Modern history of Ukraine

[3] In the second half of the 18th century, Catherine the Great instigated hysteria in the local Eastern Orthodox population by promising protection from Catholicism and support leading to an armed conflict Koliivshchyna in the neighboring right-bank Ukraine which was part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth and resulting in the Polish Bar Confederation, Russian military invasion of Poland and its internal affairs, and successful partitions of the last.

[citation needed] The defeat in the Polish-Ukrainian War and then the failure of the Piłsudski's and Petliura's Warsaw agreement of 1920 to oust the Bolsheviks during the 1920 Kiev offensive led almost to the occupation of Poland itself.

[citation needed] At the same time, the usage of Ukrainian was continuously encouraged in the workplace and in government affairs as the recruitment of indigenous cadre was implemented as part of the korenisation policies.

To satisfy the state's need for increased food supplies and finance industrialization, Stalin instituted a program of collectivization of agriculture, which profoundly affected Ukraine, often referred to as the "breadbasket of the USSR".

[citation needed] The times of industrialization and collectivization also brought about a wide campaign against "nationalist deviation" which in Ukraine translated into an assault on the national political and cultural elite.

As the policies of Ukrainisation were halted (1931) and replaced by massive Russification approximately four-fifths of the Ukrainian cultural elite, intellectuals, writers, artists, and clergy, had been "eliminated", executed or imprisoned, in the following decade.

Henryk Józewski, a voivode of the Wołyń Voivodeship 1928–1938, tried to defuse the conflict, advocating a self-governance autonomy for Ukrainians in Volhynia; however, he faced growing criticism from some quarters for allegedly being too Ukrainophilic.

He adds, "Stalin's immediate purpose was to present an ideological rationale for the Red Army's forthcoming invasion of Poland" and his main message was the need to avoid a revolutionary civil war.

"[18] Historian Timothy D. Snyder suggests that, "Stalin may have reasoned that returning Galicia and Volhynia to Soviet Ukraine would help co-opt Ukrainian nationalism.

[22][25] On July 13–14, 1942, the remaining population of the Równe ghetto – about 5,000 Jews – was sent by train some 70 kilometres north to Kostopil (Kostopol) where they were murdered by the 1st company of the Police Battalion "Ostland" in a quarry near woods outside the town.

[34]) After World War II some amendments to the Constitution of the Ukrainian SSR were accepted, which allowed it to act as a separate subject of international law in some cases and to a certain extent, remaining a part of the Soviet Union at the same time.

Once a Cossack steppe, the southern oblasts of Dnipropetrovsk and Zaporizhzhia were turned into a highly industrialised area with rapidly increasing impact on its environment and public health.

A pursuit to energy production sufficient for growing industry led to the gigantic nature-remastering: turning the Dnieper River into a regulated system of large reservoirs.

[citation needed] The products of the rapidly developed high-tech industry in Ukraine were largely directed for military consumption, similarly to much of the Soviet economy, and the supply and quality of consumer goods remained low compared even to the neighboring countries of the Eastern bloc.

A political crisis erupted after the opposition started massive street protests in Kyiv and other cities, and the Supreme Court of Ukraine ordered the election results null and void.

The same day Yanukovych supporter Volodymyr Rybak resigned as speaker of the parliament, and was replaced by Tymoshenko loyalist Oleksandr Turchynov, who was subsequently installed as interim president.

On June 20, a unilateral one-week truce was declared with a simultaneous ultimatum to pro-Russian mercenaries and local militants to leave the country, after which the liberation of the state began, which was thwarted by the already open Russian armed aggression.

With the help of Western countries, Ukraine managed to freeze the war on the line of demarcation, and Russia to consolidate the permanent state of uncertainty in the Donbass in the Minsk agreements.

Ukrainian citizens were granted visa-free travel to the Schengen Area for up to 90 days during any 180-day period on 11 June 2017 and the Association Agreement formally came into effect on 1 September 2017.

At the same time, he enlisted the support of oligarchic circles for major changes, except for the nationalization of Nadra Bank by Dmytro Firtash, and in the process of breaking the system of large property built by Kuchma did not happen.

On the contrary, the flight abroad of Ihor Kolomoiskyi, a Dnipro representative who helped fight separatists backed by Donetsk, and the nationalization of PrivatBank reminded many of the struggle for redistribution of property in the 1990s.Significant achievements in the foreign policy arena: support for anti-Russian sanctions, obtaining a visa-free regime with the countries of the European Union, combined with the need to overcome extremely difficult tasks within the country.

The fight against corruption was launched, limited to sentences of petty officials and electronic declarations, and the newly established NABU and NAPC were marked by scandals in their work.

[citation needed] On May 19, 2018, Poroshenko signed a Decree, which put into effect the decision of the National Security and Defense Council on the final termination of Ukraine's participation in the statutory bodies of the Commonwealth of Independent States.

According to the decision of the Stockholm Arbitration, Naftogaz has achieved compensation in the amount of 4.63 billion dollars for Gazprom's failure to supply the agreed volumes of gas for transit.

[103] Procrastination with the sale of its own confectionery factory in the Lipetsk oblast of Russia, the scandal with the use of offshore to minimize taxes paid (Panamagate) also did not contribute to the high rating of the president.

Even the historic acquisition of autocephaly from Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I (tomos) and the creation of an independent Orthodox Church of Ukraine did not help restore the wasted trust in the Ukrainians.

[citation needed] On April 21, 2019, in the second round of the presidential election, actor, and showman Volodymyr Zelenskyy won, who managed to consolidate the protest mood of various political spectrums around his own charismatic personality and get 73.23% of the vote.

[104] Early parliamentary elections on July 21 allowed the newly formed pro-presidential Servant of the People party to win an absolute majority of seats for the first time in the history of independent Ukraine (248).

[105] On March 4, 2020, due to a 1.5% drop in GDP (instead of a 4.5% increase at the time of the election), the Verkhovna Rada fired Honcharuk's government and Denys Shmyhal[106] became the new Prime Minister.

On 8 January 2020, the Boeing 737-800 operating the route was shot down shortly after takeoff from Tehran Imam Khomeini International Airport by the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC).