Thanks, June Helfer, being with us this hour. It's good to have you here.

It is President's Day today, February 20th.

Presidential historian Doris Kern's Goodwin is going to be here with us tonight.

She's going to be here with us live. I'm very, very much looking forward to that conversation.

But it was on this date. It was on February 20th in 2014,

when the group they call the Heavenly Hundred was killed.

It was actually 108 people. They call them the Heavenly Hundred.

The youngest of them was just 16 years old. The oldest of them was 83 years old.

It all happened as the culmination of protests that had started the previous November.

People were protesting in Ukraine because the government of that country had had the chance

to sign on to a big trade deal with Europe. A deal that was expected to have big economic benefits

for Ukraine. It was definitely something that would bring Ukraine closer to Europe,

closer to the West. People in Ukraine, people in Ukraine, broadly were really looking forward to it.

This is a popular thing. They very much wanted it.

But the President of Ukraine at the time, he decided he wasn't going to do it.

And he basically decided that because Russia didn't want him to do it.

In 2014, the President of Ukraine, and I know this sounds rude to say, but he was basically

a puppet of Russia, of Vladimir Putin. Russia had paid for his political rise and for his political

party. They had worked to install him in power. They totally controlled him. He was their guy.

That was how Russia controlled Ukraine. They controlled the Ukrainian President. They installed

him in power and they told him what to do and he did it. And Russia, of course, didn't want Ukraine

to have better economic ties to the West. They didn't want Ukraine to have any ties to the West.

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