More than 14,000 people have died in the fighting that devastated UkraineвЂ™s eastern industrial heartland known as Donbas.ДЄ 2015 peace agreement brokered by France and Germany helped end large-scale battles, but efforts to reach a political settlement have failed, and sporadic skirmishes have continued along the tense line of contact.Д®arlier this year, a spike in cease-fire violations in the east and a Russian troop concentration near Ukraine fueled war fears, but tensions abated when Moscow pulled back the bulk of its forces after maneuvers in April. Moscow denied that, charging that Russians who joined the separatists were volunteers.

Ukraine and the West accused Russia of sending its troops and weapons to back the rebels. Russia responded by annexing UkraineвЂ™s Crimean Peninsula and throwing its weight behind a separatist insurgency that broke out in Ukraine's east. The country has moved to shed its Russian imperial legacy and forge increasingly close ties with the West.ДЄ decision by Kremlin-leaning Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych to reject an association agreement with the European Union in favor of closer ties with Moscow sparked mass protests that led to his ouster in 2014. Ukraine, which was part of the Russian empire for centuries before becoming a Soviet republic, won independence as the USSR broke up in 1991.

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