3 decades of turmoil bring Ukraine to perhaps its greatest crisis
Ukraine sits surrounded by more than 100,000 Russian troops on its borders, with world leaders flying in and out of Kyiv hoping to reach a solution to the crisis that averts a looming Russian invasion.
The situation is the most high-stakes embodiment of the country's 30-year history of being caught between East and West, wavering between the influences of Moscow and the U.S. with its European allies.
Through scandal, conflict and two major protest movements, Ukraine has emerged with its democracy intact, at times choosing pro-Western leaders and other times choosing those aligned with the Kremlin.
Now, it faces its biggest test as Russia has closed in. Since the illegal annexation of the Crimean peninsula in 2014, Ukrainians have turned away from Moscow and toward the West, with popular support on the rise for joining Western alliances like NATO and the European Union.
Read on to understand how Ukraine came to where it is today.
The 1990s: Independence from the Soviet Union
1989 and 1990
Anti-communist protests sweep central and Eastern Europe, starting in Poland and spreading throughout the Soviet bloc. In Ukraine, January 1990 sees more than in a human chain stretching some 400 miles from the western city of
