When the then Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, abandoned a deal with the EU in favour of stronger ties with Russia in November 2013, hundreds of protesters came to Kyiv’s Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square). Soon, those hundreds became thousands, eventually hundreds of thousands, forming a protest camp where blue and gold EU flags flew defiantly in the winter air.
The Euromaidan movement that ultimately forced Yanukovych to flee the country powerfully showed the desire of young Ukrainians to join their western neighbours, but until the full-scale Russian invasion of February 2022 Ukrainian membership of the EU seemed a distant dream.
