Documentation

SUMMARY

Ukraine's desire to join the European Union dates back to 1993 when the government declared that integration into the EU was the main foreign policy objective. However, Kiyv did join the Council of Europe on November 9, 1995. Upon accession, it committed itself to respecting its general obligations under the Statute of the Council of Europe, namely pluralist democracy, the rule of law, and respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms of all persons under its jurisdiction.

However, the desire to join the EU is not the root of the war in Ukraine. The latter is a speech from April 2005 held by Putin during which he deplored the fall of the Soviet Union. However, the speech lamented the choice to join the European Union, which Czechia, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, and Slovenia had made a year earlier.

In 2010, Putin was working on a "project" that in October 2011 became introduced as the Eurasian Union, a vast trade and political bloc stretching from China to the edge of the EU. A year later, Ukraine and the European Union initiated the Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area Agreement (DCFTA) ahead of the accession talks.

Putin didn't want Ukraine to be part of the European Union as it would bring the eastern border of the economic bloc to Russia's doorstep. He demanded to be part of the accession talks but only to keep the -then-president Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych under pressure. On November 21, 2013, Yanukovych announced his decision to suspend the preparations for signing the Association Agreement with the EU.  Brussels announced the suspension of these talks a month later.

Yanukovych's decision was made due to Putin's blackmail by threatening to shut down the gas supply to Ukraine. It was not the first time that Putin used gas as a political weapon in his Ukraine politics. He had used it in 2009 and in 2018.

The people in the capital of Ukraine have been demonstrating since November of that year to have their voices heard,. They wanted to be part of the European Union. Yanukovych's decision turned the demonstration into a protest. When he ordered the deployment of the Berkut, a special police force of the Ukrainian Ministry Of Internal Affairs, Yanukovych only escalated the situation. The revolution broke out. The seven-minute video is from January 21, 2014.

In the heat of the battle between protesters and the Berkut in February 2014, Putin took advantage of the situation by sending a unit of Russia's special forces, the Spetsnaz, secretly to Luhansk Oblast. They were seen arriving in Krasnodon in four BMP 97 Vystrel armored vehicles.

On February 26, 2014, Putin sent a unit to Simferopol, Crimea to seize the local administration building.

On March 1, 2014, after having invaded Ukraine via the Black Sea and the Crimea Bridge, Russian troops began to seize Crimea without meeting any resistance. A month later, Putin began to focus on the Donbas region where "unrest" broke out on April 12th.

There were demonstrations against the Maidan Revolution and in support of Russia. Protesters demanded local referendums on joining Russia which is against the constitution of Ukraine.

But, a video taken on May 5, 2014, shows a man we could identify as Igor 'Strelkov' Girkin, a Russian FSB colonel directing pro-Russian militiamen in Slovyansk. The "unrest" was organized at least in Donetsk Oblast.

Girkin became later known as one of the suspects in the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH-17 that took place above Hrabove, also known as Grabovo a village in Horlivka Raion in Donetsk Oblast

SUMMARY

The media have systematically spread the suggestion that the invasion on February 22, 2022, is another war but that is not the case. It is a new phase of the war that Putin started on the same date but 8 years earlier.

Russia has a history of never declaring war or declaring the end of war. This is at least when Russia was the Soviet Union that invaded Afghanistan. That is why the Russians speak about "military operation" and "special military operation".

The predawn of the new phase of the war was the conflict that the Belarusian dictator Lukashenko had with the EU over election fraud and the way he crushed the protest that led to sanctions by Brussels.

In response to these measures, Lukashenko employed migrants in his political war with the EU. Migrants from Syria, Iraq, and Pakistan were reportedly seen taking flights from Turkey to Minsk and Moscow. Those who arrived in the Russian capital were brought to Minsk but the migrants had to walk to the border with Poland. Here are some videos showing the situation at the border with Poland.

Lukashenko was creating an EU border crisis that turned into "NATO's Article 5" after the Belarusian border militia fired shots over the border fence into Poland which is a member of the military alliance. This border incident forced Lukaskenko to visit Putin for 'consultations'. Putin decided to send two strategic nuclear bombers to the border of Belarus with Poland "to patrol". This is how Putin began to drag NATO into his own created problems.

Amid a rapidly escalating border row with Poland, Lukashenko said on November 15, 2021, he has renewed his request with Putin to acquire Iskander missile systems for the Belarusian army.

On November 29, 2021, Lukashenko announced joint military drills with Russia on its southern border with Ukraine and accused the NATO military alliance of building up offensive capabilities near its borders. However, he did not mention a specific date. Western and Ukrainian officials reacted by saying that Russia is building up forces near Ukraine. Moscow denied having any such plan, but satellite images and mobile phone footage posted by Russians on social media showed the deployment of Russian materiel to the border with Ukraine.

By the end of December 2021, both Belarus and Russia were saying that they had plans to hold joint military drills but still no specific date was mentioned. That fueled curiosity as we were asking what would Russia deploy to Belarus?

On January 10, 2022, we started monitoring the military movement across Russia to determine what was being deployed to Belarus and what Belarus was deploying within its territory. The latter was mainly to the southwest region that borders Ukraine and Poland.

Putin was deploying his troops and materiel by train and mainly from the poor regions in southeast and far east of Russia. Their destinations were the southeast region of Minsk and the region south of Belarus bordering Ukraine.  The first arrivals in Belarus were BM-21 Grad MLRS launchers on January 13, 2022.

A week later, a video was found showing the arrival of three covered mobile launchers for the nuclear capable Iskander ballistic missile at the railway station in Asipovichy (Osipovichi) in the Belarusian region of Mahilyow Oblast. These missiles where not seen during previous Zapad drills in Belarus. The Kremlin denied that these missiles were deployed to Belarus.

Interesting detail: workers of the Belarusian railways were complaining about the number of arrivals they had to handle. They said that they never have seen such a huge number of arriving Russian trains during annually held Zapad drills before.

The deployments across Russia were still ongoing amid the drills in Belarus. Suspicions began to rise when the announcement came that the drills would be extended until February 20th.

On February 21, 2022, Putin ordered the deployment of troops to Donetsk Oblast. However, the order was given while the first Russian military convoys were entering Donetsk Oblast, and one convoy already had reached the city of Donetsk while Putin had yet to ask the Duma for approval first.

Unlike the motive Putin had in 2014, that Ukraine must not be an EU member as Putin needed that country to create with Belarus a buffer zone to keep the eastern border of the EU away, this time he came up with bizarre arguments to defend the launch of a new phase. But Ukraine's President Zelenskyy preferred to solve differences in view by talks. He called Putin but the war czar refused to pick up the phone.

On February 22, 2022, Putin attacked Ukraine from Belarus. The military exercises were intended to mislead the world. 

The documentation concerned collecting information about:

• developments in Russia regarding establishing a trade union in response to the rising number of East European countries who wanted to be part of the European Union.;
• developments happening between Ukraine and the European Union.
• developments within the Russian defense industry after Putin ordered the modernization of the Russian military.
• Putin's meddling in the association talks between Ukraine and the European Commission
• the revolution after Yanukovich refused to sign the association agreement under Putin's pressure.
• the crackdown of the protest.
• Russian activities in Luhansk before the invasion of Ukraine to annex Crimea.
• the process to oust Viktor Yanukovich as president of Ukraine.
• Russian activities in Crimea before the annexation.
• the annexation of Crimea
• Russian activities in the Donbas were led by the Russian FSB Colonel Igor Girkin.
• the war in the Donbas.
• MH-17

• whether the annual drill in Belarus was genuine.
• what military materiel was deployed from Russia to Belarus, and to the Russian border with Ukraine.
• Putin's claim that he has no plans to attack Ukraine (see previous points)
• Putin's claim that he's not attacking civilians by assessing the victims
• Putin's claim that Russia is not targeting civilian buildings by assessing what buildings were targeted
• what happened north of Kiyv during attempts to invade via Belarus.
• the massacres in Buch and Kharkiv
• the environmental catastrophe after the Russians blew up the Nova Kakhovka Dam
• the near nuclear dangers after the Russians first seized the Chernobyl nuclear plant, and later the Zaporizhzhia plant.
• the illegal use of civilian objects as detention facilities.
• the killing of imprisoned members of the AZOV battalion held in an industrial complex.
• the concentration camps in the Donbas
• abduction and illegal deportation of children to Russia.
• abduction and illegal deportation of adults to the Far East of Russia.
• mass graves in the area of Mariupol.
• alteration of the country's identity in Mariupol into that of the war belligerent.

On April 5, 2022, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said he wants his country to become a “'big Israel' with its own face” after the Russian invasion ends. And, on October 11, 2023, he called on the world to support the Israelis.

Since the start of the Russian Federation's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, 11,973 civilians, including 622 children, have been killed, according to the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights.

In January 2025, the official Palestinian Health Ministry count of more than 46,600 Palestinians dead amounts to more than 10 times its count of losses in all previous Gaza conflicts since 2008. Over 13.000 children are among the victims.

We found it unethical to continue documenting the developments in Ukraine.

We're sorry for the inconvenience that we can explain.

The archive (more than 30.000 files) is too large and upgrading the used ISP package is not the solution.

GLOSM is a self-funded project. Technically, it is more than keeping a (huge) website online.

In addition to standard costs like your domain and package, the larger the website, the more web space you need, and the higher the monthly cost.

Then, there are extra monthly costs, such as keeping the website secure and protected. Hardware doesn't last a lifetime. You have to update, repair, or replace hardware parts occasionally.

The documentation runs locally for the reasons above.