CHRONOLOGY Mid 800s Scandinavians establish a trade-route along the Dnieper.
988 Prince Volodymyr baptised in Chersonesus.
1037 Santa Sofia Cathedral completed.
1240 Mongol army under Batu Khan captures Kiev.
1362 Lithuanian army under Grand Duke Algirdas captures Kiev.
1363 Lithuanian victory over the Mongols at the Battle of Blue Waters.
1386 Grand Duke Iogaila of Lithuania marries Queen Jadwiga of Poland, and is crowned Polish King.
Early 1400s First Cossack outposts established.
1553 Zaporozhian Sich founded.
1569 Union of Lublin creates the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
1596 Union of Brest creates the Uniate church.
1648 Khmelnystky Rebellion begins.
1654 Treaty of Pereyaslav. Khmelnytsky accepts Russian protection.
1657–’86 ‘The Ruin’. War between Russia, Poland, Turks and Cossacks for control of Ukraine.
1686 ‘Eternal Peace’ between Russia and Poland hands Kiev and Cossack lands east of the Dnieper over to Russian rule.
1687 Mazeppa appointed Hetman of Russian-ruled Ukraine.
1708 Swedish army under Charles XII enters Ukraine. Mazeppa declares support for Charles.
1709 Battle of Poltava. Swedes and Cossacks defeated by Peter the Great.
1773 First partition of Poland. Galicia comes under Austrian rule.
1774 Treaty of Kuchuk Kainarji ends the Russo-Ottoman war.
1775 Catherine the Great destroys the Zaporozhian Sich.
1781 Catherine dissolves the Hetmanate.
1783 Catherine annexes Crimea.
1795 Third and final partition of Poland.
1840 Shevchenko’s Kobzar published.
1847 Shevchenko arrested and exiled.
1848 ‘Springtime of Nations’. Polish risings in Cracow and Lviv. Ukrainians’ ‘Supreme Ruthenian Council’ declares loyalty to the Hapsburgs.
1861 Elected assemblies created in Vienna and Lviv, with limited Ukrainian representation.
1863–’64 Polish rising.
1876 Edict of Ems bans all Ukrainian-language publishing and teaching in the Russian empire.
1881 Alexander II assassinated by anarchists. Pogroms in Kiev, Odessa and Yelizavetgrad (Kirovohrad).
1890 First Ukrainian political party formed in Lviv.
1905 Nicholas II makes democratic concessions in face of strikes and mass demonstrations. Pogroms in Kiev, Odessa, Kherson and Nikolayev (Mykolayiv).
1908 Ukrainian student assassinates the Polish governor of Galicia.
March 1917 Nicholas II abdicates. Central Rada formed in Kiev.
November 1917 (October, old-style Julian calendar) Bolshevik coup in Petrograd (St. Petersburg).
January 1918 Red Army captures Kiev. Rada proclaims Ukrainian independence and flees.
March 1918 Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. German army occupies Kiev.
November 1918 West Ukrainian National Republic declared in Lviv. Ukrainian government flees to Stanyslaviv (Ivano-Frankivsk) in face of simultaneous Polish rising.
December 1918–August 1921 War between Red, White, Polish and Ukrainian armies, and ‘Cossack’ peasant bands, for control of Ukraine.
1923 Allies formally recognise Polish sovereignty in Galicia. Korenizatsiya launched in Soviet Ukraine.
1929 ‘Dekulakisation’ and collectivisation begin.
1929–’33 Up to twelve million ‘kulaks’ deported.
1930 Ukrainian purges begin. Polish ‘pacification’ campaign in Galicia.
1932–’33 Up to five million peasants die of starvation in Soviet Ukraine.
1937–’39 Second wave of purges sweeps the Soviet Union. Up to one million Soviets executed, and up to twelve million sent to camps.
1939 Ribbentrop–Molotov Pact. Soviet Union occupies Galicia.
June 1941 Germany invades the Soviet Union. Massacre and deportation of Ukrainian Jews begins.
1942 Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) formed.
1943–’44 Soviet army retakes Ukraine.
May 1944 Crimean Tatars deported.
1947 Last UPA units in Poland rounded up. Poland’s Ukrainians deported to newly-acquired ex-German lands, and to the Soviet Union.
1954 Khrushchev hands Crimea to the Ukrainian SSR.
1965–’66 Arrest and showtrial of Ukrainian ‘sixtiers’.
1972 Shcherbytsky appointed First Secretary of the Ukrainian Communist Party. Mass arrests of Ukrainian intelligentsia.
1976 Ukrainian Helsinki Group formed.
1986 Chernobyl explodes.
1988 First anti-communist demonstrations in Lviv and Kiev.
1989 Shcherbytsky sacked. Rukh holds its founding congress. Uniate parishes legalised.
March 1990 Semi-democratic elections to the Ukrainian Supreme Soviet.
September–October 1990 Mass demonstrations and student hunger strike in Kiev.
October 1990 Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church legalised.
August 1991 Attempted coup in Moscow. Ukrainian Supreme Soviet declares independence.
December 1991 Kravchuk elected president of Ukraine.
1993 Hyperinflation.
January 1994 Tripartite Agreement with Russia and America commits Ukraine to surrendering its nuclear weapons.
July 1994 Kuchma elected president.
1996 The hryvnya replaces the coupon.
1999 Former prime minister Lazarenko flees to the US. Kuchma wins a second presidential term, and appoints Yushchenko prime minister.
2000 Putin elected president of Russia. The Gongadze and Kuchmagate scandals break.
2001 Yushchenko resigns as prime minister.
2002 Tapes released in which Kuchma apparently agrees the sale of anti-aircraft systems to Iraq.
2003 Kuchma snubbed at a NATO summit.
2004 Yushchenko poisoned with dioxin in the run-up to presidential elections. The elections are rigged in Yanukovich’s favour; the Orange Revolution forces a re-run; Yushchenko is elected president.
2008 Ukraine offered NATO membership in principle. Russia invades Georgia.
2010 Yanukovich elected president.
November 2013 Yanukovich abandons a trade deal with the EU. Mass demonstrations begin on Kiev’s Maidan.
February 2014 Over a hundred protestors are shot dead by the security forces. Yanukovich flees to Russia; Russia invades Crimea.
April–May 2014 Pro-Russian militias take power in the eastern Donbass. Poroshenko elected president. Fighting begins between the militias and the Ukrainian army.
August 2014 Russia starts sending troops and heavy weaponry to the Donbass.
September 2014 Ceasefire and peace deal agreed in Minsk, but never implemented.
October 2014 Parliamentary elections produce a pro-European government.
February 2015 Putin and Poroshenko reach a second peace deal in Minsk, in talks brokered by Germany’s Angela Merkel.