Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
1944
Stalin deports the entire 250,000-strong Crimean Tatar population in just a few days, beginning
18 May. He accuses them of 'Nazi collaboration'. Thousands die during this genocidal journey of
'Sürgün'.
1945
Winston Churchill and an ailing Franklin Roosevelt travel to 'the Riviera of Hades' so Stalin can
bully them. At the Yalta Conference, the Soviet leader demands chunks of Eastern Europe.
1959
Stepan Bandera, the exiled Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) leader, is killed in Munich by the
KGB. Ukrainian partisans had continued ambushing Soviet police until the mid-1950s.
1986
Reactor No 4 at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant explodes, after a failed safety test. More
than 90 Hiroshimas are spewed out over the Ukrainian and Belarusian countryside.
1991
President Gorbachev is held prisoner at his country retreat in Crimea while a coup led by hard-
liners takes place in Moscow.
1991
As the Soviet Union falters, Ukraine's parliament votes for independence. Some 84% of the
population figures that's about right and backs the decision in a referendum.
1994
Former rocket scientist Leonid Kuchma becomes president. With inflation running at 10,000%,
he moves to reform the economy, but his popularity wanes when he's implicated in a series of
corruption scandals.
2000
After opposition journalist Georgiy Gongadze is murdered, a recording emerges of President
Kuchma asking his staff to 'deal with' the journalist. Kuchma later claims the tape has been se-
lectively edited.
2004
