Russia’s seizure of the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine exactly 11 years ago on March 18, 2014, was quick and bloodless, but it sent Moscow’s relations with the West into a downward spiral unseen since the Cold War.

Leonid Kravchuk, who led Ukraine to independence during the collapse of the Soviet Union and served as its first president, has died at age 88.

When the leaders of the Soviet Union’s three Slavic republics met at a secluded hunting lodge near the Polish border on Dec. 8, 1991, they delivered a death blow to the USSR.