UKRAINE: WAR CHRONICLES
2014, 2015
From the end of February 2014, demonstrations by pro-Russian and anti-government groups took place in major cities across the eastern and southern regions of Ukraine, in the aftermath of the Euromaidan movement and the 2014 Ukrainian revolution.
During the first stage of the unrest, Crimea was annexed by the Russian Federation after a crisis in the region, Russian military intervention, and an internationally criticized referendum. Protests in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts escalated into an armed separatist insurgency.
This led the Ukrainian government to launch a military counter-offensive against the insurgents, which resulted in the ongoing War in Donbass. From the beginning of March 2014, protests by pro-Russian and anti-government groups took place in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts of Ukraine, together commonly called the "Donbass”.
The armed conflict between the separatist forces of the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics (DPR and LPR respectively), and the Ukrainian government, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), as caused at least 9,640 deaths as of mid-September 2016.
