Bosnia and Herzegovina is a country in Southeast Europe, situated on the Balkan Peninsula. It borders Serbia to the east, Montenegro to the southeast, and Croatia to the north and southwest. In the south it has a 20 kilometres long coast on the Adriatic Sea, with the town of Neum being its only access to the sea. Bosnia has a moderate continental climate with hot summers and cold, snowy winters. In the central and eastern regions, the geography is mountainous, in the northwest it is moderately hilly, and in the northeast it is predominantly flat. Herzegovina, the smaller, southern region, has a Mediterranean climate and is mostly mountainous. Sarajevo is the capital and the largest city.
Victory Day is a holiday that commemorates the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany in 1945. It was first inaugurated in the 15 republics of the Soviet Union following the signing of the German Instrument of Surrender late in the evening on 8 May 1945. The Soviet government announced the victory early on 9 May after the signing ceremony in Berlin. Although the official inauguration occurred in 1945, the holiday became a non-labor day only in 1965, and only in certain Soviet republics.
The Yugoslav Wars were a series of separate but related ethnic conflicts, wars of independence, and insurgencies that took place in the SFR Yugoslavia from 1991 to 2001. The conflicts both led up to and resulted from the breakup of Yugoslavia, which began in mid-1991, into six independent countries matching the six entities known as republics that had previously constituted Yugoslavia: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Serbia, and Macedonia. SFR Yugoslavia's constituent republics declared independence due to unresolved tensions between ethnic minorities in the new countries, which fuelled the wars. While most of the conflicts ended through peace accords that involved full international recognition of new states, they resulted in a massive number of deaths as well as severe economic damage to the region.
The Bosnian War was an international armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between 1992 and 1995. The war is commonly seen as having started on 6 April 1992, following a number of earlier violent incidents. The war ended on 14 December 1995 when the Dayton accords were signed. The main belligerents were the forces of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia, and the Republika Srpska, the latter two entities being proto-states led and supplied by Croatia and Serbia, respectively.
The politics of Europe deals with the continually evolving politics within the continent of Europe. It is a topic far more detailed than other continents due to a number of factors including the long history of nation states in the region as well as the modern day trend towards increased political unity amongst the European states.
NATO is a military alliance of thirty-two European and North American countries that constitutes a system of collective defense. The process of joining the alliance is governed by Article 10 of the North Atlantic Treaty, which allows for the invitation of "other European States" only and by subsequent agreements. Countries wishing to join must meet certain requirements and complete a multi-step process involving political dialog and military integration. The accession process is overseen by the North Atlantic Council, NATO's governing body. NATO was formed in 1949 with twelve founding members and has added new members ten times. The first additions were Greece and Turkey in 1952. In May 1955, West Germany joined NATO, which was one of the conditions agreed to as part of the end of the country's occupation by France, the United Kingdom, and the United States, prompting the Soviet Union to form its own collective security alliance later that month. Following the end of the Franco regime, newly democratic Spain chose to join NATO in 1982.
Ukraine does not recognize same-sex marriage or civil unions. The Constitution of Ukraine defines marriage as between "a woman and a man". The issue of legal recognition for same-sex couples has become particularly acute after the start of Ukraine's accession to the European Union in 2022 and the Russian large-scale invasion of Ukraine during the Russo-Ukrainian War.
Independence Day of Ukraine is a state holiday in modern Ukraine, celebrated on 24 August in commemoration of the Declaration of Independence of 1991.
NATO maintains foreign relations with many non-member countries across the globe. NATO runs a number of programs which provide a framework for the partnerships between itself and these non-member nations, typically based on that country's location. These include the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council and the Partnership for Peace.
The Russo-Ukrainian War is an ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine, which 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. The first eight years of conflict also included naval incidents, cyberwarfare, and heightened political tensions. In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine and began occupying more of the country.
The National Guard of Ukraine is the Ukrainian national gendarmerie and internal military force. It is part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, responsible for public security. Originally created as an agency under the direct control of the Verkhovna Rada on 4 November 1991, following Ukrainian independence, it was later disbanded and merged into the Internal Troops of Ukraine in 2000 by then-President Leonid Kuchma as part of a "cost-saving" scheme. Following the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, amidst the Russian intervention, the National Guard was re-established, and the Internal Troops were disbanded.
"Glory to Ukraine!" is a Ukrainian national salute, known as a symbol of Ukrainian sovereignty and resistance to foreign aggression. It is the battle cry of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. It is often accompanied by the response "Glory to the heroes!".
The war in Donbas, or Donbas war, was a phase of the Russo-Ukrainian War in the Donbas region of Ukraine. The war began 12 April 2014, when a fifty-man commando unit headed by Russian citizen Igor Girkin seized Sloviansk in Donetsk oblast. The Ukrainian military launched an operation against them. It continued until it was subsumed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Volodymyr Oleksandrovych Zelenskyy is a Ukrainian politician and former actor who has been serving as the sixth president of Ukraine since 2019.
On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine in an escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War that started in 2014. The invasion became the largest attack on a European country since World War II. It is estimated to have caused tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilian casualties and hundreds of thousands of military casualties. By June 2022, Russian troops occupied about 20% of Ukrainian territory. From a population of 41 million in January 2022, about 8 million Ukrainians had been internally displaced and more than 8.2 million had fled the country by April 2023, creating Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. Extensive environmental damage caused by the war, widely described as an ecocide, contributed to food crises worldwide.
The Russo-Ukrainian War has seen foreign volunteers participate on both sides of the conflict. Most foreign fighters joined the conflict during one of two waves. The first wave happened from 2014 to 2019 during the War in the Donbas and consisted of approximately 17,241 foreign fighters. The second wave is considered by researchers to have been much larger and began in 2022 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
There have been several rounds of peace talks to halt the Russian invasion of Ukraine (2022–present) and end the Russo-Ukrainian War (2014–present) in an armistice. The first meeting was held four days after the start of the invasion, on 28 February 2022, in Belarus. It concluded without result, with delegations from both sides returning to their capitals for consultations. A second and third round of talks took place on 3 and 7 March 2022, on the Belarus–Ukraine border, in an undisclosed location in the Gomel region of Belarus. A fourth and fifth round of talks were respectively held on 10 and 14 March in Antalya, Turkey.
During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, which began on 24 February 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has made a number of speeches in multiple formats, including on social media and to foreign legislatures. The speeches have received significant attention, with a number of commentators citing a positive effect on Ukrainian morale and on international support for Ukrainian resistance to the invasion.
Denys Hennadiyovych Prokopenko is a Ukrainian military officer who is a Lieutenant Colonel of the National Guard of Ukraine and Commander of the 12th Special Forces Brigade "Azov", as well as a prominent participant of the Russian-Ukrainian war.
The Walk of the Brave was laid in Kyiv on the initiative of President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy for the 31st anniversary of Ukraine's independence. The place was not chosen by chance, because it was on the Constitution Square opposite the Verkhovna Rada.
