Petro Poroshenko in the context of "2019 Ukrainian presidential election"

The National Police of Ukraine (Ukrainian: Націона́льна полі́ція Украї́ни, romanized: Natsionalna politsiia Ukrainy, IPA: [nɐts⁽ʲ⁾ioˈnɑlʲnɐ poˈl⁽ʲ⁾its⁽ʲ⁾ijɐ ʊkrɐˈjinɪ]; abbr. НПУ/NPU [ˌɛnpeˈu]), often simply referred to as the Politsiia (Поліція, 'Police'), is the national, and only, police service of Ukraine. It was formed on 3 July 2015, as part of the post-Euromaidan reforms launched by Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, to replace Ukraine's previous national police service, the Militsiya. On 7 November 2015, all the remaining militsiya were labelled "temporary acting" members of the National Police.

The agency is overseen by the Ministry of Internal Affairs.

The Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation, and Partnership between Ukraine and the Russian Federation, also known as the "Big Treaty", was an agreement signed in 1997 between Ukraine and Russia, which fixed the principle of strategic partnership, the recognition of the inviolability of existing borders, and respect for territorial integrity and mutual commitment not to use its territory to harm the security of each other.The treaty prevents Ukraine and Russia from invading one another's country respectively, and declaring war. Due to the beginning of the Russo-Ukrainian War in 2014, Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko signed a decree not to extend the treaty on 19 September 2018. The treaty consequently expired on 31 March 2019.

Until 2019, the treaty was automatically renewed on each 10th anniversary of its signing, unless one party advised the other of its intention to end the treaty six months prior to the date of the renewal.

Snap presidential elections were held in Ukraine on 25 May 2014 and resulted in Petro Poroshenko being elected President of Ukraine. Originally scheduled to take place on 29 March 2015, the date was brought forward following the 2014 Ukrainian revolution. Poroshenko won the elections with 55% of the vote, enough to win in a single round. His closest competitor, Yulia Tymoshenko, received 13% of the vote. The Central Election Commission reported voter turnout over 60%, excluding the regions not under government control. Since Poroshenko obtained an absolute majority in the first round, a run-off second ballot (scheduled for 15 June 2014) was unnecessary.

The election was not held everywhere in Ukraine. During the 2014 Crimean crisis, Ukraine lost control over Crimea, which was unilaterally annexed by Russia in March 2014. As a result, elections were not held in Crimea. Of the 2,430 planned ballot stations (in Donbas), only 426 opened for polling. The self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic, controlling large parts of Donbas, had vowed to do everything possible to disrupt the elections on their territory.

Servant of the People is a Ukrainian political satire comedy series created and produced by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who was an actor before he became the President of Ukraine. Zelenskyy stars as Vasyl Petrovych Holoborod'ko, a high school history teacher in his thirties, who was unexpectedly elected president of Ukraine after finding instant fame when a student recorded a video of him delivering a profane rant against government corruption in his country and uploaded it to the internet. The series ran for three seasons between 2015 and 2019, and a film adaptation was released in 2016. The series was produced by Kvartal 95, a studio founded by Zelenskyy.

In 2018 the studio became involved in Ukrainian politics when a political party of the same name as the show was registered. While this was initially done to prevent others from using the name for "cynical political purposes", it quickly became active in Ukrainian politics, with Zelenskyy running as its candidate in the real-life 2019 Ukrainian presidential election against the incumbent Petro Poroshenko. Zelenskyy would be elected president following a landslide victory in the second round election, winning 73% of the vote. Zelenskyy was sworn in as the president of Ukraine on 20 May, 2019.

108 civilian protesters and 13 police officers were killed in Ukraine's Revolution of Dignity (or the 'Maidan Revolution'), which was the culmination of the Euromaidan protest movement. The deaths occurred in January and February 2014; most of them on 20 February, when police snipers fired on anti-government activists in Kyiv. The slain activists are known in Ukraine as the Heavenly Hundred or Heavenly Company (Ukrainian: Небесна сотня, romanized: Nebesna sotnia). By June 2016, 55 people had been charged in relation to the deaths of protesters, including 29 former members of the Berkut special police force, ten titushky or loyalists of the former government, and ten former government officials.

On 21 February, the Ukrainian parliament (Verkhovna Rada) passed a law to provide assistance to the families of the protesters who were killed. On 21 November 2014 a decree by the new Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko posthumously awarded the title "Hero of Ukraine" to the slain protesters. Three non-Ukrainian citizens killed in the revolution were each posthumously awarded the title "Knight of the Order of the Heaven's Hundred Heroes". Since 2015, the deaths have been commemorated each year in Ukraine on 20 February, which is "the Day of the Heavenly Hundred Heroes".

The Trilateral Contact Group on Ukraine (also known as the Trilateral Contact Group for the peaceful settlement of the situation in eastern Ukraine) was a group of representatives from Ukraine, the Russian Federation, and the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) that was formed as means to facilitate a diplomatic resolution to the war in the Donbas region of Ukraine. There were several subgroups.

The group was created after the May 2014 election of Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko. Prior to his election, unrest had gripped the southern and eastern parts of Ukraine, in the aftermath of the Euromaidan movement and the 2014 Ukrainian revolution. After an informal meeting of heads of state at the commemoration of the seventieth anniversary of D Day in Normandy on 6 June 2014, it was devised that a group should be created to facilitate dialogue between the Ukrainian government and the Russian government.

The Militsiya (Ukrainian: міліція, pronounced [miˈl⁽ʲ⁾its⁽ʲ⁾ijɐ] ) was a type of domestic law enforcement agency (militsiya) that existed in various forms in Ukraine from 1919 until 2015. The Militsiya was originally formed while Ukraine was governed by the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, part of the Soviet Union, and it continued to serve as a national police service in post-Soviet Ukraine until it was replaced by the National Police of Ukraine on 7 November 2015.

The Militsiya was under the direct control of the Ministry of Internal Affairs (known by the Ukrainian acronym MVS and by the Russian acronym MVD), and it was widely seen as corrupt and inconsiderable to the demands of the Ukrainian public. During Euromaidan, the Militsiya was accused of brutality against protestors as well as kidnapping Automaidan activists, leading to the reputation of the Militsiya being irreversibly damaged. This resulted in its replacement under the post-Maidan Poroshenko presidency.