In February of 2014, the Russian-backed Ukrainian President Viktor

Russian-backed Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted from office by a popular uprising that stemmed from a series of protests, usually called the Euro-Maden protests, that were sparked when Yanukovych decided in November of the previous year to suddenly segue away from an agreement between Ukraine and the EU

that would have brought these two entities into closer economic accord with each other.

Russia was keen to bring Ukraine more closely into its orbit.

It leaned on Yanukovych to pull Ukraine hard toward Moscow instead of Brussels.

And when he did, that led to months of protests

that forced him to flee to Russia, and things kind of spiraled from there, as Russia didn't

like losing its man at the top of the government, so it shifted tactics, opting to nudge pro-Russia

groups in the eastern and southern portions of Ukraine toward rebellion.

These groups, mostly in the eastern Donbos region, were reinforced by troops and weaponry from unmarked Russian soldiers who crossed the border in a somewhat deniable way.

The Kremlin's saying, hey, look, it's not us, they are not wearing our flags.

We are not doing this.

Maybe these soldiers are just very patriotic

and doing this in their free time. And we don't even know where they got all those heavy weapons

they're bringing with them. It's very mysterious. And that allowed Russia to help these groups

capture a huge chunk of Ukraine from Crimea upward, leading to the formation of two self-proclaimed

republics that continued to fight

a low-level war with the central Ukrainian government from April 2014 until early 2022,

when after about a year of military buildup at their borders with Ukraine, and eventually in

neighboring Belarus as well, on their border with Ukraine.

Russia invaded, following months of saying that they would not, sending waves of troops and tanks

and jets and missiles and the whole nine yards into the country from multiple directions.

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