Yeah, I gotta agree. There's pretty much nothing going on in Ukraine at this time, beyond the Mafiya doing Mafiya things.

 The 90s are a fantastic time for espionage.
You've got the Gulf War, the Rwandan Genocide, the Somali Civil War, the Afghani Civil War, and all other flavors of uprising and civil war spurred on by the power vacuum caused by the Soviet Union's demise. If you want to use a bloody, vicious war filled with ulterior motives, pretty much [i]all[/i] of the conflicts in this decade are perfect for this. It'd be a way to diversify the settings we go to, too.