The Ukrainians protested bitterly at the annexation. The Russians had been party to the Budapest Memorandum in 1994, which guaranteed Ukraine’s territorial integrity in exchange for its giving up its nuclear weapons. But Moscow insisted that the Budapest Memorandum had been invalidated by what it described as a “coup d’état,” allegedly engineered by the West, that had overturned what it asserted was the “legitimate” government of Ukraine. Then separatists, paramilitary forces, and Russian soldiers “on vacation” started military operations in the Donbas, in southeastern Ukraine, the country’s
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