Russian President Vladimir Putin announced, in a speech, Thursday morning, Cairo time, the start of a large-scale military operation in the Donbass region of Ukraine.
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The Russian forces began a comprehensive military operation, according to what the Ukrainian president announced this morning, Cairo time, and the beginning was with the sound of 6 huge explosions in the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv.
Reports indicated that Russian forces are heading to enter Ukraine from the direction of the Crimea.
The BBC's correspondent in Kiev reported hearing 5 to 6 "far away explosions".
The situation on the Ukrainian border has been tense for weeks, and the crisis appears to be deepening.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly denied his intention to invade Ukraine, but the United States has indicated that he made the decision to invade some time ago.
The beginning of the crisis in Russia and Ukraine
Russia's first strikes in Ukraine
Tensions between Russia and Ukraine now date back to the Middle Ages. Both countries have their roots in the East Slavic state called Kievan Rus', so Russian President Putin always speaks of "one people."
According to history, the path of these two nations throughout history was different, and two different languages and cultures emerged from it, despite their kinship. While Russia developed politically into an empire, Ukraine did not succeed in building its state, according to the Deutsche Villa website.
In the 17th century, a large swathe of present-day Ukraine became part of the Russian Empire, but after the fall of the Russian Empire in 1917, Ukraine became independent for a brief period, before being reoccupied militarily by Soviet Russia.
Russia grants freedom to Ukraine
Russia's first strikes in Ukraine
In December 1991, Ukraine, in addition to Belarus, was among the republics that hammered the last nail in the coffin of the Soviet Union, but Moscow wanted to maintain its influence, by founding the Commonwealth of Independent States (JUS).
The Kremlin thought at the time that it could control Ukraine with shipments of cheap gas, but that did not happen. While Russia has built a close alliance with Belarus, Ukraine's eyes have always been on the West.
Ukraine annoyed the Kremlin with its tendency to the West, but the conflict did not reach its climax throughout the 1990s, because at that time Moscow was quiet, because the West was not seeking to integrate Ukraine, and the Russian economy was suffering, and the country was preoccupied with the war in Chechnya, according to the BBC. .
In 1997, through the so-called "Great Decade", Moscow officially recognized Ukraine's borders, including Crimea, which is inhabited by a majority of Russian speakers.
When the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s, Ukraine, the former Soviet republic, had the world's third largest nuclear weapons arsenal.
The United States and Russia worked to denuclearize Ukraine, and Kiev gave up hundreds of nuclear warheads to Russia, in exchange for security guarantees to protect it from a possible Russian attack.
Moscow and Kiev witnessed their first major recent diplomatic crisis under Vladimir Putin. In the fall of 2003, Russia suddenly began building a dam in the Krech Strait towards the Ukrainian island of Kosa Tusla.
Russia's first strikes in Ukraine
Kiev considered this an attempt to redraw a new border between the two countries, and the conflict intensified, and it was only put to an end after a bilateral meeting between the Russian and Ukrainian presidents. After that, the construction of the dam was stopped, but the declared friendship between the two countries began to show cracks.
During the presidential elections in Ukraine in 2004, Russia largely supported its close candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, but the "Orange Revolution" prevented his victory based on fraud, and the politician close to the West, Viktor Yushchenko, won in his stead.
During his presidency, Russia cut gas supplies to Ukraine twice, in 2006 and 2009, and also cut gas supplies to Europe through Ukraine.
In 2008, then US President George W. Bush tried to integrate Ukraine and Georgia into NATO and accept their membership through a preparatory program, but this was met with Putin's protest, and Moscow clearly announced that it would not accept complete independence for Ukraine, according to " Sky News.
But France and Germany prevented Bush from implementing his plan, and during the NATO summit in Bucharest the issue of Ukraine and Georgia membership was raised, but no date was set for that.
Because the question of joining NATO did not succeed quickly, Ukraine tried to link up with the West through a cooperation agreement with the European Union.
In the summer of 2013, a few months after the signing of the agreement, Moscow exerted enormous economic pressure on Kiev and restricted imports into Ukraine. Against this background, the government of former President Yanukovych, who won the elections in 2010, froze the agreement, and protests against the decision were launched. This led to his escape to Russia in February 2014.
Russia includes Crimea
Moscow took advantage of the power vacuum in Kiev to annex Crimea in March 2014, a milestone and the beginning of an undeclared war. Meanwhile, Russian paramilitary forces began massing the coal-rich Donbas region in eastern Ukraine for an uprising, as two popular republics of Donetsk and Luhansk declared It is headed by Ross.
As for the government in Kiev, it waited until the end of the presidential elections in May 2014, to launch a major military operation called the “War on Terror.”
Also in June 2014, the just-elected Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko and Putin met for the first time, mediated by Germany and France, on the sidelines of the 70th Anniversary of D-Day in Normandy
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