Standing in the basement archive of Kyiv’s Independence Museum, I’m struck by a yellowing newspaper from August 1991. The headline declares Ukraine’s sovereignty in bold type—a moment when this nation of 52 million broke from the collapsing Soviet empire. Three decades later, many of those aspirations remain unfulfilled, trapped in Russia’s gravitational pull.
“Moscow never truly accepted our departure,” explains Oleksandr Boichenko, 67, who participated in Ukraine’s independence movement as a young historian. “What we’re witnessing today didn’t begin in 2022 or even 2014—it’s the continuation of an imperial project that never ended.”
Through dozens of interviews conducted across Ukraine over the past six months, a pattern emerges: Russia’s full-scale invasion represents not a new conflict but the violent climax of a decades-long struggle for genuine independence. Those who lived through the Soviet collapse and Ukraine’s birth describe a constant battle against Russian influence—sometimes overt, often covert.
“In the early 1990s, we were naive,” admits Natalia Yakovenko, former Ukrainian diplomat who served in the first post-independence government. “We believed declarations and treaties would protect our sovereignty. We didn’t understand Russia was merely regrouping.”
The initial euphoria of independence quickly confronted harsh realities. Ukraine inherited Soviet-era economic dependencies, particularly energy reliance that Moscow weaponized during critical moments. The 2006 and 2009 gas disputes demonstrated how energy could become an instrument of political pressure, with Russia cutting supplies during winter months to extract concessions.
According to data from the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, Russia initiated 87 separate economic pressure campaigns against Ukraine between 1991 and 2013, targeting everything from steel exports to agricultural products. These economic levers complemented political interference that intensified whenever Ukraine showed Western ambitions.
“Putin considers the Soviet collapse the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century,” notes Mykhailo Zhirokhov, military historian I’ve collaborated with on previous reporting projects. “Ukraine’s independence represents the most significant piece of that ‘catastrophe’ from the Kremlin’s perspective.”
Russia’s opposition to Ukrainian sovereignty manifested through various channels. The 2004 Orange Revolution revealed Moscow’s hand in Ukrainian politics when its preferred candidate, Viktor Yanukovych, attempted to steal the election. Viktor Yushchenko’s subsequent poisoning—which left his face permanently disfigured—showed the lengths to which anti-independence forces would go.
“I survived two assassination attempts,” says Heorhiy Moskalenko, 78, who led pro-independence demonstrations in Lviv during 1990-91. We speak in his modest apartment surrounded by memorabilia from those hopeful days. “The KGB never stopped operating here. They just changed business cards.”
The cultural dimension of Russia’s influence campaign remained equally persistent. Ukrainian language and culture faced systematic undermining through Russian media dominance and historical narratives that positioned Ukraine as “Little Russia”—a peripheral identity dependent on Moscow’s approval.
UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) reports from 2000-2010 documented how Ukrainian-language education gradually increased but faced constant political pushback during pro-Russian government periods. Ukrainian-language publishing represented just 29% of all books printed in Ukraine as recently as 2013, according to national publishing data.
“For decades, they told us our language was inferior—suitable for folk songs but not science or international affairs,” explains Lyudmyla Hryniv, 54, a schoolteacher from Dnipro. “Decolonization starts with reclaiming your voice.”
The 2014 Revolution of Dignity marked a decisive turn. When then-President Yanukovych rejected an EU Association Agreement under Russian pressure, mass protests erupted. Russia’s response—annexing Crimea and launching a proxy war in eastern Ukraine—confirmed what many independence-era activists had long warned: Moscow would use force rather than accept Ukraine’s westward path.
“We paid for each step toward true independence with blood,” reflects Serhiy Zhadan, acclaimed Ukrainian writer who participated in the 2014 protests. “First with the Heavenly Hundred, then with thousands in Donbas. Now the entire country stands against the empire.”
The documents in Kyiv’s Independence Museum tell this story through artifacts: independence declarations, Orange Revolution banners, and memorial plaques for the fallen. But equally revealing are economic statistics showing Ukraine’s painful diversification away from Russia. Ukrainian exports to Russia fell from 25.7% of total exports in 2012 to just 4.7% by 2021, according to Ukraine’s State Statistics Service.
Energy dependency—once Moscow’s most powerful leverage—has undergone similar transformation. Ukraine reduced Russian gas imports from 28 billion cubic meters in 2013 to zero direct purchases by 2016, instead adopting reverse flows from European partners, according to Naftogaz data.
“Economic independence was always the precondition for political freedom,” argues Yuriy Vitrenko, former head of Ukraine’s state energy company. “Russia understood this before we did.”
The full-scale invasion launched in February 2022 represents the culmination of this decades-long resistance to Ukrainian independence. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s pre-war essay denying Ukraine’s historical legitimacy as a nation and subsequent annexation claims over Ukrainian territories revealed the fundamental nature of the conflict.
As one elderly veteran of Ukraine’s independence movement told me while sheltering from Russian missiles in a Kharkiv metro station: “In 1991, we declared independence. In 2022, we’re earning it.”
Through centuries of imperial and Soviet rule, through decades of post-independence pressure, and now through all-out war, the Ukrainian struggle for genuine sovereignty continues. Each generation has taken up this fight, facing increasingly desperate Russian attempts to restore control. What Moscow never anticipated was that each assault would only strengthen Ukrainian national identity.
The yellowing newspapers in Kyiv’s archive tell only the beginning of a story still unfolding through blood and resistance—a nation’s long walk to freedom, interrupted but never stopped.
