A brief essay highlighting important historical events that I consider to be underrepresented in the media. Without this fundamental context, one simply cannot have any judgment on the conflict and the nuanced relationship between Ukraine and Russia. 

Ukraine is a sovereign and independent, democratic, social, law-based state. It is not “the Ukraine”, nor is it the same as, or similar to, Russia. The Ukrainian language is not the same as Russian, and neither is it a dialect or a peasant language. 

Ukraine has been a recognised member of the UN since the UN’s foundation in 1945 as a Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, up until the desired dissolution of the USSR in 1991. Then it gained its full independence as Ukraine and again - was recognised by all members of the UN. 

This brief chronology outlines what Ukraine has been resisting for decades, now more than ever:

LIST OF RUSSIAN AGGRESSIONS 

• 2022 — Full-scale Invasion of Ukraine
• Russia launches a full-scale invasion to physically overthrow the Ukrainian government to prevent the country’s integration with the EU and NATO, which are seen as existential threats to Russia. A total of over 1 million casualties (killed and wounded) has been reached from both sides. 
• 2014 — Crimea 
• Annexation of Crimea by “green men” - i.e. soldiers without any national insignia which is illegal under the Geneva Conventions - despite its official transfer to Ukraine in 1954, followed by military aggression and occupation of Donbas (Eastern Ukraine) as a response to Euromaidan. Euromaidan is the name for the Revolution of Dignity which was a series of protests from Nov 2013 to Jan 2014. They were sparked by then-Russian pawn president of Ukraine V. Yanukovych’s decision to suspend an agreement that would bring Ukraine closer to becoming a member of the EU. Hundreds of lives were lost due to brutal clashes with the police. Eventually, the president fled and new elections were held. The Kremlin, however, did not let my freedom-loving people let it slide so easily.
• 20th century — Ukraine 
• Not to mention the recurring mass deportations to Siberia (including both of my great-grandmother's), systematic repression and the shooting of the Intelligentsia with the most prominent examples being the “Executed Renaissance” and the “Sixtiers”. Holodomor, 1932-33 (“Holod” meaning “hunger”): a targeted man-made famine that killed 3-4 million Ukrainians, covered up by Stalin as “collectivisation”. Russification in the form of over 130+ decrees just to ban the Ukrainian language - then you ask why there are so many Russian-speaking Ukrainians? 
• Others include: 2008 — Georgia, 2015 — Syria, 1994-..-2009 — Chechnya.

Speaking of the language, it fascinates me how the two are thought to be so similar, when my Russian friends can hardly understand me. In fact, they are about as similar as Portuguese is to Spanish, yet no one questions the legitimacy of Portuguese. 

• Budapest Memorandu (1994)
• Ukraine had the third largest nuclear weapon arsenal in the entire world, all of which it gave up in exchange for security guarantees from the US, UK, and Russia. The memorandum states: “...none of their weapons will ever be used against Ukraine except in self-defence…”. And what did we get in return? War from one guarantor and a crippling debt from another. This alone should be enough to justify the billion-dollar aid packages sent to Ukraine, because yes, my country is entitled to them. 
• Russia has consistently targeted civilian infrastructure, a direct violation of the Geneva Conventions (1949). 
• In the summer of 2023 I almost experienced it myself, while visiting my hometown in Western Ukraine - actually one of the safest regions. I was meant to fly back to London on 26th June (from Poland), but decided to delay my departure by another week. Ironically, on the day I was originally supposed to leave, I was in the middle of nowhere with my friends, when the sky whistled… A high speed missile; followed by another 10 and 2 defence aircraft dissecting the air 200m over our teenage heads in the span of a quarter of an hour. I was clearly reminded to leave. 

If Ukraine did not have a distinct national identity there would simply be no need for Russia to so forcefully try to erase it. Ukrainian capital Kyiv has been the capital of the East Slavic civilization since 482 while Moscow was a very wet swamp for seven more centuries. Thus, the entire propagandistic narrative that Ukrainians are somehow lesser than Russians is baseless and ridiculous. 

As the Kremlin regime keeps testing the tolerance of civilised countries, it seems as though this world is turning a blind eye, with Trump’s activity in office and European general passivity. With Trump going as far as calling Zelensky an “illegitimate president” and even a “dictator” for not carrying out elections after his term ended a few months after the start of the full-scale invasion. This is a bizarre accusation as Ukraine had declared martial law and has remained under it since then. Under martial law, Ukraine’s constitution prohibits holding elections (note, the UK also postponed elections during the WWII), since democratic processes like voting requires security, stability and free movement - none of which can be guaranteed when 11 million citizens are abroad, and another few are trapped in the occupied regions. Lifting martial law is not practical and our government does not change the constitution whenever it whims - like Russia did in 2020, allowing V. Putin to run (and obviously illegitimately win) his fifth presidential term - 21 years in office as of Apr 2025. 

Russia still illegally holds a seat on the Security Council of the UN (for context: the Security Council is made up by the 5 winners of WWII, which back then included the USSR - after its dissolution Russia claimed to be the “continuing state” and, without any formal vote or legal process, took the seat). Everyone forgets that Ukrainian losses were 6.9 million (civilian and military) out of a population of 41 million, compared to Russia’s 13.9 million out of 110 million; and that most of the fighting took place on Ukrainian territory. Yet people still use “Russia” and the “Soviet Union” interchangeably when referring to WWII.

There are still individuals telling me that more people have been locked up in the UK than in Russia for posting online; the Labour Party is a “rEgiMe”, they said, perhaps because they are too engulfed in the Twitter disinformation hell. They clearly had not seen the “Foreign Agent law”, which expanded in Russia in 2022. 

But I have.

 I have lived in this information bubble my whole life

.So will the world really turn a blind eye to the truth, to reality?