Maidan begins in Kyiv

November 21, 2013

After Ukraine's president Viktor Yanukovych abruptly declined to sign an association agreement with the European Union under heavy pressure from Moscow, students began gathering on Kyiv's Independence Square, known as the Maidan. The protests grew, faced beatings and snipers, and three months later toppled Yanukovych. Russia answered by seizing Crimea. The decade's longest war had its prologue.