Historical and legal predictors of the Russian-Ukrainian war in the twenty-first century

The relevance of studying the historical and legal predicates of Ukraine is caused by the active phase of the military aggression of the Russian Federation. The war in Ukraine, which began with a full-scale armed invasion of the Russian Federation in 2022, became the largest military conflict in modern Europe after the Second World War, which intensified a new round of military and political crisis in the world. In the historical and legal context, the Russian Empire, as the predecessor of the Russian Federation, never abandoned its geopolitical and political and legal ambitions to influence Ukraine and European civilization. Assessing the historical and legal retrospective, it can be argued that political and legal conflicts arose from time to time between our peoples in the context of the competition for the historical and cultural memory and heritage of Ancient Rus, which was also reflected in the nature of the political and legal relations of the two ethno-national and cultural conglomerates. This confirms the relevance of scientific research into historical and legal factors that could have played a critical role in the aggravation of the military-political situation and the diplomatic crisis of today. The research that has been initiated gives us the opportunity to more objectively investigate those historical and legal and internal national features of Ukraine that are associated with the crisis of national identity, the language issue, the protection of the interests of national minorities and the general socio-political and economic crisis, which contributed to the weakening of internal security and created an opportunity for foreign policy influence on the ruling circles of Ukraine. The Russian military intervention radically changed the plane of diplomatic relations, caused a crisis of international law and prompted a rethinking of global security policy, forming a new focus of political and legal thought. Therefore, it would be ideologically correct to investigate the causal relationship between the military-political crisis that affected the world order and the historical and legal determinants that were formed in the territories of present-day Ukraine.