You're listening to the European Parliamentary Research Service podcast on Ukraine.

What started as a pro-European revolution in downtown Kiev has escalated into a full-blown

international crisis, Putin,, European Union and the US

at odds with Russia.

And despite the guns having largely fallen silent

for extended periods, the conflict is nowhere near over.

Stay with us for a recount of the origins

and evolution of a conflict

that has shaken the foundations

of Europe's security architecture.

Time has passed, but how can we forget the images of Ukrainian men and women defying

the cold and the fear waving European flags at Maidan Square and the brutal repression that followed?

Hard images, but also hard figures. According to the UN, more than 9,000 people have been killed, some 21,000 wounded and more than a million displaced since the crisis erupted in March 2014.

Today, more than two years after the Euro-Miden Revolution, Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea and the eruption of the conflict in eastern Ukraine, the country is still at a crossroads

between war and peace, between corruption and reform. Moreover, the international efforts to find a solution

and the repeated calls by the European Parliament to implement the Minsk Agreement seem to have fallen

on deaf ears. So how did we reach this point? Recounting the conflict's beginnings may offer some

clues. It was in November 2013 on the occasion of the Eastern Partnership Summit in Vilnius

when Ukraine's former President Viktor Yanukovych declined to sign an association agreement with the EU,

cashing in on a $15 billion loan from Moscow and a lucrative gas deal instead.

It would not take long before pro-European large-scale protests at Maidan Square

mushroomed all over the country, forcing an impeachment vote by the Ukrainian Parliament on President Yanukovych,

...