Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin is a Russian politician and former intelligence officer who is the president of Russia. Putin has held continuous positions as president or prime minister since 1999: as prime minister from 1999 to 2000 and from 2008 to 2012, and as president from 2000 to 2008 and since 2012. He is the longest-serving Russian or Soviet leader since Joseph Stalin.
The Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation is the principal security agency of Russia and the main successor agency to the Soviet Union's KGB; its immediate predecessor was the Federal Counterintelligence Service (FSK) which was reorganized into the FSB in 1995. The three major structural successor components of the former KGB that remain administratively independent of the FSB are the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), the Federal Protective Service (FSO), and the Main Directorate of Special Programs of the President of the Russian Federation (GUSP).
Dmitry Nikolayevich Kozak is a Russian politician who has served as the Deputy Kremlin Chief of Staff since 24 January 2020. He previously served as the Deputy Prime Minister of Russia from 2008 to 2020. He has the federal state civilian service rank of 1st class Active State Councillor of the Russian Federation.
Vladislav Yuryevich Surkov is a Russian politician and businessman. He was First Deputy Chief of the Russian Presidential Administration from 1999 to 2011, during which time he was often viewed as the main ideologist of the Kremlin who proposed and implemented the concept of sovereign democracy in Russia. From December 2011 until May 2013, Surkov served as the Russian Federation's Deputy Prime Minister. After his resignation, Surkov returned to the Presidential Executive Office and became a personal adviser of Vladimir Putin on relationships with Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Ukraine. He was removed from this duty by presidential order in February 2020.
The Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is an intergovernmental military alliance in Eurasia consisting of six post-Soviet states: Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, and Tajikistan, formed in 2002. The Collective Security Treaty has its origins in the Soviet Armed Forces, which was replaced in 1992 by the United Armed Forces of the Commonwealth of Independent States, and was then itself replaced by the successor armed forces of the respective independent states.
Dmitry Anatolyevich Medvedev is a Russian politician who has been serving as deputy chairman of the Security Council of Russia since 2020. Medvedev was also president of Russia between 2008 and 2012 and prime minister of Russia between 2012 and 2020.
The United States and Russia maintain one of the most important, critical, and strategic foreign relations in the world. Both nations have shared interests in nuclear safety and security, nonproliferation, counterterrorism, and space exploration. Due to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, relations became very tense after the United States imposed sanctions against Russia. Russia placed the United States on a list of "unfriendly countries", along with South Korea, Taiwan, European Union members, NATO members, Switzerland, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Micronesia, Japan and Ukraine.
There are currently no diplomatic or bilateral relations between Russia and Ukraine. The two states have been at war since Russia invaded the Crimean peninsula in February 2014, and Russian-controlled armed groups seized Donbas government buildings in May 2014. Following the Ukrainian Euromaidan in 2014, Ukraine's Crimean peninsula was occupied by unmarked Russian forces, and later illegally annexed by Russia, while pro-Russia separatists simultaneously engaged the Ukrainian military in an armed conflict for control over eastern Ukraine; these events marked the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War. In a major escalation of the conflict on 24 February 2022, Russia launched a large scale military invasion across a broad front, causing Ukraine to sever all formal diplomatic ties with Russia.
Valery Vasilyevich Gerasimov is a Russian army general serving as the Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces and First Deputy Minister of Defence.
The ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War began in February 2014. Following Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity, Russia occupied and annexed Crimea from Ukraine and supported pro-Russian separatists fighting the Ukrainian military in the Donbas War. These first eight years of conflict also included naval incidents and cyberwarfare. In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and began occupying more of the country, starting the biggest conflict in Europe since World War II. The war has resulted in a refugee crisis and tens of thousands of deaths.
The Luhansk or Lugansk People's Republic is a republic of Russia in the occupied parts of eastern Ukraine's Luhansk Oblast, with its capital in Luhansk. The LPR was proclaimed by Russian-backed paramilitaries in 2014, and it initially operated as a breakaway state until it was annexed by Russia in 2022. The entire territory of LPR is viewed as sovereign territory of Ukraine by nearly all UN member states.
The Minsk agreements were a series of international agreements which sought to end the Donbas war fought between armed Russian separatist groups and Armed Forces of Ukraine, with Russian regular forces playing a central part. After a defeat at Ilovaisk at the end of August 2014, Russia forced Ukraine to sign the first Minsk Protocol, or the Minsk I. It was drafted by the Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine, consisting of Ukraine, Russia, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), with mediation by the leaders of France and Germany in the so-called Normandy Format. After extensive talks in Minsk, Belarus, the agreement was signed on 5 September 2014 by representatives of the Trilateral Contact Group and, without recognition of their status, by the then-leaders of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People's Republic (LPR). This agreement followed multiple previous attempts to stop the fighting in the region and aimed to implement an immediate ceasefire.
Leonid Ivanovich Pasechnik is a Ukrainian-born politician who has served as Head of the Luhansk People's Republic (LPR) since 2017. He holds the position in acting capacity ever since the illegal and unrecognized Russian annexation of Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk and Zaporizhzhia oblasts in 2022. Pasechnik had previously held office as the LPR's Minister of State Security from 2014 to 2018.
Events in the year 2021 in Ukraine.
In March and April 2021, prior to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Russian Armed Forces began massing thousands of personnel and military equipment near Russia's border with Ukraine and in Crimea, representing the largest mobilisation since the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. This precipitated an international crisis due to concerns over a potential invasion. Satellite imagery showed movements of armour, missiles, and heavy weaponry towards the border. The troops were partially withdrawn by June 2021, though the infrastructure was left in place. A second build-up began in October 2021, this time with more soldiers and with deployments on new fronts; by December over 100,000 Russian troops were massed around Ukraine on three sides, including Belarus from the north and Crimea from the south. Despite the Russian military build-ups, Russian officials from November 2021 to 20 February 2022 repeatedly denied that Russia had plans to invade Ukraine.
Many states, international organizations, and civil society actors worldwide had expressed their reactions to the then-escalating crisis between Russia and Ukraine that started in March 2021. The crisis eventually culminated in a Russian invasion of Ukraine, beginning on 24 February 2022.
Events pertaining to world affairs in 2022, national politics, public policy, government, world economics, and international business, that took place in various nations, regions, organizations, around the world in 2022.
On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians is an essay by Russian president Vladimir Putin published on 12 July 2021.
Kyrylo Oleksiiovych Budanov is a Ukrainian military leader who has served as the chief of the Main Directorate of Intelligence of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine since August 2020. Budanov previously served as the deputy director of one of the departments of the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine. He holds the rank of lieutenant general.
On 19 January 2009, two Russian journalists, Anastasia Baburova and Stanislav Markelov, were shot and killed by members of the neo-Nazi organization Battle Organization of Russian Nationalists. Baburova became the fourth Novaya Gazeta journalist to be killed since 2000.
