Here is the second part of the timeline, as reported in my recent booklet: Dear Giorgia, what if Russia is right? (21st Century Publisher), currently only available from Amazon. The first part was the years of promises. Russians and Ukrainians promised each other an unbreakable friendship in 1654, reaffirmed in 1954. Then Ukraine promised to remain a neutral state, Russia promised that it would consider the territories of Ukraine inviolable, and NATO promised that it would not expand east of Germany. The years after 1996 are the years of betrayal of all promises, including that of Volodymyr Zelensky to stop the civil war in Donbass. Here it is.
06.18.1997: Washington, Conference on «NATO Expansion». Joe Biden, then Senator from Delaware, advanced the plan to expand NATO, even though he knew that Russia would have a “vigorous and hostile response.”
1999: First NATO enlargement to the East. Betraying the promise of 1990, NATO expands with the accession of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic. In the following years, until 2020, 11 more states will join NATO, including those of the Baltic States bordering Russia. In 2023 and 2024, Sweden and Finland will join.
2000: Vladimir Putin is elected President of the Russian Federation. He will be reconfirmed in the next elections (the last one in 2024).
29.03.2004: Second NATO enlargement to the East. Betraying the promise of 1990, NATO expands to the East with the accession of seven more states, including those in the Baltics bordering Russia.
10.02.2007: Munich, Conference on International Security. Putin intervenes by complaining about NATO expansion and asking: “What happened to your promises?”
22.01.2010: At the end of his term, Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko proclaims Stepan Bandera a national hero. Bandera was a neo-Nazi who had sworn allegiance to Adolf Hitler; and like Hitler he envisioned a Ukrainian state purged of non-Ukrainian elements (particularly ethnic Russians and Jews). He was supposed to be tried at Nuremberg, but was helped by the US to escape to Munich (where he was later executed in 1959 by a KGB agent). To this day, there are statues of Bandera in Ukraine and streets and squares named after him.
02/07/2010: Pro-Russian Viktor Yanukovych is elected new President of Ukraine. He was deposed in a coup in 2014, just one year after the next elections.
February 18-22, 2014: Kiev, culmination of the Euro-Maidan protests and coup d’état. Illegitimate President, Viktor Yanukovych, is deposed on February 22. The protests had begun 3 months earlier because Yanukovych refused to sign trade agreements with the EU. Futile reasons, therefore, especially since there would have been new elections the following year and the signing or not of those agreements could have been incorporated into the normal democratic dynamic. The protests were a pretext for the coup. There will be a trial to establish the responsibilities for the violence of February 18-20, and the verdict of October 2023 will exonerate Yanukovych’s government: that of Euro-Maidan was a real coup. And it was fomented by the USA. The coup would have brought to power – as it did – ultra-nationalist elements hostile to the ethnic Russian population. The latter will organize to separate with referendums (in Crimea and Donbass); elsewhere there will be protest demonstrations (the one in Odessa will end with a massacre).
03.16.2014: Referendum on the reunification of Crimea with the Russian Federation. The turnout was over 84% of Crimeans, and 95% voted in favor. Many European countries, the USA, Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand will impose sanctions on Russia for the annexation of Crimea, which they consider illegitimate. The rest of the world does not impose any sanctions, and some have recognized Crimea in the Russian Federation.
06.04.2014: The Donbass War begins. It is effectively a civil war between the Donbass separatists and the central government in Kiev, and will continue as such for 8 years until Moscow’s intervention with the Special Military Operation of 24.02.2022. Attempts to end it (Minsk Agreements) will fail.
02.05.2014: Odessa massacre. The protests against the coup were violently suppressed: ultra-nationalists attacked the demonstrators, who took refuge in a building which the ultra-nationalists set on fire and massacred the fugitives (at least 48 demonstrators died). The government that then took power covered up any investigation and those responsible were never punished.
09.05.2014: Kharkiv, Referendum for independence. The turnout was 47% and therefore the target was not reached. quorum (over 60% of voters were in favor of independence).
11.05.2014: Donetsk and Lugansk: Referendum for independence. Voter turnout was over 71% in Donetsk and over 81% in Lugansk. Those in favor of independence were over 79% in Donetsk and over 86% in Lugansk. The referendums were recognized by Russia, which will recognize each of the two independent republics only in 2022.
25.05.2014: Viktor Poroshenko is elected President of Ukraine. Poroshenko is an ultra-nationalist oligarch, a strong opponent of ethnic Russians. At the end of his term, he will amend the Constitution, allowing Ukraine a path to NATO membership, and will promulgate the law that essentially bans the Russian language from public life in the country.
21.11.2014: Presidential Decree no. 875/2014 of 14.11.2014 comes into force. With it Poroshenko cut all payments (salaries, pensions, social benefits, public services) to the inhabitants of Donbass, accompanying the measure with the following words: We will have a job and they will not. We will have pensions, but they will not. Our children will go to kindergarten and school, while their children will have to hide in cellars.».
19.02.2019: Amendments to the 1996 Constitution of Ukraine. The preamble and paragraph 5 of Article 85 of the amended Constitution establish the will to join NATO, thus betraying the “solemn” promise of 16.07.1990.
25.04.2019: Provisions on the functioning of the Ukrainian language. The law essentially bans the Russian language from public life in the country.
12.07.2021: Vladimir Putin publishes the long article «On the historical unity of Russians and Ukrainians». In it, denouncing the civil war in Donbass which has caused over 13,000 deaths, Putin writes: «Apparently Ukraine does not need Donbass».
February 8-9, 2022: Minsk agreements. The agreements envisaged the end of the Donbass War in exchange for the granting of large autonomy to the Russian-speaking regions of Donbass. On February 8, in a public press conference attended by Emmanuel Macron as President-in-Office of the EU, Ukrainian President Zelensky expressed his willingness to implement the Agreements, but the next day, with a press release, he reneged on his promise.
02/17/2022: Military expedition of the Ukrainian Central Government against Donbass. In response to the distress call, Russia will begin, on the 24th of the month, the Special Military Operation. The currently (September 2024) ongoing war begins.
24.02.2022: The start of the Special Military Operation. Russia invades Ukraine with the aim, according to Putin, of a) protecting ethnic Russian Ukrainian citizens abused by the Ukrainian central government (de-Nazifying Ukraine), b) neutralizing military bases hostile to Russia, c) enforcing the maintenance of the “solemn” promise of 1990 with which Ukraine guaranteed its neutrality.
06.14.2024: Peace offer from Russia. The offer will be rejected by the West. At the time of the conclusion of this book (September 2024) the war continues.
08.08.2024: Ukrainian army incursion into Russian territory. Curiously, the West has recognized a motivation for this violation of International Law by Ukraine, while any justification has been denied for the Special Military Operation of Moscow on February 24, 2022.
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