埼玉英語会英検１級・準１級　コミュのWhy Putin wants a neutral Ukraine?

Since Ukraine achieved independence in 1991, as the Soviet Union collapsed,
it has gradually veered towards the West - both the EU and Nato.

Russia's leader Vladimir Putin aims to reverse that, seeing the fall of the Soviet Union
as the "disintegration of historical Russia". He has claimed Russians and Ukrainians
are one people and denied Ukraine its long history: "Ukraine never had stable
traditions of genuine statehood," he asserted.

It was his pressure on Ukraine's pro-Russian leader, Viktor Yanukovych, not to sign
a deal with the European Union in 2013 that led to protests that ultimately ousted
the Ukrainian president in February 2014.

Russia then seized Ukraine's southern region of Crimea and triggered a separatist
rebellion in the east and a war that claimed 14,000 lives.

As he prepared to invade in February, he tore up an unfulfilled 2015 Minsk peace deal and accused Nato of threatening "our historic future as a nation",
claiming without foundation that Nato countries wanted to bring war to Crimea.

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Security guarantees and neutrality, the non-nuclear status of our state -
we are ready to go for it...
If I remember correctly, this is why Russia started the war.
(Volodymyr Zelensky, President of Ukraine)