Back in 1991, competing visions for a post-Communist era in Moscow held up Ukraine’s drive for separation from Russia. Ukrainians would re-assert their desire for independence that December, with 92.3 percent of voters backing the legislature’s declaration, including a majority of residents of Crimea and the Donbas – regions that Putin today falsely insists are more Russian than Ukrainian.
Ukraine would achieve independence on December 26, when Mikhail Gorbachev formally dissolved the Soviet Union. If August 24, 1991, represented a key step in Kyiv’s long and drawn-out fight to secure its sovereignty from Moscow, August 24, 2022, marks an equally pivotal moment. The West’s role – like in 1991 – is critical as Ukraine tries to shape its future.
Although Russia’s then-president Boris Yeltsin pushed Gorbachev to break up the USSR, Yeltsin had not given up hopes of retaining Ukraine in some form of successor union, as detailed in Collapse, Vladislav Zubok’s recently-published critical history of the end of the Soviet Union. In the aftermath of the collapse of communism, Russian nationalist politicians pursued similar aspirations. Russian territorial claims were formally settled in 1994, via the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances that saw Kyiv formally renounce its nuclear weapons. In exchange, Russia promised to refrain from threatening to use military force or economic coercion against Ukraine.
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