Leonid Danylovych Kuchma is a Ukrainian politician who was the second president of Ukraine from 19 July 1994 to 23 January 2005. The only President of Ukraine to serve two terms, his presidency was marked by democratic backsliding and the growth of the Ukrainian oligarchs, as well as several scandals and improvement of Russia–Ukraine relations.
Viktor Volodymyrovych Medvedchuk, also known as Viktor Vladimirovich Medvedchuk, is a former Ukrainian lawyer, business oligarch, and politician who has lived in exile in Russia since September 2022 after being handed over to Russia in a prisoner exchange. Medvedchuk is a pro-Kremlin Ukrainian politician and a personal friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Heidi Tagliavini is a Swiss former diplomat. She is noted for her service with international aid and peacekeeping missions; a 2003 profile in the monthly magazine of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung called her "Switzerland's outstanding diplomat". She was charged with leading the European Union investigation into the causes of the 2008 Russo-Georgian war, and represented the OSCE in the 2015 negotiations about the Minsk II agreement concerning the war in Donbass.
Nestor Ivanovych Shufrych is a Ukrainian politician who has served in the Verkhovna Rada since 1998. Since 2017, Shufrych has been in the pro-Russian Eurosceptic political party Opposition Platform — For Life, which was outlawed in 2022 following the launch of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. During the invasion, Shufrych was arrested in September 2023 under suspicion of treason.
Snap parliamentary elections were held in Ukraine on 26 October 2014 to elect members of the Verkhovna Rada. President Petro Poroshenko had pressed for early parliamentary elections since his victory in the presidential elections in May. The July breakup of the ruling coalition gave him the right to dissolve the parliament, so on 25 August 2014 he announced the early election.
From the end of February 2014, in the aftermath of the Euromaidan and the Revolution of Dignity, which resulted in the ousting of Russian-leaning Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, demonstrations by Russian-backed, pro-Russian, and anti-government groups took place in major cities across the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine. The unrest, which was supported by Russian military and intelligence, belongs to the early stages of the Russo-Ukrainian War.
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.
The Luhansk People's Republic or Lugansk People's Republic is an internationally unrecognised 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.
Pavlo Anatoliiovych Klimkin is a Ukrainian diplomat who from 19 June 2014 until 29 August 2019 served as Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine. A Moscow-educated physicist, he has worked in the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry since 1993, with positions including director of the department for the European Union, as well as deputy foreign minister in the First Azarov Government, where he played a central role in negotiating the Ukraine–European Union Association Agreement.
Alexander Vladimirovich Zakharchenko was a Ukrainian separatist leader who was the head of state and Prime Minister of the Donetsk People's Republic, a self-proclaimed state and Russian-backed rebel group which declared independence from Ukraine on 11 May 2014. Zakharchenko was appointed Prime Minister in August 2014 after his predecessor Alexander Borodai resigned, and went on to win the early November 2014 election for the position.
During the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War between the Ukrainian government forces and pro-Russian separatists in the Donbas region of Ukraine that began in April 2014, many international organisations and states noted a deteriorating humanitarian situation in the conflict zone.
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. The first, known as the Minsk Protocol, was drafted in 2014 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.
The Second Battle of Donetsk Airport was an engagement between the Ukrainian military and volunteer forces. and forces of the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) affiliated with Russia during the War in Donbas. An earlier battle in May 2014 had left Donetsk International Airport in Ukrainian control. Despite a ceasefire agreement, the Minsk Protocol, in place since 5 September 2014, fighting broke out between the warrying parties on 28 September 2014.
The 2014 Donbas general elections were held on 2 November 2014 by the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics, which were at that time both members of the now defunct Novorossiya confederation.
The following lists events that happened during 2015 in Ukraine.
The Volnovakha bus attack was an attack on a highway checkpoint near the village of Buhas outside of the Volnovakha municipality in the Donetsk Oblast, Ukraine on 13 January 2015. It resulted in the deaths of 12 passengers of an intercity bus and injuries to 18 others in the area. The attack was the largest single loss of life since the signing of the Minsk Protocol in September 2014, which attempted to halt the War in Donbass. The incident has been labeled an "act of terror" by both the Ukrainian authorities as well as the rebels.
The Normandy Format, also known as the Normandy contact group, is a grouping of states who met in an effort to resolve the war in Donbas and the wider Russo-Ukrainian War. The four countries who make up the group—Germany, Russia, Ukraine, and France—first met informally in 2014 during the 70th anniversary of D-Day celebrations in Normandy, France.
The Shyrokyne standoff was a battle for the control of the strategic village of Shyrokyne, located approximately 11 km (6.8 mi) east of Mariupol city limits, between Ukrainian forces led by the Azov Regiment, and Russian-backed separatists, between February and July 2015. It was part of the larger war in Donbas. On 10 February 2015, the Azov Regiment launched a surprise offensive against pro-Russian separatists associated with the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) with the aim of pushing the separatist forces away from Mariupol city limits. The village is located just 10 km (6.2 mi) from the Ukrainian-controlled city of Mariupol, and was used as a launching point for separatist attacks on the city, which served as the administrative centre of Donetsk Oblast whilst DPR forces control Donetsk city. Fighting continued until 3 July 2015, when DPR forces unilaterally withdrew from Shyrokyne. Subsequently a cease-fire was declared in the area.
The OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine was an international civilian observer mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) mandated to contribute to reducing tensions and to help foster peace in Ukraine. The mission was deployed in March 2014, following the Russian annexation of Crimea and the outbreak of open conflict in eastern Ukraine. The mission ended on 31 March 2022, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
This is the timeline of the war in Donbas for the year 2019. More than 110 Ukrainian soldiers were killed in the conflict between Ukrainian government forces and Russian-backed separatists in 2019.
