• Russia presented its list of demands in December 2021, some of its demand were a written guarantee that the West would stop any further eastward expansion of NATO, the removal of NATO troops from Poland and the Baltic states, and the possible withdrawal of US nuclear weapons from Europe.
• But the most important of its demands included that Ukraine should never be allowed to join NATO.
• The presidential election of 2004 brought Ukraine to the brink of disintegration and civil war which led to the first blow to the Russia-Ukraine relation in the form of the Orange Revolution.
• These peaceful protests protest succeeded in preventing an allegedly Russian-backed candidate Viktor Yanukovych from winning the Ukrainian presidency and made possible the election of his reformist rival, Viktor Yushchenko to win. Viktor Yanukovych did become the 4^th president of Ukraine came into power in 2010.
• For further context into Russia-Ukraine relations we have to talk about Crimea.
• Russia annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula in 2014 after the country’s Moscow-friendly president Viktor Yanukovych was driven from power by mass protests.
• Russia supported the two separatist insurgency movements in Ukraine’s east, the pro-Russian rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk declared the Donetsk People’s Republic and Luhansk People’s Republic as independent states.
• Following which The Minsk II agreement was brokered by France and Germany in 2015 to help end the large-scale battles.
• The 13-point agreement obliged Ukraine to offer autonomy to separatist regions and amnesty for the rebels while Ukraine would regain full control of its border with Russia in the rebel-held territories.
• Although Moscow says the accord is not applicable to them as it has not been a party in the conflict.
• In December tensions rose high as Russia amassed its troops at the border with Ukraine, while the situation quickly escalated as President Putin officially recognized the pro-Russian breakaway regions of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR) as independent states allowing him to move the Russian troops into those areas.

• Ukraine and Russia have deep historical and cultural they have been linked since the 9th century when Kyiv became the capital of the ancient state of Russia.
• Together with Belarus, Russia and Ukraine formed the Slav core of the Soviet Union as from 1654 Russia and Ukraine were under the rule of the Russian Tsar.
• Historian Serhii Plokhy, a professor of Ukrainian history in Harvard University, wrote in The Financial Times that it was during the mid-19th century when, in order to accommodate the rising Ukrainian national movement, Russian imperial thinkers formulated a concept of the tripartite Russian nation consisting of the Great Russians or Russians in today’s understanding of the word), Little Russians, or Ukrainians, and the White Russians, or Belarusians.
• After the revolution led by Lenin led to the collapse of the Tsar’s empire, the Ukrainians created a state of their own and declared independence in January 1918.
• Although it turned out to be short-lived as the Bolsheviks (member of a wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party which was led by Vladimir Lenin) took control over most of Russian Ukraine in 1920, that two-year period planted the seeds of independence among the Ukrainian people.
• “The Bolsheviks were forced to recognise Ukraine as a separate nation and even grant a pro forma independence to the Ukrainian Soviet republic,” Plokhy wrote.
• Ukraine played a key role not only in the creation of the USSR but also in its dissolution.
• As such the Ukrainian referendum of December 1 1991, in which over 90% of participants voted to leave the USSR. Russia could not bear the burden of the Union without its second-largest economy, so it can be said that Ukraine leaving the Soviet Union set the stage for the crisis today.

• Ever since the Cold War ended in the early 1990s, NATO has expanded eastward by taking in 14 new countries, including some that were part of the Soviet Union which is seen as a threat by Russia.
• Ukraine will be able to join NATO because of assurances made in 2008. After pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych was removed in 2014 Ukraine became closer politically to the West.
• It has done joint military exercises with NATO and been delivered weapons including US anti-tank missiles.
• Russia fears Ukraine joining NATO, Putin said NATO may use Ukraine as a launchpad for missiles targeted at Russia.
• Taras Kuzio, a British academic, wrote on the Atlantic Council’s website, “The real cause of today’s crisis is Putin’s quest to return Ukraine to the Russian orbit.
• For the past eight years, he has used a combination of direct military intervention, cyber attacks, disinformation campaigns, economic pressure, and coercive diplomacy to try and force Ukraine into abandoning its Euro-Atlantic ambitions.
• The failure of these efforts has led us to the current confrontation, with Russia now warning of ‘military-technical measures’ if it does not succeed in re-establishing its dominance over Ukraine.”

• Vladimir Putin was born on 7^th October 1952 and is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who is the president of Russia from 2012.
• He is the second-longest currently serving European president after Alexander Lukashenko of Belarus.
• He worked as a KGB foreign intelligence officer for 16 years, rising to the rank of lieutenant colonel, before resigning in 1991 to begin a political career in Saint Petersburg. He moved to Moscow in 1996 to join the administration of president Boris Yeltsin.
• He briefly served as director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) and secretary of the Security Council, before being appointed as prime minister in August 1999.
• After the resignation of Yeltsin, Putin became acting president and, less than four months later, was elected outright to his first term as president.
• He was re-elected in 2004.
• As he was then constitutionally limited to two consecutive terms as president, Putin served as prime minister again from 2008 to 2012 under Dmitry Medvedev, and returned to the presidency in 2012 in an election marred by allegations of fraud and protests; he was re-elected again in 2018.
• In April 2021, following a referendum, he signed into law constitutional amendments including one that would allow him to run for re-election twice more, potentially extending his presidency to 2036.
• Under Putin’s reign the Russian economy grew on average by seven percent per year, following economic reforms and a fivefold increase in the price of oil and gas. He also led Russia during a war against Chechen separatists, re-establishing federal control of the region.
• As prime minister under Medvedev, he oversaw military reform and police reform, as well as Russia's victory in its war against Georgia.
• During his third term as president, Russia annexed Crimea and sponsored a war in eastern Ukraine with several military incursions made, resulting in international sanctions and a financial crisis in Russia.
• Under Putin's leadership, Russia has experienced democratic backsliding and a shift to authoritarianism. Putin's rule has been characterised by endemic corruption, the jailing and repression of political opponents, the intimidation and suppression of independent media in Russia, and a lack of free and fair elections.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy 

• Volodymyr Zelenskyy born 25 January 1978 is a Ukrainian politician who serves as the sixth and current president of Ukraine.
• Zelenskyy is a former actor and comedian.
• Zelenskyy grew up as a native Russian speaker in Kryvyi Rih, a major city of Dnipropetrovsk Oblast in central Ukraine.
• Prior to his acting career, he obtained a degree in law from the Kyiv National Economic University.
• He then pursued comedy and created the production company Kvartal 95, which produced films, cartoons, and TV shows including the TV series Servant of the People, in which Zelenskyy played the role of the Ukrainian president. The series aired from 2015 to 2019 and was immensely popular.
• Zelenskyy announced his candidacy in the 2019 Ukrainian presidential election on the evening of 31 December 2018, alongside the New Year's Eve address of then-president Petro Poroshenko.
• As president, Zelenskyy has been a proponent of e-government and unity between the Ukrainian- and Russian-speaking parts of the country's population.
• His communication style heavily uses social media, particularly Instagram.  His party won a landslide victory in a snap legislative election held shortly after his inauguration as president.
• Zelenskyy promised to end Ukraine's protracted conflict with Russia as part of his presidential campaign, and has attempted to engage in dialogue with Russian president Vladimir Putin.
• His administration faced an escalation of tensions with Russia in 2021, culminating in the launch of an ongoing full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022.

• This War will be a major blow to the global economy according to The International Monetary Fund (IMF), it will undoubtedly hurt growth and raise prices of oil and gas and as Russia and Ukraine are major commodity producers this war will carry major ramifications for the world economy as it is barely recuperating from the impact of covid pandemic.
• With Ukraine and Russia accounting for up to 30% of the global exports for wheat, food prices, too, have skyrocketed.
• Poverty in Ukraine will increase from1.8% in 2021 to 19.8% in 2022 and a prolonged war could push nearly 30% population into poverty according to the models developed by the UN.
• The IMF echoed similar concerns. It said in March that, “Steeper price increases for food and fuel may spur a greater risk of unrest in some regions, from Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America to the Caucasus and Central Asia, while food insecurity is likely to further increase in parts of Africa and the Middle East.”
• The conflict disrupted Ukraine’s planting and harvest season, destroyed critical fields, stores, infrastructure and production, especially in eastern Ukraine.
• In Middle East and North Africa this social tensions, especially in countries with weaker social safety nets, fewer job opportunities. This extends to Egypt which imports about 80% of its wheat from Russia and Ukraine.
• According to the IMF, economies reliant on oil imports would see wider fiscal and trade deficits along with more inflation pressure. However, exporters in Middle East and Africa may benefit from higher prices.
• In the long term, the war may fundamentally alter the global economic and geopolitical order should there be a reconfiguration of supply chains, fragmentation of payment networks, shift in energy trade and countries rethink reserve currency holdings, it said.
• According to the International Energy Agency, “Oil prices were already rising prior to the war alongside a rebound in demand that accompanied the global economic recovery and after supply concerns remerged when OPEC+ production fell short of expectations amid limited spare capacity”.
• Even though Russia and Ukraine combined account for less than 3% of global exports and less than 2% of global imports, the financial body adds, the conflict and subsequent sanctions have frayed trade connectivity by disrupting transit routes Furthermore, higher fuel prices and insurance premiums have pushed up shipping costs.
• The global impact on services trade as outbound travel was disrupted with airspace closures, travel restrictions, sanctions and increased fuel prices.
• Russia and Ukraine are among the top 10 countries for total global departures and a key source of revenue for tourism-reliant countries in the Europe, East Asia and the Pacific, Middle East, North Africa and South Asia.
• World Bank highlighted the high debt among emerging markets and developing economies. As per its estimates, these economies account for about 40% of the global GDP. The dilemma for policymakers was to trade between containing inflation and preserving economic recovery post pandemic. 
• Now the situation has suddenly changed for countries with high debt, limited reserves and payments due in the near-term, example being Sri Lanka which was considering an IMF funding for some relief.
• Financial spill-overs are most likely to be felt in advanced economies with exposure to Russian financial assets, including some Italian, French and Austrian banks, according to World Bank.