After Russia, Ukraine is the largest state in Europe. Since gaining independence in December 1991, the country has organized itself politically as a parliamentary-presidential republic; it ceded its nuclear weapons to Russia in 1994 and received guarantees of its territorial integrity in return for the Budapest Memorandum. When pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych refused to sign a planned association agreement with the EU at the end of 2013, there were months of mass protests, the so-called Euromaidan revolution. After Yanukovych's escape in February 2014, Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula in violation of international law. It was the beginning of the Russian war against Ukraine. He continued with the support of pro-Russian militias that proclaimed the separatist republics in Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine and fought against the Ukrainian army. On February 24, 2022, Russia launched a full-scale war of aggression against Ukraine with advances on the capital Kiev, the major cities of Kharkiv and Sumy, the coast of the Sea of Azov and the Donbass. Map
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