Ukraine’s membership aspirations

• In response to Ukraine’s aspirations for NATO membership, Allies agreed at the 2008 Bucharest Summit that Ukraine will become a member of NATO. They also agreed that Ukraine’s next step on its way to membership was the Membership Action Plan (MAP), NATO’s programme of political, economic, defence, resource, security and legal reforms for aspirant countries. In 2009, the Annual National Programme was introduced as Ukraine’s key instrument to advance its Euro-Atlantic integration and related reforms.
• From 2010 to 2014, Ukraine pursued a non-alignment policy, which it terminated in response to Russia’s aggression. In June 2017, the Ukrainian Parliament adopted legislation reinstating membership in NATO as a strategic foreign and security policy objective. In 2019, a corresponding amendment to Ukraine's Constitution entered into force.
• In September 2020, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy approved Ukraine's new National Security Strategy, which provides for the development of the distinctive partnership with NATO with the aim of membership in NATO. In September 2022, following Russia’s illegal attempted annexations of Ukrainian territory, Ukraine reiterated its request for NATO membership.

The bloodiest week in Ukraine’s post-Soviet history concluded on February 21 with an EU-brokered agreement between Yanukovych and opposition leaders that called for early elections and the formation of an interim unity government. The parliament responded by overwhelmingly approving the restoration of the 2004 constitution, thus reducing the power of the presidency. In subsequent votes, the parliament approved a measure granting full amnesty to protesters, fired internal affairs minister Vitaliy Zakharchenko for his role in ordering the crackdown on the Maidan, and decriminalized elements of the legal code under which Tymoshenko had been prosecuted. Yanukovych, his power base crumbling, fled the capital ahead of an impeachment vote that stripped him of his powers as president. Meanwhile, Tymoshenko, who had been released from prison, traveled to Kyiv, where she delivered an impassioned speech to the crowd assembled in the Maidan. Fatherland deputy leader Oleksandr Turchynov was appointed acting president, a move that Yanukovych decried as a coup d’état. On February 24 the interim government charged Yanukovych with mass murderin connection with the deaths of the Maidan protesters and issued a warrant for his arrest.

Ukraine crisis: Sevastopol
Unidentified soldiers accompanied by Russian military vehicles patrolling Sevastopol, Ukraine, on March 1, 2014, a few weeks before Russia annexed Crimea and the city.(more)As pro-Russian protesters became increasingly assertive in Crimea, groups of armed men whose uniforms lacked any clear identifying marks surrounded the airports in Simferopol and Sevastopol. Masked gunmen occupied the Crimean parliament building and raised a Russian flag, as pro-Russian lawmakers dismissed the sitting government and installed Sergey Aksyonov, the leader of the Russian Unity Party, as Crimea’s prime minister. Voice and data links between Crimea and Ukraine were severed, and Russian authorities acknowledged that they had moved troops into the region. Turchynov criticized the action as a provocation and a violation of Ukrainian sovereignty, while Russian Pres. Vladimir Putincharacterized it as an effort to protect Russian citizens and military assets in Crimea. Aksyonov declared that he, and not the government in Kyiv, was in command of Ukrainian police and military forces in Crimea.

On March 6 the Crimean parliament voted to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation, with a public referendum on the matter scheduled for March 16, 2014. The move was hailed by Russia and broadly condemned in the West. Meanwhile, Yatsenyuk affirmed Kyiv’s position that Crimea was an integral part of Ukraine. On the day of the referendum, observers noted numerous irregularities in the voting process, including the presence of armed men at polling stations, and the result was an overwhelming 97 percent in favour of joining Russia. The interim government in Kyiv rejected the result, and the United States and the EU imposed asset freezes and travel bans on numerous Russian officials and members of the Crimean parliament. On March 18 Putin met with Aksyonov and other regional representatives and signed a treaty incorporating Crimea into the Russian Federation. Western governments protested the move. Within hours of the treaty’s signing, a Ukrainian soldier was killed when masked gunmen stormed a Ukrainian military base outside Simferopol. Russian troops moved to occupy bases throughout the peninsula, including Ukrainian naval headquarters in Sevastopol, as Ukraine initiated the evacuation of some 25,000 military personnel and their families from Crimea. On March 21 after the ratification of the annexation treaty by the Russian parliament, Putin signed a law formally integrating Crimea into Russia