ukraine, the Scythians, as a result of resettlement to the Crimea and most were conquered and assimilated by the Sarmatians, at the turn of IV-III centuries BC. In some places, they are known until the III century.
The start of the history
It all started with Kievan Rus. It lasted from the 9th to the 13th century, uniting the lands from the Black Sea to the Baltic Sea. In 882, Prince Oleg killed the Kyivan rulers Askold and Deer to make Kyiv "the mother of all Russian cities" and to defend against the attack of Scandinavian tribes (Vikings). Then came to power descendants of the Rurik dynasty, whose names are well known to us from history lessons: Igor, Olga, Svyatoslav, Vladimir the Great, Yaroslav the Wise.
Prince Vladimir the Great baptized Rus in 988. And Yaroslav the Wise build a churches and library.
For the next 300 years, the Left Bank of Ukraine was under the influence of Moscow, the Right Bank - of Poland, and Lithuania. As a result of the national liberation war of 1648-1657, part of Ukraine gained independence. Bohdan Khmelnytsky founded the Zaporozhian Army and tried his best to support the acquired statehood (which was not so easy to be surrounded by three aggressive neighbors who did not recognize the right to independence).
Due to the fact that Ukraine was divided between three different states, the Ukrainians themselves did not fully support the idea of national revival. They could not find a common language, and in 1678 Ukraine was divided along the Dnieper. But the revolutionary years did not go unnoticed: the hetmans abolished serfdom, built churches, introduced democracy, and gave the peasants land that previously belonged to the Polish burghers.
Карта України 1900 рік
In the 1920s, Ukraine had every chance to preserve its independence and avoid the heavy involvement of the Soviet Union. The Germans played an important role here.
In 1917, after the February Revolution, during which the monarchy was overthrown, the Ukrainian ethnic lands gained autonomy within the Russian Empire. The Bolsheviks came to Ukraine trying to convert Ukrainians to communist ideology. Just then, the Nazis (outside the First World War) entered the territory of the Ukrainian People's Republic, and the Bolsheviks temporarily returned to Russia. To protect itself from war, Ukraine, without a strong army at the time, took a neutral position. The Central Council signed a peace treaty with the Germans and the Austro-Hungarians, under which it undertook to provide food for German soldiers. Because of this, the Entente countries refused to recognize Ukraine's independence, and "white" monarchists from England and France dreamed of restoring the Russian Empire (with Ukraine in its composition). The countries that recognized the Ukrainian People's Republic — the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Germany, Denmark, the Vatican, Sweden, and Italy — either lost the war or did not influence the political arena.
When the First World War ended, real chaos began. The Bolsheviks returned to Ukraine, where they opposed nationalists and monarchists. After the coup d'etat in 1918, Mykhailo Hrushevsky was removed from the post of chairman of the Central Rada, and Hetman Pavlo Skoropadsky came to power. The government was too weak to resist - the Central Council received no support from the population or the parties, peacefully ceding its power. It consisted of activists, each of whom had his own vision of Ukraine's future. For example, Ivan Franko was a socialist and dreamed of making Ukraine an agrarian state. Nationalist Mykola Mikhnovsky was the first to talk about oppression and recognized Ukraine's colonial status in the Russian Empire. Vyacheslav Lypynsky was a conservative who dreamed of introducing a hereditary monarchy and turning Ukraine into a new Britain. Skoropadsky is called the most controversial ruler in the history of Ukraine. Some call him a "puppet" in the hands of the Germans, some - a patriot who came in difficult times. Be that as it may, he regained land ownership, established a dictatorship, and tried to make Ukraine a monarchy. And when he saw that nothing would come of it, he resigned from power. Due to the agreement between Ukraine and Germany, the peasants had to give away large stocks of wheat, sugar, and other products, which intensified the protest mood. Add to this the populist slogans of the Bolsheviks - that's the collapse of the Hetmanate.
Meanwhile in western Ukraine
In 1918-19 there was also the Western Ukrainian Republic, which appeared after the collapse of Austria-Hungary. On January 22, 1919, it even merged with the Ukrainian People's Republic, but six months later it was annexed by Poland. Just then, Polish nationalists, enlisting the support of the Entente, tried to revive the Rych Pospolity. Western lands were divided between Poland and Czechoslovakia. Everything else became part of the Soviet Union, and then there was no chance of regaining independence.
30 years ago
Protests began in the Eastern Bloc in the late 1980s. By 1990, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, and then Lithuania, Georgia, Estonia, Latvia, Moldova, and Armenia had left the Soviet Union. The economy of the USSR was collapsing, people were tired of the constant deficit, perestroika did not live up to expectations. It was clear that Soviet ideology was dead. Ukraine began the process of withdrawing from the Soviet Union on July 16, 1990, by adopting the Declaration of State Sovereignty. After the failure of the August coup, a coup d'état in which Gorbachev relinquished power, Ukraine declared independence. And what happened next, we already know well.
What we know well
Revolution on granite, Budapest Memorandum, The murder or death of Chornovil, Orange revolution, Euromaidan and Revolution of Dignity, Russia annexed Crimea and make fake respublicks in Donetsk and Luhansk and start of ATO, Association Agreement between Ukraine and the European Union, Zelenskiy become a president of Ukraine, Covid 19
and finally new offensive of russian army.