In terms of population the Eastern European country was the second-largest of all 15 Soviet republics, in terms of land mass it came in third after Russia and Kazakhstan.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is to miss the funeral of the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, denying the man who failed to prevent the collapse of the Soviet empire the full state honours ...

But when the 15 Soviet republics seized on the same freedoms to demand their independence, Gorbachev was powerless to prevent the collapse of the Union in 1991, six years after he had become its ...

Nikolai Ryzhkov, a premier of the Soviet Union who in 1990 took the brunt of the blame for economic chaos that engulfed the last years of communist rule, leading to the nation’s political col… ...

He was elected a delegate to the Congress of People’s Deputies, which brought together representatives from all 15 Soviet republics in the first freely elected parliamentary body since the ...

However, the economic and political situation in the former Soviet republics themselves remains fraught, in large part because Russia still considers these countries to be its own sphere of influence.

Below is a timeline of major historical events over the last 30 years: 1991 Dec. 1, 1991: Ukraine votes for independence Amid the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Ukraine votes for independence in ...