Book excerpt: What are the causes and consequences of the crisis in Ukraine, and what has been the nature of local, national, and external actors’ involvement in it? These are the questions that the authors examine in this comprehensive analysis of the situation in Ukraine. The crisis evolved from peaceful protests to full-scale military conflict and to an unstable ceasefire frequently interrupted by, at times, intense clashes between government forces and separatist rebels. Tracing the emergence of two new de-facto state entities in the post-Soviet space—the self-declared Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics—from the chaos of the early days after Russia’s annexation of Crimea in Spring 2014 to the second Minsk Agreement in February 2015, and focusing on the actions of the immediate conflict parties and their external backers, the authors investigate the feasibility and viability of several prominent ‘scenarios’ for a possible future settlement of the conflict. As an in-depth case study of the complex dynamics of the conflict at local, national, regional, and global levels of analysis, the book complements and advances existing scholarship on civil war and international crisis management and also provides insights for the policy community and the wider interested public.