u/toczownik - originally from r/GenZhou
Before 2014 Viktor Yanukovych was the President of Ukraine. His government was a centre-right oligarchy. He was mildly pro-Russian, but similarly to Nazarbayev in Kazakhstan tried to play the EU and Russia against themselves to get good trade deals with everybody. When he vetoed an association agreement with the EU in 2013 and instead turned to Russia, people who were already angry at the low standard of living in Ukraine went to the streets, inspired by NGOs funded by the EU. Euromaidan protests were mostly liberal, but there was a very strong Ukrainian nationalist faction. Protests quickly escalated, with protestors storming public buildings and special forces responding by shooting live ammo. The government after about two months lost control over riots. It was not really a coup, the army was not directly involved. The government simply lost control of major Western cities and gave up. There were over 10k casualties on both sides.
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When Yanukovych fled the country and pro-EU liberals took control, they tried to use far-right militias to weaken pro-Russian counterprotests in Eastern Ukraine. This dramatically worsened already existing ethnic conflict and Russian separatists took control of many public buildings in Russian-speaking regions. They were quickly defeated everywhere but most Russian Donbas and Crimea. Ukrainian nationalists from the west responded with repressions of ethnic Russians and banned the communist party, which was initially had quite a lot of influence in Donbas. Now they are still tolerated in Donbas, but have lost any influence on local politics. LPR and DPR are both under control of Russian nationalists, who use a weird mix of Soviet and Imperial Russian aesthetics. While Ukraine started officially celebrating WW2 collaborators, they also don't shy away from using tsarist & Russian fascist symbolics.
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In 2015 the situation stagnated, Ukrainian army and various nationalist militias (including the infamous Azov battalion) didn't manage to push back the separatist militias. Ukrainian economy is deteriorating and liberals have embraced nationalism to somehow unite frustrated citizens. There was an attempt to solve the conflict peacefully with support of France, Germany and Russia. The Minsk II Protocol is aresult of these negotiations. Ukraine was obliged to create autonomous regions of Luhansk and Donetsk and guarantee amnesty for separatists who in turn had to rejoin Ukraine. before necessary laws would be passed in Ukraine, a ceasefire has been signed. Ukraine has never got around to implement Minsk II and both sides (mostly Ukraine, but not exclusively) have repeatedly broken the ceasefire. The agreement has been dead for years and stalemate continues to this day.
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There has never really been a genocide, but Ukraine is trying to push Western Ukrainian culture with more Polish and Jewish (although Ukrainian nationalists hate those ethnicities as well, leading to some diplomatic incidents with Israel and Poland) and less Russian influences. War criminals like Stepan Bandera are celebrated as national heroes.
