this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2023
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I'll try to summarize, then. WARNING: Long post incoming, scroll to bottom for tl:dr!
In 2004, this pro-Russian politician called Viktor Yanukovych was accused of rigging that year's presidential elections. There were massive street demonstrations calling for new elections, which got named the "Orange Revolution" because the protestors wore orange, the color of the opposition. Eventually, Yanukovych relented and elections were re-run with international observers to make sure they were fair, and sure enough, the opposition won.
Jump forward five years. The opposition's had five years to blow through all their goodwill and make plenty of mistakes on their own. Yanukovych comes back onto the scene. But instead of rigging the election, this time he gets help from an American Republican operative called Paul Manafort, who helps him pull all the same culture-war ratfucking bullshit we're used to in the States on Ukraine. It depressingly works, Yanukovych wins the election fair and square.
Jump forward four more years (it's November 2013 now). During that time, Yanukovych has robbed Ukraine blind, systematically hacked away at what few democratic protections it had, and stoked culture war resentment to keep people at each other's throats and away from his. People are getting increasingly sick of his BS.
The final straw comes when Yanukovych is supposed to sign a major trade agreement with the EU, one which would let Ukrainians live and work freely there. Ukraine is desperately poor, the EU is rich and has good paying jobs, this is a deal which could dramatically change people's lives for the better. And then at the last second, Yanukovych refuses to sign the deal, and instead signs one with Russia.
Pro-Western Ukrainians took to the streets to protest. Initially, these protests were pretty small, and seemed likely to fizzle out by the end of the weekend. And then, Yanukovych makes the incredibly smart decision to sic his personal riot police on the protestors in Kyiv's Maidan square.
This is the last straw for a ton of people, who are sick of the corruption, the chaos, the government that runs roughshod over their rights and lives while leaving them to rot in poverty. The protests swell in size. The riot police step up the violence against them, but that only makes people madder, and more determined to take to the streets.
(This is also at least partly because opposition also sees this as their big political chance and publicizes the hell out of the protests, encouraging more people to join in. The US Embassy also makes no secret about being on the protestor's side, too, with the then-US Ambassador even going out to the Maidan to give cookies to the protestors one day. This is where a lot of the conspiracy theories about "US backed coup!!!!11!111!11111!!!!!!" come from, but like, my brother in Christ, you cannot psy-op hundreds of thousands of people into massive street demonstrations for months on end unless they're willing and fucking eager to play along.)
Then, on February 20th, 2014, after two months of escalating protests, the riot police open fire with live ammunition. 100 people are killed. And the protestors still refuse to give in! In fact, they begin threatening civil war if Yanukovych doesn't resign, immediately.
February 23, 2014. Yanukovych vanishes, without a trace. (A few days later, he'll pop up in Russia, where he's been living ever since.) The protestors won! Sure, Ukraine is left leaderless-- there's no Constitutional provision handling what to do if the president just up and vanishes without resigning-- but it's not like anything's likely to go wrong in the next few days while they sort things out. Right?
February 24, 2014. The residents of Crimea wake up to find soldiers all over their peninsula. They wear no insignia, refuse to answer any questions about who they are or what they want. But they speak with Russian accents. The Ukrainian military, leaderless, stripped to the bone by Yanukovych's corruption, can't do anything but watch.
Within a few weeks, "referendums" are held under the watchful eye of these mysterious men with machine guns. Crimea "votes" to join the Russian federation with 98%+ of the vote.
Four months after that, as Ukraine is gearing up to hold presidential elections to replace Yanukovych, pro-Russian "separatists" suddenly pop up in most Eastern and Southern Ukrainian oblasts, seizing control of government buildings and demanding their regions be annexed by Russia. And I'm sure the fact that these "Ukrainian separatists" all had Russian accents, and many just happened to look exactly like known FSB officers who'd "mysteriously" quit just a few days before was a total coincidence, too!
Fortunately, they're prevented from seizing power in most oblasts. Unfortunately, that's when Russian "volunteers" "on vacation" roll over the border in the Donbass with tanks they "bought at military surplus stores". (Seriously, the Russian government actually tried to claim that in its propaganda!) Again, the Ukrainian army is such a disorganized mess there's nothing it can do.
Fortunately, this time people know what's going on, so volunteer militias form to push back the invaders. (As you might expect, there was precisely zero oversight or vetting of these militias for the first few years, so some did have some pretty extremist beliefs-- this was the Azov Battalion's origin story, for example. Ukraine's since integrated most into the real army and forced them to at least make a show of abandoning their extremist beliefs; how effective this has been, someone with more knowledge of the situation than me will have to say.)
After months of fighting, the conflict settles into relatively frozen lines. At this point, the EU tries to mediate a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, called the Minsk Agreement. The deal is never actually fully implemented, mainly because Russia refused to hold up its side of the bargain. But it does cool the war down to a frozen conflict. Between 2015 and 2021, only a few dozen troops die per year, standing guard on unchanging frontlines.
Ukrainian society obviously doesn't forget or forgive any of this. But gradually, the war drops in importance in people's minds. People's minds turn towards more immediate concerns, like combating corruption, fighting poverty, and joining the EU (which is seen by most Ukrainians as necessary to accomplish the first two goals).
However, in the background, the country is rebuilding its gutted armed forces. In hopes of being good enough to join NATO, sure. But also, you know. Just in case.
And then in February 2022, "just in case" became reality.