When Russian helicopters and paratroopers launched their attack on February 24, 2022, while tanks were crossing the border from various directions and infantry were being mobilized, the surprise element of the attack that the Russian leadership wanted the operation to have was virtually non-existent.

In the previous hours, the European and American intelligence services had revealed that it was imminent, while the long history of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, which was then entering its ninth year, had prepared all sides for this escalation.

Russia’s “special military operation”, essentially the initiation – without official declaration – of it, both for Russian generals and for the staffs in the West and Ukraine, was probably the inevitable logical consequence of those that preceded it, despite the fact that, as Donald Trump insists and Vladimir Putin agrees, the conflict would not have reached this point if Trump had won his election 2020.

The Russian invasion based on both the recent political history of Ukraine, and the geopolitical balances that emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union in its peripheral Republics, probably affects developments more than an election battle in the USA.

The Orange Revolution and its political legacy

For example, when in 2004 the relationship of the Ukrainian political class with Moscow was essentially disrupted by the Orange Revolution and the victory of the “pro-Western” Viktor Yushchenko in the fourth presidential contest after Ukraine’s independence from Russia, the prelude to the subsequent conflict had already been written.

The developments then, like the election results, recorded something that was known even before the fall of the Soviet Union. The eastern regions of Ukraine – that is, those closest to Russia – voted for and supported the candidates promoted by Moscow, such as Viktor Yanukovych. This support is obviously not only related to the fact that in eastern Ukraine the majority was and is Russian-speaking, but was also the result of policies influenced by the Kremlin.

In 2004 alone, Vladimir Putin reportedly gave from $50 million according to some estimates to $300 million to the Party of Regions (Yanukovych’s party) to win the election. In fact, in 2004, Putin himself had visited Ukraine four times.

In the years following the developments of 2004 until the next presidential election in 2010, although nothing binding was agreed on the future of the country, this is the period when Ukraine began its convergence with the EU and the West and began to distance itself from Russian influence and its recent history.

It is during this period, under Yushchenko’s presidency, that Ukraine made EU integration a strategic priority and began discussions on possible NATO membership (with the later president Petro Poroshenko playing an important role in this).

All of this, of course, in the midst of severe political upheavals within it, with corruption as the main body, but also political ambitions, the components of the rivalry between Yulia Tymoshenko and Viktor Yushchenko and which finally allowed the return to the limelight of Viktor Yanukovych in 2010.

Until Yanukovych’s return, the tension within Ukraine was marginally manageable on all sides. Although Moscow has apparently been working for several years to reverse the course of Ukraine’s convergence with the “Western bloc”, leaking thousands of analyzes to support the narrative that later became the basis of the justification for its war against Ukraine and taking pressure measures on the Ukrainian leadership (with energy and gas as a key vehicle as demonstrated by the 2008-2009 crisis that led to the interruption of gas flow to the EU through Ukraine for about two weeks).

The above forms the basis for what followed. Yanukovych’s decisions were gradually aimed at concentrating more and more power in his hands, but his efforts to tone down and maintain – at least in the first years of his presidency – a more balanced stance between the EU and Russia, apparently were not enough to prevent the outbreak of the Euromaidan protests.

The Maidan and what followed

Yanukovych’s decision to suspend the signing of the association agreement with the EU (negotiations for which had begun under Yushchenko) after pressure from Moscow (by restricting imports of Ukrainian products), was the spark that caused the explosion.

Kyiv’s Independence Square on November 21, 2013 was filled with protesters initially calling for the decision to be reversed and for Ukraine to move on a European path and gradually as the crackdown grew Yanukovych’s removal.

The protests, known as Euromaidan, culminated in February 2014 with bloody clashes in the center of the Ukrainian capital. Dozens of protesters were killed by police sniper fire, but also by some supporters of the Yanukovych government.

The events of the days were obviously not limited only to Kyiv, but demonstrations, clashes and counter-demonstrations took place in several cities of the country, with the greatest tension being noted in the east and south (where pro-Russian groups and Ukrainian nationalists have been clashing continuously for months), as the events in Odessa also testify. The social upheaval eventually led to Yanukovych’s ouster and flight to Russia on February 21, and Petro Poroshenko taking office.

For Moscow, these events were not just an internal political crisis, but a geopolitical shift, as its fears that had begun after the Orange Revolution that Ukraine had now turned entirely towards the West seemed to be confirmed. Russia’s reaction was immediate, as the social and political conditions in Ukraine gave it considerable freedom of movement.

Crimea is changing hands

As early as February 26, 2014, the Russian forces in Crimea, where they had a permanent presence before, appear to be taking measures and setting up checkpoints between Sevastopol and Simferopol and gradually cutting off the installations of the Ukrainian military forces in the area. By March 17, the project was completed and on March 18, 2014, Crimea was annexed to Russia.

At the same time, the Russian-speaking and Russophile residents of Ukraine’s eastern provinces, centered on the Donbass, are also coming to the fore. From the pro-Moscow demonstrations that took place earlier in the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, armed groups are now organizing with clear demands for secession. The first signs of this appeared in the distant 2005 after the Orange Revolution.

The undeclared war in Donbass

Already in the spring of 2014, armed pro-Russian groups began to move and occupy government buildings in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk declaring themselves “people’s democracies”, starting a multi-year low-intensity war between Ukrainian forces and separatists supported politically, materially and militarily by Russia.

Battles such as those at Slavyansk, Kramatorsk, and later Debaltseve demonstrated that these were not partisan riots, but organized military conflict.

The Minsk agreements (2014 and 2015) brokered by François Hollande and Angela Merkel attempted to freeze the conflict, as they had done for several years. Of course, despite the fact that with these agreements the intensity of hostilities decreased, the front line remained active until 2022. In total, from 2014 to 2022, more than 14,000 people were killed, while millions were displaced.

Eight years of “frozen” war

For many outside Ukraine, the war in Donbas seemed forgotten. In fact, as recorded by many international reports and reports, the region lived for eight years under a regime of constant tension: daily exchanges of fire, militarization, political isolation and a divided society.

The reports of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe between 2016 and 2018 are indicative. Of these, stand out the reports about Avdiyvka, a city in Donetsk that has been a field of constant confrontation between Russian and Ukrainian separatist forces throughout this period with escalations of the intensity of the battles that were not observed in other parts of the frozen front.

Pressure and removal

All this time that the conflict remained frozen in Ukraine, but the undeclared war continued, the policy of the European Union and the USA in favor of Ukraine, but also against Russia, took on the dimensions of “expelling” Moscow from everywhere. The policy of sanctions from 2014 and the annexation of Crimea continued throughout this period, while the infamous agreement of association of Ukraine with the EU was finally signed in 2014 and entered into force in 2017.

The policy of pressure throughout this time has continued with controversial results, both from the US and the EU, with the US particularly focusing on equipping Ukraine since 2015 under Obama and continuing the same policy under Donald Trump (despite the rhetoric of rapprochement with Russia).

At the same time, for its part, Russia appeared to be moving further away from the “West”, turning its attention to tightening relations with the countries of Eurasia and especially with China, North Korea and Iran. The years after the Minsk agreements essentially passed with a frozen but open front and with the confrontation between the West and Russia constantly deepening, centered on the “game” of sanctions and their circumvention on the other side.

The Zelensky factor, the Constitution and NATO

What seems to have particularly bothered Moscow was the constitutional revision in Ukraine in 2019, which brought the explicit reference to the country’s constitution that the country’s strategic goal is full integration into the European Union and NATO.

Later in the elections of that year, the victory of Volodymyr Zelensky and the new National Security Strategy of 2020 (which provided for NATO membership), but also his moves against Russophiles and friends of Putin’s Ukrainian oligarchs, reawakened Moscow’s fears, which seem to have turned into a nightmare when the winner of the 2020 US elections was the Joe Biden.

Joe Biden and attack

Biden had taken a central role in the Ukraine issue during the Barack Obama days, and Vladimir Putin was rather certain, as the moves from 2021 onwards show, that there was no room for negotiation with him.

This is also demonstrated by the events of 2021, with the concentration of Russian forces for months near the border with Ukraine, the ideologicalization of Russian aggression against Ukraine with a pseudo-historical cloak, the ultimatums to NATO shortly before Christmas of that year and finally the invasion of February 24, 2022.

When Russian helicopters and paratroopers launched their attack on February 24, 2022, while tanks were crossing the border from various directions and infantry were being mobilized, the surprise element of the attack that the Russian leadership wanted the operation to have was virtually non-existent.

In the previous hours, the European and American intelligence services had revealed that it was imminent, while the long history of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, which was then entering its ninth year, had prepared all sides for this escalation.

Russia’s “special military operation”, essentially the initiation – without official declaration – of it, both for Russian generals and for the staffs in the West and Ukraine, was probably the inevitable logical consequence of those that preceded it, despite the fact that, as Donald Trump insists and Vladimir Putin agrees, the conflict would not have reached this point if Trump had won his election 2020.

The Russian invasion based on both the recent political history of Ukraine, and the geopolitical balances that emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union in its peripheral Republics, probably affects developments more than an election battle in the USA.

The Orange Revolution and its political legacy

For example, when in 2004 the relationship of the Ukrainian political class with Moscow was essentially disrupted by the Orange Revolution and the victory of the “pro-Western” Viktor Yushchenko in the fourth presidential contest after Ukraine’s independence from Russia, the prelude to the subsequent conflict had already been written.

The developments then, like the election results, recorded something that was known even before the fall of the Soviet Union. The eastern regions of Ukraine – that is, those closest to Russia – voted for and supported the candidates promoted by Moscow, such as Viktor Yanukovych. This support is obviously not only related to the fact that in eastern Ukraine the majority was and is Russian-speaking, but was also the result of policies influenced by the Kremlin.

In 2004 alone, Vladimir Putin reportedly gave from $50 million according to some estimates to $300 million to the Party of Regions (Yanukovych’s party) to win the election. In fact, in 2004, Putin himself had visited Ukraine four times.

In the years following the developments of 2004 until the next presidential election in 2010, although nothing binding was agreed on the future of the country, this is the period when Ukraine began its convergence with the EU and the West and began to distance itself from Russian influence and its recent history.

It is during this period, under Yushchenko’s presidency, that Ukraine made EU integration a strategic priority and began discussions on possible NATO membership (with the later president Petro Poroshenko playing an important role in this).

All of this, of course, in the midst of severe political upheavals within it, with corruption as the main body, but also political ambitions, the components of the rivalry between Yulia Tymoshenko and Viktor Yushchenko and which finally allowed the return to the limelight of Viktor Yanukovych in 2010.

Until Yanukovych’s return, the tension within Ukraine was marginally manageable on all sides. Although Moscow has apparently been working for several years to reverse the course of Ukraine’s convergence with the “Western bloc”, leaking thousands of analyzes to support the narrative that later became the basis of the justification for its war against Ukraine and taking pressure measures on the Ukrainian leadership (with energy and gas as a key vehicle as demonstrated by the 2008-2009 crisis that led to the interruption of gas flow to the EU through Ukraine for about two weeks).

The above forms the basis for what followed. Yanukovych’s decisions were gradually aimed at concentrating more and more power in his hands, but his efforts to tone down and maintain – at least in the first years of his presidency – a more balanced stance between the EU and Russia, apparently were not enough to prevent the outbreak of the Euromaidan protests.

The Maidan and what followed

Yanukovych’s decision to suspend the signing of the association agreement with the EU (negotiations for which had begun under Yushchenko) after pressure from Moscow (by restricting imports of Ukrainian products), was the spark that caused the explosion.

Kyiv’s Independence Square on November 21, 2013 was filled with protesters initially calling for the decision to be reversed and for Ukraine to move on a European path and gradually as the crackdown grew Yanukovych’s removal.

The protests, known as Euromaidan, culminated in February 2014 with bloody clashes in the center of the Ukrainian capital. Dozens of protesters were killed by police sniper fire, but also by some supporters of the Yanukovych government.

The events of the days were obviously not limited only to Kyiv, but demonstrations, clashes and counter-demonstrations took place in several cities of the country, with the greatest tension being noted in the east and south (where pro-Russian groups and Ukrainian nationalists have been clashing continuously for months), as the events in Odessa also testify. The social upheaval eventually led to Yanukovych’s ouster and flight to Russia on February 21, and Petro Poroshenko taking office.

For Moscow, these events were not just an internal political crisis, but a geopolitical shift, as its fears that had begun after the Orange Revolution that Ukraine had now turned entirely towards the West seemed to be confirmed. Russia’s reaction was immediate, as the social and political conditions in Ukraine gave it considerable freedom of movement.

Crimea is changing hands

As early as February 26, 2014, the Russian forces in Crimea, where they had a permanent presence before, appear to be taking measures and setting up checkpoints between Sevastopol and Simferopol and gradually cutting off the installations of the Ukrainian military forces in the area. By March 17, the project was completed and on March 18, 2014, Crimea was annexed to Russia.

At the same time, the Russian-speaking and Russophile residents of Ukraine’s eastern provinces, centered on the Donbass, are also coming to the fore. From the pro-Moscow demonstrations that took place earlier in the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces, armed groups are now organizing with clear demands for secession. The first signs of this appeared in the distant 2005 after the Orange Revolution.

The undeclared war in Donbass

Already in the spring of 2014, armed pro-Russian groups began to move and occupy government buildings in the eastern regions of Donetsk and Luhansk declaring themselves “people’s democracies”, starting a multi-year low-intensity war between Ukrainian forces and separatists supported politically, materially and militarily by Russia.

Battles such as those at Slavyansk, Kramatorsk, and later Debaltseve demonstrated that these were not partisan riots, but organized military conflict.

The Minsk agreements (2014 and 2015) brokered by François Hollande and Angela Merkel attempted to freeze the conflict, as they had done for several years. Of course, despite the fact that with these agreements the intensity of hostilities decreased, the front line remained active until 2022. In total, from 2014 to 2022, more than 14,000 people were killed, while millions were displaced.

Eight years of “frozen” war

For many outside Ukraine, the war in Donbas seemed forgotten. In fact, as recorded by many international reports and reports, the region lived for eight years under a regime of constant tension: daily exchanges of fire, militarization, political isolation and a divided society.

The reports of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe between 2016 and 2018 are indicative. Of these, stand out the reports about Avdiyvka, a city in Donetsk that has been a field of constant confrontation between Russian and Ukrainian separatist forces throughout this period with escalations of the intensity of the battles that were not observed in other parts of the frozen front.

Pressure and removal

All this time that the conflict remained frozen in Ukraine, but the undeclared war continued, the policy of the European Union and the USA in favor of Ukraine, but also against Russia, took on the dimensions of “expelling” Moscow from everywhere. The policy of sanctions from 2014 and the annexation of Crimea continued throughout this period, while the infamous agreement of association of Ukraine with the EU was finally signed in 2014 and entered into force in 2017.

The policy of pressure throughout this time has continued with controversial results, both from the US and the EU, with the US particularly focusing on equipping Ukraine since 2015 under Obama and continuing the same policy under Donald Trump (despite the rhetoric of rapprochement with Russia).

At the same time, for its part, Russia appeared to be moving further away from the “West”, turning its attention to tightening relations with the countries of Eurasia and especially with China, North Korea and Iran. The years after the Minsk agreements essentially passed with a frozen but open front and with the confrontation between the West and Russia constantly deepening, centered on the “game” of sanctions and their circumvention on the other side.

The Zelensky factor, the Constitution and NATO

What seems to have particularly bothered Moscow was the constitutional revision in Ukraine in 2019, which brought the explicit reference to the country’s constitution that the country’s strategic goal is full integration into the European Union and NATO.

Later in the elections of that year, the victory of Volodymyr Zelensky and the new National Security Strategy of 2020 (which provided for NATO membership), but also his moves against Russophiles and friends of Putin’s Ukrainian oligarchs, reawakened Moscow’s fears, which seem to have turned into a nightmare when the winner of the 2020 US elections was the Joe Biden.

Joe Biden and attack

Biden had taken a central role in the Ukraine issue during the Barack Obama days, and Vladimir Putin was rather certain, as the moves from 2021 onwards show, that there was no room for negotiation with him.

This is also demonstrated by the events of 2021, with the concentration of Russian forces for months near the border with Ukraine, the ideologicalization of Russian aggression against Ukraine with a pseudo-historical cloak, the ultimatums to NATO shortly before Christmas of that year and finally the invasion of February 24, 2022.