Not even living under a rock could keep you from hearing about this weeks latest war. Putin's aggression has been in the spotlight almost non-stop, which in turn has sparked interest in the Eastern European country. However as the saying goes, this war is a repeat of previous historical events - not of the Second World War, as many like to compare it to, but to the lesser known Soviet-Ukrainian War.
As a consequence of the First World War, the Russian Tsar had been recently ousted from power, forced to abdicate by revolutionary forces. In the power vacuum that ensued, Communist forces seized control and signed the Treaty of Brest Litovsk with Germany which allowed for the creation of the People's Republic of Ukraine, independent of the former Russian Empire. This was the first time that a unified Ukrainian nation-state had come to be on the world stage and at the time it looked like it were to last. However as fate would have it, the new Bolshevik powers were not satisfied with the loss of territory from the Russian Empire and wished to "export" their revolution worldwide.
Their sights were turned to the West: Germany was undergoing a revolution (often compared to its Russian counterpart) and Lenin wished to support his comrades over there. Between the Germans and Russians there however stood a plethora of new nation-states formed out of their former empires, namely the Poles, Belarusians, Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians. The next couple years would decide on the existance of these states, as their armies clashed both on Eastern and Western fronts.
In the middle of it all lay the fresh Ukrainian People's Republic. Whilst hardened with expirience of combat from fighting alongside the central powers, it was effectly surrounded from both sides. during 1919 it fought a short war with the equally new Polish Republic over what is now the Ukrainian city of Lviv, but at the time captured and controlled by the Poles up until the Second World War. After concluding a peace, the Poles and Ukrainians signed an alliance to combat what they percieved to be the greater threat: Soviet Russia. After two years of bitter fighting, with frontlines ranging from the Vistula and all the way to Kyiv, the war was concluded in 1921 with the Peace of Riga.
One may however note the lack of a Ukrainian state after the war: indeed, after a Soviet offensive on Kyiv in 1920 the Ukrainians had lost control of all of their territory, meaning that when combined Polish-Ukrainian forces recaptured it, it went straight to Polish administration. Ukraine then became a Soviet Republic, controlled from Moscow as a part of the USSR. Józef Piłsudski, the founder of the Polish Republic and proponent of the Intermarium & Promethian ideas told Ukrainian leadership after the Riga negotiations: "I'm sorry, gentlemen. I really am, it wasn't supposed to be like that."
