About Ukraine — What you might not know

5 min readJan 31, 2023

A set of articles with important facts about Russia and Ukraine that they might not have told you about on Russian aka Fox news …

in 1990, the US did NOT have a defense treaty with Kuwait. Turns out, you don’t need one to do the right thing. We sent in an entire army.

#SlavaUkraini

— Independent Republic

— No Ukraine Threat (below)

— Euromaidan Uprising

— Revolution of Dignity / Maidan Revolution

— Nazis

o Russian Imperialism

— — — — — — — — — — — — — — —

INDEPENDENT REPUBLIC

Ukraine has been an independent country since at least the 1920s. The Republic of Ukraine was a founding member of the UN in 1945. The Ukrainian people voted to leave the Soviet Union in 1991.

NO UKRAINE THREAT

UKR did NOT pose an imminent threat to RU, and was NOT going to join NATO any time soon. To join, all 30 member countries have to approve. It was clear before the war that Hungary would have vetoed any UKR entry into NATO. This was simply not going to happen.

Then on February 24, 2022, Putin reminded everybody why NATO exists. Now Finland, Sweden and Moldova want to join. NATO is now more united than since the end of the cold war. The 2022 invasion completely backfired.

EUROMAIDAN UPRISING

The then president Yanukovich won election in 2010, promising that UKR would ask to join the European Union (EU), which Ukrainians understood as enabling rule of law and democracy. They could easily see how their neighbor, Poland, was prospering from this, and how corrupt oligarchs were keeping their own country down.

Yanukovich Promising Integration With the EU.

On November 21, 2013, his government announced that the EU deal was off, that UKR would be seeking a closer alliance with Putin & his oligarchs.

From the film “Winter on Fire” (Netflix)

EUROMAIDAN (Nov 2013 …)

The reaction was immediate. People streamed to Maidan square that night in protest. I saw a story in Le Monde that day, and having lived happily in the EU for 17 years, I started following it intently in English, French and German. The issue was NOT NATO. It was about joining the EU.

This Wikipedia article will give some background:

“The protesters opposed what they saw as widespread government corruption, the influence of oligarchs, abuse of power, and violation of human rights in Ukraine. Transparency International named Yanukovych as the top example of corruption in the world.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euromaidan

At Maidan Square you see EU & Ukrainian flags. Not NATO.

The film “Winter on Fire” (Netflix) documents this revolt quite well. Hundreds of thousands people occupied the square for months, during the cold winter. The riot police came and beat Ukrainians up.

The evening of Dec. 13(???) proved to be particularly threatening as many riot police showed up, ready to crack heads. Word went out; even the cathedral bells rang. Tens of thousands showed up, fully aware of the danger. The police backed down.

REVOLUTION OF DIGNITY / MAIDAN REVOLUTION (February, 2014)

The last half hour of “Winter on Fire” showed the last battle of Maidan Square where government snipers were picking off patriots, one by one. In an astonishing sense of courage and solidarity, very few left the square. They refused to surrender. Thousands of them. When someone got shot, they did their best to pick them up and bring them back to the make-shift hospital — while under fire themselves. But under no circumstances did people leave the square. They issued a demand, that the previous oligarch/president leave. He left for Russia by the next morning.

When they say they are “fighting for our freedom”, they mean it. They are ready to die for UKR freedom

UKRAINIANS

The Ukranian government was democratically elected. It would have been political suicide for the government to launch full scale war against an enemy as large and well-armed as Russia.

NAZIS

“Operating in Ukraine are several nationalist paramilitary groups, such as the Azov movement and Right Sector, that espouse neo-Nazi ideology. While high-profile, they appear to have little public support. Only one far-right party, Svoboda, is represented in Ukraine’s parliament, and it only holds one seat.” (https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/02/24/putin-denazify-ukraine/)