Il August 24th it's a national holiday Ukraine, because on this date – in 1991 - the country declared itself independent from the Soviet Union. This year, with the war continuing seven months after the Russian invasion, the anniversary takes on a particular meaning, not only from a symbolic point of view. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, fears that the Ukrainian Independence Day can be used by enemy fighters as a pretext for demonstrative attacks: "We must be aware that this week Russia could try something particularly cruel - said Sunday the number one of the Kiev government - We must all be strong enough to resist any enemy provocation : the occupiers answer for all their actions”.
Centrifugal thrusts in the USSR
Thirty-one years ago, the secession of Ukraine came when the Soviet Union was already on the verge of collapse: the three Baltic republics (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and Georgia had already unilaterally declared their independence from Moscow and the same would soon be done by Moldova (27 August) and Armenia (21 September). Centrifugal thrusts within the USSR had received a decisive acceleration since coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev, which ended in failure and swept away what remained of communist power in the Soviet Union.
The referendum
However, the declaration of independence was not the final act of the Ukrainian secession, which officially materialized only a few months later, on December 1991 of that same XNUMX, when a popular referendum ended with a plebiscitary result (over 90%) in favor of farewell to Moscow. This was precisely one of the last historical passages that decreed the end of the USSR.
The dissolution of the Soviet Union
One week after the consultation, on December 8, 1991, the leaders of the three Slavic republics (Russia, Ukraine and Belarus) met to sign what has gone down in history as the Belavezha Agreement, or Mink Agreement, which declared the Soviet Union dissolved and replaced by the Commonwealth Independents.
