This Is Not A Drill with Gavin Esler cover image

The Ukraine War Ep. 1: The Eve of the War

This Is Not A Drill with Gavin Esler

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The End of the Soviet Union

Ukraine's very existence has been bound up with Putin's feelings of resentment and hostility since 1991. The more Russia pushed for independence, that is the Russian Federation, the more it pushed Ukraine to become independent at the same time. In 2002 when Ukraine publicly announced its goal of joining NATO, they saw that in fact Vladimir Putin had just agreed with NATO to deepen the NATO-Russia relationship. But what happened then was the United States told the Ukrainians, we're prepared to support your desire to join NATO, provided you do your homework. And President Kuchman, they really didn't do their homework. So you had this situation in 2008 when the Ukrainian government, then led by President Nuzchenko

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