Abstract
This study examines the Russia-Ukraine war in 2022 and the origins of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in the political transition during the Maidan in Ukraine in 2014. This transition of power contributed to the civil war in Donbas, Russian military interventions in Crimea and Donbas, the Russian annexation of Crimea and an international conflict between Russia and Ukraine and the West and Russia. This conflict escalated when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. The research question is as follow: What is the nature of the Russia-Ukraine war and the political transition in Ukraine during the Maidan? This issue produced divergent narratives of this war and the Maidan in scholarly studies, the media, and governments. This paper uses political science theories of wars, mass protests, coups, revolutions, and regime changes and empirical analysis of various evidence to examine the nature of the Russia-Ukraine war and the political transition during the Maidan.