The unstoppable tide of the Bolshevik Revolution had swept across the lands of the Russian Empire. Following waves of revolutionary workers councils overthrowing the Tsarist authorities, these nascent workers led governments began to declare themselves as soviet (council) republics.

In the land known as Novorossiya under the Russian Empire, comprising Kharkov, Donetsk, Lugansk and Kherson, the proletarian government had declared themselves as the Donetsk-Krivoy Rog Republic (DKSR) on February 1918. This dream of self-autonomy would not last, however. In less than a month, orders would come directly from Moscow that the DKSR would be disbanded and merged with the Ukrinian People’s Republic (UPR) to form the Ukraine Soviet Socialist Republic (Ukraine SSR). Despite protests from the local government, the decision was not to be changed.

Just a decade prior, Rosa Luxemburg had launched into a tirade challenging Lenin’s idea of national autonomy. In her The National Question and Autonomy (1908-09), Luxemburg had criticized granting territorial autonomy for Lithuania but most of all, Ukraine, citing the latter as full of reactionary petit-bourgeois class and a country “without any historical tradition and without any national culture”. Calling the “independent Ukraine” as “Lenin’s hobby” in 1918, she warned against the dangers of Ukrainian nationalism taking roots.

And so it was decided that the industrialized, proletarian republic of Donetsk-Krivoy Rog, predominantly inhabited by ethnic Russians, was to be merged with the Ukrainian People’s Republic, with the hopes that it would dilute the reactionary nature of the Ukrainian bourgeois influence.

Little did they know that in less than a hundred years, the ethnic Russian descendants of the workers republic would end up on the wrong side of the border as the Soviet Union disintegrated, and subjected to ultranationalist violence when Ukrainian nationalism has finally erupted from its dormancy.

Fast forward to 2012, Ukraine’s economy was in deep trouble. The global financial crisis of 2009 had hit their meagre economy particularly hard - once the industrial powerhouse and global leader in shipbuilding, aviation and space research and development centers under the Soviet Union, Ukraine has been relegated to the second poorest economy in Europe.

An opportunity arises when Ukraine was invited to join the EU Association Agreement in the early 2010s, an explicitly free trade agreement that could set Ukraine on the path towards EU accession. The catch? Ukraine has to open up its economy to foreign capital (at this point, land sales in Ukraine was still restricted and not privatized as had happened in other neoliberalized countries), and accepting the austerity conditions of IMF loans that would have included cutting social services and education.

However, this was far from the only difficulties. Because Ukraine had a tariff free agreement with Russia (the latter being Ukraine’s largest trading partner), the signing of the EU Association Agreement would mean that European goods would be able to enter the Russian market freely through exploiting the existing bilateral tariff free agreement, but Russian goods would not be able to do the same in reverse. This obviously concerned Russia, and so President Putin had proposed a three-way meeting between the EU, Ukraine and Russia to settle the tariff issue. Putin’s proposal was rejected by the EU. The ulterior motive behind Ukraine signing the free trade agreement has revealed itself, and the Russians saw the impending peril to their domestic industries.

Around the same time, Putin had floated the idea of a Eurasian Customs Union, a protectionist bloc that would encompass Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan to resuscitate the Soviet-era heavy industry chain. However, the free trade nature of the EU Association Agreement explicitly forbids Ukraine from joining the customs union (a protectionist bloc) were they to choose the EU route.

Thus, Ukraine had arrived at a bind, forced upon them by the conditions set explicit by the EU - it was only allowed to choose a side: the EU or Russia.

Given how much ongoing trade there were with Russia, this was obviously not an easy choice. President Viktor Yanukovych, who contrary to popular narrative was not pro-Russian but instead very much supported joining the EU side, hesitated. Appalled by the austerity demands of the EU agreement, he began to entertain the potential counter-offers from Moscow, which included a similar deal, even significant discounts of Russian gas, but without the austerity part.

Again, contrary to popular narrative, Yanukovych did not agree to Moscow’s deal. He simply decided to pause signing the agreement to buy a bit more time to re-assess the situation. But it was already too late. Ultranationalist fascists saw Yanukovych’s hesitation as signs that he had betrayed the cause of Ukraine becoming part of Europe, and launched a coup in late 2013.

The Maidan revolution followed, nationalist violence erupted, Yanukovych fled, and the rest is history.

On February 23, 2014, the very first day of taking over the Ukrainian government, the fascist coup regime immediately set to repeal the 2012 Kivalov-Kolesnichenko Language Law, which had granted the status of regional language to Russian and other minority languages.

Seen as an infringement of their rights to cultural autonomy, and understood that this was merely the very first act towards ethnic cleansing, the ethnic Russians that mostly inhabited the eastern Ukraine (Donetsk, Lugansk etc.) and who had been subjected by ultranationalist violence over the years since the collapse of the USSR, rebelled against the coup regime and formed separatist factions that demanded independence.

The Ukrainian Civil War ensued. Forced to choose between letting the Ukrainian fascists gaining power and allowing ethnic cleansing of Russians to take place at their borders, or to military intervene at the expense of inviting international condemnation, Russia chose the latter. Crimea which had voted overwhelmingly for secession (not recognized by the international community) was immediately annexed. Meanwhile, aided by the Russian military, the Donbass separatists gave the unprepared Ukrainian Armed Forces a severe beating.

(For this, Russia was to be punished with sanctions. As if that was not enough, when Malaysian airliner MH17 was shot down over eastern Ukraine, even more severe sanctions were imposed against Russia. The economic growth trajectory of Russia since the early 2000s was completely wiped out, and Russia would endure an economic crisis that would last for 44 months (nearly 4 years) before its growth would return pre-sanctions baseline, only for Covid pandemic to hit a year later.)

A truce was made by the end of August 2014. Known as the Minsk Protocol, the Donbass provinces (but not Crimea) were to be returned to the Ukrainian authority, but Donetsk and Luhansk had to be given increased autonomy through local governance, especially with regards to cultural matters. This was such that language and cultural bans cannot be ordered directly from politicians in Kyiv.

The Ukrainian fascists immediately broke the truce and were given another beating by the Donbass separatists. An annoyed Putin had to be dragged back to the negotiating table by the French president Hollande and German chancellor Merkel, who both gave their personal promises that Ukraine would behave and adhere to the protocol this time.

Minsk II was signed in February 2015, and yet in the following years, the Ukrainian fascists had made no attempt to implement the protocol as agreed. In fact, no criminal prosecutions were even made against the Azov fascists who were involved in the torture and murder of civilians. They were instead celebrated as “heroes of Ukraine” by state media. Stepan Bandera became a symbol of Ukrainian history, and rallies were often held openly with explicit Nazi emblems in honor of Bandera. (Imagine if Berlin held open rally that honor Adolf Hitler in this day and age.)

In the years since, Russia kept waiting for Ukraine to honor their agreement, but it would never come. Instead, for the next 8 years, NATO would arm Ukraine and provided military aid and training to the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

This was all too clear that Ukraine had no intention of honoring Minsk. Their goal has always been to militarily reconquer the Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts with the help of NATO rearmament.

Moscow became increasingly concerned, but somehow still held out the hope that things would somehow turn for the better. This illusion would soon be shattered.