What happened in Ukraine during World War II and the existence of the Soviet Union?

In 1941, during the WWII, Germany invaded Ukraine. More than six million Ukrainians, the vast majority of them civilians, died in the war.

In 1944 the Soviet Union regained control of Ukraine under Joseph Stalin and expanded its borders to include territory taken from Romania, Poland, and Czechoslovakia.

In 1991, the Ukrainian parliament declared independence, and a referendum held on December 1 of that year ratified the separation.

Putin’s Soviet Nostalgia

Russian President Vladimir Putin considers Ukrainians and Russians “one people,” noting that the western edge of present-day Ukraine was incorporated into the Soviet Union by the late dictator Joseph Stalin.

Early in his presidency, Putin, a former colonel in Soviet KGB intelligence, told his nation: “The disappearance of the Union soviet It was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”

Ukraine was the republic soviet that Putin especially regretted losing.

Putin constructed a justification for the ongoing war in Ukraine last year when he published a 5,000-word landmark essay, essentially arguing that the Ukrainians and the Russians were one nation. Independent Ukraine, in his opinion, was an “artificial division” of two peoples, and therefore not a real state.

According to author Susan Glasser, Ukraine is the crown jewel that was lost. “Ukraine is a sister country. She wrote an entire essay…essentially spinning some sort of pseudo-historical tale about why Ukraine shouldn’t be separated from mother Russia.”

In that rehearsal last summer, Putin he wrote that Russians and Ukrainians are “one people… a single whole.”

Experts say that Putin he has always held the view that the countries on Russia’s periphery have to be pro-Russian, and he sees a pro-Western Ukrainian government as a threat to that ideal.

Before the invasion, Putin gave a speech on the history of the Soviet Union, saying that modern Ukraine “was entirely created by communist Russia.”

For Putin, the territory of Ukraine “is being used by third countries to create threats against the Russian Federation itself,” he said.

Air-raid sirens sounded in Ukraine on Thursday for the first time since World War II, after Russia announced a “special military operation” on its territory after months of tensions in anticipation of an invasion.

Following the invasion, US President Joe Biden said that Vladimir Putin he is cut off from the rest of the world and wants to revive the former Soviet Union.

“He has much bigger ambitions than Ukraine. He wants, in fact, to re-establish the former Soviet Union. That’s what it’s all about. And I think his ambitions are completely contrary to where the rest of the world has come.”

With information from Nathan Hodge, Tara John, Jeremy Herb, Barbara Starr and Ellie Kaufman of CNN and Germán Padinger of CNN en Español