These conflicts go way back. The ancestors of Ukrainians, Russians and Belarusians lived together from the 9th to the 13th centuries in the Kiev Rus, a grand principality. A Mongol invasion ended that unity. Ukraine then passed in pieces through the hands of numerous powers, including the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Ottoman Empire, Austria-Hungary and the Russian Empire. The first time Ukrainians declared independence was in 1918, shortly after the Russian Revolution. That independence did not last long and Ukraine was absorbed into the Soviet Union, as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. This was given almost the same borders as today's Ukraine after World War II. Soviet leader Khrushchev transferred the Crimean peninsula from the Russian Soviet Republic to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in 1954. Ukraine suffered greatly during the period of the Soviet Union. When Ukrainian peasants resisted the collectivization of farmland, Josef Stalin punished Ukraine by deliberately provoking a famine. Millions of Ukrainians perished. Ukraine has been independent since 1991. In that year, 90 percent of the population voted to secede from the Soviet Union. In this book we will dive deep into the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, if you want to get the full scope of what is unfolding right now, get your facts straight with truth leak books!