In February and March 2014, Russia invaded and subsequently annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine. This event took place in the relative power vacuum on the immediate aftermath of the Revolution of Dignity and was the beginning act of the wider
The war in Donbas, or Donbas war, was an armed conflict in the Donbas region of Ukraine, part of the broader Russo-Ukrainian War. The war began in April 2014 when armed Russian-backed separatists seized government buildings and the Ukrainian military launched an operation against them.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has shared the apparent reason why he did not order a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2014. In an interview with state-controlled TV channel Russia 1, Putin claimed he wanted to resolve the upheaval in the region without going to war.
The Crimean War was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Sardinia-Piedmont. Russia loses the Danube Delta and Southern Bessarabia.
(2) the transfer was a natural outgrowth of the “territorial proximity of Crimea to Ukraine, the commonalities of their economies, and the close agricultural and cultural ties between the Crimean oblast and the UkrSSS.”
The official cause of the war was a dispute between the Russian Czar, Nicholas I and the Ottoman Emperor, Abdulmejid I, over which empire would have authority over Orthodox Christians living in Ottoman territory. This religious dispute was a pretext for European powers to project power against each other.
Ukraine (Since 1991)
With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Ukrainian independence in 1991 most of the peninsula was reorganized as the Republic of Crimea, although in 1995 the Republic was forcibly abolished by Ukraine with the Autonomous Republic of Crimea established firmly under Ukrainian authority.
Austria had repeatedly blackmailed Russia with threats of joining the allies. It was these episodes of blackmail which forced Russia to agree to (preliminary) peace terms on February 1, 1856, realising its defeat. Russia's defeat in the Crimean War prompted a national re-evaluation.
The Crimean War thus instigated an era of self-evaluation in Russia which threw off the shackles of archaic traditions and embraced modernisation. Upon the death of Nicholas I, Alexander II became Tsar, who by comparison was liberal in his views and approach.
Crimea became part of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic on 18 October 1921 as the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, The Russian SFSR founded the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in 1922, with the Crimean ASSR retaining a degree of nominal autonomy and run as a Crimean Tatar enclave.
Ukraine remains intent on wresting Crimea back from Russia, but doing so would be difficult, and the peninsula could become a bargaining chip in future diplomatic talks. For any government interested in the outcome of Ukraine's coming counteroffensive, few issues loom as large as Crimea.
Plans for NATO membership were shelved by Ukraine following the 2010 presidential election in which Viktor Yanukovych, who preferred to keep the country closer to Russia, was elected President. Yanukovych fled Ukraine in February 2014 during the Revolution of Dignity.
Russia soon annexed Crimea after a highly-disputed referendum. In April 2014, armed pro-Russian separatists seized government buildings in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region and proclaimed the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) as independent states, starting the Donbas war.
In January and February 2014, clashes in Kyiv between protesters and Berkut special riot police resulted in the deaths of 108 protesters and 13 police officers, and the wounding of many others. The first protesters were killed in fierce clashes with police on Hrushevsky Street on 19–22 January.
Ukraine officially declared itself an independent country on 24 August 1991, when the communist Supreme Soviet (parliament) of Ukraine proclaimed that Ukraine would no longer follow the laws of USSR and only the laws of the Ukrainian SSR, de facto declaring Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union.
The Republic of Crimea is a federal subject of Russia, comprising most of the Crimean Peninsula, excluding Sevastopol. Its territory corresponds to the Autonomous Republic of Crimea, a subdivision of Ukraine.
On April 26, 1954 The decree of the Presidium of the USSR Supreme Soviet transferring the Crimea Oblast from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR.
From the mid-1400s it existed as the Crimean Khanate, a protectorate of the Ottoman Empire, during which time it became the center of a roaring slave trade. The modern name "Crimea" seems to have come from the language of the Crimean Tatars, a Turkic ethnic group that emerged during the Crimean Khanate.
Russia has deep cultural, economic, and political bonds with Ukraine, and in many ways Ukraine is central to Russia's identity and vision for itself in the world. Family ties. Russia and Ukraine have strong familial bonds that go back centuries.
The outbreak of violence arose from various factors, including the issue of Christian minority rights in the Holy Land, the overall declining Ottoman Empire leading to the “eastern question” and a resistance from the British and French to Russian expansion.
The Crimean War started with Russia's invasion of the Turkish Danubian principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia (now Romania). Britain and France both wanted to prop up the ailing Ottoman Empire and resist Russian expansionism in the Near East.
Thus, by pure diplomacy and only a few thousand troops, the Russians took advantage of Chinese weakness and the strength of the other European powers to annex 350,000 square miles (910,000 km2) of Chinese territory.
An explosion in the north of annexed Crimea has destroyed Russian missiles being transported by rail, Ukraine's defence ministry has said. The Russian-installed head of the city of Dzhankoi said the area had been attacked by drones.