Background information

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s speech “This is an illegal war” discusses the invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops, which is an escalation of the war between Russia and Ukraine which has been going on since 2014. In March 2022, a month after the Russian invasion, Schwarzenegger shared his message with the Russian people.

The Russo-Ukrainian war

In 2013, a decision of the then-President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, to not sign a free-trade agreement with the European Union in favor of closer economic ties to Russia sparked large-scale protests from the general Ukrainian population. The protestors disagreed with this decision because they saw it as an abuse of power, a violation of human rights, and a sign of widespread government corruption. These often violent protests culminated in the overthrowing of the Ukrainian government and the Ukrainian parliament unanimously voted to remove the president from office in early 2014.

At the same time, this sparked a conflict with Russia, who considered the ousting of the president to be an illegal coup. Support of Russia in some south-eastern parts of the country prompted civil unrest in those areas. At the same time, undercover Russian military operations started in Ukraine, which soon led to the Russian annexation of Crimea, a peninsula of Ukraine, which was condemned as a violation of international law by the United Nations. 

Pro-Russian separatists in the Ukrainian region of Donbas also secretly received support from Russia which furthered the war. They declared the independence of the Donetsk People's Republic and the Luhansk People's Republic, but these territories were not officially recognized by any countries. Attempts to fully end the conflict in the following years failed.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine 

Starting in 2021, Russia began building a large military presence at its border with Ukraine and at Ukraine’s border with Belarus. In February 2022, Russia officially reco...